[HN Gopher] Pre-Modern Battlefields (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Pre-Modern Battlefields (2015)
Author : Tomte
Score : 116 points
Date : 2022-06-29 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scholars-stage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (scholars-stage.org)
| ilovecurl wrote:
| 'Why was cold steel a "unique terror" for troops in combat?' The
| most terrifying part of Saving Private Ryan is private Mellish's
| death after hand to hand combat with a knife.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I haven't seen that movie in a while, but the gist of that
| scene is burned into my brain. The grossest death of the movie,
| IMO, and it isn't even that gory.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Well, modern and post-modern are pretty terrifying too.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I really like this introduction of the terror aspect. It really
| is key. Another place I recognize this concept being utilized is
| by Jordan Peterson. One of the foundational pillars to his
| analysis of human psychology is that we are surrounded by
| malevolence and he uses that in his analysis to better understand
| human behavior. It certainly makes for compelling arguments
| because that foundation is so true. And, it seems to be missing
| from his critics.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| There's a pretty telling anecdote in Suetonius's life of Augustus
| where "[Augustus] sold a Roman knight and his property at public
| auction, because he had cut off the thumbs of two young sons, to
| make them unfit for military service" (24). In fact, this was
| apparently not uncommon, with several more references to similar
| self-inflicted injuries to avoid service popping up in various
| texts. I think there were also direct reforms put in place that
| specified that men without fingers could still be deemed fit for
| service (I think this might have been the late imperial period
| but unfortunately the precise source was found in a library book
| that I don't have access to at the moment).
|
| While war is obviously still horrific, I think it's a bit easier
| to forget that when discussing history when we don't have
| particularly realistic images to base our imaginations. That even
| the Romans, at the height of its power, feared sending their sons
| to war, kinda counters the notion that conquest was this
| glorious, honorable thing that built an empire and made men like
| Caesar into the immortal gods we remember.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| War, battlefields and military service are three very different
| things. Up until the Korean war, soldiers were much more likely
| to die from disease than combat. Living in unsanitary war camps
| was more likely to kill you than the enemy. Even peacetime
| military service would have, in Roman times, involved marching
| all over the place working on fortifications and roads. Roman
| soldiers got sick in camp and were injured in what we would
| today call industrial accidents. Even simple travel, especially
| if by ship, was often lethal. So when we read of a parent not
| wanting to send their son to the army, do not think that it is
| a fear of the battlefield. That was a secondary concern to all
| manner of non-combat dangers.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Great point. The picture you paint seems generally like the
| ancient world. In Rome, malaria, unsanitary apartment
| buildings burning down, highway men if you travel by road,
| pirates if by sea, everyone was sick (I vaguely recall Cicero
| mentioning another senator suffering from diarrhea soiling
| himself in public) and the bread you ate wore down your
| teeth. Do you happen to know if the Romans thought that these
| things were especially worse on campaign (wouldn't doubt it
| at all)?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A soldier on the move would probably have been healthier
| than a slave in the heart of a Roman city. But deaths
| associated with day-to-day life are very different than
| deaths far away on campaign. Remember that it would be many
| months, possibly years, before a family knew whether their
| son had survived his military service. And a good number of
| sons that did survive never actually came home, instead
| settling in some far away place or were stuck without money
| enough to make the return trip.
| duxup wrote:
| People didn't want to go to war like anyone else I suspect.
|
| Although it could be a good choice for some Romans. My
| understanding was the legions were one of the few paths to
| "move up" the social order. The rewards / rights of a solider
| could be pretty big if you retired and odds were pretty good
| you would retire. As opposed to being poor and remaining poor
| ... maybe an appealing choice.
| lkrubner wrote:
| In her book SPQR, the historian Mary Beard emphasizes that the
| Roman Empire was unable to conquer anything. The Roman Republic
| conquered the Mediterranean world, and then the Roman Empire
| failed at everything:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Spqr-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/18...
|
| The only major, lasting conquest made by the Roman Empire was
| the conquest of Britain, under the Emperor Claudius. But for
| the most part, from the moment it was created, the Roman Empire
| was in a defensive crouch, trying to defend what the Roman
| Republic had built. The Republic had a culture that very much
| treated war as a glorious thing, and mobilized the public for
| total war, over and over again. The Roman Empire was very
| different, fighting became professionalized, and it became
| defensive.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > The only major, lasting conquest made by the Roman Empire
| was the conquest of Britain
|
| If you consider Augustus to be the beginning of the Empire,
| then there were many lasting conquests under the Empire
| (parts of Hispania, Pannonia, Africa, etc). But even if you
| don't, the Empire conquered and held Dacia for over 150 years
| and held many parts of Armenia for long periods of time.
|
| > mobilized the public for total war, over and over again
|
| I'm not sure I would consider anything later than the Punic
| Wars to be a state of total war. At no point was Rome or
| Italy actually threatened in the Mithridatic Wars, Caesar's
| conquest of Gaul, etc. Slaves were not mobilized and property
| not confiscated for the state. The only times total war
| actually happened in the late Republic-early Empire - the
| period of Rome's greatest territorial gains - was during
| existential invading threats like the Cimbri or the Pannonian
| revolt. None of these were a result of Rome losing a battle
| in a war of aggression.
|
| One of the reasons Christianity is considered a reason for
| why the Empire fell is absolutely the culture of war and
| nationalism that pagan Rome had though.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "One of the reasons Christianity is considered a reason for
| why the Empire fell is absolutely the culture of war and
| nationalism that pagan Rome had though."
|
| Really? The Eastern empire (Byzantium) was Christian
| through and through, and yet rather warlike and survived
| for 1000 more years.
|
| Even in the declining Western empire of the fifth century,
| there was quite a lot of fight left, with important
| military leaders such as Stilicho and Majorian. The problem
| was often the barely checked aggression _within_ the
| Christian elites themselves. Both Stilicho and Majorian
| were killed by their internal Roman adversaries, not by an
| external enemy.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Stilicho and Majorian's armies were composed of at least
| a plurality of Germanic troops recruited from tribes that
| were stopped in their migrations by Rome. The Eastern
| Empire (and the Empire as a whole starting around
| Diocletian) had to force soldiers' children to serve
| because they had a shortage of willing recruits. All the
| evidence (conscription, hereditary service, large-scale
| incorporation of barbarians into the legions) points to
| manpower shortages due to the unwillingness of native
| Romans to serve. Republican Rome put barbarians into
| auxiliary units, not the legions, because they had no
| need for more men in the legions.
|
| Even the Battle of Adrianople in 378 and Germanic
| incursions into Italy in the early 5th century did not
| force Rome into total mobilization of the population like
| when Hannibal invaded Italy. That points to a general
| unwillingness to defend the Roman state in the general
| population. Consider that Rome was able to repeatedly
| raise new, massive armies when Hannibal inflicted
| defeats, but the Eastern empire was unable to raise even
| a token force to combat the Goths after Adrianople.
|
| There may have been elites with fight left in them, but
| the average citizen did not share the attitude of those
| of Republican Rome.
| april_22 wrote:
| While they did fail when it comes to conquering, it should
| still not be understated how impressive the romans where in
| so many other areas. Their road network and how they built it
| is nothing but fascinating and it's always amazing seeing the
| roads in real life.
|
| https://you.com/search?q=roman+roads https://www.reddit.com/r
| /MapPorn/comments/u5wlwh/mapped_roma...
|
| Not to forget many other areas like architecture or arts.
| https://you.com/search?q=roman+architecture
| starwind wrote:
| The Romans were also up against some adversaries who fought
| desperately to not be Roman. Somewhat off topic, but I'll
| bring it up anyway, it must have been better to have lived in
| a Gallic or Germanic or Iberian tribe than to have lived as a
| Roman ~citizen~ _person_ if they were willing to die than
| submit. I'm sure honor had something to do with it, but the
| general trend seen in the archaeological record in the Middle
| East and North America is that people got shorter and had
| more teeth problems as they settle down into civilization
| than when they were hunter /gatherers or lived in settled
| communities for no more than a few years before hitting the
| proverbial road again. I'm sure the same thing applies in
| Europe during the Roman age.
| cheriot wrote:
| Where Gallic, Germanic, and Iberian tribes actually
| hunter/gatherers? By that time I thought Europe and the
| Mediterranean were dominated by farming cultures.
| starwind wrote:
| They were farming some crops but wouldn't have been as
| dependent on them as Romans would have been and would
| have had a lot more variety including meat in their diets
| gotorazor wrote:
| Caesar in his Bellum Gallicum -- the gauls had cities
| (that Caesar's army had to build siege engines to take)
| and kings. The regions had millions of people living
| there. In one tribe alone (Atuatici), Caesar, to punish
| them sold 53,000 people from a single tribe into slavery.
| This isn't the entire population, just what he could
| round up in a single town.
|
| I don't think small tribes of wandering hunters with
| small farming plots can sustain that many people. Caesar
| ran around and laid sieges to these things regularly
| during the Gaullic Wars.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The good farmland was farmed, but this left a lot of
| hillcountry which was kind of marginal for that purpose.
| mellavora wrote:
| You might want to read the book
|
| The Art of Not Being Governed
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Govern
| ed
|
| which discusses in some detail the advantages of living
| in "marginally" farmable hillcountry.
| usrusr wrote:
| The take-home impression I got from reading through those
| two Cesar wars is that the legions were almost as
| dependent on local grain available to steal (ready to
| take in granary, or just ready to harvest, doesn't really
| matter) as trains are dependent on rails. I assume that
| except for bumping into an adequate rival in the east,
| they just gobbled up the entire "wheatosphere", quickly
| running out of steam (and, with a few notable exceptions,
| out of motivation) whatever they ran into hunter/gatherer
| economies.
| Someone wrote:
| But if there's lots of grain to steal, doesn't that
| indicate they're not in hunter/gatherer territory?
| usrusr wrote:
| That's what I meant: I take it as a given that if they
| were successfully invaded, they must have left the
| hunter/gatherer state behind, likely by a considerable
| margin.
| Someone wrote:
| Sorry, misread your comment
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Central and Western Europe have been farmed for thousands
| of years by that point. Farming in Southern France/Iberia
| was already well established around 7000 years BP (before
| present). By the time of Romans, the hunter-gatherer's
| lifestyle was wholly displaced from the area, with only
| minuscule fraction of resident population engaging in it,
| at best.
|
| See e.g. First Farmers of Europe,
| https://www.amazon.com/First-Farmers-Europe-Evolutionary-
| Per...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Somewhat off topic, but I'll bring it up anyway, it must
| have been better to have lived in a Gallic or Germanic or
| Iberian tribe than to have lived as a Roman citizen if they
| were willing to die than submit.
|
| Peoples conquered by Rome did not become Roman citizens
| with the rights and privileges associated with that,
| generally.
|
| In the graded levels of rights in Roman law, depending on
| whether they were just conquered or had treaty status, they
| were two or three steps _below_ citizens of Rome.
| starwind wrote:
| Good call. I mean "citizen" in the general sense like
| "person who lives under Rome" but wasn't thinking that
| "citizen" had a very specific meaning in the Roman
| context. I edited my answer
| gotorazor wrote:
| The reason these tribes usually resist isn't because the
| Roman lifestyle is bad, it's because the Romans ran the
| biggest slaving empire in the world. Those slaves that
| does everything in Rome, they get them from waging war.
| So strictly-speaking, there is a change that they won't
| even get to be a "person" if they submit to Rome, they
| would become a slave. So would their wives and children.
|
| If anything, a lot of people want to be Roman citizens
| _after_ they have tried it. There is a whole war in Italy
| called the "Social War" over extending formal, normal
| citizenship to Roman allies.
| acchow wrote:
| > The Republic had a culture that very much treated war as a
| glorious thing, and mobilized the public for total war, over
| and over again.
|
| This is contrary to the modern world where democratic
| countries are much less willing to go to war
| concordDance wrote:
| It certainly feels like the US has been in more wars in the
| last 100 years than any 100 years of Roman history.
| elmomle wrote:
| It's actually surprisingly close. According to https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_wars_and_battles, there
| were 21 Roman wars in the 2nd Century BC. US count (https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni..
| .) for the 20th century AD is 31, but you also have to
| factor in the fact that the whole world is much more
| connected, and that the Roman war-and-intervention count
| was almost certainly limited by communication and
| transportation abilities of the time. In the context of
| the ancient world, 21 wars by one state in one century
| seems like an enormous number. The Achaemenid Persian
| empire, which existed a few centuries prior and was very
| expansionist for its time, averaged perhaps 6-8 wars per
| century, depending on how you quantify wars (https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Iran).
| starwind wrote:
| And also rely on a lot less infantry so casualties are
| lower. Even with as brutal as Russia-Ukraine is, the total
| number of military men killed is comparable to a single
| decent-sized WWII battle
| engineer_22 wrote:
| My experience has been to the contrary.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > The Republic had a culture that very much treated war as a
| glorious thing, and mobilized the public for total war, over
| and over again.
|
| I think there are two big differences.
|
| Early on the legions were on "Team Rome". Scipio Africanus
| and Asiaticus conquered large regions but never turned their
| armies against Rome. Sulla turned his armies against Rome. As
| did Julius. Legions were seen as more for the glory of a
| general than for the glory of Rome.
|
| Second, conquering new territories was a way to increase a
| person's prestige relative to their peers. So there was a
| kind of friendly competition with various consuls trying to
| outdo each other.
|
| The Empire changed everything. The Emperor already had
| prestige relative to his peers. Trying to conquer new
| territories was a high risk activity for not that much upside
| (you were already emperor). For example, Augustus knew that
| Crassus (died at Carrhae) and Mark Antony(defeated in
| Parthia) had huge setbacks that undermined their position.
| Even Augustus suffered the disaster at the Tueteborg, but
| through a lot of PR effort was able to pawn it off on Varrus
| who conveniently was not a part of the immediate Imperial
| family.
|
| The other danger was that if there was a victory, it might be
| enough to propel the commanding general to rivalry (see the
| later example of Vespasian and the Jewish rebellion).
| Augustus was an brilliant politician, but not that great of a
| commander, and had to rely on others (see Agrippa) for actual
| battlefield command.
|
| Thus given these risks Augustus was not very aggressive about
| expansion (though he did conquer northwest Spain, and his
| armies made some expeditions in Germania).
|
| Given that he was the first Emperor and ruled so long, he
| kind of set the precedent.
|
| EDIT:
|
| It is interesting that instead of launching a punitive
| expedition against Parthia to retrieve the captured Roman
| standards from Carrhae, he recovered them through diplomatic
| means.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Cicero sic in omnibus et Brutus aderat.
|
| Please be careful about describing events and people 2000+
| years ago, without attribution or sources.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > counters the notion that conquest was this glorious...
|
| Not really, especially in the face of so much evidence that the
| Romans generally thought this way. It does show, however, that
| not _everybody_ thought glory was worth it. That 's hardly
| surprising, given that societies are always diverse
| populations. But segments of society disagreeing with the
| culture at large does not disprove that the culture had certain
| proclivities.
| amalcon wrote:
| It's also probably why that incorrect image exists: projecting
| such an image would have been absolutely vital for morale, and
| those stories influence the stories we tell today. In many
| ways, it's still vital for morale today, but it would have
| mattered a lot more when morale was as decisive as it was then.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Philip Sabin, quoted in TFA, is a professor at King's College
| London with a long list of publications related to warfare [1].
| He is also known as a war game designer where he puts his ideas
| in rule sets designed to simulate the battles he has studied. See
| his list of game credits in [2].
|
| [1]. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/professor-philip-sabin
|
| [2]. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/6341/philip-
| sabi...
| Borrible wrote:
| The Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria in WWII used to use
| living prisoners for their bayonet training.
| usrusr wrote:
| I suspect that we have a coping mechanism wired in where a
| certain part of our mind tries to refute bad conscience over
| something we have done that we consider really bad by repeating
| the deedwhile internally shouting down the horrified parts
| "see? it's not that bad, life goes on". Repeating the deed, or
| exceeding. I'd imagine that conditioning (I refuse to call it
| training) to have been exceptionally effective.
| Borrible wrote:
| It is estimated that the number of intraspecies killings in
| humans is about six times higher than the average of all
| mammals.
|
| The 20th century compared to the Middle Ages, was a peaceful
| affair. It's estimated that in the good olden times about 12
| percent of recorded deaths were inflicted by killing, in the
| century of two Great Wars, the Holocaust and some minor
| naughties like the Holodomor, Cambodia, Rwanda etc. just
| about 1.3 percent.
|
| It seems humans don't have to be taught to suppress a
| "natural" kill inhibition, but to suppress a natural tendency
| to kill. You know, I guess there is a reason, God Allmighty
| had to forbid it explicitly in almost all of his writings
| from time immemorial. It's always itching the brains of his
| loverly creatures so much that somehow they can't let it go.
|
| By the way, those Japanese believed wholeheartedly they did
| it for a greater good and it would strengthen them to inflict
| severe fear, pain and death on their enemies. They didn't
| needed to be desensitized.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Not only pre-modern. I got to know quite a couple of WWII
| veterans. PTSD was invented for them and coping mechanism #1 was
| alcohol.
|
| During the 80th you could witness a lot of vets, who were blind,
| men who had lost limbs - quite common here. Not to mention rape
| for the women.
|
| These folks shaped the daily live.
| kerblang wrote:
| Not sure about what's being said here but given what other
| comments are claiming
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder...
|
| > Early in 1978, the diagnosis term "post-traumatic stress
| disorder" was first recommended in a working group finding
| presented to the Committee of Reactive Disorder
|
| > The addition of the term to the DSM-III was greatly
| influenced by the experiences and conditions of U.S. military
| veterans of the Vietnam War.
|
| Ham-fisted a film as it was, First Blood w/ Sylvester Stallone
| really launched the term into the American consciousness and
| completely changed the perception and sympathy towards Vietnam
| veterans. The DVD commentary is arguably more interesting than
| the movie.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > PTSD was invented for them
|
| You think nobody suffered PTSD before WW2? Look up the battle
| shock that people suffered in WW1.
| conorcleary wrote:
| They're referring to the semantic term. Also 'shell shock' is
| a more common term for WW1's version.
| kloch wrote:
| George Carlin had a classic bit on the topic of evolving
| names for PTSD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0
| Group_B wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0
| shitpostbot wrote:
| sandworm101 wrote:
| PTSD is also less common in soldiers than in other jobs. Many
| types of doctors (oncology, some branches of pediatrics) are
| pretty much expected to experience symptoms after a given
| number of years. It is also very very common amongst train
| engineers. And prison guards.
| carapace wrote:
| With apologies to those for whom this is just dreamstuff...
|
| A long time ago I was trying various therapists to get help with
| some personal problems, and one of them did something that they
| called "germ-line regression". This was like a hypnotic past life
| regression, but rather than going back through previous
| incarnations, it was going back through the genetic line of my
| ancestors.
|
| We went back to a man who lived in Europe at the time when the
| Romans were making inroads up there. His name was something like
| "Otygh" and he was a huge "Conan the Barbarian"-looking dude,
| biggest and toughest guy in his village. He was pretty much the
| top of the local food chain and social hierarchy, no one above
| him but the gods themselves.
|
| And then the Romans show up...
|
| They're short (not too short, there were standards, but shorter
| than the barbarians), smelly (garlic eaters, eh?), weak and
| (seemingly) stupid, they're like beast-men, orcs. They should be
| easy to defeat, every other living thing has been, but damned if
| they don't keep winning fights! They always win!? WTF!? How is
| this possible? I can't exaggerate the rage and frustration Otygh
| felt at losing to these Romans. It was totally incomprehensible.
|
| For what it's worth, which may not be much, Otygh _loved_ battle.
| Far from terrifying, it was exhilarating, right up until he
| started losing and the Romans torched his village and killed or
| enslaved everybody he knew and loved. Don 't shed any tears for
| him, he was a murderous dickhead who did the very same thing to
| other villages.
| the_biot wrote:
| If that helped you, or at least gave you some enjoyment in a
| fun story to tell, good for you. But you should know that the
| therapist that did this was an absolute quack.
|
| Please, don't seek help from quacks.
| carapace wrote:
| > If that helped you, or at least gave you some enjoyment in
| a fun story to tell, good for you.
|
| It did help, not enough to keep going to that therapist but
| it helped. (I left out the cathartic part of the
| story/dream.)
|
| > But you should know that the therapist that did this was an
| absolute quack.
|
| What would happen if I didn't know that?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> combat as a dynamic balance of mutual dread
|
| enough said ...
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| Another interesting exploration of maniples is available at
| https://yewtu.be/watch?v=croWDsDhgPo, at the end of which he
| references a excellent battle scene from the HBO's _Rome_
| (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0).
|
| The pike scene from _Alatriste_
| (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4y6agtVxWi8&t=125) also gives a good
| idea of how terrifying close-quarters battle must've been
| (disclaimer: I'm not a historian so I can't vouch for the
| historical accuracy). Imagine being the little guy with the
| dagger who has to duck under all that.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| Interesting read! Funnily, this reminds me of World of Warcraft
| 40 vs 40 horde vs alliance battles in Alterac Valley (in
| vanilla). Can a game battle be taken as a realistic simulation of
| real battle? Anyway, it matches this description of grouping.
|
| Depending on the current meta, both sides would generally urge
| each other to 'charge' immediately to the enemy base and win.
| This was called rushing the base. However, sometimes the opposing
| side would mount a defense. In that case, a battle line would
| naturally form. Both sides would face off at 40 yards, which was
| roughly the maximum spellcasting range. They would pick at each
| other with long range spells, cautiously, no one wanting to do a
| suicide charge.
|
| Then smaller teams on each side (cohorts?) would urge each other
| to charge in simultaneously. A grouped warrior or mage +healer,
| if they charged in together, could decimate (yes) the enemy. When
| that happened, the enemy would attempt to back up. Sometimes they
| couldn't back up fast enough; they had overcommitted. Then they
| got 'wiped'. Other times, they retreated and the battle line was
| re-established closer to their base.
| atwood22 wrote:
| While pre-modern battlefields were certainly horrific, I wonder
| which is more terrifying:
|
| 1) Hand-to-hand combat where your fate is decided within a few
| seconds but you have some control over the situation.
|
| 2) Sitting in cover while artillery shells rain down randomly
| around you.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The article claims that the former is, soldiers fled trenches
| where they'd have been getting shelled the moment the enemy
| managed to get close enough with hand to hand weapons.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The latter is way more terrifying because lack of agency
| multiplies fear.
|
| Not to mention that modern war is way, way, way more deadly.
| mynameishere wrote:
| If I remember correctly the book "on killing" discusses this
| very question--the short answer is that hand-to-hand combat is
| far more terrifying because it has an innate, animalistic
| psychological component. To see the face of someone who wants
| to kill you is far more traumatic than a metal tube from the
| sky. That tube does not hate you. That tube won't show up in
| your dreams.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Go test it out. Come back and report your findings.
| burnished wrote:
| How do you reckon melee combat is finished so quickly?
| piyh wrote:
| Watch any UFC match, then extrapolate that to the death.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Humans with penetrating wounds to the torso don't fight much
| longer. Such wounds can be created with sharpened sticks (as
| well as a variety of slightly more advanced weapons), while
| preventing such wounds requires armor of complicated
| manufacture. Humans with concussive damage to the head tend
| to stop defending themselves, which also means they don't
| fight much longer. Such wounds can be created by anything
| dense, such as rocks or big sticks (as well as a variety of
| slightly more advanced weapons), while preventing such wounds
| requires very modern high-quality helmets. Once steel and
| higher-quality swords and polearms came along, a variety of
| new types of wounds became more likely, many of which also
| quickly led to cessation of fighting on their victims' part.
|
| Even unarmed fights are usually shorter than portrayed in
| popular fiction. If ancient battles lasted days, that's
| because they were organized to move combatants around and
| avoid actual combat until advantage could be taken. Melee
| between two groups of armed humans could be over in less than
| a minute. Note that the most common way for melee to cease
| would be for the losing side to retreat (perhaps without
| those of their number who had already succumbed), which is
| viable when ranged weapons aren't used.
| chewz wrote:
| I have read opinion (and don't have source at hand) that as
| horrific as battlefields were it suited human nature well. The
| clashes lasted minutes (and most battles were series of clashes
| rather then day long non-stop combat) and even during multi day
| battles (like Pharsalus or Philippi) there were night breaks
| etc.
|
| Being in constant danger for days (like WW1 trench warfare) is
| more traumatizing for a human.
| larsrc wrote:
| The amount of control over the situation in hand-to-hand combat
| is extremely limited, especially for the poorly trained
| fighters making up much of pre-modern armies.
| t_mann wrote:
| You can try to back out, which was in fact extremely common,
| especially among the poorly trained. Soldiers in trenches
| couldn't even let their head protrude above the edge (to not
| get shot by snipers), and had to live in horrendous
| conditions for months.
| morninglight wrote:
| If you were in a battlefield that was not terrifying, you were
| not in a battlefield.
| [deleted]
| t_mann wrote:
| The efficiency of well-trained armies such as the imperial
| legions at their peak just defies belief. At the battle of
| Watling Street in Britain, two Roman legions (~10,000 soldiers,
| including auxiliaries) faced off against an estimated 230,000
| tribal warriors. They came out victorious, with minuscule losses
| (~400) compared to an estimated 80,000 Britons (not all warriors)
| who left their lives in the battle. The odds were so heavily
| stacked against the Romans prior to the battle that the commander
| of the Legio II Augusta had refused an order to join the
| outnumbered troops (and committed suicide after hearing the
| outcome).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_of_Boudica
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_II_Augusta
| chewz wrote:
| On the other hand Cannae...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae
| t_mann wrote:
| Well, two well-trained armies facing each other is a wholly
| different story, as the example shows.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It would be interesting to try and model this scenario in a
| videogame (the Total War series has a morale system of course,
| but it doesn't seem to quite match this description -- units with
| good "leadership" bonuses can sustain fighting basically from
| full strength to death), or a pen-and-paper RPG (the idea that
| the neutral state of armies is a sort of stand-off situation
| could be beneficial for a couple reasons -- mechanically simpler
| with less going on, the players can perform heroic feats in the
| stand-off area, and the psychological differences between the
| various fantasy races could play with the scenario
| interestingly).
| jaqalopes wrote:
| Just a small contribution to the discussion: my understanding is
| that alcohol also had a lot to do with loosening soldiers up
| enough that they'd be willing to actually charge the enemy. They
| don't call it "liquid courage" for nothing.
| larsrc wrote:
| Methinks a key difference in "terror level" is that in close
| combat, you see the enemy and their deadly possibly bloodied
| weapons up close. Much more psychologically present. Ranged
| weapons give a different overall stress of "I could suddenly die
| without warning", but you're not facing your death as clearly.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > The losers could suffer appalling casualties in the battle
| itself or in the ensuing pursuit, but the victors rarely suffered
| more than 5 per cent fatalities even in drawn-out engagements.
|
| One of Rome's biggest advantages was that their training and
| discipline were such that even when they lost, they would often
| still extract a high price from the opponent (see Pyrrhus).
|
| This could be a real problem during civil wars and the opposing
| Roman legions would devastate each other.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Well, except for Cannae and other Hannibalic battles.
| WJW wrote:
| Or the ambush in the Teutoburg Forest where the Romans lost
| 16k+ troops vs only minor losses for the Germanic tribes.
| t_mann wrote:
| Do you have a source for the 'only minor losses for the
| Germanic tribes'? Afaik we know very little about the
| Germanic side at all. Most of what we know is in fact due
| to Roman historians who mostly wrote about the events
| decades and centuries after they happened.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| Yeah and there was also Carrhae.
|
| But those cases either involved a brilliant general
| (Hannibal was probably top 10 of all time generals) or else
| ambushes in unfamiliar territory far from their home base.
|
| I think the original point still stands.
| cercatrova wrote:
| From Livy's History of Rome, when Scipio Africanus and
| Hannibal met at a party once:
|
| > Africanus asked who, in Hannibal's opinion, was the
| greatest general of all time. Hannibal replied:
| 'Alexander, King of the Macedonians, because with a small
| force he routed armies of countless numbers, and because
| he traversed the remotest lands. Merely to visit such
| lands transcended human expectation.'
|
| > Asked whom he would place second, Hannibal said:
| 'Pyrrhus. He was the first to teach the art of laying out
| a camp. Besides that, no one has ever shown nicer
| judgement in choosing his ground, or in disposing his
| forces. He also had the art of winning men to his side;
| so that the Italian peoples preferred the overlordship of
| a foreign king to that of the Roman people, who for so
| long had been the chief power in that country.'
|
| > When Africanus followed up by asking whom he ranked
| third, Hannibal unhesitatingly chose himself. Scipio
| burst out laughing at this, and said: 'What would you
| have said if you had defeated me?' 'In that case',
| replied Hannibal, 'I should certainly put myself before
| Alexander and before Pyrrhus - in fact, before all other
| generals!'
|
| > This reply, with its elaborate Punic subtlety, and this
| unexpected kind of flattery...affected Scipio deeply,
| because Hannibal had set him (Scipio) apart from the
| general run of commanders, as one whose worth was beyond
| calculation.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| The exceptions prove the rule, though. Cannae, Teutoburg,
| etc. were permanently etched in the Roman mind, and
| triggered immediate, major military campaigns in response.
| If these events had not been so utterly unthinkable at the
| time, the blowback simply wouldn't have materialized.
| SHAKEDECADE wrote:
| When pre-modern battlefields are brought up, I often think of the
| Battle of the Bastards scene from Game of Thrones. One of the few
| battle scenes that gives me the cold sweats. Watching the
| absolutely suffocating clash of flesh and metal is horrific.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| That battle was a terrible representation of medieval warfare.
| And it was still one of the better representations of the
| entire show.
| OJFord wrote:
| Is there a similar show without the fantasy/supernatural
| elements that you might recommend, if you see what I mean?
|
| I don't need it to be historically accurate (if anything I'd
| prefer it didn't even pretend to be about 'Romans' or
| whatever, like GoT doesn't, since then there's an historical
| truth for it to (likely) miss) but the more GoT went on the
| more dragony, visiony, giants-y, etc. it seemed to get, and
| while I enjoyed it I do find it harder to engage (or perhaps
| rather easier to disengage, take a while to get into, etc.)
| with that sort of stuff.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| HBO's Rome is pretty good, but only two seasons. Its from
| the mid 00s.
| danenania wrote:
| 'Vikings' is great. It has many battles and focuses a lot
| on strategy and tactics.
|
| It has a touch of the supernatural since it's based on the
| Icelandic sagas, but it's a fairly minor element.
| the_biot wrote:
| It really was terrible, but the aspect of the fighters
| getting pushed ever closer together, to the point where it's
| hard to watch it's so terrifying, really did happen. The
| battle of Cannae was apparently like that, where soldiers
| were so terrified they started digging holes to crawl into.
|
| The article mentions this as possibly one of the things that
| make a flanking attack so terrifying -- it would squish the
| ranks together in a way that a frontal attack didn't.
| westpfelia wrote:
| Some real terror was the early days of WW1. We had long
| standing generals who just did not know how to adjust to the
| (at the time) modern battlefield. So they would just lead mass
| charges into fortified positions with artillery and machine
| guns. It was the definition of a meat grinder.
|
| I would suggest checking out Dan Carlins Hardcore History
| podcast for more about it! The series he did on WW1 was called
| "Blueprint for Armageddon" Its really good and Dan does a great
| job of pulling you into the narrative.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Some real terror was the early days of WW1
|
| > So they would just lead mass charges into fortified
| positions with artillery and machine guns
|
| That wasn't just in the early days, lots of countries, armies
| and generals failed to adapt. Cadorna from Italy, von
| Hotzendorf from Austria-Hungary, most Ottoman and Russian
| generals sent their men to die the same way at the end as at
| the beginning. Germany, France, UK learned (sometimes) from
| their mistakes, but not everyone did. For instance when the
| US joined, the US commander, Pershing, disregarded all allied
| military experience and advice and the US army had to learn
| everything the hard way because they were led by someone
| stuck in another type of conflict (punitive expedition
| against an inferior enemy).
|
| But the begining of WWI was especially terrible due to the
| the emphasis on attack, colourful uniforms, and the disregard
| for defense. Machine guns mowing troops marching with
| music... There were mass charges in the first weeks and in
| the last weeks, but they were vastly different (creeping
| barrage to protect infantry and soften up the enemy, helmets
| to protect heads, coordination, etc.)
| pdpi wrote:
| > So they would just lead mass charges into fortified
| positions with artillery and machine guns. It was the
| definition of a meat grinder.
|
| I read something a while back that, while I'm not sure how
| accurate it is, got sort of seared into my brain. In medieval
| times, permanent fortified positions (castles and such) were
| of the utmost importance, and sieges were a major part of
| war. With the arrival of gunpowder, cannons could wreck walls
| and other fortifications, and warfare in the open field
| largely replaced siege warfare.
|
| The single biggest military failure of WW1 (by both sides)
| was that the then-modern military doctrine told them to treat
| trench warfare as slow-moving open warfare, where it
| should've instead been fought as a slightly mobile form of
| siege warfare.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| "Fighting siege warfare" means that both sides can expect
| to "win" by doing nothing and sitting in their defenses.
| It's unclear if this really applies to WW1 Western Front.
|
| Perhaps Germany was in a position were it was happy to sit
| in their trenches and just endure, but France was not.
| France had to be able to compel Germany to come to terms
| and restore French territory (which we should also remember
| contained a good chunk of French industry). While the
| blockade of Germany was clearly effective, it's not clear
| to this day (and certainly would not have been clear to the
| western allies at the time) if the blockade alone could
| have compelled Germany to terms.
|
| And certainly the western allies DID attempt to
| strategically outflank Germany. It just... didn't really
| work.
|
| WW1 generals understood sieges. They generally understood
| what fortifications could and could not do. There's a
| reason the Belgiums kept building forts. There's a reason
| why Germany built ever bigger artillery. WW1 generals got
| to see the Russo-Japanese war 10 years ago. They got to see
| a 6 month siege of Port Arthur. They got to see the
| ridiculous causalities that modern weapons could inflict.
| But they also saw something - the attack WORKED. The costs
| were awful, but the Japanese achieved their goals.
| pdpi wrote:
| > "Fighting siege warfare" means that both sides can
| expect to "win" by doing nothing and sitting in their
| defenses. It's unclear if this really applies to WW1
| Western Front.
|
| The problem with a siege isn't that you win by doing
| nothing, it's that the attacker always loses, hard, by
| trying a head-on assault. The really novel aspect of
| trench warfare is that you had both sides in a fortified
| highly-defensible position at the same time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, and of course after WWI the French in particular
| largely took the lesson that forts work; they just need
| to be bigger, better, and more numerous.
| ivanonhn wrote:
| I think this is still true for the case of a conventional
| war. This can be checked in Ukraine right now. As far as I
| know, most of the losses of Russian troops at the beginning
| of the conflict are associated with hidden groups of
| Ukrainian soldiers who did not show up while the Russian
| tanks were making the initial march. And then, when supply
| caravans were heading to the front line, these hidden
| groups instantly attacked them from the side, and then hid
| again in the woods by the roads. Then the Russians changed
| tactics - no rush, but intense shelling of the front line
| with all kinds of artillery for several days, then a small
| advance, then a sweep, and then the cycle repeats.
| usrusr wrote:
| The good news would have been that without encirclement,
| siege warfare would have been delightfully similar to
| peacetime. The bad news that this war would still be going
| on. Which would be good news again, because of all those
| other wars that could not have happened in the meantime.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| The pile of bodies in that battle is completely unrealistic.
| About the only thing that was realistic was the shield wall.
| But then the writers left a huge plot hole because the good
| guys had a giant that could have just broken the lines.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| A book [1] that's nearly 30 years old now by one of the best
| military historians of his age, John Keegan: _The Face of
| Battle_. It looks at what it was actually like to be there, in
| the midst of it, at three famous battles. I need to read it
| again.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Face-Battle-Study-Agincourt-
| Waterloo/...?
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