 Originally Posted by Swaeft
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Thank you for the long and detailed answer!
No worries I'm mostly typing for the pleasure of seeing my own brain mashed on the screen, and very happy for you and others to correct me when I am wrong.
Originally Posted by Swaeft
...As I said before, I'm not talking about the musket/guns era, but rather the sword and shield battles. I understand the morale shock in later engagements, but when you can clearly see your enemy coming you have time to prepare.
The musket and gun era are relevant though as a lot of the work done is the same.
Getting men onto a field to kill one another is no mean feat. You do it by bonding them socially, emotionally and militarily. Less centralized ("civilised") societies bring warriors to the field when each individual decides to come. Complex societies have conscription and other forms of coercion, material rewards, intangible rewards , religion and so on that allows masses to be mobilised and moved. Part of these systems is practicing in formation, and the line of battle is a very old and successful institution.
The systems that bring men (and occasionally women) to fight makes them want to fight. if one army melts, doesn't turn up etc then obviously there's no battle. This can result in a lost war (not always) but the net result is warriors want to fight. So the leader's line em up and go.
Getting units of men to obey once in battle is another hurdle. They better have practiced drill because battle is too stressful to make stuff up on the spot effectively. The drill tends to be "all face this way, when they get close stab them", because thats what works. Once a unti knows how to fight and wants top fight, the next trick is making them not fight the moment they see an enemy.
Its a very well trained force that can march around not fighting and keep morale high enough to keep the army together. Hannibal did it, Fabius Cunctator did it. By the 18th century a lot of armies could do it, there was the third Silesian war where close to 10% of casualties were outside battle because the whole thing was a walkfest ("war of manouevre").
On the actual battlefield units can rush at a hated foe, or refuse to move away from their neighboring units cause its dangerous out there man. Once in a melee (or later a firefiught) units tend to get bogged down and ignore orders to stop and withdraw: they face the nearest enemy and go at them and ignore the rest. Other units can get imaginative 'is that our cavalry in the rear, or is it the enemy? Holy  ..."
War is hard. Leaders try to keep their forces well positioned, not bogged down, one step ahead of the other guy. A flank attack (ie a part of your army attacking an army's wing, perhaps from an oblique, perpendicular or best of all rear angle) is a normal battle option. getting a force around a flank though exposes it, all other things being equal. By definition you detach a part of your force and send it off into the blue. It is at risk of being caught, perhaps by the enemies whole force if it is in turn out-manouevred.
Fredrick the great overcame this problem by flanking with his entire force: he'd rapid march his boys to an oblique angle and approach his center against the opposition wing: still risky but he had a manouevre advantage and he exploited it. i think he was copying (in part) Alexander's superb (risky) battle plan from Gaugemela: here again the whole army rapid marched and approached on an oblique angle, disrupting the larger enemy line and throwing prior plans into some dissarray although the main attack was against the centre and the Makedonian line was doubled to protect the rear of the first line. Gaugemela was finished with a sharp cavalry charge at the centre, another Frederickan trick.
That battle gives me cold sweats when I think about it. March the whole force diagonally, trust the weak second line to defend the rear of the incredibly short front line, "don't worry guys, I'll catch the enemy cavalry with the tribesmen we have hanging off our bridles of our massively ounumbered cavalry, then we'll dart back toward the centre (no way the elephants will have moved across to cover it by then) and i will personally kill the opposition king before the rest of you are trampled by the largest army anyone has yet assembled". He was a genius to make it work, did not attempt a flank attack or outflank (he did feint toward the flank though) and Darius' attempted double envelopment failed because he was too slow, didn't deal with the second line and couldn't blunt the Companion Cavalry charge before it reached his own position.
At Austerlitz the Russians attempted a massive outflank, marching over half their force south to sweep up the French from the right to left. It was bold and well planned: Napoleon's right was weak, the Russian centre was protected by the Pratzen heights (which were thought to obscure sight of the move and to hinder any French spoiling attack) and they could smell victory. Sadly things went wrong.
Davout had force marched all night and arrived to block the Russian left. French scouts spotted the Russians in marching columns heading south. Soult counterattacked across Pratzen heights (Napleon's infantry had developed uncanny speed and now high morale as well allowing rapid movement and return to formation beyond other army's capabilities at the time: the Russians had not seen this yet) and took the Russian regiments heading south in flank, scattering them piecemeal. French left held the Austrians at bay. The Russian move to outflank led to the near destruction of their force (the remnants were saved by repeated reckless charges by the guard cavalry led by the Emperor's brother) and the Austrians wisely bugged out to fight another day.
Against a skilled nimble opponent a gamble like an outflank was possibly suicidal. In the right circumstances it could bag a smaller opponent with less loss of life. Art Agincourt the English line held (because of superb terrain choices by Henry V, and because the French knights only wanted to fight the English knights, and caused a pedestrian crush trying to all get at them while ignoring all other English, who beat them to death with hammers-true story) and the only serious threat was a tiny outflank attempt made against orders by a stray local noble.
At Agincourt the French wanted a face to face battle because their superiority in chevaliers vs knights (which they considered the only important fighting element ) was colossal, at least ten to one. They wanted a knight vs knight battle because that satisfied honour. The English, more intent on surviving fought a battle we would recognise as more "military" in character: they aimed to defeat the attack with all arms playing a part. French tactics were to advance on foot, so their horses would not be shot from under them (cunning plan!), wear heavier armour to neutralise English archery (well it worked) but once on the field the French began falling over one another to get to the handful on English knights in the line.
Soldiers do not always behave intelligently in battle. They are not trained too, they are trained to carry out a set of tactics, and how they do that is influenced by a dizzying array of other factors: education (the French infantry in the Napoleonic wars was more literate than other armies, and it showed), social position, specialcirumstances relating to pay, supply, the character of the commander etc etc.
The variety of systems that get men to battle do not always prepare them to respond effectively to what really happens. The French in the Battles of the Frontiers in 1914, the British force at the Somme in 1916, the Romans at Cannae, all these seem stupid wastes but they were actually well thought out plans that seemed to their commanders would work.
Sometimes an outflank works. Sometimes a stab at the flank works. Sometimes it does not. |
POTF 3 - Winner and Runner-Up
