Having been exposed to both elephants and guns, I’d say being on the battle field with a gladius and a shield I’d be more panicked by the elephants, too. War elephants are fucking terrifying!
Sorry Pyrrhus’ elephants, sometimes I forget that historical figures have different names in different languages.
Not only the composition, but the arms, armour, tactics, and organisation changed considerably over the centuries.
Examples of the dress and equipment of late Roman soldiers:
However, I assume we are talking about early imperial legionaries, because that’s what most people today seem to think of.
The difference is that Roman soldiers were professional career soldiers, but the ordinary rank and file of the British Army were not.
In early imperial times there were more people wanting to join the Roman army than there were places, and it was often difficult to become a soldier without a blood relationship to a serving or retired soldier, or at least a recommendation.
So the Roman army had their choice of the best candidates, and men joined up intending to serve from their late teens to their mid-forties, or even later for higher ranks, and then retire with a certain amount of prosperity.
A soldier was looked up to and respected in society. Even an ordinary soldier was somebody, he had prestige among civilians. Soldiers also had an ethos and a code of honour.
On the other hand, in Britain in the 18th century, ordinary soldiers were looked down on and regarded as the dregs of society. They consisted of anyone who could be induced, persuaded or conscripted to join up. The officers were professionals, but the soldiers were generally there because they had no better prospects, and because soldiering was better than starving on the streets.
The OP was actually fairly clear about that:
Late Republican. Although the differences between the Late Republic and Early Imperial era kit and training would be relatively small.
Your information is partly true, but you are presenting it in an extremely misleading way.
First, although a sling-stone is not a trivial weapon, it is also not remotely comparable to a musket ball. Even much early handguns completely outclassed slings. At a conservative estimate, the musket would fire projectiles with five times the force of a sling-stone. And that’s frankly being generous to the sling-stone. It will punch through the shield easily; it will punch through Roman equally well.
Slingers were, if not dreaded, definitely disliked by armored soldiers in the Mediterranean world. Their projectiles didn’t generally puncture through armor, but they were capable of dealing serious injury or killing even so. The Balearic slingers were the most infamous, although they existed just about anywhere herdsmen did. That said, the Roman kit was not primarily designed to protect against slingers; that was a relatively minor issue all told. Slingers had some awkward issues in formation fighting and were often deployed in the same way as crossbowmen in the Medieval era.
That being said, Romans armor had some reasonable protection against sling stones, but functionally none against an attack with the force and velocity of a musket ball. For a comparison, it’s a bit like trying to use a pre-gunpowder city wall and trying to use it as a defense against WW1-era siege artillery, on the basis that “well, this city wall defended against a type of artillery!”
Technically true, yes, but meaningless in context. The Romans, in this case, would be best served by simply ditching their shields and possibly armor altogether.
Sorry, I should have reread the OP.
Legionaries of Caesar’s time didn’t use the lorica segmentata, but chain mail. They would have looked more like this:
With the huge proliferation of armies during the civil wars and conquests of the late Republic, soldiers were also less of career professionals, but still volunteers.
My point wasn’t to say that sling bullets were comparable in damage to musket balls. It was to say that the idea of so-fast-as-to-be-invisible lead projectiles was not a foreign concept to the Romans, and they were not going to react to them like they were magic, as one poster was suggesting.
That’s just ridiculous. If armour was worse than useless against gunfire, it wouldn’t have been reinvented again in WWI. Especially helmets (which the Romans have and the musketeers don’t - which will make for fun times when the Romans are in javelin range).
And apparently wooden splinters are now a deadly risk - armour would certainly help against that.
IIRC, muskets were considerably more powerful than say, a modern handgun, and would punch through considerably stronger armor. Their drawbacks are extreme inaccuracy and glacial reload time.
I keep thinking “playing fields of Eton”. The redcoat officers will all have studied the Romans and probably wasted a lot of time considering this very issue. I’m betting on the redcoats.
Yeah I missed the part of the OP that specified Caesar’s legions as well.
Knowing the exact ballistic performance metrics of period firearms is difficult primarily because we lack comprehensive information on the powder used. Chemical purity, grain size, and amount of powder used are all important variables. The article @bump posted actually contains some interesting explanations of that. Their conservative figure of 1500 fps of the Brown Bess ball would suggest a pretty powerful round if it hit you at that speed, due to the weight and size of the ball. A .45 ACP in most standard rounds and powder loads will be between 850 and 1200 fps, which is a pretty powerful handgun round, with the varying weights of the different types that ranges from like 480 to 800 j of energy. Brown Bess would be putting out something like 4000 joules.
Of course the ballistics of the rounds are different and these numbers are basically at the muzzle, musket balls lost velocity per foot traveled through the air faster than more modern rounds do.
Note that the article you quote discusses the utility of body armor and helmets in protecting against fragments, not against direct fire.
As discussed to some extent upthread, there are a complex of reasons why armor was largely abandoned by European armies by 1780. I personally think that claims that armor was rendered obsolete by the armor-piercing qualities of guns are exaggerated and ignore a lot of other factors. From what I’ve seen of experimental archaeology demonstrations of muskets vs. armor, I suspect the Roman shields and armor would have had some protective value. But I think the Romans would still have been taking a lot of casualties from the Redcoats’ fire.
You’re right that the Romans would have had training and experience with fighting missile troops. But they wouldn’t have had training and experience in fighting gunpowder troops, and I think the differences are more significant than you’re allowing.
I’ve personally never been in combat, but I’ve served with guys who have been. I’ve participated in training with simunitions, and live fire exercises. It’s loud. Just, really loud. And disorienting. And scary. Now, it’s true, I haven’t trained with massed musket fire, so I don’t know how similar the sound levels are. But I think it’s a live possibility that with the utterly unfamiliar roar of musket fire, the muzzle flashes and smoke, and seeing shields, armor, and men splintered and shattered around them, the Romans would break and run.
If the Romans maintain enough unit cohesion to absorb the musket fire and close to contact with the Redcoats, I think they win in a rout. Sure, the Redcoats are trained and experienced in bayonet fighting, but they’re used to fighting troops with similar arms and (lack of) armor. They’re not used to fighting Roman legionaries with body armor and shields. The Romans, on the other hand, are trained and experienced in fighting lightly armored spear formations.
But I think the Romans maintaining unit cohesion under a musket barrage, and being able to close to contact, is a pretty big “if”.
Here’s a detailed and exhaustive study of the effect of slings.
Sling stones are a lot more powerful and effective than you would think. They could break bones and cause death, even with armour, and even at long range, due to transmitted shock, even if they didn’t penetrate.
The range was easily 100m+
Redcoats faced slings in Samoa in 1838-1845:
The sling was always considered a very formidable weapon, and old warriors have repeatedly assured me that a wound from a stone hurled from a sling and thrown with force was often much worse than one received from a musket ball. If a stone struck the arm or leg, it was difficult to heal, since the bone was usually smashed to pieces, and caused much suffering.
Biomechanical data (see below) tend to confirm that even the relatively small projectiles, probably launched at lower velocities than those attained by skilled warriors, used in the present study could fracture most human bone even at extreme range.
Another reason armor wasn’t entirely worthless in the 1780s was because lots of combat actually was settled with melee fighting and bayonets, mounted troops would continue to do saber charges for over a hundred years past 1780. There were lots of things where armor would be useful. The reason it went out of style is largely due to logistics and mobility in my opinion, European armies were undergoing structural changes. Part of the reason most Middle Age and Renaissance armies were relatively small is partially because population size was small, but part of it was also because of how soldiers were raised and used. Now we’re covering a big chunk of time when we say “Middle Age and Renaissance”, but generally speaking the professional core of the armies was small, usually supplemented by mercenaries and limited use of levies of quasi-trained and geared people. There were reasons not to just raise up large armies of peasants and farm equipment in most cases, as these were people who were productively working at creating food and who were fairly ineffective in battle.
By the time of the shift to line infantry soldiering had been decreased tremendously in terms of skill, the training to go from “lad off the street” to what the British would have considered “trained” in 1780 wasn’t terribly long or complex. It was much easier to train people in muskets than it was in the sort of weapons the Romans or Middle Age men-at-arms used, hence larger portions of the adult male population could be deployed as effective fighting men. This really ramped up in the Napoleonic Wars.
Other changes were afoot as well, and things like mobility were becoming more prized, an army carrying a lot of armor is going to move slower. Note that none of this is to say that European armies of the period didn’t have well trained men, they did–but in the infantry it was often the officers who were well trained, artillery and cavalry forces were much more rigorously trained than the line infantry. Cavalry also carried armor for longer–and were still regularly using it in the Napoleonic wars–since they had a horse to ride about on armor was not a significant impediment to marching speed and the logistics train, at least not incrementally over the horse and rider itself. ’
It wasn’t ever that armor truly became complete worthless, it’s just that there was a broader cost benefit analysis being done. A thick steel shield would actually protect infantry from bullets even today, but it would be cumbersome and difficult to incorporate into most infantry maneuvers. They actually do make such shields though, they just have a niche use case in the military.
If Caesar was leading the 500 Romans, the first thing they would do is dig a trench. Many of his battles were won as much by shovels as swords. With no artillery, the British would be forced to attack at closer range, and the benefits of the muskets would be drastically reduced.
I am not entirely sure how to parse your response. I think you are using “you” in the general sense rather than to imply that you disagree with me. I broadly agree with your post. However, as I said armor would be realistically useful against sling-stones whereas it simply wasn’t against gunfire.
To mjmartin:
Well, under the circumstances that’s a terrible idea for the Roman side. The British of the time usually did not use field fortifications, because they could under specific circumstances be as much hindrance as help - often a swift attack was just as useful. But they certainly dug in when it was advisable and displayed no weakness in the art of fortification. Here, the Romans have really no good ranged options. Building a fort would effectively pin them in place for a time, make them vulnerable to attack during construction, and subject them to counter-fortification. For the Romans, such on-the-spot defences were often a really good tactics, but in these situations it would subject them to great danger.
Now, if they knew exactly what they were doing, they could potentially build a more appropriate fortification ahead of time and out of danger, but that would require specialized knowledge or considerable foresight.
I disagree. The British muskets were not very accurate. Postings above say an effective range of 100 to 300 yards, but that is hitting a man sized target with a massed volley. If the Romans had a “wall” of 4 feet of mounded earth in front of them, the British would need to be far more accurate, which would require getting far closer. This would allow either a shorter distance for the Romans to travel if they decided to attack, or force the British to attack the Romans at close range. Either way, it takes away the British primary advantage of a superior ranged weapon. I don’t think a circle of mounded earth would require very specific knowledge or foresight.
Then what? Where in the “rules” does it say the redcoats have to attack? The Romans have just turned themselves into a big, stationary target. With no ranged weapons, the Brits can just surround the mound at range and starve the Romans out. Any crest that peeks over the mound gets hit by a dozen muskets. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.
Not sure the muskets have the accuracy for that.
A pila has a effective range of 15-20 meters. I doubt this is that much closer than the effective sniping range of a musket. If the British tried to surround the mound, they would be spread very thin. A mass pila throw, followed by a attack on a portion of the British would play incredibly well into the Roman strength. The British would need far more men than the Romans in order to hold an effective siege on the mound.