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There's nothing glamorous about it. The shield is there to absorb big calorie-burning hits for as long as it takes the other guy to get tired, at which point the legionary will go for his crotch, belly or inner thighs with a quick thrusting sword that doesn't take many calories to use at all. If he hits, likely a mortal wound. If he misses he can try again, and if not there's another dude behind him with the exact same kit ready to try the exact same thing. They aren't even doing anything particularly difficult, right? I mean it's not like they're doing a triple lindy here. (A) Use shield until other guy is tired, (b) stab tired guy in his dick, (c) use shield and wait, (d) repeat. This is not performative war, they are butchers looking to drain some pigs. The evolution of the flared tip Mainz-style gladius indicates even further enthusiasm for the piggy-draining business, because it delivers more soft tissue damage on either a thrust to the belly, or a quick slice across the femoral aorta. It's a horrifyingly efficient way to fight.
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Feb 17, 2022 18:26
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War is very performative in antiquity though, most of the game is scaring the other team so bad they try to flee. This certainly involves combat, but it's not like legionnaires are standing there building walls of corpses at the front of their line.
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Feb 17, 2022 19:26
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Roman legions did do Hoplite poo poo for a long time .
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Feb 17, 2022 19:27
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The trick about talking about "how Romans fought" is that you're talking about an incredibly broad span of history (753bce-1922ce for a wide range, or 509bce-476ce for a more cowardly chronology), and while the Romans didn't change things at the kind of breakneck pace of 20th century warfare, they did still change things pretty substantially over time. Virtus and disciplina were in tension and Rome went from citizen militias to universal service and had multiple different styles of second class soldiers from socii to auxilia to foederati. To the best of my knowledge we still don't have a consensus about how a manipular legion actually worked, and Lendon (my main source for this stuff) makes the argument that the velites weren't so much skirmishers as bravos or duellists - the point of the velites was to give young soldiers a chance to prove their virtus in public, before witnesses, thus ensuring that the next generation of roman soldiers were good, bloodthirsty warriors.
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Feb 17, 2022 19:52
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Tulip posted:The trick about talking about "how Romans fought" is that you're talking about an incredibly broad span of history (753bce-1922ce for a wide range, or 509bce-476ce for a more cowardly chronology), and while the Romans didn't change things at the kind of breakneck pace of 20th century warfare, they did still change things pretty substantially over time. Virtus and disciplina were in tension and Rome went from citizen militias to universal service and had multiple different styles of second class soldiers from socii to auxilia to foederati. To the best of my knowledge we still don't have a consensus about how a manipular legion actually worked, and Lendon (my main source for this stuff) makes the argument that the velites weren't so much skirmishers as bravos or duellists - the point of the velites was to give young soldiers a chance to prove their virtus in public, before witnesses, thus ensuring that the next generation of roman soldiers were good, bloodthirsty warriors. Another factor that makes it hard to talk about "how the Romans fought" is the fact that they made extensive use of auxiliary troops, who often used different methods than the legions. The legions didn't need to be able to do everything themselves, because if a specialized need arose that they were not equipped/trained to do, Rome could find auxiliaries who were equipped and trained to do that. The Mid-Republic standard was to have 50% of an army made up of auxiliaries, and at certain times in the imperial period, Rome relied even more heavily on auxiliary troops.
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Feb 17, 2022 20:54
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most of the mid-republic auxiliaries were quite similar to the romans proper tho. in that era it's more just a term for units raised from the rest of italy than for specialist troops. imperial auxiliaries tend to be raised for specific purposes to complement the legions, yeah.
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Feb 17, 2022 21:11
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Jazerus posted:most of the mid-republic auxiliaries were quite similar to the romans proper tho. in that era it's more just a term for units raised from the rest of italy than for specialist troops. imperial auxiliaries tend to be raised for specific purposes to complement the legions, yeah. That's true, but a disproportionate amount of the cavalry came from auxiliaries in the mid-Republic, which was a major way they differed in composition from Roman troops.
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Feb 17, 2022 21:19
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It is really important to remember the standardized legion era was an outlier. There are not that many historical armies that used swords as the primary hand to hand weapon (I can't think of any at all offhand, but there probably are some), it was far far more common to use spears and swords were an emergency backup if you carried one at all. The Romans intentionally fighting at such close range was odd, if you think about it much of the evolution of weapons throughout history is finding better ways to poke the other guy from as far away as possible since the best protection is distance. Even places you might think of as being pretty sword-y like medieval Japan, the peasant levies were carrying spears and my understanding is archery was the primary samurai weapon system.
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Feb 17, 2022 21:51
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Grand Fromage posted:It is really important to remember the standardized legion era was an outlier. There are not that many historical armies that used swords as the primary hand to hand weapon (I can't think of any at all offhand, but there probably are some), it was far far more common to use spears and swords were an emergency backup if you carried one at all. The Romans intentionally fighting at such close range was odd, if you think about it much of the evolution of weapons throughout history is finding better ways to poke the other guy from as far away as possible since the best protection is distance. Even places you might think of as being pretty sword-y like medieval Japan, the peasant levies were carrying spears and my understanding is archery was the primary samurai weapon system. the standard and main Roman weapon was technically the Pilum ,you wouldnt say that the main weapon of a napoleonic soldier was a bayonet.
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Feb 17, 2022 22:16
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Pydna is an example of deliberately approaching a pike formation with the gladius in hand. It might seem odd, to players of the various video games out there, to march swords into the face of a pike phalanx, because the numbers in those games will make it a bad idea. Real life has a lot more tactical options than the game, however. They used their pilum volleys to disrupt the pike formations and, failing that, they retreated back over rough ground which they noticed was breaking up the phalanxes when the Macedonians tried to press forward. Eventually the romans broke their own formations up into small groups to force the Macedonian block to part itself in many places. That Macedonian phalanx with its spears poking out of it only works if it coheres. Once the Romans have openings to get themselves right up against their enemy, it's over. Yes the Romans did mirror the Greek tactics for a while; they even used the hoplon for a time, before discovering the scutum somewhere in celtic and/or iberian territories. The idea that they mainly formed their own phalanxes, though, is not great given that they discovered and repeatedly employed the antidote to that particular tactic. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 22:19
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PawParole posted:the standard and main Roman weapon was technically the Pilum ,you wouldnt say that the main weapon of a napoleonic soldier was a bayonet. The pilum was in no way the primary weapon. There are a couple battles called out in sources specifically because they used pila as a main weapon (they could be used as improvised spears against cavalry) but the vast majority of the time they were a useful but ultimately unnecessary tool. We don't know exactly how legions fought but I have never seen anyone make an argument against it being hand to hand sword combat.
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Feb 17, 2022 22:29
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Also, phalanxes are at their best in called battles on level ground. The Romans didn't give a gently caress about any Greek notions of an honourable battle: the aim is to take the city and be in control of it. Most Roman battles are them seizing some kind of fortification if not ambushing a moving army or being ambushed themselves.
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Feb 17, 2022 22:30
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Azza Bamboo posted:Also, phalanxes are at their best in called battles on level ground. The Romans didn't give a gently caress about any Greek notions of an honourable battle: the aim is to take the city and be in control of it. Most Roman battles are them seizing some kind of fortification if not ambushing a moving army or being ambushed themselves. This is not a reasonable description of those battles and Pydna itself stands as a strong counterexample. Paullus faced repeated insubordination at Pydna for not letting his men charge across open field to fight immediately and honorably with their Macedonian opponents. Fabius got named "the delayer" and removed from office for being a coward because he refused to engage in straightforward battle when he would rather win a war through use of fortifications. Are correct about the phalanxes being at their best on level ground. They'd still beat a lot of other armies even on less level ground - drilled heavy infantry was generally the ur-tool of classical armies - but it's hard to keep formation and rely on others' pikes when the ground is broken. Later Roman armies would become just absolute masters of seizing fortified cities. Masada is an insane battle for that reason.
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Feb 17, 2022 23:21
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Sure, the politicians don't like reasonable warfare, but if you look at the title of this thread you'll remember that it's not a uniquely Roman problem. And the point stands that they'd rather go up close with swords than use something like a phalanx, and go straight to the objective rather than engage the enemy in some weird setpiece battle. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 23:39
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Grand Fromage posted:Even places you might think of as being pretty sword-y like medieval Japan, the peasant levies were carrying spears and my understanding is archery was the primary samurai weapon system. If you've read The Tale of the Heike, there's definitely an emphasis on archery duels and archery skills. Keeping in mind it was written in the 13th century about events in the 12th century, though. The swords, if I remember correctly, were more a status symbol. Still great for killing people, though.
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Feb 18, 2022 00:31
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The consensus is that archery was primary, yes. Battles took place at small scale, and were primarily over personal authority, so the "canonical" combat was raiding or fire phases first (in which mounted archers were ideal) and personal combat intended to decapitate (both figuratively and literally) the enemy command structure second; the latter phase saw a wide variety of saber and glaive applications, both mounted and dismounted, but neither had particular cultural cachet over the other and certainly not over archery. Meanwhile, while the spear was always known, it only really took off in a parallel to the pike, then shot-and-pike, in the very latest parts of the medieval-equivalent period, when the stakes rose to the point where mass conscript battles on an open field became common. The status symbol aspect of the hand-and-a-half saber dates from the early modern, when strict controls on feudatories' ability to maintain private armies or hold any real gains were instituted, severely limiting any action beyond brigandry, brawling, or duels, but its previous nothing-special reputation allowed it to be retained as the noble's sidearm perfect for these (and saw the shift of the less-portable, more loaded-for-battle-and-we're-not-supposed-to-have-battles-anymore glaive from a generalist weapon to a home-defense weapon conceived of as mainly for women, who weren't by and large dueling and were considered to get more value from its improved reach.) Mandoric fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 03:33
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This thread always has great ideas. Any suggestions for things to see or places to go near Bergen or Oslo in Norway? I'll be going late next month to provide moral support to a friend while they present and I thought I might stay a few days extra.
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Feb 18, 2022 05:10
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Leadership getting mad that war isn't unfolding in the way the stories tell it certainly isn't a new or uncommon thing. See also so much of WW1. Actually, the Romans do stand out apparently in that historically they baffled and terrified foes by fighting to win at all costs, and refusing to surrender or step down their military-industrial complex even after disastrous defeats. Like most successful empires, they fought to win and there's nothing they wouldn't stoop to- and of course, even at the time people rightfully criticised how they'd destroy people and cultures and anything in their way to get what they want. The Roman use of what we'd call combined arms, basically different companies of specialists in different fields that complement one another and fill niches that others don't, even if they have a 'main' fighting style and complement, is interesting. And drawing them from different parts of the Empire that maintained different cultures is especially so- not only does it bring up exciting visuals of a diverse army with not only rows of stern-faced legionaries in lockstep with matching gear, but obviously foreign cavalry, archers and whatever, all following the same banner, a demonstration of the reach and power of Rome. Archers and cavalry require specialist training from a young age, as well as equipment and supplies, and given how much standardisation is important to the Legions it says something as to the war machine that fuels such an army that has to feed men and beasts, to make sure they have javelins, arrows and horses, and stop them from getting in each others' way. Something that even modern warfare often struggles with.
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Feb 18, 2022 08:41
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I've read that Rome's total-war mindset wasn't particularly unique, but may rather have been a natural result of a republican empire. In the late stages of the second punic war, Carthage suffered losses as bad as Rome suffered in the early stages, but they kept raising new armies to press onward, same as Rome, and only surrendered when Scipio was literally on their doorstep (and even then, only when Hannibal begged their senate equivalent to surrender). As the theory goes, a king can absorb a loss and remain king, because their legitimacy comes from their bloodline, so their incentives are to cut their losses and negotiate a peace while things are still relatively intact. A consul who ends his term on defeat is a laughingstock with no chance to recover.
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Feb 18, 2022 08:50
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I wonder how much seeing a few thousand guys all with identical and presumably good and well kept equipment must have looked. As far as I know that kind of standardisation wasn't really a thing (at least in europe) before or again until the early modern maybe? Must have been a terrifying sight. The ability to do that is insane.
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Feb 18, 2022 09:24
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It begins to be a thing during the HYW in Western Europe I think, I seem to remember Bret Devereaux writing something about how the state started manufacturing standardized plate armor pieces. It may have been an England specific thing though.
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Feb 18, 2022 09:42
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Leadership getting mad that war isn't unfolding in the way the stories tell it certainly isn't a new or uncommon thing. See also so much of WW1. Actually, the Romans do stand out apparently in that historically they baffled and terrified foes by fighting to win at all costs, and refusing to surrender or step down their military-industrial complex even after disastrous defeats. Like most successful empires, they fought to win and there's nothing they wouldn't stoop to- and of course, even at the time people rightfully criticised how they'd destroy people and cultures and anything in their way to get what they want. I don't know if I'd go with calling the Roman approach different from their contemporary Hellenistic enemies in the mid-Republican age because everyone is using combined armies with specialist units drawn from ethnic enclaves supported by a backbone of Greek professional soldiers and supplemented by mercenaries.
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Feb 18, 2022 12:29
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PittTheElder posted:It begins to be a thing during the HYW in Western Europe I think, I seem to remember Bret Devereaux writing something about how the state started manufacturing standardized plate armor pieces. It may have been an England specific thing though. Probably not tbf, England is behind the times with, like, everything Army-wise at all times, or at least until the late 19th century. If someone's standardising this poo poo it's probably going to be, like, France starting it off.
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Feb 18, 2022 15:55
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LLSix posted:This thread always has great ideas. Any suggestions for things to see or places to go near Bergen or Oslo in Norway? I'll be going late next month to provide moral support to a friend while they present and I thought I might stay a few days extra. I mean you cant miss them but the old Hanseatic buildings on the seafront in Bergen are thread-relevant and worth a look. Oslo has a fortress, I've never been there myself but it might be worth a look.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:03
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AFAIK combined arms is extremely common, with two major salient exceptions - in the earliest parts of Greek history there is a seemingly monomania for heavy infantry that fades as Greeks develop light infantry and cavalry tactics and you get battles like Lechaeum where the Spartans get wrecked by light infantry; and very small unit tactics, such as guerilla warfare and light-infantry only raiding groups. That last group is almost certainly the vast majority of all warfare humans have ever done by dint of having a thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, year head start, so it is a pretty loving salient exception. But we know that the Macedonians were very proud of their combined arms, the Persian and Egyptian armies bragged about it since it was synecdoche for the imperial mastery of diverse groups of people and thus symbolic of the universal claims of their rulers, Chinese military manuals emphasize it as a critical component of training, and of course the Assyrians loved their combined arms.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:18
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Grand Fromage posted:It is really important to remember the standardized legion era was an outlier. There are not that many historical armies that used swords as the primary hand to hand weapon (I can't think of any at all offhand, but there probably are some) Well, the Celts they got that sword from. Also, e.g., Highlanders from the Jacobite period some centuries later. Swords aren't, like, unusual.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:21
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The Pilum is such a cool weapon. I think what I really like about it is it's not even necessarily about the killing power of it. Yes it could kill obviously but one of the big benefits of it iirc is that even if it didn't kill you it would stick in your shield and you could not easily get it out, especially in the midst of combat. So some Roman sticks your shield with a pilum and now you have to drop it and oops the Romans are advancing at you too and a good chunk of your line is now shieldless which is not gonna be good for business. You're damned if you block it and damned if you don't. It's such an ingenious weapon design.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:26
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Ginette Reno posted:The Pilum is such a cool weapon. I think what I really like about it is it's not even necessarily about the killing power of it. Yes it could kill obviously but one of the big benefits of it iirc is that even if it didn't kill you it would stick in your shield and you could not easily get it out, especially in the midst of combat. So some Roman sticks your shield with a pilum and now you have to drop it and oops the Romans are advancing at you too and a good chunk of your line is now shieldless which is not gonna be good for business. Matt Easton did a bunch of testing by hucking pilum at shields one of his takeaways was that a big chunk of the time the pilum penetrates far enough to stick the person holding the shield. His thesis is that while the metal necks might bend sometimes, and that's not a bad thing for the Romans, the biggest reason they have long metal necks that are thinner than the spearhead is to penetrate and wound the person holding the shield.
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Feb 18, 2022 17:47
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feedmegin posted:Probably not tbf, England is behind the times with, like, everything Army-wise at all times, or at least until the late 19th century. If someone's standardising this poo poo it's probably going to be, like, France starting it off. I don't think this is true that far back through. Back in the 12th-14th century the English Monarchy is highly centralized and effective (and fighting France all the drat time). But like many monarchies of the day it's highly reliant on an effective King at the top of the system, and so it all comes apart during the War of the Roses, and they just never manage to get the army going again to the same degree, quite probably because the century of civil wars has left the government vastly less capable and institutionally uninterested in having an effective army.
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Feb 18, 2022 19:07
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Matt Easton did a bunch of testing by hucking pilum at shields one of his takeaways was that a big chunk of the time the pilum penetrates far enough to stick the person holding the shield. His thesis is that while the metal necks might bend sometimes, and that's not a bad thing for the Romans, the biggest reason they have long metal necks that are thinner than the spearhead is to penetrate and wound the person holding the shield. Yeah just amazing weapons really. Can't imagine the terror I'd have of not only possibly getting wounded by a pilum that sticks through my shield but also having to at best drop my shield even if I fail to get wounded from it. A soldier without a shield on a medieval battlefield is basically a sitting duck.
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Feb 18, 2022 19:32
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PittTheElder posted:I don't think this is true that far back through. Back in the 12th-14th century the English Monarchy is highly centralized and effective (and fighting France all the drat time). But like many monarchies of the day it's highly reliant on an effective King at the top of the system, and so it all comes apart during the War of the Roses, and they just never manage to get the army going again to the same degree, quite probably because the century of civil wars has left the government vastly less capable and institutionally uninterested in having an effective army. On the Pax Brittanica podcast I just listened to an episode that was sketching out that one of the reasons that the Bishops Wars went sideways for Charles I was that the English military apparatus, despite being larger, wealthier, and with an order of magnitude more manpower in theory, was decentralized (via noble privileges) and behind the times, whereas Scotland was full of veteran mercenaries who had been slugging it out on both sides of the 30YW at all ranks, up to and including Marshall, and thus knew how modern warfare worked.
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Feb 18, 2022 19:45
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Ginette Reno posted:Yeah just amazing weapons really. Can't imagine the terror I'd have of not only possibly getting wounded by a pilum that sticks through my shield but also having to at best drop my shield even if I fail to get wounded from it. A soldier without a shield on a medieval battlefield is basically a sitting duck. There's a lot of debate about the shield ruining, whether it actually was useful for that and whether it was designed to do so. There's not a good answer since we don't have a Roman manual explaining it. Given general Roman tactics I suspect the pilum was designed to kill people and if it did the bend in the shield thing, that was an unintended side effect. Possibly a good one but I don't think it was designed for that.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:47
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Grand Fromage posted:There's a lot of debate about the shield ruining, whether it actually was useful for that and whether it was designed to do so. There's not a good answer since we don't have a Roman manual explaining it. Given general Roman tactics I suspect the pilum was designed to kill people and if it did the bend in the shield thing, that was an unintended side effect. Possibly a good one but I don't think it was designed for that. Yeah I could absolutely see that just being an unintended but very good thing. Like wasn't that the German 88 gun designed primarily to be an anti aircraft gun and then they realized that it actually blows up tanks exceptionally well too? I feel like a lot of exceptional war weapons end up that way.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:44
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAe1krJFl78
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Feb 18, 2022 22:04
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Ginette Reno posted:Yeah I could absolutely see that just being an unintended but very good thing. No, it was high-velocity gun designed to shoot flak shells high up in the air. High-velocity guns also happen to be good anti-tank guns because you can shoot AP shells with a lot of penetrating power. The paper stats of the 8.8cm gun are just the same as any of the similar calibre AA guns of WWII. The main difference was that the Germans started off in 1939 with more institutional intent to use the 8.8cm guns as AT weapons, designing an appropriate mount sights for them and and dispersing them to frontline units. Cast_No_Shadow posted:I wonder how much seeing a few thousand guys all with identical and presumably good and well kept equipment must have looked. Roman equipment was standardized to a degree, but they didn't have industrial standards and everything was ultimately crafted by hand. There were several locations throughout the empire that were the main suppliers of certain items, so there were regional variations on top that Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 01:15
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Quite frankly one of the bigger deals in the late Republic onwards is having an actual professional military that could drill and train relatively consistently compared to neighbors often having part time militias, the ability to take cities efficiently pretty much requires a well trained engineering corps for all the techniques needed to successful weaken and break through a wall that is far more difficult to replicate with having people train during lay times of work.
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Feb 19, 2022 01:35
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LLSix posted:This thread always has great ideas. Any suggestions for things to see or places to go near Bergen or Oslo in Norway? I'll be going late next month to provide moral support to a friend while they present and I thought I might stay a few days extra. I think the stereotypical tourist activity in Bergen is taking the funicular up to Fløyen for a panoramic view of the city. I guess the Oslo equivalent would be the top of the Holmenkollen ski jump. Both cities have old fortifications, Bergenhus and Akershus respectively. Akershus is also home to Forsvarsmuseet.
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Feb 19, 2022 02:20
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Bergen also has some hidden gems with regards to museums. The Hanseatic History Museum ought to be worth a trip. There's also the "Theta Museum" about the Norwegian resistance, though I haven't been.
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Feb 19, 2022 08:53
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CommonShore posted:On the Pax Brittanica podcast I just listened to an episode that was sketching out that one of the reasons that the Bishops Wars went sideways for Charles I was that the English military apparatus, despite being larger, wealthier, and with an order of magnitude more manpower in theory, was decentralized (via noble privileges) and behind the times, whereas Scotland was full of veteran mercenaries who had been slugging it out on both sides of the 30YW at all ranks, up to and including Marshall, and thus knew how modern warfare worked. English people were fighting on the Continent too, though. A bigger factor is Charles I was trying to run those wars without summoning Parliament, which is to say a) without the consent of a bunch of his subjects (many of whom were Presbyterian in sympathy and thus on the side of the Scots, as the Civil War was to prove), and b) without any money. Him losing and thus having to summon Parliament anyway to try to raise the funds for another army - again, against the wish of most of the people in Parliament - is what rather kicks the Civil Wars off. Decentralisation or w/e doesn't have much to do with it - it's no more or less 'decentralised' in the wars that follow, and while the Scots are more uniformly state-supplied this is indicative of weakness - that is, a lack of rich magnates to help raise and supply troops, so the State has to do it. Certainly the Scottish Engager army gets its rear end kicked perfectly handily by Parliament in 1648. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 12:57
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A sword is a great mix between a stabbing and bludgeoning weapon with added/optional defensive capabilities. And they can be developed and min/maxed along any of those lines. A gladius, katana, epee, Saber, scimitar, bastard and claymore are all pretty different weapons despite all being "swords"
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