infantry

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1. The branch of an army made up of units trained to fight on foot.
2. Soldiers armed and trained to fight on foot: The general ordered his infantry to attack.
3. A unit, such as a regiment, of such soldiers: Company B of the 7th Infantry.

[French infanterie, from Old French, from Old Italian infanteria, from infante, youth, foot soldier, from Latin īnfāns, īnfant-, infant. See infant.]

For more information on infantry, visit Britannica.com.

The foot soldier is as old as man, whose ability to make weapons compensated for lack of lethal teeth and claws: these weapons formed two categories which still define the infantryman today. Projectile weapons, initially the stick, stone, arrow, or throwing spear, enabled him to strike at a distance, while he fought hand-to-hand with shock weapons, like the club, stabbing spear, and sword. The fragility of his body, so evident in infantry combat, encouraged him to protect himself with shield, helmet, and body armour. The relationship between the weight of weapons and equipment, and the mobility generated by human muscles has been his lasting preoccupation. Initially his tactics were an extension of the hunt: he ambushed, raided, and swept enemies against a human cordon or natural barrier. He was essentially a warrior, whose skills were individual, and not yet a soldier with collective skills.

From about 2500 bc the infantry of Mesopotamian city states made this crucial transition. They were armed alike, with shield and spear, and went into battle in massed phalanxes which required simple drills. Although the infantryman's status might be eclipsed by that of charioteers or horsemen, he played a key role in many of the great armies of the ancient world. The cities of classical Greece produced the hoplite, so called from the hoplon, the bronze shield he carried. Hoplite armies met in battles whose duration was limited by the physical difficulty of plying spear and shield for very long. Though they usually had little to fear from cavalry, they were vulnerable to light troops who might hover outside their reach, and it was often clear that assertive democracy did not make for military effectiveness. Nevertheless, the Spartans, the most martial of the Greeks, displayed a high level of organization: Plutarch (see Greek historians) describes them advancing ‘in step to the pipe, leaving no gap in their line of battle and no confusion in their hearts’. The infantrymen who formed the core of the Macedonian army under Alexander ‘the Great’ were more lightly equipped than hoplites, and carried the sarissa, a 15-foot (4.5-metre) pike. Their basic unit, the syntagma, consisted of 256 men formed 16 deep, and was combined with others into the phalanx, flexible enough to open up to allow Persian chariots or Indian war-elephants to pass harmlessly through.

The Roman legion, developed during two major wars against Carthage in the 3rd century bc, possessed even greater flexibility. Its organization, with the 8-man conturbernium, the 80-strong century, the 6-century cohort, and the 10-cohort legion, reflected ageless truths about the bonding process and the span of command. The legionary carried a throwing-spear, the pilum, which he used to disorganize the enemy's ranks before he charged with sword and shield. Rigid discipline, hard training, and standard operating procedures accounted for much of the legion's success. The Romans, recognizing that no army could live by heavy infantry alone, recruited cavalry and missile-armed troops from their allies. There were always dangerous foes even for the legion, and the combination of overconfidence and unsuitable terrain could prove fatal. In 53 bc Parthian mounted archers defeated Crassus at Carrhae, and in ad 9 a Roman army was wiped out in the trackless Teutoburger Wald.

The decay of the legion's recruiting base, as much as tactical obsolescence, caused its decline. The Emperor Valens was defeated at Adrianople by Gothic cavalry which caught his infantry tired and straggling, and pressed in to throw spears from close quarters. For the next thousand years the cavalryman was to predominate. From the East came swarms of steppe horsemen, while in the West the armoured knight emerged as the dominant military instrument. The link between social status and military effectiveness, which had told in favour of the foot soldier in the era of hoplite and legionary, now told against him. Not only were infantrymen despised by mounted warriors, but any increase in their effectiveness was a threat to the knight's status. Armies of the Middle Ages were often little more than a rabble of mounted gentility, with their foot soldiers as low in military value as social status.

One major threat to the knight came from the Swiss, some of whose sturdy and egalitarian soldiers plied the 18-foot (5.4 metre) pike at shoulder level, while others, posted behind the hedge of pikes, rushed out to swing axes, two-handed swords, or clubs. The Swiss usually gave battle on ground that did not favour cavalry, and in the 14th and 15th centuries won a series of victories over feudal opponents. They were eventually eclipsed by the development of pike-armed landsknechts in Germany and the improvement of cannon in the 16th century.

If the pike was a classic shock weapon, the second major threat to the knight was just the opposite. In the 13th century the longbow had become the characteristic weapon of English infantry, although much ‘English’ infantry was in fact Welsh. English archers fought with knights and spearmen as part of a combined-arms force, and their effect upon armoured cavalry or unsupported infantry could be devastating. At Falkirk in 1298 they riddled schiltroms of Scots spearmen with their arrows. At Crécy in 1346 they demolished a French army which attacked mounted. The French deduced that they had failed because chargers had been maddened by arrows, but when they attacked dismounted at Agincourt in 1415 the result was no less calamitous.

Social as well as military pressures played their part in the decline of the longbow. It was not until the 1800s that firearms could match it in range, accuracy, or rate of fire. But the archer was the product of years of training, and the bowyers and fletchers who supported him were craftsmen whose skills could not easily be duplicated. The monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries set great store by modernity, and noisy, up-to-date gunpowder weapons emphasized their status.

The 16th and 17th centuries drew together the threads represented by the Swiss on the one hand and the English on the other. The infantry of early modern Europe combined the fire of gunpowder weapons—first the arquebus and then the matchlock musket—and the shock of cold steel. At first it was the Spanish tercio, literally a third of an army, that ruled the roost. It drew up in deep formations with pikemen in the centre and ‘sleeves’ of musketeers at the corners. Both Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus improved the effectiveness of infantry by making units smaller and thus more flexible, and by increasing the proportion of musketeers to pikemen. The process accelerated in the Thirty Years War and the British civil wars. By 1691 pikemen formed less than a quarter of the strength of the English regiments which left for Flanders.

Towards the end of the 17th century the matchlock was superseded by the flintlock, more convenient to use but more expensive to manufacture. The invention of the bayonet sounded the death knell of the pike, although for many years infantry officers and sergeants carried staff weapons as a symbol of authority. The first bayonets plugged into the musket's muzzle, and the weapon could not be fired with the bayonet fixed. This, as British government troops discovered when charged by the Scots at Killiecrankie, was no small inconvenience. In the early 18th century the socket bayonet, which fitted round the musket's muzzle, came into general use.

Infantry of the line now formed the bulk of armies, and decided most battles by the regularity of their fire and the cohesion of their ranks. The musket was inaccurate: in the late 18th century a Prussian battalion, engaging a target 6 feet (1.8 metres) high and 100 feet (30.5 metres) long, scored 25 per cent of hits at 225 yards (206 metres), 40 per cent hits at 150 yards (137 metres), and 60 per cent hits at 75 yards (69 metres). Under the stress of battle the proportion of hits fell dramatically. Many of the most successful commanders of the age, like Frederick and Wellington, were men who trained their infantry carefully and used them well. There were lengthy debates about the efficacy of column and line, the former best suited for movement and shock and the latter for fire. Although there were national preferences— French Revolutionary armies often used columns, with tirailleurs skirmishing ahead—mixed order, with deployed battalions firing and others, in column, ready to reinforce them or to charge with the bayonet, usually brought best results.

Bayonet fights were relatively rare, usually because one side fled before contact, and determination to close with the enemy—the product of discipline, patriotic fervour, or soldierly emulation—was a battle-winning quality. Cohesive infantry could usually see off cavalry, but a skilful commander could unhinge an opponent by threatening him with cavalry, thus forcing his infantry to form square, engaging the squares with artillery, and bringing on the cavalry again if the infantry tried to open out to offer a less attractive target.

These tactics had limitations. Rifle-armed opponents could cause heavy casualties even if resolute infantry pushed on through their fire: the British lost 1, 150 men, nearly half the infantry engaged, at Bunker Hill in 1775. The threat of light troops encouraged the formation of light companies, each usually paired with a grenadier company, whose soldiers originally carried hand grenades, to form a battalion's flank companies. Specialist light or rifle battalions were raised, sometimes by the recruitment of woodsmen or gamekeepers.

In the 19th century technological change accelerated. The simple and reliable percussion lock replaced the flintlock from the 1830s; rifles became standard in the 1850s; and the Franco-Prussian war was the first in which the infantry on both sides carried breech-loaders. Heavy infantry casualties of the period owed much to the fact that these new weapons were used in old-fashioned massed tactics: the Prussian Guard lost over 8, 000 men at Saint-Privat (see Rezonville/Gravelotte, battles of). The machine gun also appeared, and within a generation this ‘concentrated essence of infantry’ would make the battlefield even more lethal.

By 1871 there were clear signs that infantry could achieve best results by fire and manoeuvre, one company providing fire to cover the movement of another, and that artillery could do much to shake the cohesion of infantry, whether attacking or defending. These lessons were underlined in the Second Boer War, where British infantry lost heavily making frontal assaults on positions held by riflemen whose weapons now used smokeless powder. In the years before 1914 there was renewed emphasis on close-order offensive tactics, because of fears that the conscript infantry composing European armies would lose cohesion if allowed to spread out on the ‘empty battlefield’ dominated by the rifle.

WW I brought suffering and transformation to the infantryman. The most numerous of the war's soldiers, he was its beast of burden, trudging along laden with rifle and pack, suffering the privation, tedium, and danger of trench warfare, and enduring the enemy's artillery. In the process he received old and new weapons and equipment. Hand grenades, mortars, and helmets were rediscovered, light machine guns were new. Although the battlefield was dominated by artillery, the infantryman found his rightful place upon it, in looser formations than ever before, his movement linked to the fire of artillery and mortars. German storm troops, used to such effect in 1918, underscored his transformation.

It was a transformation which was only partial, and infantry in WW II retained elements of the ancient set alongside the modern. Mechanization, begun in the inter-war years, saw some infantry carried in APCs and integrated, like German panzer grenadiers or Soviet motor riflemen, into the mobile all-arms battle. The proliferation of weapons continued, with anti-armour weapons like Panzerfaust or bazooka entering the inventory and automatic weapons becoming ever more numerous. The spread of radio sets made tactical separation easier and improved the control of artillery and mortar fire. But infantrymen still marched long distances, and the impact of terrain and climate, from the jungles of Burma to the mountains of Italy and the steppes of Russia, was ever-present. Sometimes this terrain was man-made, and the fighting at Stalingrad in 1942-3 was but one example of the value of infantry in the urban environment.

These tensions have persisted since 1945. The introduction of infantry fighting vehicles, like the US Bradley or British Warrior, continues to stitch infantry into the combined-arms battle, at the risk, as Gudmundsson and English observe, of ‘converting them to something other than infantry’. In the casualty-conscious 1990s, when the dismounted infantryman, even with helmet and body armour, seems dangerously vulnerable, such vehicles have proved useful in peace support operations, as well as, of course, relieving the foot soldier of at least part of his traditionally crushing burden of equipment. Alongside this runs a demand for light infantry, quickly deployable, usable on terrain which restricts the deployment of armour, in circumstances where heavy weapons may be politically unusable. As western nations ponder the risks of asymmetrical war against an enemy who chooses not to offer targets for their technology, they may conclude that the requirement for first-class infantry will increase—perhaps at a time when their societies find it harder to produce those tough and resourceful foot soldiers who have for so long provided the backbone of their armies.

Bibliography

• English, John A., and Gudmundsson, Bruce I., On Infantry (rev. edn., Westport, Conn., 1994)

— Richard Holmes

n. soldiers marching or fighting on foot; foot soldiers collectively.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Soldiers trained, armed and equipped to fight on foot.

Infantry Online
Screenshot (from Mechanized Skirmish) of Infantry Online.
Developer(s)	Harmless Games LLC
Publisher(s)	Sony Online Entertainment
License	Free-to-play
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	1999
Genre(s)	Combat MMOG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
System requirements	Pentium 90; 16 MB RAM; 28.8 kbit/s modem; 2 MB video card; Windows 9x or newer
Input methods	Keyboard and mouse

Infantry Online is an isometric perspective multiplayer combat computer game^[1] with sprite animation graphics, using complex soldier, ground vehicle and space-ship models on typically complex terrains.^[2] Players may choose from a list of game zones to enter, each zone having a unique style of gameplay and many offering a wide diversity of weapons, player classes and objectives.^[3]

Contents 1 History 2 Capture The Flag Player's League (CTFPL) 3 Game setting 4 Game zones 5 References 6 External links

History

In 1997, the now-defunct development team Virgin Interactive Entertainment (VIE) released the 2D Space Shooter, SubSpace. Members of the SubSpace development team banded together afterwards to form Harmless Games LLC. This new team designed and released Infantry during the late '90s.

The game was developed and was picked up by Brainscan Development Corporation, also known as Brainscan Interactive, as publisher. GameFan, the parent company of Brainscan Interactive, went bankrupt and did not pay its employees for a period of several months. Sony Online Entertainment announced its acquisition of Infantry on October 5, 2000. Rod (Rodvik) Humble, the lead designer of Infantry, was offered a job with Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and left Harmless Games. Larry J. Cordner (LJC) also found another job, but stayed with the development team until shortly after Harmless Games was bought by SOE. Harmless Games, and its sole game, Infantry, was bought by SOE from Brainscan Interactive for an undisclosed sum. The two remaining developers, Jeff Petersen (programmer) and Jerimy Weeks (artist and zone designer), were hired by SOE to continue development of the game. Some time later, SOE had them develop Cosmic Rift (CR), an offshoot of Infantry meant to compete with the still popular SubSpace.^[2] CR had gained a small portion of Infantry's and SubSpace's communities, but its population still paled in comparison. In October 2001, Petersen was transferred to EverQuest 2 development and Weeks later was laid off. Game development stagnated.^[4]

In May 2002, SOE rehired Weeks and introduced a monthly $6.95 pay-to-play system for SOE's three small action games: Infantry, CR and Tanarus, however, both Infantry and Cosmic Rift remained free to play with limitations.^[4] Infantry's and CR's populations have since declined drastically from daily highs of thousands at a time to a mere hundred or fewer players. In October 2005, Weeks was laid off again and a new developer was put to the task. Hope for the game's future was questionable, as the new developer was Joe Nelson, whose only prior experience with Infantry involved customer service duties, who held the position for only a few months. As of May 2006 there were three SOE employees delegated either full or part time to the game: Bill Corning, Jose Araiza and recently re-hired developer Jerimy Weeks, although Weeks' contract with Sony Online Entertainment expired at the end of April, 2007.^[5]

In May 2007, Sony Online Entertainment announced full and free online gaming access to Infantry and the rest of their "Station Pass" games, starting on June 26, 2007.^[6][7][8] "Station Pass" games started in May 2002 as a monthly $6.95 pay-to-play subscription, for Sony Online Entertainment's three action titles: Infantry, Cosmic Rift, and Tanarus. However, both Infantry and Cosmic Rift featured a free play mode that gave players access to a limited version of the game. Infantry itself was restricted to a limited playtime on servers (a player could only stay connected for half an hour before being disconnected), the inability to accumulate money, no statistical tracking and no personalised options. Now that it is completely free, Sony Online Entertainment released a Map Editor for Infantry, downloadable via the official site in July 2007.^[9]

Alternative servers to the official Infantry Online have spawned over the recent years, initially to provide a free option to the game, most notably "Free Infantry".^[10] However, with Sony Online Entertainment's announcement that has made Infantry and Cosmic Rift free of charge, the role of these servers transitioned to providing alternative maps and gameplay from the official server. They inevitably slowly faded out of existence as players went back to SOE's version of the game.

Infantry's versatile game style provided for the expansion of community squad development and implementation of squad vs. squad consisting of players worldwide.

Capture The Flag Player's League (CTFPL)

• Player organized League where teams of 20 players compete on a modified I:CTF - Twin Peaks map.
• CTFPL is permit only. Players must private message administrators in game or on the public forum located at Ctfpl.org
• CTFPL games are played on Sunday nights usually starting between 7pm EST and 10pm EST (GMT -5).

Game setting

The time is set several centuries ahead of the present. There is a war between the government (The Collective) and the various rebelling colonies of the outer solar system moons, notably the Titan colony. The Collective is a pure democracy; every single citizen has a voting unit in which they vote on every issue, although more often only on the issues that concern them. The rebels are mainly located in the outer colonies of the solar system and are a minority compared to the much larger populations of Earth and Mars. The rebels feel their colonies are being exploited for resources and labor due to the fact that they have little voice on what is decided. The citizens of the larger populations cannot understand why people would rebel from a system where everyone has a say and thus the war. Titan has the largest population of the outer rim colonies and therefore the major battles are between them and the Collective army. However, many colonies provide militia and able bodies to the cause of groups such as the Europan mercenaries. Due to the chaos, many privateers have emerged, such as the Morgan Raiders who will throw in with anyone providing they are paid, even though they have no love for any faction.^[11]

Game zones

Zones from both official and third party servers are included.

• [I:Chaos] Combined Arms - Developed by Free Imagination Group, it is a large scale, complex warzone with an exhaustive set of weapons, classes and vehicles of its own map.^[12]
• [I:CTF] Capture the Flag - Fast-paced basing action and the most popular zone. Maps for it are often rotated between a 2-team Twin Peaks, a 3-team Heinreich's Point, and a multiple-team "Extreme" involving the Titan Militia, Collective Military, Europan Mercenaries and others. Has an extensive store with purchasable weapons.^[13]
• [I:SK] Skirmish - Massive team vs. team fighting between the Titan Militia and Collective Military. Several maps exist, some including tanks and other vehicles. Most employ static flags for territory holding. Uses fast and realistic game physics. ^[14]
• Chambert's Moon - King-of-the-Hill zone with a different set of classes, weapons and physics. Features small teams, aliens (Skrall) and various vehicles. ^[15]
• Chambert's Tournament - Free Infantry's spin off of Chambert's Moon containing varied player classes, weapons, vehicles, and a separate map while maintaining the basic game play of Chamberts Moon.
• [I:Arcade] Bug Hunt - Collective Marines vs The Skrall.^[16]
• [I:Arcade] Infestation - A new spinoff of Bug Hunt with new classes, objectives and weapons.
• [I:RPG] Eol - Infantry's action/RPG project. Various versions including Eol Beta, Gamma and Advanced were developed with both related features and different weapons. ^[11]
• Gravball - Sport zone. Players pilot hoverbikes on a large map with various obstacles, attempting to shoot the ball over their own goal square while avoiding opponents' weapons. ^[17]
• Ambush - Features the use of jetpacks or hoverboards to fly around collecting flags and shooting at other players.^[18]
• Team Deathmatch - A basic fast paced zone where players pick up weapons against each other in tight corridors.^[19]
• Fleet - Team-oriented space action. The main goal of this game is to destroy your enemies Command Post while defending your own. This zone is no longer on the zone list.^[20]
• Conquest - A newer development, The Collective Military fight against Titan Militia by capturing anywhere from 5 to 35 flags (depending on player population) on the planet Kleos. The Collective and Titans start with no flags at the beginning of the game and must move from base to base capturing flags. The Collective Military and Titan Militia can recapture captured flags.
• Sports - Team-oriented sports maps. Several different sports maps exist including Gravball, Hockey Zone, Soccer Brawl, and Dodgeball.^[21]

References

1. ^ Portail d'informations Ce site est en vente!
2. ^ ^{a b} Sony.com
3. ^ Sony.com
4. ^ ^{a b} Freeinfantry.com
5. ^ Sony.com
6. ^ Press Center | Sony Online Entertainment Announces A Diverse Lineup Of Games Available At Newly Revamped Station.Com
7. ^ Multiplayer Online Games Directory / News / Sony Announces 3 Free Online Multiplayer Games - Find Multiplayer Games Here
8. ^ Multiplayer Online Games Directory / News / Infantry Goes Free Again Today - Find Multiplayer Games Here
9. ^ Sony.com - Infantry
10. ^ Freeninfantry.net
11. ^ ^{a b} Sony.com
12. ^ Freeninfantry.net
13. ^ Sony.com
14. ^ Sony.com
15. ^ Freeinfantry.net
16. ^ Sony.com
17. ^ Sony.com
18. ^ Sony.com
19. ^ Sony.com
20. ^ Sony.com
21. ^ Sony.com

External links

• Infantry; Official Infantry website.
• IGBL; Infantry Gravball League, Official website for the Gravball zone league.
• CTFPL; Capture the Flag Players League, Official website for the CTF zone league.
• USL; Unified Skirmish League, Official website for the USL zone league.
• SBL; Soccer Brawl League, Official website for the SBL zone league.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - infanteri, fodfolk

Nederlands (Dutch)
infanterie

Français (French)
n. - (Mil) infanterie, fantassins

Deutsch (German)
n. - Infanterie

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (στρατ.) πεζικό

Italiano (Italian)
fanteria

Português (Portuguese)
n. - infantaria (f)

Русский (Russian)
пехота

Español (Spanish)
n. - infantería

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - infanteri, fotfolk

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
步兵, 步兵团

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 步兵, 步兵團

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 보병, 보병대

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 歩兵, 歩兵隊

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) المشاة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חיל רגלים‬

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