A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

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Besides the list of contemporary foreign works I have included
one of the ancient technical writers, in chronological order, with
notes.
Although the writings of the latter are now of more service
to the military historian than to the soldier, yet, as regards strategy,
some of their teaching is still to be found in our text-books. It is
in tactics that the great changes have taken place, and in that
branch, therefore, there is little, perhaps, to be learnt from them.
But it was not so during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or
even in the seventeenth, up to the time of Gustavus Adolphus ;
who
started a new system, and won his battles by movements entirely
opposed to the ponderous and slow methods of handling troops
handed down from ancient and from feudal days.
The editing and printing of these MSS., in the first instance,
were carried on almost entirely abroad. The sole Englishman to
put his hand to one of them was Sir John Cheke, who translated
Leo's "Ta6lics" into Latin ;
and he was forced to send it to Basle to
be printed, his own countrymen not being competent to the task.
There are three editions of the work: Basle, 1554, 160; Basle,
1595, 16° ; and Leyden, 161 2, 4°. Of the twenty-nine authors in
the list whose treatises, or parts of them, are extant, the first to be
sent to the press was Vegetius (1475), while the last was only recently
published (1898) ; but with three exceptions all were in print by
1693. iElian, Modestus, Frontinus, and Vegetius were often
combined in one volume ; the British Museum has eleven such
colleded editions, all issued between 1487 and 1670. Vitruvius
was brought out in i486; seven others, Xenophon, Orbicius,
Apsyrtus, Leo, Constantine, Polyaenus, and Polybius appeared
during the sixteenth century.^
Hyginus, iEneas, and Hero the Elder
followed between 1607 and 1616 ; Arrian and Maurice together
in 1664. The fragments of Athenaeus, Apollodorus, Philo, Bito,
^
A Latin translation of Hero the Younger appeared in 1572.
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