Looks like a factorio map view of your defense's vs bugs attacking
I think it's funny how so many ancient battles involve the winning side's center giving way (whether intentionally or not), and the losing side's center over-pursuing their ostensibly routed foe and then getting slaughtered from the flanks. Cannae, Gaugamela, Hastings and a bunch of others all fit this pattern. Hell, even WWI (in the West at least) was basically this shit for most of its four years. Even Stalingrad and the Battle of the Bulge were exactly this in WWII.
The importance of NCOs shouting at overeager farmboy sons-of-bitches to keep it in their pants until ordered to pursue cannot be overstated.
... the importance of career officers firmly-but-politely informing their aristocratic glory-hound commanders to keep it in their pants until pursuit is viable also cannot be overstated.
You can kind of see what ancient battles probably looked like by checking out the skirmishes on the Indian Chinese border where they aren't allowed guns.
I'd be such a bitch in an ancient battle. Yeah, I love the idea of roaring and swinging a weapon around whilst hulking in armor (except you know I'd be the guy who got a quilted gambeson at best), but I am so afraid of being sliced or pulverized. Imagine being in a simple knife fight. That's terrifying enough. And let's say you survive the first fight without getting your arm cleaved off or the head of an axe buried snug into your ribcage. Now what? Count your blessings and move on to the next guy within swinging range? Roll the dice on that desperate monster with a frantic look in his eye and hope you don't catch a glaive in the meantime? And say you beat him and the others? You survive the battle with manageable wounds and have to worry about the next one? Fuck that, dude. I'd be desserting on day one to live as a hermit in the woods. King can eat me arse. I'd rather live with the crones of Crookback Bog.
You'd be like an extra in Braveheart. There's one scene in that movie where Mel is giving an impassioned speech about free lunches or something and in the background behind his head you can see one extra like fifty feet away from everybody else aimlessly waving a piece of white foam around. If George Lucas had directed Braveheart, that shit would have been removed a long time ago.
Casualties don’t get bad until a retreat. You hold that fucking line.
You also hold that fucking line even if your enemy appears to be running away. So many ancient battles were lost by over-pursuing a broken foe in the center and then getting annihilated in the flanks.
sun tzu recommend you back your soldiers into a corner to avoid both situations :3
thats why vikings would take shrooms before battle. absolutely no fear and if they die who cares im going to valhalla now later suckers
I'm afraid to run into other hikers while on shrooms. The vikings were madmen..
Everybody gangsta till they hit a phalanx
Everyone phalanx till they hit TRIPLEX ACIES
This comment is proudly presented by S.P.Q.R.
Everyone Triplex Acies till they don’t hit skirmishing horse archers
This comment was present while sipping out of the gold skull goblet of Cassius.
On the second panel there should be some op & plot-armoured heroes that have a neat line of enemies formed in front of them attacking one at a time & the rest just patiently waiting for their turn as to not overwhelm the main char.
The movie 300 is one of the worst perpetrators of this. Though I guess tbf it's argued that the movie is just the storytelling of the Spartan who Leonidas told to return to Sparta
especially bad, because they make the point to explain why their military was superior, then fight for style points
"You can't join us, we don't break formation."
[immediately breaks formation]
That movie is 99% style points. with 1% protofascist messaging.
What's the protofascist message? Don't remember the movie too well
Gonna second the other two comments, but I think its worth remembering that the warrior society of Sparta likely never existed. People didnt start talking about the indomitable martial society of Sparta until, like, 300 years after the nation of Sparta stopped existing. Contemporary accounts seem to tell that Spartan society looked pretty similar to other Greek states at the time, except they actually trained their soldiers. For example, the agoge now has a reputation as the brutal training ground where Spartan boys became men, but contemporary accounts say that their boys were not just trained in martial arts but also in hunting, dancing, singing, reading and writing, and rhetoric. It wasnt until the roman empire gave them a tourist industry that they started playing up the "legendary honorable warrior culture" angle, partially as a conservative movement calling to return to the good old days where men were real men.
give it a rewatch, tell me if you notice them.
Big Joel, a YouTuber, covers some of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMqTPUWXqw&pp=ygUMYmlnIEpvZWwgMzAw
And 1500% Aaaaaaaaaaauuuubbbbbsssss
why are conservative themed movies the most homoerotic things on the planet?
Its not even close to how it actually happened either. From the geography of that specific area to the pace and events that take place, almost none of it is based on history.
My 'favorite' is when the hyper-eugenic proto-Nazi Spartan king is very kind and accommodating towards someone who was disabled and supposed to be murdered at birth, as hyper-eugenic proto-Nazi leaders are known to be, of course! Or when the Persian monarch is depicted as some despotic demigod when in reality Persia was probably the more tolerable of the two polities. Or when the much larger contributions of other Greek city-states were brushed off with a little casual mid-2000s homophobia and like two scenes of screentime. Or when there's a complete absence of the ~80% of literal fucking slaves who let the Spartan polity function, so we can maintain the "GOOD Spartans, BAD Persians" narrative for modern audiences. Or when the Persian troops are depicted as literal monsters. Or etc etc etc
It's also weird that the Spartan council of elders was all old, deformed guys. Like, what were they still doing around?
Wouldn't even get a gravestone for being such cowards to LIVE to OLD AGE, smh
Aristodemus was his name!
I mean, tbf, the real Spartans sucked at fighting too, so…
Is it true though? In the above example, the attackers could just concentrate their attack on one side forcing the defenders to support there and thus weaking the line elsewhere which then can be attacked in return. So in reality I think it is really difficult to hold such a formation.
Wasn't that the great advantage of the Romans that they trained this kind of stuff a lot and thus were actually able to more or less hold these formations.
But I would guess most battles ended up looking more or less like the lower example.
You have to keep in mind no one had this kind of bird view and no one could directly tell every soldier what to do while at the battlefield. So every soldier in the end is just fighting for their own survival eventually resulting in chaos.
Is it true though? In the above example, the attackers could just concentrate their attack on one side forcing the defenders to support there
Generally, there's only so much 'pressure' that can be applied across a given width of troops. While Greek and Macedonian phalanxes benefitted from increased depth (and even then, very far from a 1-1 benefit for committing more troops), as befits their tightly-packed shoving-match style of fighting, most armies would not immediately benefit from committing more troops to a portion of the line, except to relieve exhausted troops or replace losses. This is also why reserve forces are common, to shore up any unexpected weakening of a section of the army.
On the charge, some amount of advantage is gained by increased depth, such as seen in the shoving-matches of Greek phalanxes and the focus on depth for 18th and early 19th century French troops to overwhelm enemies with a bayonet charge, but there's only so much after that initial charge you can do with that depth in most cases, since people, even trained soldiers, are generally reluctant to be shoved into the metaphorical meat grinder for prolonged periods of time.
Imagine you and 20 other friends in the front line are facing off against 21 enemies, with (for the sake of simplifying the example) no room to maneuver left or right to outflank each other. Will another 20 friends behind you with swords give you an advantage commensurate with their numbers? They can't 'reach' over your shoulders while you're fighting to strike the enemies. The best they can do is wait for someone to fall, or withdraw due to wounds or exhaustion, and replace them. Which is a large advantage if your enemies lack that, but not as simple as "More numbers = more immediate pressure".
If you and your 20 original friends all rush the enemy with all your might, you might disrupt the enemy formation, allowing some of your 20 reinforcements to join in, putting the disordered enemies at a disadvantage, but that's both (psychologically) difficult to sustain, and runs the risk of your aggression exposing yourselves to the strikes of the enemy - what good is an extra 20 troops if you lose 20 troops trying to get them into a position to fight?
Wasn’t that the great advantage of the Romans that they trained this kind of stuff a lot and thus were actually able to more or less hold these formations.
Holding a rough formation isn't as difficult as it sounds - while the Romans were obsessive about it, their foes were generally clustered in more-or-less equivalent blocks, just less neat (or just as neat, in the case of fighting Hellenic foes).
The big advantage of Roman drilling was what's called in the modern day command-and-control. A pike phalanx of the kind the Hellenic states used could be committed to combat, but not easily adjusted. Romans trained to respond with small units (maniples of ~160 in the mid-Republic, cohorts of ~800 in the Late Republic and Early Empire) to take advantage of changes in the battlefield. Roman troops could (and did) reorient and reorganize themselves as developments in the battle occurred.
At the Battle of Cynoscephalae, a small Roman force (around 2,500 men, or 10% of the army) saw changing battlefield conditions and made an obvious choice to take advantage of them ("We are now literally behind the enemy, it would be simple to run into their rear and rout them").
However, many ancient armies simply would not have been capable of doing so - to get a large mass of men to suddenly change direction and objectives requires more than just a strong voice and the necessary authority - you need men to stay together in combat-effective groups, you need them to pass along orders quickly and coherently, and you need everyone to know their literal and metaphorical place in the new set of objectives. This is what drills and low-mid-level officers help with. In that very battle, even, the Macedonians they were facing could not react quickly enough to confront several thousand men coming up from behind them, and were utterly crushed, turning what had appeared to be a draw into a complete, war-ending defeat for the Macedonians.
But I would guess most battles ended up looking more or less like the lower example.
Very rare. Even in tribal-style warfare, like that of the pre-Christian Irish and Scots, there were generally coherent lines, with a small gap wherein individuals might duel or skirmish, retiring behind their own battle line when exhausted or defeated. People in dangerous scenarios tend to cluster around friendlies even without training, with the animal mindset of "I would like to know whoever is behind me will be safe and not dangerous".
You have to keep in mind no one had this kind of bird view and no one could directly tell every soldier what to do while at the battlefield. So every soldier in the end is just fighting for their own survival eventually resulting in chaos.
Once lines break in a battle, the side that has kept the more coherent line generally wins. If you can't be guaranteed to have a lad on your left and your right, and perhaps most importantly, behind you, you're fucked. Skill can't make up for the limitations of human senses and focus. Once the enemy can use their (safe, mutually covered) troops to isolate pockets or individual enemies, those pockets and individual enemies will be attacked on multiple sides, and that is a very difficult thing to fight off.
Hence why flanking maneuvers are so vital when they're successfully executed. No one wants to get blind-sided by someone on their left or right while they're trying to focus on the angry blade-wielding fellow to their front. And no one wants to turn to the left or right to confront a foe and get shanked by the fellow in front of them.
They can't 'reach' over your shoulders while you're fighting to strike the enemies.
That's why spears, not swords, were the weapon of choice in war for centuries.
I think people have a very wrong view of old / ancient warfare because they're used to martial arts, or movies, or other scenarios where it's 1 on 1, not many on many. The result of that is that the most useful weapons of war were ones that would be terrible in a duel or 1 on 1 fight. Adding to the confusion, there were actually people who had the very best armour, the very best duelling weapons, etc. And, they're the ones there are often stories about not because they were the best or most important warriors, but because they were the upper class. They had money and power so people told stories about them.They didn't have to stand in the phalanx. They didn't have to engage unless they wanted to. To a certain extent, they were dead weight that the army carried, although sometimes they could also make a decisive contribution in a battle by causing chaos at the right place at the right time.
People in dangerous scenarios tend to cluster around friendlies even without training, with the animal mindset of "I would like to know whoever is behind me will be safe and not dangerous".
Yeah, even in a street fight, most people aren't going to run straight into a group of enemies / opponents. If someone attacks, they'll normally attack someone on the enemy front line, not because those are the easiest targets (they're probably the hardest targets), but because that means they only have to be aware of what's in front of them, not what's to the side or behind them.
Once lines break in a battle, the side that has kept the more coherent line generally wins.
You see this with police vs. protesters. That's probably the most realistic depiction of ancient warfare we see today. When the police maintain their lines, they're safe. But, when the police break their lines to go after the protesters, that's often when they get hurt. Similarly, the protesters who tend to get hurt / arrested are the ones who get too close to the police and don't have a buddy who can grab them and pull them away from the cops if the cops try to grab them.
My guess is that a realistic image of a battle is mostly like the top one, but with little pockets where the line failed and a few people got surrounded and are in the process of getting murdered. And, if the line is long enough, it probably wouldn't be straight after contact with the enemy. People would still want to be shoulder-to-shoulder with their nearest neighbours, but over time some parts would shift up, and other parts would shift back. If the line was pushed enough that someone was no longer shoulder-to-shoulder with an ally, that's when their side was in trouble.
That’s why spears, not swords, were the weapon of choice in war for centuries.
A 'normal' spear 6-8 feet long can offer maybe a single additional line of assistance in combat, but only at the expense of reducing the maneuverability of the front line (by the previous line needing to 'crowd' them to strike the enemy). Even in the extremely tightly-packed and not-very-manueverable Greek phalanx, which is not really typical of spear-dominated warfare throughout most of history, and reliant on intense drilling, only two ranks could engage at a time.
Ease of use, reach in formation combat, and cheapness of manufacture are the bigger contributors. Even four feet of striking distance (making some allowance for the grip position with one hand) is longer than most swords, putting an enemy at a disadvantage in that they need to approach closer than you need to in order to get a good hit in.
The pikes depicted in that drawing are typical of Macedonian phalanxes, which were revolutionary and steamrolled most the known world inside of 100 years because of how fantastic it was to suddenly be able to employ 3-5 ranks of troops per file engaged, both because of the style of fighting (holding the sarissa with two hands, even tighter formation, reduced importance of the shield) and the length of the sarissa itself (typically 2-3 times longer than a 'normal' dory spear).
To a certain extent, they were dead weight that the army carried, although sometimes they could also make a decisive contribution in a battle by causing chaos at the right place at the right time.
I would argue against this - the individual 'noble' duelists of this sort often had outsized effect on the battle, not just sometimes, but as a matter of course before strong traditions of formation combat developed. In most battles, most troops on both sides will not cause even a single casualty, at least not until one side or the other routs. The performance of such champions and skirmishers is not only severe on morale, but also in terms of materially reducing the enemy's ability to resist - in battles where one side or the other manages to withdraw in orderly fashion, you often see extremely low casualty rates even on the losing side, to the tune of 1%-2% of irrecoverables. In systems of warfare reliant on champions and 'heroic' skirmishers over intensely-drilled or motivated meat-grinder clashes, the vast majority of those casualties would be the result of those champions clashing, eliminating each other, or picking off enemy draff whose primary motivation is to cluster together, provide a screen for the champions, and hopefully not get killed.
On the other hand, the fact that a well-drilled formation is all-but-immune to such champions on foot (as no amount of skill or equipment will save you from being mobbed to death by basically-armed troops who outnumber you, locally, 5-1 or more and are aggressive enough to use that numerical advantage) means that such systems tend to fade away as states and organized military systems become more established.
Everything else you said I agree with, especially the comparison of police v. protesters. Especially relevant in tribal warfare wherein captures and ransoms remain important - I've seen that very police-protesters comparison before in discussions of tribal captures in the heat of battle, where small groups or 'champions' nab an enemy who gets too bold or too close and squirrel them away behind the shield wall.
Great read thank you very much!
I would summarize that it is true that line formations were vital and usually the starting point, but on the other hand the main strategic goal was to break the line of the opponent so at some point the formations would break and it would become more chaotic, but not as extreme as multiple 1 vs 1 and rather splitting the other army in half or more pieces.
Once the line breaks, though, the result is everyone in the broken line fleeing as soon as they realize what's happening. If they're disciplined, they might regroup if not pursued too far or too vigorously, but the chaos that ensues is mostly retreat and butchery, not further combat.
could just concentrate their attack on one side forcing the defenders to support there and thus weaking the line which then can be attacked in return.
You can't stack up your troops like in video games, so that wouldn't work. If the attackers were concentrating on the left side, then the defenders could breach the right side and encircle the attacking army.
Also keep in mind - you pretty much can't command your troops during the battle. Once the battle is unleashed, only chaos remains. You can only try to predict the flow of the battle and position your troops accordingly and prepare the early-stage orders.
But I would guess most battles ended up looking more or less like the lower example.
Vaguely, but definitely not in a 1:1 manner like on the dance floor
The inability of commanding trots is why seasoned soldiers are so important. You can't train for eventualities but experience soldiers recognize what to do without direct leadership.
NCO-equivalents were also immensely important once it became apparent that low-mid level command could still be effectively exercised in the heat of battle. Roman centurions, for example, got paid 16x an enlisted man's salary by the time of the Early Empire precisely because it was recognized just how vital they were (and also because centurions took massive casualties and needed a bit of an inducement for anyone with a bit of brains in their skull to still want to stay in that front-line position)
Jules Ceasar would stand behind the formation during battle with troops that stayed in the back, and send them wherever the formation was about to fail.
Vaguely, but definitely not in a 1:1 manner like on the dance floor
I bet I'd still end up by myself with no one to fight, even if my side lost.
If they did that, the unengaged side would fold in and attach their side
Yes, afaik the first panel is an exaggeration too, if for some reason (eg environmental, or they are defending something close) one side forms a wall/line, you initially wouldn't distribute your (non-overwhelming) force equally along that line, that's basically just a bit more organised second panel pic.
Instead you would concentrate on one or a few specific spots to try to locally overwhelm them tho break the initial line formation (spearhead the line) & get groups of them more encircled (bce the outside curve gives you more of your people vs fewer of them in the line of fight - which is the core mechanic of the joke in this post).
Not all attackers a a peasant army without discipline or formation.
Yeah, more often the peasant army without discipline or formation would be the defenders.
(Sorry about the double comment, I accidentally replied to OP at first)
That’s a huge battle all the way from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of South America!
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