A common means to either pluck up collective courage, or signal rally points, or issue commands was the battle cry. The Ottomans timed prebattle shouts to the crash of musket volleys, to frighten the enemy and raise their own spirits. Constant beating of battle drums served similar purposes. Battle cries of this period, as in all war, were extremely varied. Only a handful of illustrative samples are listed here. Among the most famous and most typical of an age that mixed God and battle in every recipe for war was the battle cry of the Teutonic Knights. They shouted as they charged toward some poor Wend or other pagan village on the Baltic coast, or against amore equal Lithuanian host: “Gott mit uns!” (“God is with us!”). French Crusaders fighting Muslims or heretics yelled “Dieu le veut!” (“God wills it!”).Matching deity to deity, when Muslims drew swords they shouted toward heaven: “Allah akbar!” (“God is Great!”). The yell of Hospitallers was “St. Jean! St. Jean.” When Hussites fought the Ordensstaat in the 1450s they beat a war drummade from the skin of their dead commander, Jan Žizka, and sang the battle hymn: “We, warriors of God!” which ended: “slay, slay, slay, slay them every one.” It was common to shout out the name of one’s country alongside that of the deity. The conquistadores who slew with Corte’s shouted “Castilla! Castilla!” as they charged into the Aztecs at Otumba (1520) and at Tenochtitla’n (1521), while Mezoamerican allies chanted the name of their city-state: “Tlaxcala! Tlaxcala!”
Some battle cries were intended more for enemy ears than one’s own. Finnish cavalry fighting for Gustavus Adolphus in Poland or Muscovy or Germany raised terror among their enemies when they foretold bloodthirsty deeds to come: “Hakkaa paalle!” (“Cut them down!”). In battles of the Thirty Years’ War fought after the sack of Magdeburg by a Catholic army in 1631, Protestants cried: “Magdeburg Quarter!” meaning they would give none. Royalist gunners in the English Civil Wars (1639-1651) rather languorously exclaimed the politically sophisticated battle cry: “First shot for the devil! Second for God! Third for the King!” Conversely, some things just were not said on the battlefield. For instance, in medieval English armies it was forbidden to shout “Monte” (“to horse!”), because it tended to induce panic if mistaken as the signal to dismounted knights to remount and flee. On the other hand, crying “Havoc!” was a self-issued warrant from the most savage soldiers to commence murder, burning, pillaging, and rape, a practice recalled, though predated to ancient Rome, by Shakespeare’s “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!” (Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I).
