The trailer makes it look like melodramatic nonsense to me. All oiled bronze bodies oiling bronze weapons. The women and gay men will have a great old time, I’m sure.
This is not on my list of movies to see at all. But then, I’ve only seen one new movie this year so far as it is, and I can’t even remember, off the top of my head, what it was.
I seem to remember that the importance of military discipline paled next to the importance of having the fates on your side. Even meddling gods and goddesses had to accede to the power of the fates.
God I hate being this anal, but…
Actually his coverage is more about Genghis Khan’s main man, Subedei Bahadur :). I also recommend that book and Keegan’s ( though I disagreed with Keegan more than once in that one, something, which considering Keegan’s stature in the field, I shouldn’t even have the right to admit to 
).
I’ll add a couple of titles I liked when I get home tonight and don’t have to try to reconstruct from memory and amazon.
Shibboleth: Here are just a few more general volume’s on military history:
There is J.F.C. Fuller’s two volume A Military History of the Western World, a classic from the 1950’s which covers the period from antiquity to the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Reasonably well-written and accessible, though it should not be regarded as completely encyclopedic ( he cherry-picks battles and campaigns which he regards as being of particular interest and importance to focus on ).
Much more detailed into the wherefores and how’s of pre-modern warfare is the four volume set by Hans Delbruck, History of the Art of War, each covering a particular period ( Warfare in Antiquity, The Barbarian Invasions, Medieval Warfare and The Dawn of Modern Warfare, respectively ). They’re translated from German and are rather dense with their swarm of footnotes and end chapter discursions, so probably don’t qualify as easy to read. Somewhat similarly with another nice volume, Philip Contamine’s War in the Middle Ages. However if your interest is whetted by other stuff, the above are worth pursuing for their reams of interesting minutia.
Books on military failures and blunders always seem to be popular. I must have a half-dozen, of which maybe the most analytic is one of the thinnest, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch - it focuses exclusively on a half-dozen twentieth century examples. However IMO the most fun is Charles Fair’s From the Jaws of Victory: Character, Causes, and Consequences of Military Stupidity. He starts with Crassus and ends with Westmoreland ( the book was written in 1971 and is rather anti-Vietnam ) and generally writes with both humor ( pretty snarky at times, at that ) and panache.
If you’re interested in any particular period or area ( or want another several titles on military blunders ) let me know. I have a few odd things floating around
To Gibson’s credit, he originally wanted to do the battles fairly close to the more realistic historical version. However, heavy rains kept him from shooting Stirling bridge properly, so he wound up having to move to another location at the last minute. They had to put something together, and there weren’t a whole lot of options. You try finding an old stone bridge in South Scotland in the rain while keeping 400 extras on staff.
As rich as Hollywood is, their not almighty. While it certainly wasn’t historically accurate, Gibson’s battles were reasonably authentic on their own terms.
Well, they are going against the Rohirrim, so you would at least expect them to HAVE pikes, if not actually use them in the battle. And you’d still want to keep a few of them around, to guard against…
A wizard did it. (The light was probably enhanced by Gandalf)
Unorganized cavalry tactics seem perfectly in tune to the more Dark Ages mentality of the Rohirrim, but I dont recall what their typical cavalry formation was.
I don’t think he was referring so much to the absence of Sterling Bridge, but rather to the actual combat as depicted: Hoardes of disorganized troops charging across several hundred yards of open field, rather than organized units of men maneuvering around the field in a tactical way, looking for openings and weaknesses, using different strategies to break and pound enemy lines.
Unorganized tactics? That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? 
Fair enough—some license will probably have to be taken on many things, which I respect.
There are still a lot of general things that shouldn’t be affected by rain. E.g., a one armed guy sitting on his ass probably can’t skewer a suit of armor like it was melted butter; as a student of Renatus, Edwards troop’s wouldn’t have been pell-mell all over the field; the Scots fought in more-or-less a phalanx: a shiltron (or a pike square); they used pikes or spears rather than trees.
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed your post and you made a good point that I happily acknowledge.
Well, they were steppe people, to at least some extent governing the plains around the gap in the mountains, and would most likely be like the Huns or Mongols, if you get right down to it. Generations of herding and riding would make them naturally organized since, according to Keegan, calvary tactics are pretty much like herding tactics.
With a battle plan like that, a wizard would have to do it.
That’s definitely true: I just wanted to pont out that Gibson tried very hard to make a reasonably accurate movie and, thrugh no fault of his own, had to change the facts to suit the situation. The movie as shown was the result of a last-minute reorganization.