Slithy, this reminds me of a joke: It was during WWII and the German field marshall and the Italian general were consolidating their battle plans. As they were preparing to leave, the German called out to his aide, “Ernst! Go get my battle jacket!” and he was brought a leather jacket of blazing scarlet. The Italian watched in wonder as the field marshall donned the garment. “You-a are-a crazy!” the general said. “The-a enemy will-a see-a you onna the battlefield-a from a mile away and-a shoot-a you just-a like-a that!” The German replied imperturbably, “Dat may be so, but my troops vill not see me bleed, and vill go on to fight a great victory for der Fatherland!” Well, the Italian thought about this for a minute and said, “You-a know, that’s-a not-a such a bad-a idea. Hey, Luigi! Go getta my brown pants!”
Out of curiousity how did the Italians get the cowardly fighters reputation they seem to have been saddled with since WWII. The Romans conquered much of the known world as part of their empire and Italian Americans certainly don’t have a reluctant fighters reputation in either war or peace.
Is there some historical truth to this stereotype or was it due to the fact that the facist war was pretty pointless from the average Italians point of view and they didn’t have much enthusiam for it.
Ahem. First let me say, I didn’t intend any offense toward Italians. Just a joke, guys! But I think the Italian effort during World War II was what brought about this reputation? The Italians conquered Albania and Ethiopia and that was it. When Germany invaded France, Italy waited until that country was almost completely overrun before they joined in, and they barely progressed into Provence, even though the French army was in tatters. Then they invaded Greece from conquered Albania, and the Greeks repulsed them and took half of Albania, too. The Germans had to come in and finish the job for them.
People have pretty much covered this question correctly, but for what it’s worth, military commanders have typically been slow to respond to new technologies. A pretty realistic example of this was at the beginning of the movie Glory in which Matthew Broderick’s troops get wiped out by rifle and cannon fire because he’s using the outmoded, march-up-in-formation-and-don’t-waste-your-first-shot technique required for musketry. As someone else pointed out, tactics met technology in a spectacularly gory fashion when the infantry charge was used against nested machine gun fire in WWI.
The Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell seems pretty
realistic in depicting British tactics in the Napoleanic wars. Not much had changed 20 or 30 years after the American Revolution. The rifle was still considered a marginal weapon because it took so long to load.
A few more points which might or might not have been made in the Patriot – British officers of the time usually bought their commissions and didn’t usually receive much formal training. The soldiers of the time were pretty much thugs who joined the army rather than go to prison or were yokels who signed up because it seemed more glamorous than pushing plows. The only thing that held the whole thing together was the noncommissioned officers and some truly brutal discipline. So if the soldiers were in formation, it made it easy to ensure that no one broke and ran under fire.
I had a very forceful eighth-grade teacher–the same one who told us that Japanese corpses are buried standing up. (We did not dare criticize her at all.) She told us that the British did not expect the revolutionaries to hide behind buildings, rocks, trees, etc., and “fight dirty”! Apparently she larded her lessons to us about American history with pride of country at the expense of historical objectivity and accuracy. (I don’t think I’m singling her out; I’ll bet a great many teachers–and textbooks–have asserted this.)
Bill Cosby even did a routine about this, in his first comedy monolog album, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow–Right! It included the following passage:
“The settlers say that during the war they will wear any color clothes that they want to; shoot from behind rocks and trees and everywhere; and [the British] must wear red and march in a straight line!” [Audience laughter follows.]
Mr. Cosby, like my eighth-grade teacher, was wrong. The British had some 70 years’ experience with guerrilla fighting from the French and Indian Wars. In fact von Steuben taught Washington’s armies to learn to fight like the British did. [Giving the British their due.]
Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I have found out is that the British lost because, among other things, they were fighting with inferior commanders (aristocrats and such who bought their military ranks, for example); fighting 3000 miles from home in unfamiliar territory; and certainly opposing quite capable military men like Washington & Co.
One thing about World War II–which, I regret to say, does not bode well for Italian military strategy, hardware, or commanders–was that, although Mussolini’s forces supposedly were, in a sense, shooting fish in a barrel when they went to conquer Ethiopia (the Italians’ 20th-century planes, guns and tanks against the Ethiopians’ rocks, clubs, and spears), it actually took the Italians eight months to defeat the Ethiopians! It sounds like the Ethiopian ‘fish’ were quite capable warriors themselves–or the Italians just couldn’t pass muster against them! Che scigura!
The reason for fighting in line has been partly covered in mentioning the deficiencies of muskets and the need for discipline, but there is one other point which has not been (IMHO) adiquatly covered, DEFENCE. Mention has ben made of the bayonet and square, but even the line, if properly held, can stand against cavalry (consider the 93rd Foot at Balaklava). At this (Revwar) period, if your enemy is fighting in open field (and remember there are not always convenient woods/ buildings/ hard cover to work from) and is in loose (or better still no) formation, this is a light cavalry commander’s dream, they stand very little chance, if formed, the light bobs stay away!
Why did the British army wear red?
Slithy Tove said:
“…Some histories say that the reason behind British red uniforms was Cromwell’s idea. If you’re wearing white, like the pre-revolutionary French or Austrians, and men around you are hit and suddenly are wearing red, it’s bad for morale. It was less of a shock if they were in red in the first place. …”
It was much simpler than that, during the English Civil War, there was no uniformity, regiments were uniformed by their Colonel. When the New Model Army was formed, to destinguish it from what went before, they decided on a uniform coat colour and red came out cheapest (even then, it wasn’t necessarily the same red).
How did the Italians get their reputation for “lack of fighting prowess”?
Mussolini had ideas of grandure, an army working with equipment which was often not up to the job and which was made up of conscripts who didn’t want to be there and, in many cases were often opposed to Il Duce’s political aims (don’t forget, the political left was active in Italy before the Fascist victory), couldn’t see the point of being stuck where they were and generally believed that
they were getting the dirty end of the stick.
When a government screws its own army’s morale, it shouldnt be surprised if that army won’t fight at its best.
On the other hand, when the Italian troops WERE well led and motivated, they COULD do a bloody good job.
By the bye, the best review I saw of “The Patriot” came in three words: “Braveheart doodle dandy”.
Actually, Washington was mediocre at best. He did manage to beat up on the British some at Boston, and the Battle of Trenton was electrifying, but he also lost NYC to the British, and was unable to hold Philadelphia either. Benedict Arnold, on the other hand, was responsible for the capture of Burgoyne’s army in upstate New York, which brought the French into the war on our side. That was captured army number one, and decisive victory number one. It was why his later betrayal was so devastating. Ben Franklin’s efforts up to that time to get the French into the war on our side had not convinced the French king, who wanted to see a decisive American victory before he would fight the British.
The French were, of course, invaluable at Yorktown, where they trapped Cornwallis’ army and prevented him from being reinforced by sea or escaping by sea either. Washington scampered on down in time to be there to accept their surrender, but most of the work of winning that battle had been done by the time he got there, by American forces on land (I don’t remember who the American general was, but I’m sure someone else on this board can tell us) and the French at sea.
Anyway, Yorktown was captured army number two, and decisive victory number two.
Washington’s greatness, IMO, comes from his actions after the war, from giving up his sword and going home when he could easily have become a military dictator, to setting up the basic structure of government as President and then limiting himself to two terms, an example not broken until Roosevelt, and now made legally binding in the Constitution.
I’m sure I’m missing something here, and actually I think I asked this question once before, but it was before the Great Post Wipe and is now lost to time.
Everyone says that muskets were slow, inaccurate, hard to reload and dangerous (in so far as all the smoke and spark and whatnot). If you were to meet up again a force using muskets and you had an equal sized force, wouldn’t you be just as, if not better, off using trained men armed with longbows or crossbows? Crossbows are a bit slow in reloading, but it seems that a longbow would have greater range, quicker firing times, better accuracy and have the same potential to kill an unarmored man that a musket would have. Of course, you’d need men well trained in using them, but I can’t believe that slow, dangerous, inaccurate and expensive small firearms were ever given the chance to compete against an already effective ranged anti-infantry weapon. Needless to say, they did and grew to be much better than the ole bow and arrow, but it still boggles my mind.
From Brittanica’s article on the Battle of Yorktown ( //http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,80129+1+78033,00.html?query=yorktown ):
Meanwhile, a smaller British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves was unable to counter French naval superiority at the Battle of Virginia Capes (see Virginia Capes, Battle of) and felt forced to return to New York. A British rescue fleet, two-thirds the size of the French, set out for Virginia on October 17 with some 7,000 British troops, but it was too late.
The above article also gives Washington a much greater role in the winning of the battle, so it appears I was wrong on that point. The American general initially involved in forcing Cornwallis into Yorktown was Anthony Wayne, along with Lafayette and Von Steuben.
I remember hearing somewhere that during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Ethiopians managed to “shoot down” at least one Italian airplane with a spear.
The battle of Virginia Capes refered to by pantom was about the only French naval victory over the British in all the various wars (and there were quite a few) between those two contries from about 1700 to the end of the Napoleanic Wars. So carnivorousplant’s confusion on this issue is understandable.
A skilled soldier with a smoothbore musket might get 3 rounds per minute. That fast rate of fire was the chief advantage given the poor accuracy. A rifled barrel is much more difficult to load and might only have a third that rate of fire.
There is a current small but vocal group of historians who are telling everyone whom they can snag that Washington was a pretty poor excuse for a general who never won a truly significant battle. So far, their presentations have made sense to me–with limitations.
It appears that Washington never had what it takes to deliver a battlefield victory. (Of course, “what it takes” could include sufficient trained troops and supplies.)
A cursory review of his hallmark battles indicates that he was a superb commander to have if you were intending to be defeated. From his earliest “success” (regrouping and covering the retreat from Fort Duquesne after Braddock’s defeat) to his success in saving his army from Howe’s in New York (after choosing a battlefield that nearly guaranteed defeat), to his triumph in maintaining any army, at all, at Valley Forge, Washington consistently demonstrated the ability to salvage as much of his army as possible after a defeat. On the other hand, his victory at Boston had a lot to do with the utter incompetence of his opponent and his raid on Trenton is dismissed as trickery since he attacked on Christmas Even when no civilized person would be waging war. Princeton, while brilliant, was not a truly major engagement and was, itself, a “victory in retreat.”
Washington’s generalship was recognized as less than stellar even among his contemporaries. The several plots to have him removed from command came as close to succeeding as they did because even people who respected him recognized the truth in some of the accusations the plotters leveled against him.
On the other hand, his style of “successful defeat” may have made him the best possible commander for a war in which ill-trained, underpaid, volunteers were forced to face professional troops. He was able to hold together an army for enough years to cause the British to simply throw in the towel. (Saratoga and Yorktown were great victories for the time, but neither actually brought the war to an end. Had not the British Parliament been already divided on the subject of Independence, there is no reason to believe that the British had to give up after Yorktown. They still had an army in New York city and a base in Canada. With a different (i.e., united) view toward keeping their colony, they might have treated Yorktown as a second Saratoga and simply come back one more time to assert their sovereignty. The war, in fact, did continue (with no significant armed conflict) for two more years.
190 years later, the U.S. would repeat that historic lesson from the other side–as U.S. Army spokesmen sometimes point out, the U.S. never lost a pitched battle in Vietnam.
To add to the technical forces, there were cultural forces, as well.
Most European wars at the time were less emotional than the revolutionary war. Fighting your neighbor for a little piece of land or fighting for a colony you don’t really need anyways just doesnt inspire the emotion and dedication that fighting for your own land does.
Also, many of the European royals were close relatives. Just because you want a little strip of land, you don’t go anhillate your cousin’s country.
Instead war was more like a game of chess. Everything was stylized (not that any amount of stylization can take away the horror of war) The attitude was not “we will do everything we can to acheive our goal” as much as “we will perform this set of actions and whoever wins wins.” Think of war at that time as elementry school playground fights. If you are going to fight someone in elementry school, you make a time. Everyone gathers around to see who the winner is. There are unspocken rules, for example, you don’t knee people in the genitals. And the fight has a very clear winner and loser. At the end of the fight everyone goes home and life continues on. This wasn’t honor or stupidity as much as mass self-preservation. Without certain standards everything would turn in to an all out brawl, even things that wern’t that inmportant in the first place.
For another example of people using outmoded fighting techniques, check out how the Russians went into WWI.
The British followed the rules of war. That was one of the rules. It was considered “fair fighting” to line up against each other and “let the other side have it”. The usual and expected result was the largest army won. On the other hand, the rebels had far fewer soldiers than the British so they had to outsmart them. They had just lived through many years of the French & Indian Wars being fought in their neck of the woods and were use to getting their butts kicked by the Indians. The Indians didn’t fight fair. They hid and ambushed the troops at their weakest times. Rubbed them out. They were also good at taking the officers out first. The regular soldiers were at a loss without officers to guide them and then usually ran away. Eventually the rebels saw how effective this tactic was and used it against the larger forces of the British.
BTW, It was required that all regular colonial army enlisted men could get three shots off in one minute. They were also required to have at least three front teeth to bite the end off of the paper cartridge.
Contrary to popular belief, smooth bored muskets were very accurate to about 50 yds. The Brown Bess musket was manufactured without any kind of a sighting device except a bayonet lug at the muzzle end of the barrel.
An untrained, riderless horse will often refuse to trample a person, or a group of people, who seem like a significant obstacle. OTOH, a cavalry horse is (or shouldn’t be; excrement occurs) neither untrained or riderless. Contrary to the opinions expressed by some, riot police are not attempting to kill or maim as many rioters as possible.
I frankly can’t think of any European-Middle Eastern battles after the chariot became common that involved disciplined but improperly-armed infantry attempting to hold against cavalry (except some of the Roman-Parthian battles, but then, the Parthians were horse archers, not Enlightenment-style light cavalry). Possibly one of the Valois-Habsburg Wars in Italy, when generals were still trying to figure out what disciplined infantry and gunpowder meant? OTOH, at Uedahara, samurai rode down improperly-handled ashigaru armed with arquebuses (less than thirty years later, however, Oda Nobunaga had figured out how to use firearms, and blew the opposition cavalry away with them at Nagashino).
jophiel asks:
The crossbow is even slower to fire than the matchlock; a crossbowman who could get off one shot per minute was considered quite good.
Longbows and composite (recurved) bows are much more effective in terms of rate of fire than the matchlock, and have adequate penetrating power, if not quite as great as the crossbow. They take an incredible amount of training to use effectivly, though; you simply can’t campaign more than a couple times per generation if you want your losses to be made up (the significance of Lepanto wasn’t that the Turks lost ships – those were quickly and easily replaced, but that they lost about half of their trained naval archers, who couldn’t be replaced in that generation).
Additionally, the matchlock makes (as jophiel comments) a lot of smoke, sparks, and noise – and is thereby a terror weapon. Machiavelli didn’t think a lot of the arquebus (given the technology of the day, he was probably right), but he recommended it for bands of light infantry clearing rustics out of strong positions – the psychological effects, he thought, made one arquebusier better than twenty crossbowmen in that role.
By 1700, the flintlock had come in to general use; the flintlock-with-socket-bayonet was definitely superior to a pike/bow combination.
I’m afraid you’re perpetuating popular mythology, here. As has been pointed out in several instances on this thread, (not always explicitly), the serious battles were fought and won or lost in the European tradition (which is why Washington was delighted to get the services of von Steuben and Lafayette).
The rebels didn’t “learn” to fight from ambush, they began that way. Having stood in line at Lexington (and lost), they then blocked the road out of Concord by pulling up the bridge roadbed. Faced with an unknown number of rallying rebels and a defended ford, the British commander headed back to Boston. At that point, the sniping and hit-and-run tactics that have become so much a cherised tradition in Yankee mythology came into play. The British force was harried all the way back to Boston. However, a close reading of the day’s actions shows that whenever the Minutemen picked a strongpoint to defend, the British simply detached a small unit to chase them off. In every single case, when the British got to the strongpoint, they were not only successful in clearing the opposition, they nearly always inflicted casualties on the Yanks.
The British were quite capable of fighting from behind cover. However, one does not suppress a rebellion from a defensive position (as Howe and Clinton demonstrated from New York), and so their battles were generally fought using the European method. While the guerrilla tactics and skirmishing favored by the less-trained militia units were very effective in “softening up” the British by disrupting their lines of march and communication, any actual battles were fought in the European style. Even such an “American” (styled) victory as Bennington was fought on the basic European mode, despite the hills, fence rows, and heavy woods in which it was fought.
From what I got out of The Patriot, their militia/guerilla-style fighting was effective only for harassment and plunder, and as retribution against loyalists.
Not that harassing and plundering your enemies supplies is itself an ineffective tactic; it’s what modern force structure refers to as a “combat multiplier”.
That is, a unit and/or tactic designed to enhance the effectiveness of your main fighting forces.
That the militia unit in The Patriot actually held in a battle of the line was the exception, rather than the rule.
and the only thing I have to contribute with is on the hijack, i.e. the Italian reputation for cowardice: Some of WWII’s great propaganda coups were the mass surrenders of Italians in North Africa (you’ve seen the pictures). What lots of people forgot was that in desert warfare, being cut off from your supplies means dying of thirst within days.
In other words, an isolated unit has no alternative but surrendering. However, the fighting in mainland Italy was another thing entirely.
