Are you just talking about the smoke and noise? Because like I said earlier, the Romans were no strangers to being attacked with lead bullets.
Were those societies fielding organized, well-drilled armies where the penalty for routing was decimation? Roman army discipline was brutal. And they were quite familiar with noisy terror weapons , and employed them themselves.
This was the interesting scenario of the OP.
So no extra weapons (as added to the discussion later.)
I think Martin Hyde makes key points about the state of the battleground terrain and how the two sides meet etc., which dramatically affects the outcome.
Perhaps the OP should have chosen a ‘Star trek’ scenario, where a powerful alien brings the two sides together on a limited flat plain (i.e. no retreat.)
I also think that we need to look at how fast the Romans could run 100 metres whilst wearing armour and holding their shields in front.
The Olympic records for 100 metres are roughly:
So I suggest that going back to Roman times would see a real drop in speed. Plus the above times are trained unencumbered runners.
The slower the Romans are, the more volleys they have to face.
Of course if the terrain is not arranged by an alien, then any slope, rough ground or undergrowth would also hamper the charge.
Running in sandals is no picnic either.
According to my “highly scientific” study, the Romans win handily.
I’m talking about basically hearing explosives for the first time, seeing dudes dressed in clothing you’ve never seen before point a stick at you and that stick belches smoke and fire. Almost instantly after guys to your left and right fall over mortally wounded or dead. In quick order the entire battlefield is completely filled with thick smoke. It would be otherworldly.
I grew up in Appalachia and I think my Dad first put a small gun in my hands to show me some basics of shooting when I was 7 or 8 years old. My dad and grandpa were sighting in guns, maintaining guns on the regular my whole life. There was never a point in my life when just the sound of gunfire was strange or unusual to me. While not every person grows up so acquainted with guns, every soldier practices with guns and gets a similar amount of familiarity.
I posit that pre-Columbian warriors were no cowards and many were ferocious fighters with long warrior traditions. There’s a reason they broke in fear from guns, and it isn’t cowardice nor in my opinion is it lack of discipline. I can’t know that the Romans would break, but I can say that assuming Romans were “better” than Aztec and Inca warriors in bravery and discipline, I’m not 100% sure that is true. Some of the warrior traditions of the Western hemispheres pre-Columbian peoples were pretty ancient and well established.
Mind you the Romans lost plenty of battles in their history, they were never unbeatable in a single battle, they mostly dominated because they had logistics and manpower advantages so that one battle was never enough to put them away.
I’ll also note some serious issues with the way a lot of you are mentally setting this battle up. As I said heavy infantry in a traditional sense was still being utilized in the late 1600s and early 1700s, and many units in European armies still had heavy infantry names attached to them even when they had functionally been converted to line infantry (i.e. Grenadiers regiments and such.) Heavy infantry wasn’t done away with in the 18th century because it didn’t work at all, it just didn’t make sense to devote resources to it given the bigger picture. It was similar in many respects to why battleships went away.
But positing a scenario where you drop 500 of what would frankly be considered heavy infantry at very close range to 500 line infantry, and both sides have no complementary forces or etc, is kind of a silly situation and in my opinion doesn’t prove much. It’s again, like dropping a battleship from space 1000m away from an aircraft carrier that had just sent its entire detachment of planes on a mission. The result of that battle doesn’t “prove” a battleship is a more powerful military force than an aircraft carrier. It proves that in “a contrived situation that to have occurred in real life would have meant a series of extremely stupid blunders happened, an archaic technology can beat a superior one.” To me that isn’t particularly interesting.
Imagine a scenario where 500 Roman legionnaires are dropped on top of 500 sleeping Navy SEALs, omg the SEALs would lose, so Romans > Navy SEALs. It’s almost like there’s a reason in real life large forces don’t drop in and surprise Navy SEALs like that while all of them are sleeping, because it isn’t how real military forces operate that such a thing would happen.
Line infantry was part of a bigger whole and putting it in essentially close combat with heavy infantry from a long ago era is a very contrived situation.
It’s not like they were wearing flip-flops. They were essentially wearing hobnail boots with better airflow.
Romans weren’t strangers to smoke and fire and noise in warfare. Nor were they strangers to projectile weapons. At 100 yards, they’re not going to be seeing “sticks belching smoke”, just a sudden smoke cloud from the enemy ranks. And then they won’t be seeing anything as the cloud thickens and persists.
“Aah, they must have some pretty accurate Balearics in that bunch of people hidden by that smoke cloud. Best close with them quickly!”
And seriously, “dudes dress in clothing you’ve never seen before”? Are you aware of the variety of enemies Rome faced? If strange clothes were going to put them off, they’d never have left Latium.
Warriors are not soldiers. Aztecs and Incas had a warrior tradition. Romans had a soldier one. Here’s a nice series of articles that expands on the difference.
I am. Not the personal bravery, but unit cohesion and discipline, definitely.
I mean all of that sounds highly speculative and you’re comparing pre-gunpowder noise to gunpowder noise. I assume the Incas had heard a loud noise in their life before Cajamarca.
Redcoats have experience fighting an enemy with swords and shields. Romans have no experience fighting an enemy armed with guns.
Terrain is hugely important in this scenario. The links here show some comparables of this battle and if the Romans had any experience in Briton or Gaul they would be familiar with the Celtic battle tactics of using the forest similar to Native Americans against the British and American troops. Standing in an open plain tilts favour to the Redcoats but I still think the battle would likely run as below.
This quote is from the first link (Bolding mine):
"And let’s discuss the primary weapon of that time the musket now than contrary to where hollywood shows people dying like flies in real life in didn’t work that way. There are many battles where 10,000 or more men on a side fired at each other at ranges of less than 100 meters for hours, where the descriptions of the battles spoke of hot fire and the advance of pike formations driving the enemy off the field in close quarters. For example, the battle of Naseby in 1645 - after two hours of a firefight that used up tons of ammunition, the total casualties on each side was only a hundred or two dead – less than 1%! Then, came the shock combat phase, and one side broke, and the losers quickly lost another few thousand men in the pursuit, whereas the winners lost very few more. There’s another battle where 700 Austrians fought 800 hundred Turks for hours from a few feet away and when the shooting the dead (both sides added together) was less than 50 men then the Turks charged and defeated the Austrians.outside of 50 yards (Three inches shorter than a meter for those of you like me who have trouble converting) La Noue records that you would have been as safe as if you had been in St. Pauls Cathedral although shooting at that range was a waste of powder and even shooting at twenty five feet was iffy. In fact the tactics of that time for infantry were (instead of shooting away like hollywood shows it) was to fire off one volley and then to charge with bayonets 1. A Polish officer in Napoleons army records that the enemy might shoot a few of his Lancers but it wouldn’t stop them and when they reached the enemy foot they would be helpless.
1 Frederick the Greats Cavalry used a similar method although they charged first and then fired into the enemy right before they hit them and then drawing sabers and closing with the enemy. Interestingly enough in most cavalry units the use of guns in close combat was prohibited.
In a test using good modern powder several muskets were fired off 43% off them were duds and that’s not counting the primitve powder of the 1700s and misfires, wet powder, wonky gun, etc."
In the OP’s scenario the action really doesn’t start until roughly 100 yds in any case as there is no cavalry or artillery on either side. If both sides are experienced veterans it seems to me the Redcoats would fix bayonets (assuming they have socket style), hold fire until 50 yds, maybe get two rounds off while the Romans would start throwing their pilum around 25 yds and charging. Even if the Romans lose 1/2 their force I’m pretty sure they close and mop up, especially if the Redcoats are in close order to maximize their volley(s).
The OP says just shields and swords and no artillery (which is what a javelin basically is).
From the OP. Roman artillery would have been ballista and scorpions.
And if militaries had to choose between exclusively line infantry and heavy infantry, with no supporting forces, that might inform us of something. But that wasn’t reality, there is a reason militaries of the late 18th century had moved away from heavy infantry, and there is a reason essentially no large scale battles of consequence involved only line infantry. There is also a reason someone just a few years after the 1780 time period mentioned in the OP came up as an artillery officer. Ignoring the importance of artillery and other complementing forces to how the armies of the late 18th century works creates this very unrealistic scenario. For example at Austerlitz Napoleon commanded around 73,000 with 139 guns, and some 20,000+ of his forces were made up of mounted cuirassiers and dragoons.
I’m not sure any Roman Army that ever marched moved that many horse with it (and I am familiar with some large recorded cavalry numbers like Caesar’s 8,000 at Munda), and certainly would have had difficulty moving such number of field guns and the supplies to operate them. This shows a massive technological and logistical superiority of the armies of the Napoleonic French Empire (which is close to contemporaneous with the 1780s period OP mentions.) In a battle between similarly sized Armies for example Napoleon’s mounted forces would be a terror for any mounted forces the Romans could deploy and would drive them out of the battle very quickly, and then would represent a tremendous threat to the Roman legionary flanks. The power of large field guns would also massively disrupt Roman operations with virtually no meaningful counter possible. It wasn’t uncommon to see complements of around 24 guns as being standard per corps (which varied considerably in size based on type and etc, from 5000ish to 13000ish) in Napoleon’s time.
I admit I don’t know much about Roman tactics, but I’m pretty sure that the Romans aren’t going to be running as fast as they can. If your line breaks into a run like that, some soldiers will run faster than others, and your line loses its cohesion. The strength in those types of tactics is keeping the line intact.
They may do some sort of double-time march where they are moving faster than walking, but they definitely aren’t sprinting across the battlefield. They move as a line.
OP here. Thanks for all the incredibly knowledgeable, detailed and thoughtful responses! Seems there is no clear consensus. I didn’t think it’d be a done deal, but didn’t have the background historical knowledge to back that up. In my job as a forensic pathologist I deal a lot with wound ballistics, and I see bullets doing many strange and occasionally inexplicable things, especially after they interact with intermediate targets, such as a Roman shield.
If anyone’s interested the discussion I referred to in the OP is here: The British History Podcast episode 84. The relevant part starts about 9:30. Their discussion is brief, and they don’t lay out even the minimal conditions I did. It’s just Redcoats vs Romans. Furthermore, the scholar actually makes a reasonable case for the Romans winning, even under those no holds barred conditions, by introducing two plausible factors: (1) Overconfidence on the part of the Redcoat commanders, and (2) plausible to the point of certainty, the cunning and audacity of Caesar*.
As for questions that have arose about the conditions of the battle, for the record I was imagining infantrymen on both sides kitted out with whatever infantrymen of the era would have. For the terrain, basically anything that would make that factor neither an advantage nor disadvantage for either side. And as for their knowledge of their opponents, I figured the Redcoats could consult the historical record of their day to learn about the Romans, while the Romans would be allowed to scout the Redcoats long enough to learn what their capabilities were. After that, the Roman commanders could orient their men to the capabilities of the Redcoats in whatever way they deemed best fit.
For those who think the Romans would be cut down by musket fire and neutralized, what if they employed a tactic such as this: Half or a third of their men start off charging pel mell. No shield and no body armor to slow them down. Just flat out sprint waving galadii and hollering bloody murder. As they start off, the rest advance, fully armed and armored, at a medium quick pace.
*Caeser scouts the Redcoats and learns their advantage is all about gunpowder. He then stages a nighttime raid on the Redcoat gunpowder stores and destroys it.
Several people seem to have the idea that Roman soldiers didn’t run into battle. Many accounts testify that they did.
It was probably a fast jog trot, keeping more or less in line. Caesar implies that this could result in some disorder, but it was worth it. The soldiers raised a loud shout, rising from a low pitch to a high pitch, as they charged. They hurled their pila while running, drew their swords, and charged home
Another misconception is that Romans fought shoulder to shoulder. They didn’t, they fought on a frontage of about a yard per man. They needed to have space to swing their swords and fight freely. There are several accounts of fighting enemies packed too closely together, which gave the Romans a great advantage.
In general I agree with most of the things @Martin_Hyde has said. This kind of fantasy match-up doesn’t really make sense. It’s based on computer gaming. In real war things never happen in isolation, or in clinically perfect circumstances, and armies have several different types of troops fighting together for a reason.
I’ve been following the discussion with some interest and have a few comments.
It seems as if the tendency has been to assume that the Romans have more “battle” experience and better leadership than the Redcoats. I’m not sure of the basis for this assumption. Sure, a typical redcoat might not have much experience handling a charge of this type, but quite a few troops would have seen action of this type and have very capable leadership. And not every Roman would have been a battle-seasoned veteran.
I don’t think the OP meant for this to be a “cage match” encounter, where 1000 troops enter and only 1 leaves. Casualties of 15-30% are usually enough to tip a battle, or at least trigger a significant change in tactics. If initial volleys from the Redcoats reduce the Roman lines significantly, I suspect that the Romans would withdraw, regroup, and rethink. I don’t believe that the Romans were outright suicidal or had the type of culture that glorified useless death in battle.
Just to directly address the thread title. Not only is a wooden shield poor protection from a musket ball, it can actually compound the damage by creating splintered shrapnel.
This type of discussion is often really popular on the internet, in the specific case of “Roman legionnaires vs British Redcoats c. 1780” the most useful information to be gleaned is probably a better appreciation for the value of armor and melee weapons like the Roman gladius and the Roman’s shields.
I think there is a frequent overstatement of the % of casualties in battle that guns caused in the first few hundred years of gunpowder warfare, and a misunderstanding of how melees were still quite common for a long time after gunpowder warfare developed in the west. In that context it should not be terribly surprising at all that put in already relatively close quarters, and in a somewhat unrealistic scenario in which the Redcoats would not have any real support elements, heavy infantry would be so devastating to musket armed line infantry.
At the same time, I think in this thread it was being a little overstated almost to the point the impression was being given that musket wielding line infantry wasn’t an effective military innovation, when it actually was, and largely is what saw “retirement” of heavy infantry. But it was a gradual process.
This is a good point and also would vary a lot. We’ve affixed 1780 as our Redcoat year but we haven’t fixed a year for our 500 Romans, the actual composition of Roman armies changed a lot over time, and at different points in the history of the Republic and the Empire the likelihood of x % of the force being battle tested would vary widely as well.
In terms of experience, I think 1780 is actually a pretty “good” year for the Redcoats. There has frequently been a representation that at the start of the American Revolution many of the redcoats were young and inexperienced. In actuality most had 5 or more years in service. The % that were battle tested was relatively low, with much of their service experience being garrison duty and things of that nature. Now 1780 was significantly different in that quite a good chunk of the British army had been in active war zones.
The more I think about it, the more I think that the noise of the guns would win the battle for the Redcoats. The Romans were extremely well-trained soldiers, some of the best in history, but you can only train soldiers for things you know of. And the way you train soldiers to not panic at the sound of massed gunfire is that you expose them to that sound, repeatedly and often, during their training. The Romans couldn’t have trained for that unless they had guns, too, and if they had guns, they would have been using them.
Early republican soldiers (Ironically? :P) panicked the first time they fought Pirro’s elephants.
Something like that could happen with firearms.
On the other hand I’m not sure soldiers were trained with exposure to gunfire, or at least that soldiers without that exposure would run at the first round of gunfire, many armies did not have the money to really expose their soldiers too too much gunfire, gundpowder was expensive