Well I don’t have the historical background that some of you do but I have been in an SCA battle and the use of a wedge for breaking a line seems pretty obvious to me.
Once formations make contact, line/formation discipline goes to hell. The point where they contact turns into a giant medieval mosh pit full of one on one fights. A straight line provides relatively even resistance where as the wedge, by sheer weight of charge, will tend to penetrate. The soldiers in ranks behind the front will not just stand and wait their turn to fight they will push forward and seek targets, slipping between existing fights or assisting their bretheren with their opponents. Since there are more people in the center section of a wedge formation, more assistance is available to carry the fight forward.
No, hastening to engage William before the arrival of his entire feudal levy and not forcing him to winter for awhile amidst insignificant forage lost Hastings for Harold.
Not to mention, as my pet theory goes, the loss of his brothers Leofwine and Gyrth.
Way off topic, but I would actually disagree with this. England in point of fact was conquered by the Danes and only a dynastic accident kept them from remaining under a Scandinavian dynasty ( at least for a time ), i.e. Canute’s and Hathacanute’s young deaths. A significant portion of the English people, including sections of the nobility, many of whom had deep cultural and linguistic ties to the Danes et al after years of conquest and settlement ( not to mention the essentially Scano-Germanic character of Anglo-Saxon England period ), seem to have been content with Canute and his dynasty. Indeed Godwin, Harold Godwinson’s father, owed his prominent position to Canute and was married to a sister-in-law of his. Edward the Confessor succeeded to the throne because he was the ally, half-brother, junior co-King of sorts and designated heir of Hathacanute, who died childless. The fact that he was also the last direct descendant of the house of Wessex didn’t hurt his candidacy either, of course. But he didn’t take the throne by conquest.
jiHymas: Thanks - I’ve appreciated the education, believe me :).
You mean besides Nigel Tranter? Tranter was a respected historian and based every event in his novels on known history (especially in the case of battles and other major turning points) and confined conjecture to minor details such as private conversations that were lost to history as soon as the participants parted. As I said before, he also authored several straightforward history books that, unfortunately, I don’t own yet, but he used the same criteria in his research whether he was writing a novel about Robert the Bruce or a scholarly history of 14th century Scotland.
Maeglin, without Stamford Bridge, William would have faced a tougher, fresher and larger army. I’d have backed Harold. All your points are valid, but IMHO they were force weakening factors only because the army was already weak. Without Stamford Bridge, their impact would have much less. Harold pretty much had to fight quickly for political reasons. His throne wasn’t secure enough to risk leaving an invading army in Sussex for too long and he had to fight before the fyrd went home.
Tamerlane, fair comment, but… An accident of history kept the ruling dynasty English and not Danish, true, but Alfred the Great stopped the country becoming Danish in the 9th century. He created a kingdom strong enough to eventually conquer the Danelaw and an English (as opposed to Wessex, Mercian or Danish) culture. If the dynasty had become Danish in the 9th century, my WAG is that culturally, the Scandinavian empire of Canute and his heirs would have centred on England - the strongest component both militarily and culturally - and become English in the same sense that Scotland “became” English after Kames VI became James I.
Maeglin, without Stamford Bridge, William would have faced a tougher, fresher and larger army. I’d have backed Harold. All your points are valid, but IMHO they were major factors only because the army was already weak. Without Stamford Bridge, their impact would have much less. Harold pretty much had to fight quickly for political reasons. His throne wasn’t secure enough to risk leaving an invading army in Sussex for too long and he had to fight before the fyrd went home.
Tamerlane, fair comment, but… An accident of history kept the ruling dynasty English and not Danish, true, but Alfred the Great stopped the country becoming Danish in the 9th century. He created a kingdom strong enough to eventually conquer the Danelaw and an English (as opposed to Wessex, Mercian or Danish) culture. If the dynasty had become Danish in the 11th century, I reckon that culturally, the Scandinavian empire of Canute and his heirs would have centred on England - the strongest component both militarily and culturally - and become English in the same sense that Scotland “became” English after James VI became James I. The cultural impact of the Normans was much greater because the ruling class had been replaced wholesale by the death of William, unlike the situation under Canute & Harthacanute.
(Apologies to all Scottish dopers for calling them English but you know what I mean.)
However my own additonal tack-on to that WAG is that if that situation had occurred, the Norman conquest would likely never have happened ( a lot less likely to have been tried and just as less likely to succeed if it had, even though an ambitious prince like William with his ties to Emma of Normandy might still have been tempted to make the gamble ) and in its absense England would have retained a very strong Germanic character that would have shared far more cultural connections to the Scandinavian north than the Latin west. We would have quite the alternate history in Europe.
But this really is getting pretty far afield from the topic ;).
Tamerlane, true. William’s chances against a dynastically Danish England (say that quickly three times!) would have been limited to say the least. And had Denmark remained under that same dynasty…
Foote and Wilson provide no citations for their claim of literary references to ‘wedges’ in either language, svingylking or porcinum caput.
Is this list in order of desirability?
I was hoping a re-enactor would join in! When these wedges are used in battles, how does the defender react? In general terms, I refuse to believe in all-powerful wedges as this implies ‘line’ formation is no good, which means it wouldn’t be standard.
So, from a re-enactment perspective, and setting aside all questions of historicity for the moment, what do defenders in these battles do prior to, during and after a wedge attack? And how many men would be involved in these reconstructions?
No disrespect to Tranter is intended - I know he has a huge following. But any further cites or quotes to support the idea that cavalry would charge (as distinct from maneuvering) in wedge formation would be greatly appreciated.
No, catching an arrow in the eye lost Hastings for Harold. It was more of a near-run thing than Waterloo!
As threatened, I am resurrecting this thread as I have received a new book (a book! I needed one of those): The Rule of the Templars, J. M. Upton Ward, Boydell Press 1992, ISBN 0-85115-315-1 (hardback) 0-85115-701-1 (paperback), with the appendix by Matthew Bennett, 1989, on “How to deliver a cavalry charge”.
Good memory, Go alien. This is from George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man.
At any rate, all the evidence cited by Bennett supports the idea that cavalry always charged in line. There is too much material to quote here, but there are some juicy cites. Louis Edward Nolan, who is remembered by history chiefly for being the carrier of the misunderstood message that launched the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, said:
I recognize, of course, that Nolan’s experience was Victorian - but cavalry tactics changed little over the centuries. One might allow that the “50 yards” could be somewhat shorter in medieval times, as the horses would be carrying a greater weight and enemy projectile weapons would not be as effective at 50 yards in medieval times as they would be in Victorian.
Ah, well - now off to Amazon, to see if Nolan’s Cavalry Tactics is still in print!
I hope it’s not excessively bad manners to resurrect a thread after so long, but this thread remains one of my favourite internet discussions.
Anyway, the book Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918 by Stephen Badsey contains the following in a sample chapter posted online by the publisher.
The objections to the use of the wedge I think fail to take into account two factors: (1) that not all warriors are alike and fungible; and (2) the moral effect of penetrating a line of battle.
The shield-wall derived its strength from co-operation: each neighbour protects the other. So in theory, it would work best if all were the same worth as warriors. However, some warriors were always going to be weaker, less experienced, less fearsome than others. Normally, those would go behind in the wall.
Using a wedge, one places one’s strongest warriors - most fearsome, most experiened - at the ‘boar’s snout’ - that is, at the front of the wedge. Then, have them aim for a perceived weakest warrior in the opposing shieldwall. This opposes your strenght to the enemy’s weakness.
If the “snout” breaks through, in theory it can be outflanked on each side - but that does not take into account the moral effect. If the shieldwall is broken through, the weakest will (in the assumption of the attackers) start to flee the line, leaving the strongest feeling vulnerable; also, there may be a reluctance to make a turn towards the invading “snout”, as this exposes the outflankers to being outflanked in their turn by the enemy’s advancing shieldwall.
I have been reading quite a lot about The Peninsular war lately. It seems that in general, Napoleon preferred the wedge or column approach and Wellesley (later Wellington) beat him almost every time with his troops in a line. Cavalry were dangerous but could always be stymied by forming a square.
Napoleon’s tactics had served him well up to that point, and the sight of a solid, well armed column advancing in step with banners, drummers etc, must have half won the battle before it started. British (and eventually Portuguese) troops were made of sterner stuff, as well as being positioned on the high ground, and this turned the tactic against the French, with the troops at the rear being totally unable to engage the enemy.
In Napoleonic times the line had the additional advantage that every man in it could shoot at the enemy - in medieval times, in the shieldwall, aside from javilins and the like only the men in direct contact could fight. (Discounting here the roll of the bow, as bowmen typically did not stand in the shieldwall).
At the risk of contradicting Mr. Badsey…have you read John Keegan’s *The Face of Battle? * He makes a persuasive-sounding argument that cavalry “shock” was largely, perhaps almost entirely, * moral * in character. That despite the thrilling literature, cavalry seldom charged home with * physical * impact, and not galloping, either. Rather, according to Keegan’s interpretation, cavalry would typically advance at something less than full gallop, carefully observing the firmness of the opposing infantry, and only upon seeing weakness–Keegan’s memorable phrase was “a visible shiver” running along the line–would the cavalry make contact, entering weak points as terrified footmen faltered or fell back.
He admits a few cases where a crazed or dying horse broke into a square like a physical missile, but notes that contempraries spoke of these as unusual events.
You might find the book worth reading if you haven’t already. I apologize if I have overemphasized one aspect of your citation, and for not quoting my own, as I am posting from a phone at considerable challenge to my dexterity.
True, accuracy for smoothbore muskets was miserable. But in a line vs. column, most of those shots were pointed at the front of the column as ‘converging fire’ - and as it moved towards the line, the shots got more and more accurate.
The effect was that the front ranks of the column tended to get decimated, increasingly so as it moved into contact with the line. The physical effect was that, just when the column would want to move really fast (to smash through the line), the men had to somehow stumble over the bodies of those in front who were shot; and the moral effect was pretty natural - the men deep in the line, exposed by the deaths of those ahead of them, tended to flinch and hesitate as it came to be “their turn” to be in front!
The effect was seen time and time again in the battles of the Penninsular War - the column tended to slow down just as it reached the true “killing zone” in front of the line, where the muskets (at last) tended to do real damage - and hang there, being shredded, rather than making that last rush that would push the column through the line and break it. Then, as casualties mounted, the morale of the column would crumble, and back it would go.
Well, that’s a relief! I was afraid a Mod would lock the thread with a nasty remark.
That might be very difficult to do in the heat of battle.
While your comments make perfect sense in theory, it is my view that the practical impediments are insurmountable; I haven’t seen any evidence that tactical wedges were ever used in practice.
I confess that I haven’t read Face of Battle, but I will add it to the list!
I will certainly agree that cavalry will not charge a well formed line of men. The horses will refuse, even if the troopers don’t! It is my conclusion, from a variety of sources (Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages; and Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097-1193 are the ones I consider most academically sound, but there are many others) that charges were not employed against a well-formed shield-wall. First, the defenders had to be thrown into some kind of disorder, by either missile fire or maneuver, and only then would the cavalry attempt to exploit this weakness.
Beeler claims (Warfare in England, 1066-1189) that, for instance Hastings was planned in exactly this manner:
In the end, the Anglo-Saxon line was thinned by poorly executed attempts to exploit defensive successes against the Normans (which led to the ‘Feigned Retreat’ narratives, which Beeler criticizes harshly) and this thinning allowed a double envelopment of the line.
At some point I would really like to learn more about Guderian’s development of Panzer tactics in the 1930’s, because it strikes me that it all comes down to the same ideas as William’s original plan, which was mirrored throughout the medieval era. If I remember correctly from a biography I read a long time ago, Patton made the same arguments in the U.S.
