Did the Italians do any better when they changed sides?
I have not seen Patriot, but since it is loosely based on Francis Marion/Swamp Fox and the war in the Carolinas, they may have borrowed some real history–modified to meet Hollywood standards, of course.
At Cowpens, Daniel Morgan (down from Vermont since the Brits had given up using Canada as an offensive base) lined up the local militia in the line ahead of his troops. He then let both the militia and his own regulars know that the miltia was required to fire two rounds before they were allowed to fall back. Any member of the militia who fell back before firing twice was to be shot by the regulars behind him.
“Steadied” by this “inspirational” talk, the militia did, indeed, stand for two rounds, and most of them then stuck around to support the regulars in the ensuing fight.
On the other hand, King’s Mountain a couple of months earlier, was basically a militia battle, with rebel militia overwhelming loyalist militia. (It has been too long, and I do not remember the tactics of the battle.) Militia would fight, and did fight well, on many occasions. The two problems that Washington and his commanders had with the militia were that they were not often prepared to fight the British regulars in a way that would actually defeat them and that they would often sign up for 90 days, then leave at midnight on the 90th day–even if a major battle was in the offing.
As far as I remember, the Italian reputation of military incompetance originated far before WW2. Machiavelli himself mentioned it in The Prince, bemoaning the fact that while Italy produced the world’s greatest swordsmen and riders, it could not defeat a foreign army on the field of battle.
Just look back at history - except for guerilla campaigns, no Italian army has won a signifigant battle (besides battles against other Italian armies) since the last Roman Caesar.
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*Originally posted by tomndebb *
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Militia units lacked discipline, morale, and unit cohesion, as a whole, and millitia drills were primarily social gatherings, rather than organized training. They did decently against other militia, but generally didn’t do well against regular troops.
All this talk about the slowness of musket fire makes me ask a question-why did longbows become obsolete? I read that in the battle of Crecy (ca 1346?) the English longbowman was the best in the world-a good bowman could get off 5 or 6 arrows/minute-a rate of fire far above that of the 18th-century musketeer. And, the longbow was accurate to 400 feet (at least). So why didn’t armies use archers into the 18th century? To me, it would have made sense to add archers to musketeers-you fire a volley, then let the archers pick off the enemy (while your own musketeers are reloading). Of course, the decline on English archery had many causes-not the least because the greedy manor lords forced the yeomanry off the land-by the time of the Tudor monarchs, it was more profitable to raise sheep than farm the manors. With the yeomanry off the land, they had no incentive to retain the skills of archery
You missed that episode of Connections, eh? (Although you did provide most of the answer.)
The longbow requires a lot of practice to use. (This was mentioned earlier in the thread.) Shortly after the British victories over the French at Agincourt and related battles, advances in farming gave the British yeomen more liesure time–time that they were very reluctant to surrender for military training. Combining that with the dispossession of the yeomanry, training fell off precipitously.
And, as noted above, a battle that wiped out a lot of archers left a hole that could not be refilled by a levy the following spring. The nobility came to be distrustful of investing the time and money to keep large numbers of archers trained, since all that training could be so easily lost in battle (or in inuries around the farm or through decimation at the next outbreak of plague), so they let drop the requirements that the men all practice the bow each Sunday.
Without the extended and continuous training, the longbow was rather useless on the battlefield. The bow was also susceptible to weather conditions, making it less than ideal as a general purpose weapon. The earliest matchlocks were also susceptible to rain (although cold didn’t bother them), but the flintlock reduced that problem for firearms.
The trouble with longbows is the level of training required to use them effectively. With a musket you train the peasant levies how to load and march and you’re done. If you want longbowmen, first start with their grandfathers. I think it was Henry VII who banned all sporting events in England except archery in order to maintain the skills of the yeomanry.
I know that in Japan musketeers were considered vastly inferior to samurai archers. But there were only so many samurai, where unlimited numbers of peasants could be trained with muskets. Which is why the Shoguns decided to shut down gun manufacturing…they could see that widespread gunpowder weapons meant the end of the samurai system.
[semi-hijack]
The Patriot was the fist movie I’ve seen that shows what a cannonball really does (hits the ground and skips, taking off soldiers’ legs).
I read that Mussolini did more to screw up Hitler’s plans than Allied intellegence probably did: Without telling Hitler, Il Duce attacked Greece; the British sent forces to Greece to defend the country. This apparently angered Hitler, because the British were thus close to oilfields in Roumania he had taken. So he had to divert German forces to repel the British, thus delaying his planned invasion of Russia, long enough so that the Russian winter would bog his forces down. Any comments?
Another reason for the low reputation of the Italian Army, post-amalgamation ( both the Piedmontese Army and Garibaldi’s forces that accomplished the unification of Italy actually had rather good reputations ) was their poor performance in Africa during “The Scramble for Africa” in the late-19th, early 20th centuries.
They had considerable difficulty dealing with the guerilla of the Sanusi Brotherhood in Libya ( no shock - the French, Spanish, and British had plenty of problems in their sections of North Africa as well ). But far worse was the disastrous defeat at Adowa, where a fairly large and modern Italian army operating out of modern-day Eritrea was completely shattered by the the Ethiopians ( then still called the Abyssinians ). With the result that Ethiopia was the only significant native African state to retain it’s independence during this period ( the other exception, which survived for political reasons, was Liberia ). This was also the reason that Italy was so eager to invade Ethiopia pre-WW II. It was insignificant strategically and resource-wise. But it Mussolini’s sop to the Army, which desperately wanted to revenge their earlier humiliation.
Not incidentally, the Spanish Army had an even worse reputation as a result of it’s dismal performance during the Rif Rebellion in Spanish Morocco. If I’m remembering right I think the total number <i>battle</i> deaths for the Spaniards topped 60,000. And that facing an opponent who never numbered more than 15,000 irregulars at it’s <i>height</i> ( I won’t swear to exact figures here - my memory might be a little faulty - But it’s close ). The French pretty much saved their bacon. And it was in this war that Franco made his reputation.
I think that the real turnaround in the Revolution came when two things dovetailed. Washington in the North wanted to maintain an army-in-being to oppose the British, while Nathaniel Greene wanted a more irregular, guerilla-style approach. But Washington didn’t dare risk defeat, and Greene could not muster a large victory. The solution was fallen upon by both generals at different times, and has been mentioned earlier in this thread by tomndebb.
Washington proved that stick-and-move strategy could work with an “army.” (He had only a few thousand troops at Princeton) Later, Greene fought in a similar style in his long withdrawl from Charleston, which decimated his British pursuers.
Tactically, Daniel Morgan finally figured out how to effectively use militia troops in battle using the same principles. His doctrine was quite simple: “give me one shot, maybe even two, and then you are free to run like hell.” He then designated a safe rally point. The low casualties and visible success resulting from the one-and-a-half volleys fired in the opening stages at Cowpens so inspired the green militia troops that they re-formed and helped smash the flank of the advancing, complacent British.
Bump (first post in like 15 years)