The most obvious and closest analogy to Homeric warfare is that of the period (1300-1430 A.D.) when the Flemings and Scots had shown the powerlessness of charges of heavy cavalry against the schiltroms of spearmen, if these had not been broken up by "artillery preparation," by the long bow. Henceforth the English knights, squires, and "lances," or men-at-arms dismounted, their horses being held in reserve, and received the attacks of the heavy French cavalry on foot, with spear, sword, and axe. In case of defeat (which did not occur) or of pursuit, the horses were in readiness. Heavy armed infantry, like the hoplites of historic Greece, were developed later than Homer, and the heavy cavalry then became a separate arm. The changes occurred in the dim age between the date of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ and the dawn of historic Greece. Chariots ceased to be employed in war by the Greek cities of Asia. The chief arm was the heavy drilled infantry, the hoplites. We catch our first glimpses of them on the Warrior Vase of the upper and later stratum at Mycenae, and on an old sculptured Mycenaean stele, later "plastered over and painted in fresco." In the former is a line of swordless spearmen on the march; on the latter, a row of swordless spearmen in the act of brandishing the spear. Their bucklers are worn on the left arm: they appear to wear hauberks, not corslets of plate, but one cannot be certain.[22] In these figures we see the germ of the infantry of historic Hellas. The war chariot becoming obsolete, civic cavalry were employed; the horsemen of Colophon were celebrated for dealing a fatal conclusive charge. Nothing could be much less like Homeric than historical Ionian warfare, except in so far as Homer's dismounted men-at-arms resemble the heavy historic infantry, who never mount. We have now given a brief sketch of Homer's idea of a general engagement in force. The clash of marshalled lines of heavy dismounted men-at-arms ends in the breaking of the phalanxes, and in the single combats, or combats of small knots of heroes, in which the poet and his audience take special delight. We now criticise the modern criticisms of Homeric pictures of battles. Herr Mülder, in 1906, and Mr. Murray, in 1908, discover that Homeric formations and fighting are a confusion of the methods of historic Greece--with drilled hoplites and cavalry,--and the "Mycenaean" system of "a battle of _promachoi_ or champions."[23]