In the interests of helping people understand military matters more completely, at least as far as my admittedly sophomoric understanding may guide them, I am going to here endeavor to impart some limited wisdom on the nature of conflict and of larger-scale operations in general. I claim neither particular academic mastery, nor first-hand experience, but rather the collected knowledge from many years of studying military matters as a hobby. I will of course attempt to avoid any errors, but if such issues are seen by potential readers, please do point them out, preferably with citations to prove the point definitively. I hope that this exercise will help me learn as much as it will help any particular reader.
As my time is currently limited, I will begin by avoiding sweeping theses on combat, but instead focus on correcting specific errors I have seen on not only this website but in popular fiction.
#1: People of the past are not fools.
#2: In Pre-Modern Warfare, Most Deaths Happened Off the Battlefield
#3: Battles Are Historically Uncommon
#4: Artillery is both and offensive and defensive weapon, and decided historical battles
#5: Overrated ways of fighting: Horse Archers, Katanas, and the Longbow#6 Firearms are really rather good: their obvious benefits and less-obvious drawbacks.#1:People of the past are not fools. Cultures change over time. The society we live in today is extremely different to the society of a century ago, and even more different than the societies a millennium hence. The cultures of the past seem primitive to societies at a high point in their development, as we no doubt are, and I would even agree that in general societies in the past are less civilized, and less prone to genius or the progression of thought as we are today. That being said, people of the past innovated constantly, and shared our human drive to improve things.
This is especially true when lives are on the line. If you are a knight in the Holy Roman Empire, and your continued life depends on the weapons and armor you bring to the battlefield, you will choose the best on offer, and artisans who make weapons will try to make their wares better to better appeal to the users. Great innovation comes in spurts: firearms, aviation, industry, brilliant inventions radically change the face of the world, but things are being constantly improved in between these punctuation marks in the development of technology.
So, as this applies to the art of violence: weapons and armor worked. Especially weapons and armor that are seen throughout history are proven by the test of time, and would not survive if not effective. The spear had a useful place on battlefields from time immemorial to arguably the 1860s (if we include bayonets) for a very good reason: they worked well. Shields were used well into the late medieval period because they worked. Just because something is used does not mean it is the best on offer: a weapon (like the spear) may be chosen because of cost efficiency, or for a hundred other reasons, and different tools will always be good in different situations, but tools that are used en masse are almost always the best choice available to the people who used them.
The corollary to this is obvious: people do not move en masse from something which works to something which does not. When a weapon is phased out, a better alternative has been found. The example that jumps to mind is when individuals question with incredulity why the nascent firearm would be adopted when the longbow was “better”. There is always a reason.
There is always a reason for a change, and that reason is almost always because an alternative is better. With the invariably incomplete record of the past, the reasons may not always be clear, and may be completely unknown, but instead of assuming that our lack of understanding implies idiocy on the part of our ancestors, the better course of action is to assume that the people of the past had a reason for their change.
One point to remember is that in the pre-modern era, ideas moved very slowly. Only with the printing press did a true spike in the transmission of ideas occur. Ideas moved slowly, and an advance in swordsmithing in Geatland could take decades to reach smiths in Cadiz. The process occurred by trade, or word of mouth, or intermarriage. It could also happen in war. An excellent example is the radical changes in formation seen in the Carthaginian armies of the second punic war, from phalanx to looser formation, from long pike to shorter roman spears and swords. War spreads ideas, and its lessons are learned very quickly.
To summarize: only good ideas are adopted en masse, and good ideas are only abandoned en masse when a better alternative is available. It may be better for different reasons, or we may not fully understand why the change was made, but in almost every case changes in weapons are to new weapons and armor more efficient in warfare.
#2: In Pre-Modern Warfare, Most Deaths Happened Off the BattlefieldThis point does not need much explanation. 99.9% of the time on campaign is spent not fighting, either sitting around a city one is besieging or just walking from one place to another. Being on campaign is a very dirty, usually very hungry pursuit, and pre-modern medicine, sanitation and economies were not up to the standard. As such, huge numbers of people died on the campaign, especially because as I will mention later, battles are historically uncommon.
There is another point to be made, however. This may seem counter-intuitive, but pre-modern battles tended to have surprisingly low casualty rates at the battles themselves. Pre-modern battles were won by morale, and the armies of the day tended to lose heart and flee with less prompting than video games or books will have one believe. This did not mean that battles did not cause huge casualties to the losing side (another reason why battles were uncommon). When a battle is lost, the winning army pursues the losing army almost without exception, and it is in this pursuit that the lion’s share of casualties occur. Cavalry being the chief instrument of this pursuit, the winners ride down the fleeing losers, who without cohesion or leadership are struck down in small groups until usually darkness, or natural features, stop the slaughter. This is one of the reasons battles are usually fought in the morning: more time to chase people down. An illustrative example of this phenomenon is Alexander the Great, who indeed never lost a major battle, and suffered TREMENDOUSLY low casualty rates among his forces precisely because of this fact.
To summarize: people in the past didn’t know what sanitation is, and battles end before most of the deaths actually happen.
#3: Battles Are Historically UncommonNapoleon is the real game-changer here. He pushed for battles, breaking from the Frederick the Great model of positioning, sieges and intimidation. After Napoleon, and his apostles Jomini and Clausewitz, everything changed, but that is a different post entirely. Historically, the battle is a universally rare thing. It may be more common in some eras than others, but they are always less common than sieges, with very few, but important, exceptions. All the time that a medieval campaign was being conducted, sieges were happening at every major settlement. Sieges were unavoidable by the defender: cities cannot move, and armies can. Therefore, any army that wants to conduct a siege, and is large enough to conduct one, can. Fortified points were bases for the enemy that could not be left alone, they were part of the logistical chain, and they were the seats of regional governance, and thus, valuable to attackers.
They were also valuable to defenders. A defending force is much better off with a great curtain of stone to stand on/behind, with warm shelter, clean water and food stores to hand. As such, a defending commander would very much like to stay in one, rather than meeting his enemy in the field.
And that leads to my final point on this matter, which can be followed up on with a rather good video by the usually-reliable Lindybeige (
youtube.com/watch?v=7IO-CooA4_Y). A pitched battle in the pre-modern world will almost never happen if both sides do not want it to happen. Ambushes happened, sure, the Teutonberg forest being the premier ancient example, but they were very hard and relied on good intelligence on one side and bad intelligence on the other side, which was remarkably uncommon. Battles are INCREDIBLY risky, and determined not only by the comparative merits of opposing forces and commander but frequently by luck, at least in some part. A defending force that is not absolutely confident in itself can usually retreat behind those walls they built for just such a purpose.
Of course, gunpowder helped change this, but with even with Vauban’s considerable innovations ignored, a defending force can always sally forth after a siege has been conducted, and before that, big walls and good supplies are a considerable boon to defending troops.
Battles can be forced, as Napoleon was so good at doing, and this was when battles happened without the wishes of both sides, but these situations where a defender was for some reason forced from his specially-constructed fortifications were rare, and as such, battles were fairly rare.
The exception to this argument is when armies move at different speeds, which happened only very rarely during the ancient world. The chief example is of course the Mongol hoards, or other steppe forces who reached strategic speeds not equaled until the truly modern period. Steppe forces, cavalry-bound as they were, were excellent at forcing battles, and were rather good at winning them, and as such their number of battles was very, very, high.
But even them, with all their battle-forcing capability, were still excellent at siegecraft. Because even once the battle is won entirely, there are all these fortifications which have to be besieged one at a time. And these sieges will always outnumber the amount of battles in the ancient world.
#4: Artillery is both and offensive and defensive weapon, and decided historical battlesNapoleon understood that, in his day, artillery won battles. He was famous for using it, and it brought him brilliant success at Jena, Austerlitz and the pyramids. Artillery was the deciding factor in battles from the days of Gustavus Adolphus all the way to the fields of Flanders in World War 1, and has was and still is used in many capacities.
Artillery started far too large to maneuver, and far too unreliable to be a major force in the ways of war. Artillery’s first real debut on the stage of history was when it battered down the walls of Constantinople, bearing its riches to the Turks. It developed in leaps and bounds, until during the Thirty Years War it became reliable enough to be safe for the crews and light enough to move around the battlefield with the troops.
Guns vary in weight, and the larger the bore the more powerful they are. The granularities of the use of artillery is a whole book unto itself, but there are important things to make note of that can be covered in this short form.
Most artillery was not kept in a grand battery on the battlefield. In sieges, guns were kept as far from the walls as could be afforded, but on the battlefield most artillery pieces were placed in front of infantry. This seems counter-productive: surely valuable artillery pieces and their defenseless crews should be screened from enemy cavalry or musket-fire? The reality is different. Artillery before the ~1840s fired something called canister shot, or a derivative thereof. Canister shot is like a modern shotgun shell: a thin canister of tin or iron containing hundreds of small metal balls, that when fired spread out in a deadly cone. The range for canister shot was much, much longer than the effective ranges of musketfire, and as such cannon would lead infantry and fire into the enemy’s ranks to great effect.
Cavalry were even more vulnerable. Canister shot proved excellent at stopping horsemen from attacking by decimating horses and riders alike, and even if cavalry managed to clear the crews from the guns, to dismount and spike them would be nothing short of suicide, since the cannon were almost always within musket range of friendly infantry.
Rifling changed this: all of a sudden the effective range of infantry fire was 500 yards rather than 100 yards, and as such canister shot was forced to retreat behind the lines of infantry. Fortunately for artillerists, cannon developed in leaps and bounds, it too being rifled and equipped with new complex shells to be fired more accurately. By 1871, German Krupp cannon were the dominant force on the battlefields of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian war, with light cannon trailing infantry and raining shrapnel while miles behind heavy guns fired the same shells, which exploded above enemy infantry, spreading the same cones of leaden death their predecessors 70 years ago had done.
In fact, artillery, though it started to change after small arms, so outpaced it's small contemporary that its heyday, WW1, in which it utterly decided conflicts until the end of the war, was still to come after its already proud showing at Sedan.
#5: Overrated ways of fighting: Horse Archers, Katanas, and the Longbow Let’s get the most controversial out of the way first: the katana is a rather bad sword, at least compared to its contemporaries. The Japanese isles are cursed with rather bad-quality iron, and a lack of understanding of the steel-making methods of the west, and as such the Japanese made steel which needed to be pattern-welded, by folding the sword and hammering it long. This is not some special way of making swords: the Geats [I think, I may be wrong. Some ancient Scandinavian tribe, regardless], made swords in a similar method, though their way of working impurities out of steel was rather more refined, and invented a millennia and a half before.
Regardless, even ignoring the rather crap material, the katana is not much good at most things. It was never a battlefield weapon, with the real work being done by spears or bows. The katana does not permit the use of a shield, and its handguard [one of the most important parts of a sword] is rather lacking. It is rather short for being a two handed blade, and is remarkably fat. It has very, very poor armor piercing capabilities. It’s point is not excellent for thrusting, either, and when faced with the Portugese fencers in the 1600s it was trounced by the combination of rapier and main gauche. It is an excellent draw-cutting weapon, and many were works of great artistry.
It was a mark of station. It was the brand that showed the world you are a Samurai, and should be respected. It was also a weapon of extreme conservatism, becoming a religious symbol and a cultural icon, not changing significantly for nearly 600 years. As much as one might want them to be the best things ever, they are simply not. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either enamored with their considerable beauty or trying to sell you something.
The other two items are rather more difficult, as both were rather effective. However, like everything, they had their pros and cons, and were situationally extremely viable.
The English Longbow won fame at the Battle of Agincourt, and rightfully so. It did its job rather well. Its job, however, was not to kill enemy knights. The longbow was excellent at out-ranging enemy crossbowmen, hurting well-armored knights, and most importantly killing horses. There are no accounts of a longbow arrow piercing a suit of plate armor’s strong points that are reliable. There is one account that I am aware of, in which a longbow arrow pierces through a visor, but the chronicler makes it very clear this was an exceptionally unlikely event, and one that surprised those who saw it.
Agincourt was a battle that was famed for having a mass French Knight charge, and an extraordinary amount of prisoners taken. These do not make sense if the longbow could pierce plat armor. Like I said before, people in history did not do what did not work, they learned lessons. The longbow ended the famous charge by knocking out knights and most importantly killing horses, which threw their riders to the ground [incidentally, plate armor only weighs like 30 pounds: it is very easy to move around in, unless you are trying to swim. Getting up in plate armor, excluding sets made for jousts for reasons I’ll not cover here, is rather easy.] These knights were then captured while the longbowmen made short work of the unarmored soldiers to the rear.
The horse archer is a very good weapon system. It is fast, and has an excellent ability to fight at range. The steppe tribes famous for them were born in the saddle, and were masters of the form. However, there are many issues with the horse archer.
Besides the logistical problems, horse archers cannot do 2 very important things. They cannot outrange foot archers, and they cannot hold territory. They are reliant on avoiding combat, and thus can be thrust off territory, and the fact that the rider is mounted prohibits the large bows that footmen can use, hurting the range dramatically. Ironically, the English longbow would be the best weapon to use against horse archers.
Horse archers did great things, but they rely on not engaging in a straight up fight with the enemy. When this is not possible, they get wrecked. The Russians kicked the steppe nomads out of Russia by advancing slowly, building forts, and eventually forcing the steppe horse archers to fight or be shoved out of Russia slowly. The Russians had cannon which could outrange the horse archers, and were safe behind their quickly-built forts from enemy missiles.
Napoleon fought them on the open field, and once again, canister shot proved far more effective at longer ranges than the horse archer bows, and musketfire let infantry reach out and touch the horse archer, spelling their doom.
Horse archers were expensive [horses were expensive, and the archers needed a few each], they required extensive training, and were limited to harassing warfare or supporting other armed formations. They were good at all of these things, but are not the be-all end-all of medieval combat.
Ask questions, pout out mistakes, and give feedback, please. I'm alway looking to learn and help learn, and feedback is excellent motivation for me, both good and bad.
#6 Firearms are really rather good: their obvious benefits and less-obvious drawbacks.NB: This section is intended for generalities about firearms which are usually true, but have not always been so. Everything here is true for modern firearms, and is at least entirely the case as far back as the minie ball. I would be willing to stick by all of this going back to the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus or Jan Zizka, but the points herein become less true as firearms get older.
Firearms are really rather good. There is a very good reason every army uses guns rather than bows, pikes or cavalry. Modern assault rifles can punch a hole in dime from a very long range, very quickly, and with much more killing potential than some bloke with a sword. A firearm is, in almost every case, the best weapon for the job. The biggest exception is at the closest of close ranges, but even then: a handgun will do wonders against some fuck with a knife.
The chief advantages of firearms are myriad. First, they are very loud. This is often a good thing, especially on the battlefields of before circa-1865, when mass infantry had to be scared off the field, and when horses had to be dissuaded from charging said infantry. The sound of a firearm is a scary thing, and as will be mentioned, morale wins battles.
Firearms are easy to use. The use of a crossbow is hard to teach. The mastery of a traditional bow is a lifetime’s work. There is certainly skill in using firearms, and in the modern age the importance of training on soldiers has only ever increased, and at a frightening pace, but if you hand someone a gun they will learn to be proficient, if not skillful, much, MUCH quicker than any other weapon with the possible exception of the spear. This is more true when the ability for a soldier to aim their weapon was less important thanks to the inaccuracy of the weapon, and their targets were blocks of hundreds of men in close formation. (It should be noted that soldiers needed to become better trained in general as gunpowder influenced tactics, but the point here is that the actual use of the weapon is easy to learn)
Firearms are very deadly. People do not always die when they get shot. Adrenaline does bizarre, counter-intuitive things to a person, and in many cases enemies are not immediately debilitated like shown in movies. It also usually takes a bit for someone to die once they’ve been shot, but that is a point for a later entry. A bullet will take someone out of the fight very reliably, and will do a great deal of damage to whoever is hit. Bullets also are excellent at piercing armor, much better than other weapon systems. The English longbow may not have been able to reliably pierce plate armor, but the gun sure could, and was the chief reason for the elimination of plate harnesses from the face of warfare.
Firearms kill people from distances at which you cannot be stabbed/hit/sliced by your opponent. This does not need explanation.
You cannot avoid an accurately-shot bullet. Bullets move very, very fast. How fast depends on the weight and shape of the projectile and the charge behind it, but even subsonic rounds cannot be seen by the eye fast enough to be reacted to, let alone blocked, or dodged. Normal humans, or even truly exceptional humans, cannot get out of the way of a bullet, nor can they cut them in half. A point to remember, if a bullet hits most shields, it will actually be just as bad for the person holding it whether or not it penetrates [which it almost always will]. Wood shields splinter, and those splinters kill. Most naval deaths to cannon-fire in the age of sail were from splinters of wood. Metal spalls: flakes of metal from hard steel especially break off and work just like wood shrapnel. This spalling was one of the main reasons the T-34 was a pretty terrible tank to serve in (and a rather poor tank in general, which I might address later).
This is all fairly intuitive, but it bears repeating. Devil May Cry, or John Woo, or whatever, seems to have convinced many people here that swords can do well against firearms. There are also the perennial stories of “muh katana glorious Nippon steel cuts through gun barrel/cuts bullet”, which are simply not possible, or at least so astronomically unlikely that it could not be called reliable. Though, unlikely things do happen. Frequently on battlefields bullets which collided mid-air are found, so who knows when something with million-to-one odds will happen. (one time per million, probably)
So, the drawbacks. Until the bayonet, firearm-equipped soldiers were very vulnerable in melee. And, in the early days of the firearm, the bayonet plugged the barrel, usually being unable to remove until after the battle. Firearms are also very expensive, and had to make. At least, compared to swords. A sword is a sharpened iron bar, a spear a point of metal on a stick. A firearm is a piece of complicated machinery which requires more man hours to create, and thus costs more. They also shoot bullets, which cost money.
On this note, the chief drawback of firearms is logistics. As technology has improved, the drain of resources each soldier has on his nation has increased, and firearms were the real beginning of this trend. Guns need ammo, and especially in the case of artillery, this ammo is heavy, and you really do need a lot of it. The guns themselves are heavy also, and until the invention of the internal combustion engine a long artillery train meant a very limited strategic speed, something which was obviously acceptable to those who wanted cannon on the battlefield, but is absolutely still an important consideration.
Points to be made later:Armor is much better than you think, and fights in armor look very odd to the uninitiated.
Historic battles are won by morale
The way people fight is defined by their culture.
Battles are won off of the battlefield: tactics are less important than one might think.
How tanks are actually used and why Kursk is a bad example
The myth of the short war, hopefully featuring quotes from Professor John Lynn
Concentration vs dispersion and the eternal debate therein
Discipline: the most important factor of war and the chief change of the Military Renaissance
Jomini vs Clausewitz: Napoleon's Inheritors.