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Chariot fighting was prestige symbol in Bronze Age Mediterranean because it takes a lot of wherewithal to build a chariot, get the horses to drive it and the guy to drive you around in it. If you had chariots that meant you were a big man. But there is basically no evidence that chariots were used for actual fighting in Greece in historical times. Even Homer's champions don't fight from their chariots by and large, they tend to ride to the battle in them, dismount, and fight on foot, only getting back in their chariots if they need to get away, and some famous historian though I forget who has suggested that this is because Homeric Greeks didn't have any idea how chariot fighting actually worked (basically by disrupting formations and launching arrows/javelins).
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Aug 20, 2016 20:31
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LLSix posted:After Alexander died and his empire split up, did the Greeks stick with the longer sarrissa or did they quickly switch back to more of a shield and spear formation?
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Aug 20, 2016 20:31
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i want that tattooed on my lower back, right in the tramp stamp position
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Aug 20, 2016 20:33
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Pikes were known before Philip, iirc some were used on ships. Poor people couldn't afford horses or chariots and infantry had to look up when they spoke to cavalrymen. Cavalry made better scouts than infantry did. Most of the heavy lifting was done by infantry, but cavalry could turn enemy's retreat into a massacre. Greeks used chariots mainly to carry heavily armoured nobles to combat, but they fought dismounted. Not all of the infantry was armed with long spears, skirmish troops in disorganized formations were easy pickings for heavy cavalry.
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Aug 20, 2016 20:37
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Cavalry are richer, die less, and kill more dudes each (because most casualties happen in the pursuit). They're the fighter pilots of the ancient world.
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Aug 20, 2016 20:42
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Jazerus posted:Cavalry are richer, die less, and kill more dudes each (because most casualties happen in the pursuit). They're the fighter pilots of the ancient world. Llamas are f-35s
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Aug 20, 2016 20:57
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Whoa, huge slam on llamas out of nowhere.
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Aug 20, 2016 21:41
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LLSix posted:After Alexander died and his empire split up, did the Greeks stick with the longer sarrissa or did they quickly switch back to more of a shield and spear formation? Actually, some of his successors went with even longer sarissas. As far as I'm aware that remained a thing til the Romans kicked their faces in.
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Aug 20, 2016 22:26
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feedmegin posted:Actually, some of his successors went with even longer sarissas. As far as I'm aware that remained a thing til the Romans kicked their faces in.
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Aug 20, 2016 22:28
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Their galley arms race was one of the most beautiful things in military history.
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Aug 20, 2016 22:32
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Libluini posted:Quails aren't poisonous, though. I'd imagine a lot of people did eat them, while rolling their eyes at this "poisonous quails" bullshit. people will plan strategies around forcing your enemy's army to go where there are vineyards
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Aug 20, 2016 22:36
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HEY GAL posted:17th century military theorists from Spain to the Ottoman Empire are convinced that if soldiers eat grapes, they die George Washington posted:If your enemy is too drunk to fight, you win
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Aug 20, 2016 22:37
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fishmech posted:Random beliefs that something is deadly poison continued for a long time. Into the 19th century there were people who believed raw tomatoes would absolutely kill you, even though other cultures had had no issue eating them. Now that is understandable, considering tomatoes are part of the Solanums (Nightshades), which makes everything on a tomato-plant outside of the fruit itself poisonous. The poison isn't very strong though, at most eating the green parts of a tomato-plant will make you vomit. (Please don't test this, if you end up in hospital getting your stomach pumped it will be your own drat fault.) HEY GAL posted:17th century military theorists from Spain to the Ottoman Empire are convinced that if soldiers eat grapes, they die Now this on the other hand is just sad
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Aug 20, 2016 22:48
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Libluini posted:Now this on the other hand is just sad ed: he's wrong about army size tho
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Aug 20, 2016 22:56
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HEY GAL posted:it's from this article, which is goddamn beautiful and a stellar example of how you have to pay attention to more people than Western Europeans if you want to study 17th century central european warfare what are the correct numbers then
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Aug 20, 2016 22:59
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Libluini posted:Now that is understandable, considering tomatoes are part of the Solanums (Nightshades), which makes everything on a tomato-plant outside of the fruit itself poisonous. The point is that people in other places had already figured out it was ok to eat raw tomatoes, often quite a while before. The people still refusing to eat them were mostly in England and the eastern US for whatever reason, while the French were fine with eating them, and the Italians were downright obsessed with eating them.
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Aug 20, 2016 23:01
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Hogge Wild posted:what are the correct numbers then "a lot lower than he thinks for the thirty years' war" see this book for a discussion of how difficult it is to track. i think it's chap. 3 https://books.google.de/books?id=xDr26glfOHoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false ed: people a while back, like the sources the author in that link used, just counted regiments/companies and called it a day. but army size fluctuated insanely and nobody expected a regiment to be at "theoretical full strength" at the time anyway, that's what the article i'm working on now is about, which is why i posted that graph in the milhist thread HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 23:04
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Hogge Wild posted:Their galley arms race was one of the most beautiful things in military history. It really, really is. I should finish that effortpost I was doing about classical/hellenistic navies...
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Aug 21, 2016 00:38
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HEY GAL posted:17th century military theorists from Spain to the Ottoman Empire are convinced that if soldiers eat grapes, they die So are soldiers unique in their vulnerability to the insidious grape or did they think French peasants regularly keeled over I mean they did, but not more than any other peasants
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Aug 21, 2016 01:03
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FishFood posted:It really, really is. I should finish that effortpost I was doing about classical/hellenistic navies... Yes. Yes you should.
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Aug 22, 2016 00:18
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HEY GAL posted:ed: people a while back, like the sources the author in that link used, just counted regiments/companies and called it a day. but army size fluctuated insanely and nobody expected a regiment to be at "theoretical full strength" at the time anyway, that's what the article i'm working on now is about, which is why i posted that graph in the milhist thread Hell this applies even in the modern era during wartime, when in theory these days we have much better tracking. You can't look at e.g. the Eastern Front in World War 2 and say 'ok, so the Soviets have <x> regiments, their theoretical strength is <y>, so they had x times y dudes'; theoretical TOE and actual numbers were wildly different.
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Aug 22, 2016 13:37
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LLSix posted:After Alexander died and his empire split up, did the Greeks stick with the longer sarrissa or did they quickly switch back to more of a shield and spear formation? Successor armies very much continued with the Macedonian phalanx, if anything as the successor kingdoms started running into manpower issues later on in the period their armies rely more and more on straight pike formations (which because of simultaneous developments in equipment and doctrine also became less mobile than the phalanxes of Phillip/Alexander). This is to the detriment of the sort of professional "combined arms" force that Alexander used, which saw the phalanx in an "anvil" role, pinning the enemy in place so the cavalry could run around the back and charge from behind. Most of the big losses against the Romans happened because the Roman maniples had mobility over pike formations, and could simply outflank any phalanx formation the successor states flung at them. And yeah, you're right, cavalry was pretty marginal in the ancient world. Most cavalry forces were screening formations or used to chase down fleeing troops in a rout, their prestige largely came from the economic costs of being able to maintain a horse and cavalry equipment. In Greece, very few of the city states developed a notable cavalry force, with the exception of the Boeotians and the Thessalians who had more open terrain to facilitate a cavalry force, the terrain simply wasn't suited for it in the rest of Greece. It's not until Phillip that you see anything resembling shock cavalry used to deliver decisive blows. Actually, the Thessalians nearly had a Phillip like figure in Jason of Pherae, he sort of prefigures the sort of military reforms and hegemonic ambitions you see a few decades later with Phillip, but he died in his bed before anything could come of it. The Romans never really developed a cavalry either, relying on auxiliaries in that role.
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Aug 25, 2016 12:01
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Hellequin posted:The Romans never really developed a cavalry either, relying on auxiliaries in that role. They did eventually. In late antiquity the cavalry became a major component of the forces guarding the borders, and the catraphracts were a big deal in the medieval empire. But you're right that up to that point cavalry were more of a scouting/harassment force than a key component of the army. The classical Roman army was entirely built around having the best heavy infantry in the ancient world.
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Aug 25, 2016 12:09
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Hellequin posted:Successor armies very much continued with the Macedonian phalanx, if anything as the successor kingdoms started running into manpower issues later on in the period their armies rely more and more on straight pike formations (which because of simultaneous developments in equipment and doctrine also became less mobile than the phalanxes of Phillip/Alexander). This is to the detriment of the sort of professional "combined arms" force that Alexander used, which saw the phalanx in an "anvil" role, pinning the enemy in place so the cavalry could run around the back and charge from behind.
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Aug 25, 2016 12:49
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Grand Fromage posted:They did eventually. In late antiquity the cavalry became a major component of the forces guarding the borders, and the catraphracts were a big deal in the medieval empire. Oh yeah definitely, by late antiquity you do start seeing more heavy cavalry because of Roman experiences in the Parthian wars, and by the time the stirrup shows up in the 6th/7th century cavalry is king. On the other hand, according to Polybius the cavalry of the early Republic didn't even wear armour beyond an ox-hide shield, and by the Jugurthine war, Roman cavalry is made up almost exclusively of non-citizens. HEY GAL posted:do you think this is why lots of people end up thinking pikes are less mobile in the 16th and 17th century as well, with the worst informed even saying people never attacked with pikes? because i've seen that on the internet a bunch and it is not backed up by the writings of Maurice of Nassau and Montecuccoli I wouldn't know, my area is actually Classical/Hellenistic cultural history and literature. If we're talking Macedonian phalanxes, they were definitely used offensively in charges during Phillip and Alexander's time, but as the pikes got longer and heavier (from around 5 metres during Phillip's time to 7 metres by the mid 2nd century), and their armour got heavier the formations lost a lot of mobility and their capability for sudden charges. I don't know something similar happened with the 16th/17th century units, but I'm not really certain if you could make a direct comparison.
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Aug 25, 2016 13:50
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HEY GAL posted:do you think this is why lots of people end up thinking pikes are less mobile in the 16th and 17th century as well, with the worst informed even saying people never attacked with pikes? because i've seen that on the internet a bunch and it is not backed up by the writings of Maurice of Nassau and Montecuccoli Pretend I posted that video of the twat in the jumper talking about how he can't work out what role pikes played on the 17th century battlefield, therefore pikes are objectively poo poo
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Aug 25, 2016 14:15
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Does anyone have a good rec for a social history book of classical times. Like "how women and children lived" and what normal people did. Getting tired of phalanxes.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:22
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Hellequin posted:
The successor states also bled one another dry and the training and skill of the phalangites dropped a ton from Alexander's time. Alexander's troops were far more akin to Hegel's people, in terms of mobility and ability to do drilled maneuvers. As the ability to train and drill drops off, they compensate with longer pikes and more armor, which is what leads to the romans beating them startlingly quickly.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:27
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euphronius posted:Getting tired of phalanxes. Roman during the Samnite wars detected
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Aug 25, 2016 14:43
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MikeCrotch posted:Pretend I posted that video of the twat in the jumper talking about how he can't work out what role pikes played on the 17th century battlefield, therefore pikes are objectively poo poo Is that the same guy who whines about archery in movies because it's impossible to pull a bow with a bent arm or some such bollocks? Lift a weight, nerd.
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Aug 25, 2016 15:08
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"it can't be possible to walk quickly, and then stab"
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Aug 25, 2016 15:19
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MikeCrotch posted:Pretend I posted that video of the twat in the jumper talking about how he can't work out what role pikes played on the 17th century battlefield, therefore pikes are objectively poo poo  there's all the diagrams of little dudes you need in those things
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Aug 25, 2016 15:29
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HEY GAL posted:that argument makes my eyes hurt because there are hundreds of books on that topic alone and they're so old they're all available for free on googlebooks Yeah I lost it within a minute where he talks about all the different branches of a 17th century army, but can't put together the fact that at the very least you team up musketeers with pikemen so the pikemen protect the gun men from the horsies. Something you could have found out in about 10 minutes of research.
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Aug 25, 2016 15:34
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euphronius posted:Does anyone have a good rec for a social history book of classical times. Like "how women and children lived" and what normal people did. The first volume of A History of Private Life
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Aug 25, 2016 15:35
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MikeCrotch posted:Pretend I posted that video of the twat in the jumper talking about how he can't work out what role pikes played on the 17th century battlefield, therefore pikes are objectively poo poo Wait, someone was that dumb?
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Aug 25, 2016 19:56
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sbaldrick posted:Wait, someone was that dumb? Plenty of American children grew up being taught that British redcoats wore bright uniforms and matched in formation solely because they were stupid. But yeah I want to see this video too.
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Aug 25, 2016 20:07
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euphronius posted:Does anyone have a good rec for a social history book of classical times. Like "how women and children lived" and what normal people did. Hesiod's Works and Days is advice to his dumb brother on how to not gently caress up farming in ancient Greece. It's good but short.
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Aug 25, 2016 21:01
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P-Mack posted:Plenty of American children grew up being taught that British redcoats wore bright uniforms and matched in formation solely because they were stupid. I remember being taught that. The reason we got was so that generals could see their troops better through the smoke.
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Aug 25, 2016 21:02
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sbaldrick posted:Wait, someone was that dumb? british 17th century stuff is influenced real hard by british 17th century reenactors. and those dudes do not know how to fight. it's entirely possible he saw a reenactment and thought that was how things went.
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Aug 25, 2016 21:03
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euphronius posted:Does anyone have a good rec for a social history book of classical times. Like "how women and children lived" and what normal people did. You could read Mary Beards stuff. You could also watch them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggk_H3jEgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnIY6AE4m6E
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Aug 25, 2016 21:05
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