Welcome back to our discussion of warfare in the ancient world! I took a brief hiatus for Thanksgiving, but now I’m ready to finish up this series. So far, we’ve discussed some theory of warfare and the weapons used by various peoples. Today, I’d like to delve into the tactics used on the battlefield. Military historians usually refer to the overarching plans of a commander as “strategy”, while the minute movements of troops on the ground fall in the realm of “tactics”. Hannibal’s efforts to recruit aid from the Italian cities was part of his strategy, while his use of cavalry to surround the Romans at Cannae was a tactical decision.
Aside from some creative license, an army would usually have a set group of tactics that they would typically use, like a playbook for a sports team. This standard set of tactics worked hand-in-hand with the training and outfitting of the troops. For instance, the long sarissas of the Macedonian phalanx were designed to keep the enemy at a safe distance, while the short sword of the Roman infantryman was intended for much closer combat. The equipment of a warrior lent him specific strengths and weaknesses which needed to be capitalized on and mitigated, respectively. Thus tactics were influenced by equipment. Conversely, the equipment of the troops mirrored their needs. After a long history of being without any armor, the Roman Cavalry abruptly began wearing heavy armor after the harrowing Second Punic War. The Roman Cavalry had suffered several severe defeats at the hands of Hannibal’s cavalry, which led to the rout or destruction of many Roman legions. When the Romans realized that they were ill-equipped to seize their tactical objectives, they changed their equipment to fit their tactics.
At the intersection of tactics and equipment was the unit formation. A formation was a specific arrangement of soldiers meant to achieve a certain objective. The standard battle formation of an army was the manifestation of its most dear tactical goals. The ancient Greeks and Macedonians had the phalanx, a wall of heavily armored soldiers with broad shields and long spears. The phalanx was often a broad line, thin, but strong. The hoplites would have stood in close order, so that one man was partially protected by the shields of those at his sides. The great length of a phalanx line would have dared the enemy to match it, or be flanked themselves. Matching a phalanx’s length could compromise the strength an enemy’s lines, rendering them vulnerable to collapse under the pressure of the elite hoplites.
The power of the phalanx is most famously illustrated by the Battle of Thermopylae, in which seven thousand Greek hoplites (led by the legendary three hundred Spartans) held a pass against over a hundred thousand Persians. On the third and final day of that battle, the Persians followed a Greek traitor up a mountain path and finally surrounded the Greek army. King Leonidas allowed the bulk of his army to return home, while he remained to fight and die with two thousand men. Thermopylae demonstrates that assaulting a phalanx from the front was a daunting task, but also shows how vulnerable the formation was to flanking maneuvers. The lack of depth of the average phalanx was also an issue. If the line was pushed in, the battle was all but lost. Additionally, walking over rough or uneven terrain would make it difficult for hoplites to maintain the close order of their formation. A phalanx worked best when the hoplites could stand still on flat ground, with their flanks and rear guarded from attack. Despite these limiting conditions, the phalanx was one of the most successful formations used in the ancient world.
If the Greeks can be said to have invented the ideal defensive formation, the Romans created a no less brilliant offensive formation: the maniple. The maniple was a revolutionary counterpoint to the phalanx. Where the phalanx’s strength relied on a close formation and the reach of their spears, the maniple used an open formation and short-swords to great effect. The manipular formation has most often been compared to a checkerboard pattern composed of three staggered lines, where each soldier has ten feet between him and his nearest comrade but there are no clear lanes through the formation. That spacing provided the Roman soldier with ample space to swing his sword and admitted the enemy into the gaps. Rather than compromising the maniple, funneling the enemy into the gaps placed them within a kill-box. By filling the gaps of the maniple, an enemy warrior would compromise his own formation to become surrounded by the highly maneuverable Roman swordsmen. The spacing of the maniple also let it remain functional, even when marching over uneven terrain that would spell disaster for a phalanx. Finally, the spacing of the maniple combined well with its depth to allow multiple lines to engage at once, a feat that was practically unheard of in the ancient world. The maniple was strong, elastic, and could chew through practically every enemy it met.
Though the Macedonians adopted the phalanx from the Greeks, Alexander made many diversions from the Greek model. Among the most effective of these new techniques was the wedge formation. Alexander liked to form his heavy Companion cavalry into a triangular wedge that could smash through the enemy line. Just like a spear point, the wedge formation has a narrow point of impact that broadens as it is plunged deeper into the enemy. The result is a wound that is hard to staunch, or the separation and collapse of an enemy line. Since the wedge formation had one man at its head, it was more maneuverable than square formations; the following horsemen would simply follow the leader, rather than having to worry about complex wheeling maneuvers. Historians believe that Phillip II, Alexander’s father, originally learned the wedge formation from the Scythinas, a nomadic people that lived on the Eurasian Steppe. The wedge was also an effective formation for infantry, who also used it to smash through enemy lines. Celtic and Germanic tribes both used a form of wedge against the Romans, often committing their entire force to the formation. The recessed line of the wedge is able to counter any attacks to the side of the leading point, and requires any force that attempts to flank it to travel a prohibitively long distance. Since it is essential that the wedge pierce and push through the enemy formation, the point of the wedge was generally occupied by the most elite troops of the army. The very shape of the wedge formation causes the point to have the most depth and strength, which lends itself to accomplishing its objective of piercing the enemy formation. However, if the wedge fails to break through, the attacking force can dissolve into a chaotic and easily surrounded ball.
Among European armies, infantry has always been the center. For the Greeks and Romans, it was their primary arm, the unit on which victory hinged. However, the greatest generals of the ancient world used cavalry to great effect. Hannibal and Alexander are generally acknowledged to be the greatest commanders in the history of Western Civilization, and they both used cavalry as the most decisive arm of their armies. Their general formula was this: fix the enemy line with infantry, then flank and scatter the enemy with cavalry. To parrot a common idiom, the infantry was the anvil while the calvary struck as the hammer. Aside from these men, cavalry was generally regarded as an auxiliary force in the ancient world. They contributed to the overall victory, but it was the infantry that carried the day. This trend was much the same in the armies of the Middle and Far East. The people groups that provide the shocking exceptions to the rule are the nomadic riders of the Eurasian Steppe. The Scythians, Huns, Mongols, and other tribes and confederations were always the terrifying antithesis to the infantry armies of the ancient world.
The Scythians are the earliest attested steppe group known to Europeans, and they were the scourge of several Persian empires. They were nomadic pastoralists who roamed the Eurasian Steppe on horseback. The Scythians were most famous for their mounted archers, whose maneuverability was unmatched. A Scythian warriors would have brought several horses to battle, to insure that he had a fresh mount at all times. Speed and mobility were always central to Scythian tactics. An infantry based army would march toward a threat, as was the standard practice, but the horse archers would stay always out of reach while raining arrows on the enemy infantry. In one attested formation, the horse archers would ride in a circle in front of the enemy, shooting arrows when ride close to the enemy line, then quickly wheeling away. Since the archers could reload while on the far side of the circle, this formation created a constant stream of arrows whizzing at the infantry. Their light cavalry was also notorious for feigned retreats that encouraged the enemy to break ranks to follow. Once the enemy were adequately disorganized and perhaps even tired from the chase, the Scythian cavalry would wheel around and attack the vulnerable troops. Other peoples with horse cultures paired the horse archer with large contingents of shock cavalry to great effect. The Parthians used this combo very successfully against the Romans in a multitude of battles.
The story of the Eurasian Steppe is generally one of a tribe of horse archers being defeated and replaced by another tribe from further east. After the Scythians came the Sarmatians, the Alani, and the Huns. The peak of the nomad’s power was under the Mongolian Empire, the largest land empire the world has ever seen. The bulk and heart of the Mongol domain was the Eurasian Steppe itself. The tactics of the mounted nomads were extremely successful in the broad plains of their home, but few other than the Mongols successfully ventured beyond their native steppe land. However, Alexander once defeated the Scythians on their home turf, and the Mongol general Subutai successfully waged a campaign in the dense forests of Poland and Hungary. Brilliant commanders aside, the effectiveness of steppe peoples’ all-cavalry tactics were mostly confined to plains.