My 13-y.o. daughter and I were watching the movie GLORY last night, and enjoyed it ok, but I couldn’t explain the wisdom of most of the tactics employed by the armies: line up shoulder to shoulder and march toward the enemy, who is lined up similarly, and fire rifles until you’re close enough for hand to hand combat. If I tried to think up a more efficient way to maximize your own casualties, I don’t think I could do it.
My question is so basic, I’m sure it’s been done to death here (though a quick search for “Civil War” “tactics” and the like has turned up nothing germane.) Could a Civil War buff, or any kind of pre-WWI buff, direct me to an explanation of this tactic understandable to a non-military type mind?
On a related note, the conventional wisdom about war and tactics seems to be that armies started becoming uncivilized, ungentlemanly, etc. beginning with WWI or thereabouts, but I can hardly see what’s so civilized about marching into opposing fire.
The ultimate book claiming that military tactics were pointless was Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Tolstoy held that all of history was a “calculus of individuals”, and that one person had little effect on the outcome of events. He went out of his way to show how figures like Napoleon rationalized their actions and consequences, despite their impotence.
But Napoleon won a lot of battles and a lot of political campaigning, so I have to come to the conclusion that there was something behind what he was doing. Despite the 'fog of war" and sayings about “no plan surviving contact with the enemy”, Nappy and other strategists did seem to win a statisticaslly significant portion of the time.
Unfortunately, I’m not the one who knows about tactics, so I can’t direct you. The idea of marching shoulder-to-shoulder into direct fire seems stupid to me, too, but it seems to be the way. Of you think Glory seems bad, look at Barry Lyndon sometime. But it does seem to make sense when you consider that, with single-shot muzzle-loaders, the rate of fire was pretty slow. I think the idea was to give your own troops confidence by marching in a pack at a steady pace so that, even among the confusion, you could get close to your opponent, then either firing a good steady, well-loaded volley from close range and/or rushing them before they could reload. These tactics wouldn’t work against a Gatling tgun, but you have to shape your tactics to the weapons in use.
The only weapons available to the vast majority of Civil War soldiers were smooth-bore muskets. These guns are wildly inaccurate and can’t be reliably aimed at long range. Thus, the common thing to do was to concentrate as much fire as possible in the direction of your enemy, without ever aiming at a particular person.
Of course, the entire war was not fought like that. There were snipers, equipped with rifles and trained to pick off officers from a distance, there was cavalry, artillery, spies, dirty tricks, espionage, and good old-fashioned fire.
In a nutshell, I’d argue that the Civil War took place at a stage when technological developments had increased the power of defense over offense, but offensive tactics had not advanced far enough to compensate. That is, it was a lot easier for defending infantrymen to kill attackers at longer ranges than during, say, the Napoleonic Wars, but no one had yet thought of a tactic or come up with any kind of invention that would enable attackers to overcome this, to grossly oversimplify things.
Whereas smoothbore muskets were the main infantry weapon during the Napoleonic Wars, the development of the minie ball, a type of ammunition, meant that by the time of the Civil War these had been replaced by rifled muskets, which had much more range and accuracy than smoothbores. (Capable of firing up to 1,500 yards and very accurate at 350 yards, or less, according to the website I’m looking at, whereas the British Brown Bess musket of the Napoleonic era was unlikely to hit a man-size target more than 100 yards away.)
Subsequent technical advances, particularly the machine gun, further increased the power of the defense over the offense. This culminated in the deadlock that was World War I until the Germans invented a type of soldier (Stosstruppen, or storm troopers) that could break the deadlock and the Allies came up with a machine (the tank) that did the same. Certainly in the early stages of World War I infantry tactics still consisted pretty much of line-up-and-charge. Hope this makes sense.
Infantry tactics have always been dependent on the weapons available. When the short sward and the spear were the available weapon the formations used were those that allowed the weapon to be most effectively employed. By the time of the American Revolution the rifle was coming into use as an alternative to the musket not only on the American frontier but in European Armies as well, notably in Germany. The problem with the rifle was its rate of fire since the bullet had to be forcibly driven down the bore. That took time. A well trained soldier with a clean musket could get off four aimed shots a minute with the rate dropping off as the weapon became fouled with powder residue. A rifleman could not get off two shot a minute.
In the mid Nineteenth Century, after the Napoleonic Wars, an answer was found that combined the rate of fire of the musket and the accuracy of the rifle. The answer was a shaped bullet with a hollow base. When the weapon was fired the skirting at the base of the bullet expanded and bit into the rifle grooved cut into the bore of the gun. The weapon had the mid-range accuracy of a rifle but could be loaded and fired as fast as a musket. This weapon, the rifle-musket was the standard infantry weapon of the American Civil War.
While the rifle-musket could kill at a range of one half mile its effective range was half that and most commanders wanted their people to withhold fire until the enemy was within 250 yards or so. The idea was that to be effective fire had to be massed. That meant that you needed to get your people in a bunch and have them fire more or less at once and then just as fast as they could. While the rifle musket was a marginal improvement over the musket it was enough of an improvement that it made massed frontal assaults on an alert and disciplined opponent prohibitively expensive – thus Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, Grant’s general attack at Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg. The result was to drive armies underground, into trenches, and advances by rushes, maneuvers to find an open flank (the classic in the Civil War being Jackson’s attack at Chancelorsville), and attrition tactics. It was a bloody and destructive business but it is what the weapon imposed on the armies.
The real revolution came in the later Nineteenth Century with the development of rapid fire bolt action rifles with reliable accuracy as far as a soldier could see. The Boer Wars in South Africa are the outstanding example of what could be done with this sort of rifle. The reliable machine gun mechanized infantry gun fire, allowing a two man crew and a single weapon to lay down continuous fire equal to that produced by a whole regiment of rifle-musket armed infantry and at considerably greater distance. The machine gun and the modern rifle put an end to traditional mass tactics. Until then mass tactics were used because they worked. The worked because of the nature of the weapons available.
It may well be that retaining discipline in an attacking force was worth sacrificing many individuals for. The general who could command his units en masse with greater accuracy surely held a distinct advantage, even if it meant his men required nerves of steel to walk headlong into a storm of shot.
However, well-trained and experienced troops were able to grind through greenhorns in the civil war (one of the South’s advantages was that thery replaced troops rather than making new units, so spreading the experience of the veterans). Partly this was an increase in accuracy, but also heavily influenced by courage under fire. Men sometimes got into simple bad situations, but most of the time if they kept their cool units would come out intact. The smart ones (vets) learned to grab whatever cover was available, too, even on the offense. You might be surprised to learn how much bravery affected the course of battles, though: quite often a group of men would run through enemy fire and leap into the enemy trenches and the whole army group would follow. One man really could make a huge difference in those battles.
Late in the war the Union figured out some new tactics. In the right positions, troops were formed into a long column and charged over a weak point in the enemies breastworks, the “hammer”.
This was the turning point where strategy began to take primacy over tactics, which lasts until the modren day. Though the US seems to be going back to tactical brilliance as the basic point of battle.
To take a fortified position, you need to attack with enough manpower to not cross “no-mans land” and reach the enemy lines, but arrive with enough strength to overwhelm the defenders once you reach them. The catch is that more troops also makes a bigger target.
The problem is that with the introduction of long-range rifles and artillery (and eventually early machineguns like the Gatling or Maxim guns), it became effectively impossible to uproot a small number of defenders even with thousands of soldiers. A few gun crews could kill hundreds of attackers rendering an attack ineffective if it even reaches the enemy lines. The result is a return to “seige” and “trench warfare” tactics where both sides dige extensive earthworks and try to wait each other out.
There are a lot of examples in the Civil War where unconventional tactics were used to attempt to break seiges. One that comes to mind is the Battle of Petersburg where the Union tunneled under the Confererate lines and blew up a huge bomb (as seen in the movie Cold Mountain, also common in WWI).
You have to remember that all of this was pre tanks and aircraft. The introduction of the tank and aircraft with their speed and protection led to a departure from seige and trench warfare (as demonstrated by the dismal failure of the French Maginot line in WWII) and a return to “menuever” warfare where armies attempt to flank, evade and attack each other from unexpected directions.
I don’t know if there was a point where war and tactics were “gentlemanly”. What changed was that the power long range of modern weapons made warfare much more lethal and indiscriminate. As the realities of the battlefield became “if you can see it, you can kill it”, the purpose of the soldiers uniform changed from identification to conceilment. It was no longer practical to mass large formations because it would simply provide a bigger target for artillery and eventually aircraft.
Gentlemanly war means chivalry. Chivalry is a complex combination of tradition and heroism and the ideals of masculine grace and courage during warfare, but it involves choosing your opposite number from among the ranks of the enemy and fighting in single combat until one or the other of you is vanquished. This implies landed gentry serving as an officer corps in the form of mounted knights, by the way, which is why knights were always referred to as `Sir’ and treated with deference by the poor schlubs who fought in the mud and carnage on the ground.
It’s hard to do single combat when your enemy can kill you from 50 yards away, and when a groundling can kill more knights than can be replaced by natural increase. I don’t know enough military history to put a definitive date on the death of the knight, but the longbow could penetrate plate armor and England had masses of longbowmen in time for the Hundred Years’ War. Muskets eventually duplicated this essential trick, and I do know that rifles never had to.
The thing to remember is that tactics were created in response to technology, and also in response to other tactics. Early gunpowder tactics grew out of medieval tactics. There were basically 4 types of troops…heavy infantry (pikes), light infantry (archers), heavy cavalry (knights), and light cavalry (horse archers). In europe horse archers were neglected. Medieval military tactics held that heavy cavalry was supreme. A trained knight on horseback could rout any number of peasant footmen. And this was true at the time.
Anyone with wealth aspired to become a heavy cavalryman, and the path to wealth was to be a heavy cavalryman. Medieval knights never faced effective heavy infantry, only conscripted peasants. Wars weren’t fought by nations, they were fought by individual aristocrats and the aristocrats personally loyal to them. And they weren’t fighting for fun, they were fighting for wealth and land. Winning a war meant being able to distribute land, wealth and position to your vassals. But the people you were fighting against weren’t foreigners, they were your neighbors. You might be fighting under Baron X against Count Y today, but tomorrow Baron X and Count Y might be allies against Duke Z. Your goal wasn’t to annihilate your enemy and destroy his country, it was to neutralize your enemy and take over his country. Burning down peasant huts massacring serfs makes no sense if those peasants become your property if you win the war. And killing prisoners makes no sense if you can ransom them. And after all, you might be in the same position tomorrow. And you might literally be related to your enemies, since alliances were cemented through marriage. Training peasants to be effective soldiers was counterproductive, since every trained soldier was by definition an aristocrat and vice-versa. Training peasants to fight meant literally enobling them, which meant you would have to give them land and wealth. Instead of people contributing to your income you have created competitors and expense. So the aristocrats put together a code of conduct that made warfare safer for everyone. But the point was that limited objectives made for limited warfare, more like a war between mafia families than a war between modern nation-states.
Of course, as the renaissance rolled around, things changed. Not just from gunpowder weapons. But also with the increased power of the non-nobility. An army of peasant infantry was just a sideshow to the battles of knights. But an army of trained heavy infantry could defeat any number of knights. Pikemen that stand their ground win. Pikemen that run away get killed. So the premium virtue for the infantryman is stolidity, the ability to hold your ground, take casualties and not run away, and to march forward as a group. If you leave the formation you are dead, because an individual knight can destroy anyone on their own. But in a mass you are safe.
But heavy infantry is vulnerable to light infantry. Your pike can’t protect you against archers. So you need your own archers to defend yourself against enemy archers, or cavalry to run down and destroy the enemy archers. You protect your archers against enemy cavalry with heavy infantry. Your pikes protect the archers. But the enemy does the same thing, and suddenly your cavalry can’t smash through the infantry any more. Eventually archers and crossbowmen are replaced by musketeers, but the same situation holds. Your pikes protect against cavalry. Your musketeers protect against other musketeers. Your cavalry exists to exploit broken formations. But you MUST maintain formation, or enemy cavalry will kill you. But effective range of the musket is much shorter than visual range. It is possible to form up into a mass under the eyes of the enemy, and the only thing they can do about it is charge you. But for a charge to work, they have to be formed up into a mass too. So you have the spectacle of two armies looking across a field at each other, while the soldiers march around and get into lines, each general looking for a weak spot where his concentrated mass can be brought to bear against a spot where the enemy is dispersed.
Now combine the musket and the pike with the bayonet. But you still must maintain mass. A dispersed line of soldiers can be broken apart and destroyed piecemeal by a concentrated line of soldiers. If your people are concentrated, then (say) 100 of your soldiers are in range of (say) 25 of his soldiers. If (say) 1/4 of all shots hit home, then you can kill all 25 soldiers in one volley while he only kills 6 of yours. Rates of fire are very low, so volleys take time. It is possible to charge the enemy and bayonet him and only take a few volleys of fire before you reach him. Also muzzle-loading weapons can only be reloaded standing up. You can’t effectively reload your weapon while lying on the ground taking cover.
The supreme virtue of an infantryman is to hold ranks, and march into fire under orders. The side that runs away will lose, the side that holds can win against much superior numbers. Soldiers wear bright uniforms to instill pride and unit cohesion. Orders are given by voice or bugle call. Officers must be able to see their men in order to control them. Anyone they can’t see is probably running away, which means disaster. So draconian disciple is needed. And sheer mindless courage is celebrated. A reasonable person WOULD run away. But if everyone runs away the other side can kill you easily. The side with the most guys who cold-bloodedly stand and fight and advance into fire will win.
Now, fast forward to the civil war. The accuracy and rate of fire of the guns is much higher. Modern artillery can aim and fire much more quickly. Suddenly the guys on the other side of the field can shoot you from much farther away. It isn’t safe anymore to stand there and form up into mass, because your soldiers are being cut to ribbons by enemy fire. But in order to charge, you HAVE to form up into mass, otherwise your men will be picked apart piecemeal and never make it across no-man’s land. But if you form up into mass, enemy artillery can smash your formation. Eventually after a lot of soldiers were massacred, it became clear that the older rules no longer applied. Any soldier visible in the open was vulnerable to enemy fire. Massed troops were vulnerable to artillery fire even when behind cover. Entrenchments made it impossible for charging soldiers to take enemy positions. Soldiers could not concentrate without becoming targets.
And so the older style of warfare changed. Soldiers could no longer be under the direct eye of their officers. They had to wear camouflage instead of fancy uniforms. They could no longer form ranks and mass, they had to be dispersed. They had to be mobile and take initiative. Marching in formation was no longer the key to victory but suicide. In short, our modern idea of what makes sense in war. But our modern ideas depend on modern weapons, and modern wars between nation-states rather than competing mafiosi/aristocrats.
What’s “civilized” about it is that the only people at risk are you & the soldiers from the other side. Not 'civilized society", the towns & villages around, the civilian people living & working in them, etc.
As opposed to more modern warfare, with gunboats shelling harbors, with artillery, airplane, & missile bombardments, deliberate attempt to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure & their “means to make war”, and side-effect of killing some civilians and terrorizing many others.
In the older wars, non-combatants were pretty much safe from the war. The death toll of non-combatants was pretty minor compared to that of soldiers. The villagers from Waterloo, for example, mostly survived the battle between Napolean & the Duke of Wellington’s armies unhurt. But this is no longer true once you get into wars in the 20th & 21st Centuries.
I think that was only true during that brief golden age between when barbarian tribes like the Huns or the Mongols would sack villages and before we could lob metal balls full of gunpowder half a mile. I think that throughout history, civilians had to be concerned about war whether is was from errent fire, displacement due to destroyed homes, violence from overzealeous troops or starvation from the loss of crops or supplies.
The old mass infantry tactics did make sense in their own time. For several hundred years, guns were so inaccurate there was no point in aiming them; trying to hit a particular target with a musket ball made no more sense than trying to hit a target with a shotgun pellet or a chunk of shrapnel from a grenade. So like these weapons, you made them effective by increasing the quantity of the projectiles not the quality. You got effective musket fire by getting as many muskets shooting as possible. Packing as many musketeers as possible into a given area was good tactics.
Read about the Thirty Years War. The civilian casualties in that war were so extreme that Germany’s population declined by about 30% in a single generation.
One very important point that everyone has overlooked: cavalry.
Cavalry was still very, very important at this stage of history. Because of the rate and rage of fire of the weapons a cavalry unit could rapidly decimate infantry. The only possible solution to this problem was to form up into a defensive square. What this meant was that the cavalry couldn’t ride over the musketeers. To attack cavalry had ride into the square, and risk being shot and bayonetted for their trouble.
That is the primary reason for the massed formation. The musketemen were attempting to manoeuvre into a suitable position to attack the enemy, while at the same time attempting to defend themselves form cavalry counterattacks. The only way to do this was to remain tightly bunched and ready to form a solid defensive block.
Any civil war infantry unit that attempted a modern infantry advance would have been doomed. With each man scattered across the landscape a cavalry unit could have ridden in and picked the entire unit off within minutes with minimal casualties.
The thing that you need to realise about tactics is that it is all about manouevring units to advantage. The units have to be moved to attack or defend an objective. However they also had to be ready to defend themselves in the event of counterattack, and defensive units had to be capable of mounting a counter-attack. And the objectives changed during the course of a battle. As objectives were lost or won units had to be capable of responding, and rapidly. And of course every manouvre provoked a counter manouvre and so forth. Military tactics are chaotic, which means they are incredibly complex. However generally tactics were adopted because they worked, not because people thought they looked pretty. Napoleon was a master of responsive tactics. He also played heavily on the enemies known responses. He perfected the tactic of simply showing cavalry to enemy infantry, forcing them to form up into a defensive position, He then directed all artillery fire onto the immobile position. Either they broke up and were cut down, or they were blown to pieces. A very clever exploitation of the weakness in the accepted tactics of the day, and a strategy that allowed napoleon to gain maximum effectiveness form cavalry with minimal loss of men and horses.
Massed formations might look silly to you today, but think where you would prefer to be. Imagine you are in the middle of an area the size of a football field with 100 other men. There are 200 men on horseback armed with sabres at one end of the field. Would you like to try to advance at them as amass of rushing screaming individuals? Remember your weapon won’t hit them until they are almost on top of you, and you can’t outrun a horse. Or would you prefer to be part of a slowly advancing mass of men that can form such a tight group that the cavalry can’t just ride over you?
That’s an oft repeated idea, but of course it makes no sense when explaining tactics. Sure early muskets were inaccurate. Sure they often missed. Sure the more shots you fired the more damage you did. But how does that explaining massed formations? You have 100 men in a unit, and they are all 100 yards from the target. What does it matter if the men are scattered in half-circle around the target, or all massed together? The probability of any given round hitting is <I>exactly</I> the same. Fire isn’t going to be any more effective because the unit is bunched up. The lack of accuracy of the muskets doesn’t explain the need for tight formations because tight formations doesn’t increase accuracy. In fact because tight formations advanced far slower it would in fact make them less accurate.
I thought it was simply
“We always use tactics to fight the last war we were in.” Unfortunately, the next war is always a bit different…but we’ll use the correct tactics for that one during the war beyond that.
It was the development of the rifle at the turn of the century that changed how soldiers in all modern armies (U.S., England, France, Germany, etc.), fought wars.
Other developments such as the airplane and the machine gun, as well as the rifled artillery piece are all hallmarks of second-generation (2G) warfare. These developments spurred changes, such as tactics based on fire & maneuver instead of the 1G concept of the line & column, the amassing of industrial output to achieve military objectives, the deployment of air power and the development of modern command & control techniques.
Changes in how soldiers were trained to fight starting from the first organized bands of marauders to today’s modern armies have always been based on the dominant weapons technology of the day.
The Civil War exemplified first-generation warfare, i.e., warfare based on the dominant longarm technology of the day – the smoothbore musket. Regular footoldiers up to that time were not trained to be marsksman. They were only trained to deliver rapid, unaimed volley fire. This was the essence of classic first-generation (1G) tactics based on the line and column theory of warfare. Such tactics depended heavily upon the training of soldiers in rigid drill performed in line formations, thus enabling the delivery of high rates of unaimed and massed volley fire against similarly situated opposing forces in set-piece engagements.
While the Civil War was a classic example of first-generation (1G) warfare, WW! was a 2G conflict based on the leading technologies of the day: the rifle, the machine gun and the delivery of precision indirect fire enabled by rifled artillery. WW2, was also a 2G conflict, but implemented elements of 3G warfare, or maneuver warfare as exemplified in “Blitzkrieg.” The Vietnam War had elements of 3G, but also brought to a pitch the newest form of war – fourth-generation (4G), or “assymetrical warfare”, which also employed some 2G developments as well (indirect fire, the rifle, the machine gun, etc.).
The difference between how men in the Civil War fought wars compared to men in WW1, WW2, etc. has primarily to do with the introduction of basic rifle marskmanship to infantry footsoldiers, which happened during WW1. This training was a direct result of the mass introduction of breech-loading rifled weaponry, particularly, the bolt-action rifle, which was introduced in 1871 to Germany’s armed forces by Paul Mauser.
The U.S. later picked up on this design after the Spanish-American war, when they captured the superior Mauser 98’s being used by Spanish troops against them and brought them back to the U.S. for study.
This led to the creation of the U.S.'s first bolt-action rifle, the “Springfield 1903”, which marked the advent of second-generation warfare and all the developments and innovations in training, tactics and other technologies (such as the rifled artillery piece and machine gun) that followed.
Thus, it was the simple introduction of the bolt-action rifles, first in Germany in 1871 with the “Gewehr 71”, then in England with the introduction in 1895 of the 10-shot “Magazine Lee-Enfield” (MLE), and finally in the U.S. in 1903 with the introduction of the bolt-action “Springfield 1903” & 1905, that became the watershed in the transition from first- to second-generation warfare.
That’s a common misconception. If you look at any war in history, it is the side that innovates and adapts first that is usually victorious. Just off the top of my head, some major innovations of some of the big wars of the last century
Vietnam - Small unit tactics and gurilla warfare
-Airmobility (helicopters)
Desert Storm - Massive air and mechanized power
-Smart weapons
-GPS
-Cruise missles
Afghanistan/Iraq - Special operations and small unit actions supported by precision airstrikes and conventional forces
-RPVs
-Smarter weapons
At a casual glance, it seems like any war usually isn’t fought anything like the last war and rarely like anyone expects
I really wish you’d learn more about War first…before you bash current tactics.
Killing Civilians is not a “new thing”.
Rome did it all the time.
Greece, in fact, every nation up until that rare and unexplicable time-period from 1750s to 1850s (one hundred years), civilians had it worse than the soldiers.
If they weren’ts old into slavery after battle, they were killed.
It was Europe’s peculiar politics that prevented this, fragmented nations united by blood and religion. But even then, just when things were starting to get civilized, the 30 years war took a heavy toll on Civilians.
Over all however, the casualties in wars have been declining. That is a percentage. Obviously WW2 was the bloodiest war ever fought. At least in terms of lives.
But it certainly wasn’t the bloodiest war in terms of casualties during a battle.
In a certain battle between Hannibal and a Roman General (I forget which one forgive me), Hannibal successfully surrounded the entire Roman army of 80,000, with just his 40,000 manned force. And killed them all, all 80,000, in that one day.
This is a tactical marvel because it is the only time in recorded history that an Army was ever completely surrounded by another, and defeated.
After that Hannibal proceeded to slaughter town after town until successfully matched.
I would like to point out that “Any war isn’t fought like the last war” is a misconception.
It is a rare thing that we should live in times where Military technology changes so rapidly.
The Roman Army fought as it had for 3 centuries, until it needed to use Steel Helmets instead of leather and bronze because of the Gallic Campaign. Then after that it would proceed to fight in the same manner till the end of the empire.
The tactics would remain the same until the invention of the Gun.
Going back further, the Phalanx was the tactic of the age from about 1000 BC to about 300 BC.
It is only the innovation of the Industrialized Nation State that has lead to a leap in creation of military hardware that usually changes several times between wars.
There seems to be a running misconception that the Civil War was fought with “Muskets”. Others have corrected this misconception, I shall do so again.
The Civil War is best described as: “Old world tactics and New World weapons make the Civil War the bloodiest war ever fought”. Close…we’ve already been through an example of what battles were more bloody.
The Rifle was fully produced, even machine guns were being produced during the Civil war.
I forget how many machine guns Lincoln ordered purchased, but they never left Washington DC.
I use the term Machine gun liberally, it was a repeater that could fire a huge number of rounds in a minute…and it was easily reloadable.
Wrong, we’re talking about the Civil War here, the square tactic was used in Waterloo by the Britts and Napolean proved that he became an idiot. I can’t think of a single other battle where this tactic was actually successfully deployed.
Well, since even the author of this thread believes that wars became more uncivilized…I have to again correct this.
I urge anyone who thinks that wars were more “honorable” in the past, to read Josephus.
Nothing beats the list after list of 40,000 casualties city razed…80,000 casualties, city burned population sold to slavery, 50,000 casualties, city partially spared…just goes ON and ON and ON.
No…you guys can go back to whining about 500 dead Americans in Iraq.
I laugh at you.
If this were 70AD, we’d have killed 10,000,000 Iraqis, sold the rest into slavery, then salt the earth in Baghdad so nothing would ever grow there ever again.
Seriously, you know where Carthage used to be?
It used to be a lovely green city along Tunisia.
Know what it is now? A barren waste hole that is inseperable from the rest of the Sahara.
All thanks to the Romans…after defeating Carthage in the 3rd Punic War.
They burned Carthage to the ground, killing most of the inhabitants, salted the earth so bad that even today it is a desert.
Sorry for the sloppy post above…eh…but I feel like correcting some more people
Well it’s Lemur really…I don’t know why you’re breaking up Infantry and Cavalry into Heavy and Light.
Those distinctions don’t exist.
Infantry was Infantry (we’ll discuss midieval), usually it was a slop of peasants, you got that right.
But there were no such thing as all pikemen or all archers.
Archers in fact were another thing all together.
Pikemen were reutinely used but not to the extent you are portraying.
The idea that Cavalry owned was not as entrenched either…knights were fully capable of fighting on the ground.
The sense of “heavy infantry” was infact the Knight. On the ground he was usually the only one armored in more than leather and scraps of metal (studded leather).
Most peasants had nothing but the clothes on their back.
A knight almost always wore quilted armor beneath a layer of chain mail.
As far as I can tell platemail never really took hold until the later 1300s later 1400s. By then it was pretty useless anyways.
Light infantry would be the standard infantry at that time. As heavy infantry in the sense “Hoplites” went out of style when Europe’s economy went bust with the fall of Rome.
Light Cavalry would simply be mounted soldiers with less armor than a knight…bowmen horse riders was a different civilization all together.
And it was far before the Rennaisance that peasants took power for themselves.
1380s, the “Great Peasant Revolts” … amazing reading.
England had the largest inssurection, lead by the man William Tyler. Of course treachery won that war, if only William told Richard to stuff it when he sued for peace.
Say it again!
War! I despise
'cause it means destruction
Of innocent lives
War means tears
To thousands of mothers how
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist with that thread title. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
