Infantry

• 1. Introduction

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  Infantry are the soldiers who fight on foot, and they were the first military forces in history. Before the chariot created the first mobile fighting forces around 2000 BC, every army on earth was pure infantry. The word itself carries an odd insult buried inside it. It comes from the Latin word for newborn, speechless, even foolish, the same root that gives English the word infant. That history hides a string of puzzles. How did a soldier with a spear and a shield grow into block formations a hundred meters wide and a dozen rows deep? Why were Roman legionaries mocked as mules? And how did the foot soldier survive the arrival of gunpowder, armoured vehicles, and airpower while remaining pivotal to every modern combined arms operation?

• 2. A Word For Foot Soldiers

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  Around the 1570s, English speakers began using the term infantry to describe soldiers who march and fight on foot. It travelled from Middle French infanterie, from older Italian and Spanish infanteria, a word meaning foot soldiers too inexperienced for cavalry. The individual-soldier term infantryman waited much longer, not coined until 1837. Some forces avoid that word entirely. The Canadian Army uses infanteer to name a single soldier of the infantry. Names often outlive the things that earned them. From the mid-18th century until 1881, the British Army called its infantry numbered regiments of Foot, marking them off from cavalry and dragoons. Units equipped with special weapons took their names from those weapons, like grenadiers for their grenades and fusiliers for their fusils. Long after the weapon faded, the title remained, as with the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Grenadier Guards. That habit of holding onto an old name would soon blur the line between infantry and the men on horseback.

• 3. When The Horses Vanished

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  Dragoons began as mounted infantry, riding horses only to travel between battles and dismounting before any fighting. Because they fought on foot, they counted as infantry. When an army lacked light cavalry, its dragoons might be handed cavalry duties, and over time they gained the weapons and training of both. Eventually they could be classed as either. The traffic ran the other way too. From about the mid-19th century, regular cavalry were forced to fight dismounted more and more, driven off their horses by the growing power of enemy firearms. Most cavalry became mounted infantry as a result. The old labels survived the loss of the horse, preserved in names like the Royal Dragoon Guards, the Royal Lancers, and the King's Royal Hussars. The same pattern repeats with engines. Motorised infantry ride trucks and other unarmed vehicles for movement, then leave them to fight on foot, so they remain infantry. Mechanised infantry go further, riding armoured personnel carriers that allow some combat without dismounting. A few of those carriers became infantry fighting vehicles, with combat abilities approaching those of light tanks. Because most armoured forces field more mechanised infantry units than tank units, the distinction between mechanised infantry and armour has steadily blurred.

• 4. Heavy And Light

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  From roughly the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD, the infantry of the Western world were sorted into two kinds, heavy and light. After the fall of Rome, the quality of heavy infantry fell away, and warfare came to be ruled by heavy cavalry like knights, who formed small elite units for decisive shock combat. Peasant militias and light infantry from the lower classes filled out the ranks beneath them. The pendulum swung back near the end of the Middle Ages. Better trained light infantry began to prove effective against knights, like the English longbowmen of the Hundred Years' War. By the start of the Renaissance, Swiss pikemen and German Landsknechts revived the heavy infantry role, using dense formations of pikes to drive off any cavalry. Density carried a fatal weakness, since packed formations make easy targets for ranged weapons. New technology let armies raise large numbers of light infantry armed with ranged weapons, skipping the years of training that archers and slingers once required. It came slowly, first crossbowmen, then hand cannoneers and arquebusiers, each more effective than the last. Firearms eventually made heavy infantry obsolete. When musketeers with bayonets arrived in the mid-17th century, the infantry square began to replace the pike square. To squeeze out maximum firepower, musketeers were trained to fight in wide lines, creating line infantry that took over the old central battlefield role. Smaller formations in dispersed skirmish lines supported them, distinguished not by lighter arms but by their loose formation and flexible tactics. As firepower kept climbing, the infantry line withered, until in practice all infantry became light infantry.

• 5. Marius' Mules

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  In the late Roman Republic, legionaries earned the nickname Marius' mules, because their main activity seemed to be hauling the weight of their legion on their backs. The practice actually predates Gaius Marius, the man it was named for. The burden has changed little across centuries of warfare. An infantryman's military kit runs to combat boots, battledress, camping gear, heavy weather gear, survival gear, secondary weapons and ammunition, repair kits, hygiene items, a mess kit, rations, a filled water canteen, and every other consumable needed for time away from base. On top of that comes shared gear like tents or heavy weapons, with the load spread across several soldiers. The most valuable single piece is the entrenching tool, a folding spade used to dig defences, handle daily tasks, and even serve as a weapon in a pinch. When fighting looms, infantry switch to packing light, cutting down to weapons, ammunition, and basic essentials. Unnecessary items are left with the baggage train, stashed in hidden caches, or in emergencies simply thrown away. Through history, infantry have suffered terrible losses from disease, exposure, exhaustion, and privation, often more than from enemy attacks. Because health and morale ride on how a soldier is fed, militaries issue standardised field rations meant to keep a soldier well-fed and combat-ready. Communications gear has become a necessity, letting commanders direct units across greater distances and coordinate with artillery. Modern infantry may carry GPS, encrypted communications, surveillance and night vision equipment. Armies have pushed to standardise gear, as with the American all-purpose lightweight individual carrying equipment, known as ALICE.

• 6. Arms And Armour

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  Infantrymen are defined by their primary arms, the personal weapons and body armour each soldier carries. The categories fall into a few groups. Ranged weapons span javelins, slings, blowguns, bows, crossbows, hand cannons, arquebuses, muskets, grenades, and flamethrowers. Melee weapons cover bludgeoning tools like clubs, flails, and maces, bladed arms like swords, daggers, and axes, and polearms like spears, halberds, naginata, and pikes. One weapon bridges both worlds, the bayonet fixed to a firearm, which lets a soldier fight at range and up close with the same tool. It began with muskets and continues with modern assault rifles, though its use declined as automatic firearms arrived. Backup weapons run deep through infantry history. The Roman legionary threw a javelin called the pilum just before drawing his primary weapon, the short sword known as the gladius, then closed with the enemy line. Modern infantrymen treat the bayonet itself as a backup, sometimes carrying handguns as sidearms. Protection followed its own long arc. Personal armour ranged from shields and helmets to padded linen, leather, lamellar, mail, plate, and kevlar, always balancing protection against coverage since full attack-proof armour would be too heavy to wear. As firearms improved, armour had to grow thicker and heavier until mobility suffered. The heavy arquebus, built to pierce standard steel armour, proved a point, that it was easier to make heavier firearms than heavier armour. Armour shrank to close-combat use, then to helmets and breastplates for pikemen and almost nothing for gunners. Helmets returned during World War I, when artillery began to dominate and soldiers needed protection from fragmentation and blast. Composite materials like kevlar have begun a return to body armour, at the cost of extra weight. Modern soldiers must also carry gas masks, counter-agents, and protective suits against chemical and biological attack, each addition adding to a load that can decrease combat efficiency.

• 7. The Solid Wall

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  A spear keeps an opponent at a distance, and a longer spear extends that reach, yet a long spear becomes near useless if an enemy side-steps the point and closes for hand-to-hand fighting. The answer was to have each spearman stand side by side with the others, covering his neighbours and presenting a solid wall of spears the enemy cannot get around. The same logic shaped the shield. A shield defends well but is hit-or-miss, and an attack from an unexpected angle can slip past it entirely. Larger shields cover more ground yet weigh more and move slower. Standing shield-armed soldiers shoulder to shoulder, each guarding himself and his comrade, builds a solid shield wall against the enemy. The opponents of these first formations, the tribal warriors and others without regular infantry, favoured arms built around the individual, larger swinging swords, axes, and clubs. Those weapons need room to wield, forcing a looser organisation. A loose mass could mount a fierce running charge, an initial shock, but the tight spear-and-shield formation gave a local manpower advantage where several soldiers could gang up on each opponent. To deepen their staying power, multiple rows of heavy infantry were added, which also magnified the shock effect, since a single enemy found himself facing several heavy infantrymen at once with no apparent chance of beating them all. Heavy infantry grew into huge solid blocks, up to a hundred meters wide and a dozen rows deep. Keeping that formation intact became the deciding factor when two heavy infantry forces met, and intense discipline and training turned paramount. Empires formed around their military.

• 8. Counting The Ranks

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  Egyptian records of the Battle of Kadesh, around 1274 BC, give the first known sign of military forces organised into regular units. Soldiers were grouped into units of 50, then bundled into units of 250, then 1,000, and finally into units of up to 5,000, the largest independent command. Several of these Egyptian divisions made up an army yet operated independently, both on the march and in battle, showing enough command and control for basic manoeuvres. Other ancient armies show similar layering, often in rough ratios of 10 to 100 to 1,000, echoing the modern section, company, and regiment. Training varied drastically across time and place, shaped by the cost of keeping an army in fighting order and the seasonal rhythm of warfare, which ruled out large permanent armies. Antiquity ran the full range, from the well-trained citizen armies of Greece and Rome to tribal hosts of farmers and hunters and masses of ill-trained, lightly armed militia. The Kushite king Taharqa won military success in the Near East partly by strengthening his army through daily long-distance running. Medieval foot soldiers ranged from peasant levies to semi-permanent mercenary companies, foremost among them the Swiss, English, Aragonese, and German, and to men-at-arms armoured like knights. The rise of standing armies, kept permanently assembled, brought greater training and experience. National and mass armies set minimum requirements and added special troops, beginning with the engineers, whose roots reach back to medieval times, and culminating in the highly trained special forces introduced during the first and second World Wars.