How dangerous were Persians in combat?

[Osceola]

There seems to be this idea possibly a stereotype going around that basically says the Perisans were only good in numbers and were rather weak.

How true is that?

I mean taking a Greek swordsmen against a Persian swordsmen wouldnt the Persian be able to put up at least some sort of a fight? I mean the idea that they were all merely ants on a lion just seems so odd. Surely they had thier own lions!

[Richard the Lionheart]

They were master horsemen. The strenght of their army was in their cavalry and their horse-archers. As far as swordsmen goes, I think the Immortals were exceptionally skilled.

[Eric]

I think they were decent for their way of warfare. They fought in great numbers, wearing light armour because of the heat. Mostly, they came in great numbers because they were intended to inspire 'shock and awe' at the opposing force, making the enemies surrender. They were okay when they were forced to fight but theie advantage was in numbers. Even the Immortals, their utter elite, were in great numbers, 10,000 strong, no small force. They were like cattle to the slaughter when they went up against highly trained, utterly determined, very heavily armored Hoplites whose advantage was in group cohesion. Their light armor made them exquisitely easy to kill for the Hoplites and the Persian weapons, short spears, swords, bows, and armor, leather, cloth, scale mail, wicker shields, were of little use against the large shields and heavy armor of Greek soldiers. The cavalry, while exceptional, could not penetrate the tight Hoplite phalanx. Look at the Battle of Hastings(I know, hundreds of years later but the outcome is the same), Norman Cavalry, some of the best of the day, could not penetrate the tight Saxon shield wall until the Saxons were in utter dissarray and cohesion had been lost. It was the same during the Persian Wars.

[Freddie]

The Persians probably get bad rep because some of there most famous armies they fielded against the western Greeks/Macedon’s armies were made up of conscripts who were little more then slaves to their king. Take the armies that fought Alexander the Persians had armies of maybe 250,000/275,000men? 200,000 of them would be conscripts who were no match for the disciplined hoplites.

[Revan The Great]

Freddie: That shows how crappy they were. Everyone says the reason Persians sucked was because they were using conscripts, my reply is "Well then Where the hell are they keeping their uber 1337 troops"

Also on Immortals: They were not called Immortal because of their skills, they were called that because when one died, another took his place. Such were their numbers.

The Persians sucked, get over it. The only thing Arabs (Using them to refer to middle-easterners) could do is Cavalry, but their infantry is Terrible

-Revan B)

[The Dane]

I remember reading something about a battle between persia and macedonia under Alexander. I read that the best part of the persian army (at that battle) was mecenaries from greek.

[DEMETRIOUS II]

Persians were very dangerous, they caused some heavy casualties stampeding during their massive routs. To bad they trampled one another. Just imagine if 250000 stampeded towards their opponent rather than away from them :laughing:

[TIGERCAT]

They were master horsemen. The strenght of their army was in their cavalry and their horse-archers. As far as swordsmen goes, I think the Immortals were exceptionally skilled.

True. Their infantry was used just to hold the
enemy in place while the horse archers and their calvary/heavy
calvary did the real killing. The problem with the Greek/Macedonian
Wars was that they could not hold the Greek phalanxes in place
while their archers/horse archers and calvary did the killing.

[darius]

Just one thing if the persians troops sucked so badly how come they were able to create the largest empire known to the world at that time?

[Odovacar]

Very good question, indeed. Their fighting style haven't suited the situation fighting against greeks. They could only win by better leaders, which they had not.
They were far better cavalrymen than anyone else, but their foot troops were lightly armored, and thus against the greeks they could not fight efficently. The greek warfare was superior at that time, and the greeks were fighting on their own terms in their own country. However this doesn't prove that persians as individual fighters were bad...if they were they could not conquer anything.

[Revan The Great]

Just one thing if the persians troops sucked so badly how come they were able to create the largest empire known to the world at that time?

Did it occur to you they were fighting guys who sucked as much as them? They all came from the same place.

-Revan

[Arcaliea]

Sad that we'd witness such retarded discrimination without evidence against the multitude of warriors within a single massive region, but whatever....

The Persians also had decent/good archers as well as cavalry. I think one of the main issues was that in the latter empire, it either had no single standing army, or if it did the forces were often scattered and relocated across the civil wars and uprisings that plagued the nation. As a result there was no cohesiveness and little morale - for example, Alexander's enemies at Issus, for the most part, had wildly differing equipment, most of them having secured what they could. Furthermore, gathering an army took time. Many of Persia's best cavlary, for example, could not reach Darius for the Battle of Issus, only Gaugamela/Arbela.

[Richard the Lionheart]

Did it occur to you they were fighting guys who sucked as much as them? They all came from the same place.

-Revan

Did it occur to you what a weak historical analysis you're providing? :laughing: Obviously you don't know much about the military of the Persian Empire. Like I said, the power of the Persian army was in their effective use of Cavalry and Horse-Archers. Different armies use different tactics. Just because they didn't rely mostly on infantry doesn't mean they "sucked". :wink:

And the only reason the Persian Empire fell to Alexander was because the Persian leadership was horrible at that time. Even with that, if Darius III hadn't fled so many times, Alexander would have been most likely defeated.

[Ahiga]

So I guess the Bactrians, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks in asia Minor, Macedonians, Thracians, greek mercenaries (Excluding the events of the 10,000), Babylon, Media, and nomadic peoples were all sucky?

Revan's thinking is the western centric style of 'any army that doesn't hinge upon infantry in heavy armor is an undisciplined mess', and probably aid in the thinking that Persian's were all arabic looking (look at alexander. -_- They actually spoke arabic in the movie, apparently).

And again, the greek hoplite's had the advantage of their geographics, though by all means they did show themselves to be very tactically sound and strong. Remember that the Ionian hoplites were bulldozed over by the Persians, so it is not a case of inferior weaponry, or tactics.

[LSJ]

People say that Persians were terrible in combat, but think historically. The Parthians were Persians, and they crushed several Roman Legions, and stole the eagles as trophies. They ran down the Seleucids when they wanted freedom, and held the Arabs back from taking their lands. The Arabs were the ones that could not put up a good fight; they had superb horse archers and foot archers, and some nice cavalry, but they were mostly unorganized and had no good infantry. the Persians had some great infantry, including some types of Immortals. They had some good archers, warriors, heavy cavalry, elephants, and horsearchers, but the composition of their ranks put them down. rather than supporting a taxing system like later Rome, where the tax money pays for the military's weapons and armour, they used the old Greek system - you join the military, supply what you can afford, and fight. Since most people were poor, they used no armour, and only a cheap weapon or bow. Most people didn't have a horse either, even though they were best using them. So they go to war with the Greeks - the phalanx faces them, and ranks of peltasts and light cavalry are behind it.
Even though most of the Greek warriors were poor, a pike in anyone's hands is lethal in a phalanx. The Persians did not do that - they were into mobile formations. So when they fought, their unorganized infantry charged a phalanx, and died. Their cavalry (in the early days) would be put down by spears. Their archers would be run over by the untrained Greek cavalry, only because they had no flank guard designed for this combat. Making hunting illegal in many areas deprives the unwealthy of bow skills, so they use an axe and wood shield. If they were allowed to hunt freely they would be skilled with bows, and 10000 persian archers is much better than 10000 militiamen with carpenter tools.
In the later years (when Alexanders empire is gone, and Rome is coming to Asia Minor), the Persians had a much more advanced army, and more professional. Instead of forcing all the weaklings to fight, they had cataphracts, auxiliaries, trained archers, Immortals and trained spearmen. Although that meant they had less men, their new ambush tactics worked wonders. With a large army, you are seen from a mile away. With a small, well trained army, you are almost unseen. The enemies come through your lands, you drag them into an ambush with horsearchers, and run them over with small numbers of superb cavalry. Then the infantry come in, and batter the lines. That is a much better chance of success than 12000 militiamen who just charge with handaxes and hammers. Thats what I think, anyway.

[Eric]

Well, the crushing of the Roman Legions at Carrhae can be partially blamed on Crassus. The man was not a military genius. Moreover, the Romans were in a situation unfamiliar to them and their tactics. Whilst the Parthians were on home terrain and were fighting in a style perfect for the deserts of Asia Minor.

[antaeus]

xenophon testifies to the quality of persian infantry. he found that the soldiers themselves were often a match one on one with greeks, and when they were fighting under their own satraps leadership they could be well organised and formidable. his army of 10,000 greeks was put on the run by often similarly sized persian forces. on the other hand, when fighting in the huge persian kings armies, they were mixed with dozens of other ethnic groups who couldnt understand each others languages, and were often virtually enemies themselves. xenophon and his co commanders exploited this division within persian forces whenever they unified against them.

there also was a substantial difference between the trained soldiers and the conscripts. to make up numbers in the semi feudal system of persian government, local kings made up their numbers with anybody they could find - in particular criminals and bandits. this meant that as said above - the large armies of the high kings had a mixed bag of good and bad - and a lot of miscommunication.

but also remember this... all big persian armies had greek mercenaries. that was why xenophon himself was in persia. his force were mercenary recruits for the failed rebellion of a prince. in any persian kings army you would be likely to see a core of thousands of greeks - they were on the loosing side of this battle because the prince died so the rebellion was over. but many other persian armies of note included greeks too. darius had a core of upwards of 15,000 greeks holding his center at gaugamela. they did not help hold the persian lines against alexander any more than the persian conscripts.

[SigniferOne]

When was Xenophon and his Greeks put on the run by "similarly sized" persian forces?

[antaeus]

i didn't mean he was defeated, i meant bested. and that was a constant theme. the march was a trial that cost the lives of a fifth of his force. harrassment of their trek was constant and unrelenting through the early part. during the trek to the coast they were never massively outnumbered and for the most part faced local satraps rather than the main persian force. their difficulties comming to grips with the persians were such that they had to form cavalry and missile forces out of hoptilites who had experience with these - and without doing this they would have been slaughtered. common sense we might say with hindsight... but at the time there was resistance the idea of even leaving. some wanted to and indeed did surrender.

[Rosacrux redux]

never, actually. The only people that gave Xenophon's "myrioi" a run for their money were the mountainous tribes and they used of course guerilla tactics (to which the Greeks had to adopt).

The Persian army did not "suck" or anything. It was a formidable force, at least the core army, the Imperial Spada. The latter consisted at its height of 89.000 (80K infantry - 9 K cavalry) highly trained, disciplined, organized and decently outfitted, Persian, Median and other Iranian troops. They had a superb organization, but did never utilize heavy infantry tactics effectively. The crack infantry, their Immortals, were man-to-man as good as the best fighters of the ancient world. They were highly skilled in the use of a multitude of weapons and very good trained. Their crack cavalry was the best in the ancient world, until the Makedonian and Thessalian cavalry came about.

They had though some shortcomings:
- the main problem stems from the nature of their state and culture. The Persian social system was one that didn't allow for any social mobility and the lesser classes were closer to slaves than anything else. Although such a social system provides with a more than decent core army (the nobility and warrior classes) it does not help in augmenting these core forces with willing or decent (training, equipment and skill wise) massive troops - the recruits were usually of rather poor quality and not at all willing to die so their Shahanshah and local oppressors could become wealthier.
- Maybe an offspring of the previous point: the Iranian fighters were formidable when the chain of command was intact, but sucked badly the moment they lost their leaders. Comes with the autocratic character of their state, I guess.
- The Persians although keen on getting hired help, were not easy on adopting new tactics and armaments and such. We know that right after the Persian wars they started hiring Greek mercenaries, but it took them more than another century until they started to deploy a similar unit of themself (Kardakes) - and by that time innovations in Greece had rendered the old hoplite quite innefective. Same with cavalry, they had extraordinary cavalry but used them in outdated skirmishing tactics - they had a nasty surprise when the Heteroi and Thessalians started charging on them head on.
- The imperial army, past the core Spada, rallied a multitude of people from different ethnicities, with different tactics and equipment and usually reluctant to fight for the Persian hegemon. Hard to utilize such troops and even harder to motivate them.

To say that "the Persians sucked" is silly - you don't build a huge empire with a "sucking" army. But they just met with a political, social and military system superior to theirs, that's why the lost the Persian wars and later succumbed to Alex.