What formation obtained the maximum effort from the Greek army?

What methods caused the soldiers of a Roman army to fight most effectively?

The first question admits of discussion. The Roman solved the second.

The Roman was not essentially brave. He did not produce any warrior of the type of Alexander. It is acknowledged that the valorous impetuosity of the barbarians, Gauls, Cimbri, Teutons, made him tremble. But to the glorious courage of the Greeks, to the natural bravery of the Gauls he opposed a strict sense of duty, secured by a terrible discipline in the masses. It was inspired in the officers by a sentiment of the strongest patriotism.

The discipline of the Greeks was secured by exercises and rewards; the discipline of the Romans was secured also by the fear of death. They put to death with the club; they decimated their cowardly or traitorous units.

In order to conquer enemies that terrified his men, a Roman general heightened their morale, not by enthusiasm but by anger. He made the life of his soldiers miserable by excessive work and privations. He stretched the force of discipline to the point where, at a critical instant, it must break or expend itself on the enemy. Under similar circumstances, a Greek general caused Tyrtaeus to sing. [3] It would have been curious to see two such forces opposed.

But discipline alone does not constitute superior tactics. Man in battle, I repeat, is a being in whom the instinct of self-preservation dominates, at certain moments, all other sentiments. Discipline has for its aim the domination of that instinct by a greater terror. But it cannot dominate it completely. I do not deny the glorious examples where discipline and devotion have elevated man above himself. But if these examples are glorious, it is because they are rare; if they are admired, it is because they are considered exceptions, and the exception proves the rule.

The determination of that instant where man loses his reasoning power and becomes instinctive is the crowning achievement in the science of combat. In general, here was the strength of the Roman tactics. In particular cases such successful determination makes Hannibals and Caesars.

Combat took place between masses in more or less deep formation commanded and supervised by leaders with a definite mission. The combat between masses was a series of individual conflicts, juxtaposed, with the front rank man alone fighting. If he fell, if he was wounded or worn out, he was replaced by the man of the second rank who had watched and guarded his flanks. This procedure continued up to the last rank. Man is always physically and morally fatigued in a hand-to-hand tournament where he employs all his energy.

These contests generally lasted but a short time. With like morale, the least fatigued always won.

During this engagement of the first two ranks, the one fighting, the other watching close at hand, the men of the rear ranks waited inactive at two paces distance for their turn in the combat, which would come only when their predecessors were killed, wounded or exhausted. They were impressed by the violent fluctuations of the struggle of the first rank. They heard the clashes of the blows and distinguished, perhaps, those that sank into the flesh. They saw the wounded, the exhausted crawl through the intervals to go to the rear. Passive spectators of danger, they were forced to await its terrible approach. These men were subjected to the poignant emotions of combat without being supported by the animation of the struggle. They were thus placed under the moral pressure of the greatest of anxieties. Often they could not stand it until their turn came; they gave way.

The best tactics, the best dispositions were those that made easiest a succession of efforts by assuring the relief by ranks of units in action, actually engaging only the necessary units and keeping the rest as a support or reserve outside of the immediate sphere of moral tension. The superiority of the Romans lay in such tactics and in the terrible discipline which prepared and assured the execution. By their resistance against fatigue which rude and continual tasks gave them and by the renewal of combatants in combat, they secured greater continuity of effort than any others. [4]

The Gauls did not reason. Seeing only the inflexible line, they bound themselves together, thus rendering relief impracticable. They believed, as did the Greeks, in the power of the mass and impulse of deep files, and did not understand that deep files were powerless to push the first ranks forward as they recoiled in the face of death. It is a strange error to believe that the last ranks will go to meet that which made the first ones fall back. On the contrary, the contagion of recoil is so strong that the stopping of the head means the falling back of the rear!

The Greeks, also, certainly had reserves and supports in the second half of their dense ranks. But the idea of mass dominated. They placed these supports and reserves too near, forgetting the essential, man.

The Romans believed in the power of mass, but from the moral point of view only. They did not multiply the files in order to add to the mass, but to give to the combatants the confidence of being aided and relieved. The number of ranks was calculated according to the moral pressure that the last ranks could sustain.

There is a point beyond which man cannot bear the anxiety of combat in the front lines without being engaged. The Romans did not so increase the number of ranks as to bring about this condition. The Greeks did not observe and calculate so well. They sometimes brought the number of files up to thirty-two and their last files, which in their minds, were doubtless their reserves, found themselves forcibly dragged into the material disorder of the first ones.

In the order by maniples in the Roman legion, the best soldiers, those whose courage had been proved by experience in battle, waited stoically, kept in the second and third lines. They were far enough away not to suffer wounds and not to be drawn in by the front line retiring into their intervals. Yet they were near enough to give support when necessary or to finish the job by advancing.

When the three separate and successive maniples of the first cohort were united in order to form the united battle cohort of Marius and of Caesar, the same brain placed the most reliable men in the last lines, i.e., the oldest. The youngest, the most impetuous, were in the first lines. The legion was not increased simply to make numbers or mass. Each had his turn in action, each man in his maniple, each maniple in its cohort, and, when the unit became a cohort, each cohort in the order of battle.

We have seen that the Roman theory dictated a depth of ranks to furnish successive lines of combatants. The genius of the general modified these established formations. If the men were inured to war, well-trained, reliable, tenacious, quick to relieve their file leaders, full of confidence in their general and their own comrades, the general diminished the depth of the files, did away with the lines even, in order to increase the number of immediate combatants by increasing the front. His men having a moral, and sometimes also a physical endurance superior to that of the adversary, the general knew that the last ranks of the latter would not, under pressure, hold sufficiently to relieve the first lines nor to forbid the relief of his own. Hannibal had a part of his infantry, the Africans, armed and drilled in the Roman way; his Spanish infantrymen had the long wind of the Spaniards of to-day; his Gallic soldiers, tried out by hardship, were in the same way fit for long efforts. Hannibal, strong with the confidence with which he inspired his people, drew up a line less deep by half than the Roman army and at Cannae hemmed in an army which had twice his number and exterminated it. Caesar at Pharsalus, for similar reasons, did not hesitate to decrease his depth. He faced double his strength in the army of Pompey, a Roman army like his own, and crushed it.

We have mentioned Cannae and Pharsalus, we shall study in them the mechanism and the morale of ancient combat, two things which cannot be separated. We cannot find better examples of battle more clearly and more impartially exhibited. This is due in one case to the clear presentation of Polybius, who obtained his information from the fugitives from Cannae, possibly even from some of the conquerors; in the other it is due to the impassive clearness of Caesar in describing the art of war.



CHAPTER III

ANALYSIS OF THE BATTLE OF CANNAE

Recital of Polybius:

"Varro placed the cavalry on the right wing, and rested it on the river; the infantry was deployed near it and on the same line, the maniples drawn close to each other, with smaller intervals than usual, and the maniples presenting more depth than front.

"The cavalry of the allies, on the left wing, completed the line, in front of which were posted the light troops. There were in that army, including the allies, eighty thousand foot and a little more than six thousand horse.

"Meanwhile Hannibal had his slingers and light troops cross the Aufidus and posted them in front of his army. The rest crossed the river at two places. He placed the Iberian and Gallic cavalry on the left wing, next the river and facing the Roman cavalry. He placed on the same line, one half of the African infantry heavily armed, the Iberian and Gallic infantry, the other half of the African infantry, and finally the Numidian cavalry which formed the right wing.

"After he had thus arrayed all his troops upon a single line, he marched to meet the enemy with the Iberian and Gallic infantry moving independently of the main body. As it was joined in a straight line with the rest, on separating, it was formed like the convex face of a crescent. This formation reduced its depth in the center. The intention of the general was to commence the battle with the Iberians and Gauls, and have them supported by the Africans.

"The latter infantry was armed like the Roman infantry, having been equipped by Hannibal with arms that had been taken from the Romans in preceding battle. Both Iberians and Gauls had shields; but their swords were quite different. The sword of the former was as fit for thrusting as for cutting while that of the Gauls only cut with the edge, and at a limited distance. These troops were drawn up as follows: the Iberians were in two bodies of troops on the wings, near the Africans; the Gauls in the center. The Gauls were nude; the Iberians in linen shirts of purple color, which to the Romans was an extraordinary and frightening spectacle. The Carthaginian army consisted of ten thousand horse and little more than forty thousand foot.

"Aemilius commanded the right of the Romans, Varro the left; the two consuls of the past year, Servilius and Attilius, were in the center. On the Carthaginian side, Hasdrubal had the left under his orders, Hanno the right, and Hannibal, who had his brother Mago with him, reserved for himself the command of the center. The two armies did not suffer from the glare of the sun when it rose, the one being faced to the South, as I remarked, and the other to the North.

"Action commenced with the light troops, which were in front of both armies. The first engagement gave advantage to neither the one nor the other. Just as soon as the Iberian and Gallic cavalry on the left approached, the conflict became hot. The Romans fought with fury and rather more like barbarians than Romans. This falling back and then returning to the charge was not according to their tactics. Scarcely did they become engaged when they leaped from their horses and each seized his adversary. In the meanwhile the Carthaginians gained the upper hand. The greater number of the Romans remained on the ground after having fought with the greatest valor. The others were pursued along the river and cut to pieces without being able to obtain quarter.

"The heavily armed infantry immediately took the place of the light troops and became engaged. The Iberians and Gauls held firm at first and sustained the shock with vigor; but they soon gave way to the weight of the legions, and, opening the crescent, turned their backs and retreated. The Romans followed them with impetuosity, and broke the Gallic line much more easily because the wings crowded toward the center where the thick of the fighting was. The whole line did not fight at the same time. The action commenced in the center because the Gauls, being drawn up in the form of a crescent, left the wings far behind them, and presented the convex face of the crescent to the Romans. The latter then followed the Gauls and Iberians closely, and crowded towards the center, to the place where the enemy gave way, pushing ahead so forcibly that on both flanks they engaged the heavily armed Africans. The Africans on the right, in swinging about from right to left, found themselves all along the enemy's flank, as well as those on the left which made the swing from left to right. The very circumstances of the action showed them what they had to do. This was what Hannibal had foreseen; that the Romans pursuing the Gauls must be enveloped by the Africans. The Romans then, no longer able to keep their formation [5] were forced to defend themselves man to man and in small groups against those who attacked them on front and flank.[6]

"Aemilius had escaped the carnage on the right wing at the commencement of the battle. Wishing, according to the orders he had given, to be everywhere, and seeing that it was the legionary infantry that would decide the fate of the battle, he pushed his horse through the fray, warded off or killed every one who opposed him, and sought at the same time to reanimate the ardor of the Roman soldiers. Hannibal, who during the entire battle remained in the conflict, did the same in his army.

"The Numidian cavalry on the right wing, without doing or suffering much, was useful on that occasion by its manner of fighting; for, pouncing upon the enemy on all sides, they gave him enough to do so that he might not have time to think of helping his own people. Indeed, when the left wing, where Hasdrubal commanded, had routed almost all the cavalry of the Roman right wing, and a junction had been effected with the Numidians, the auxiliary cavalry did not wait to be attacked but gave way.

"Hasdrubal is said to have done something which proved his prudence and his ability, and which contributed to the success of the battle. As the Numidians were in great number, and as these troops were never more useful than when one was in flight before them, he gave them the fugitives to pursue, and led the Iberian and Gallic cavalry in a charge to aid the African infantry. He pounced on the Romans from the rear, and having bodies of cavalry charge into the melee at several places, he gave new strength to the Africans and made the arms drop from the hands of the adversaries. It was then that L. Aemilius, a citizen who during his whole life, as in this last conflict, had nobly fulfilled his duties to his country, finally succumbed, covered with mortal wounds.

"The Romans continued fighting, giving battle to those who were surrounding them. They resisted to the last. But as their numbers diminished more and more, they were finally forced into a smaller circle, and all put to the sword. Attilius and Servilius, two persons of great probity, who had distinguished themselves in the combat as true Romans, were also killed on that occasion.

"While this carnage was taking place in the center, the Numidians pursued the fugitives of the left wing. Most of them were cut down, others were thrown under their horses; some of them escaped to Venusia. Among these was Varro, the Roman general, that abominable man whose administration cost his country so dearly. Thus ended the battle of Cannae, a battle where prodigies of valor were seen on both sides.

"Of the six thousand horse of which the Roman cavalry was composed, only seventy Romans reached Venusia with Varro, and, of the auxiliary cavalry, only three hundred men found shelter in various towns. Ten thousand foot were taken prisoners, but they were not in the battle. [7] Of troops in battle only about three thousand saved themselves in the nearby town; the balance, numbering about twenty thousand, died on the field of honor." [8]

Hannibal lost in that action in the neighborhood of four thousand Gauls, fifteen hundred Iberians and Africans and two hundred horses.

Let us analyze:

The light infantry troops were scattered in front of the armies and skirmished without result. The real combat commenced with the attack on the legitimate cavalry of the Roman left wing by the cavalry of Hannibal.

There, says Polybius, the fight grew thickest, the Romans fought with fury and much more like barbarians than like Romans; because this falling back, then returning to the charge was not according to their tactics; scarcely did they become engaged when they leaped from their horses and each seized his adversary, etc., etc.

This means that the Roman cavalry did not habitually fight hand to hand like the infantry. It threw itself in a gallop on the enemy cavalry. When within javelin range, if the enemy's cavalry had not turned in the opposite direction on seeing the Roman cavalry coming, the latter prudently slackened its gait, threw some javelins, and, making an about by platoons, took to the rear for the purpose of repeating the charge. The hostile cavalry did the same, and such an operation might be renewed several times, until one of the two, persuaded that his enemy was going to attack him with a dash, turned in flight and was pursued to the limit.

That day, the fight becoming hot, they became really engaged; the two cavalry bodies closed and man fought man. The fight was forced, however; as there was no giving way on one side or the other, it was necessary actually to attack. There was no space for skirmishing. Closed in by the Aufidus and the legions, the Roman cavalry could not operate (Livy). The Iberian and Gallic cavalry, likewise shut in and double the Roman cavalry, was forced into two lines; it could still less maneuver. This limited front served the Romans, inferior in number, who could thus be attacked only in front, that is by an equal number. It rendered, as we have said, contact inevitable. These two cavalry bodies placed chest to chest had to fight close, had to grapple man to man, and for riders mounted on simple saddle cloths and without stirrup, embarrassed with a shield, a lance, a saber or a sword, to grapple man to man is to grapple together, fall together and fight on foot. That is what happened, as the account of Titus Livius explains it in completing that of Polybius. The same thing happened every time that two ancient cavalry organizations really had to fight, as the battle of the Tecinus showed. This mode of action was all to the advantage of the Romans, who were well-armed and well-trained therein. Note the battle of Tecinus. The Roman light infantry was cut to pieces, but the elite of the Roman cavalry, although surprised and surrounded, fought a-foot and on horse back, inflicted more casualties on the cavalry of Hannibal than they suffered, and brought back from the field their wounded general. The Romans besides were well led by Consul Aemilius, a man of head and heart, who, instead of fleeing when his cavalry was defeated, went himself to die in the ranks of the infantry.

Meanwhile we see thirty to thirty-four hundred Roman cavalrymen nearly exterminated by six to seven thousand Gauls and Iberians who did not lose even two hundred men. Hannibal's entire cavalry lost but two hundred men on that day.

How can that be explained?

Because most of them died without dreaming of selling their lives and because they took to flight during the fight of the first line and were struck with impunity from behind. The words of Polybius: "Most of them remained on the spot after having defended themselves with the utmost valor," were consecrated words before Polybius. The conquered always console themselves with their bravery and conquerors never contradict. Unfortunately, the figures are there. The facts of the battle are found in the account, which sounds no note of desperation. The Gallic and Roman cavalry had each already made a brave effort by attacking each other from the front. This effort was followed by the terrible anxiety of close combat. The Roman cavalrymen, who from behind the combatants on foot were able to see the second Gallic line on horse back, gave ground. Fear very quickly made the disengaged ranks take to their horses, wheel about like a flock of sheep in a stampede, and abandon their comrades and themselves to the mercy of the conquerors.

Yet, these horsemen were brave men, the elite of the army, noble knights, guards of the consuls, volunteers of noble families.

The Roman cavalry defeated, Hasdrubal passed his Gallic and Iberian troopers behind Hannibal's army, to attack the allied cavalry till then engaged by the Numidians. [9] The cavalry of the allies did not await the enemy. It turned its back immediately; pursued to the utmost by the Numidians who were numerous (three thousand), and excellent in pursuit, it was reduced to some three hundred men, without a struggle.

After the skirmishing of the light infantry troops, the foot-soldiers of the line met. Polybius has explained to us how the Roman infantry let itself be enclosed by the two wings of the Carthaginian army and taken in rear by Hasdrubal's cavalry. It is also probable that the Gauls and Iberians, repulsed in the first part of the action and forced to turn their backs, returned, aided by a portion of the light infantry, to the charge upon the apex of the wedge formed by the Romans and completed their encirclement.

But we know, as will be seen further on in examples taken from Caesar, that the ancient cavalryman was powerless against formed infantry, even against the isolated infantryman possessing coolness. The Iberian and Gallic cavalry ought to have found behind the Roman army the reliable triarians penned in, armed, with pikes. [10] It might have held them in check, forced them to give battle, but done them little or no harm as long as the ranks were preserved.

We know that of Hannibal's infantry only twelve thousand at the most were equipped with Roman weapons. We know that his Gallic and Iberian infantry, protected by plain shields, had to fall back, turn, and probably lost in this part of the action very nearly the four thousand men, which the battle cost them.

Let us deduct the ten thousand men that had gone to the attack of Hannibal's camp and the five thousand which the latter must have left there. There remain:

A mass of seventy thousand men surrounded and slaughtered by twenty-eight thousand foot soldiers, or, counting Hasdrubal's cavalry, by thirty-six thousand men, by half their number.

It may be asked how seventy thousand men could have let themselves be slaughtered, without defense, by thirty-six thousand men less well-armed, when each combatant had but one man before him. For in close combat, and especially in so large an envelopment, the number of combatants immediately engaged was the same on each side. Then there were neither guns nor rifles able to pierce the mass by a converging fire and destroy it by the superiority of this fire over diverging fire. Arrows were exhausted in the first period of the action. It seems that, by their mass, the Romans must have presented an insurmountable resistance, and that while permitting the enemy to wear himself out against it, that mass had only to defend itself in order to repel assailants.

But it was wiped out.

In pursuit of the Gauls and Iberians, who certainly were not able, even with like morale, to stand against the superior arms of the legionaries, the center drove all vigorously before it. The wings, in order to support it and not to lose the intervals, followed its movement by a forward oblique march and formed the sides of the salient. The entire Roman army, in wedge order, marched to victory. Suddenly the wings were attacked by the African battalions; the Gauls, the Iberians, [11] who had been in retreat, returned to the fight. The horsemen of Hasdrubal, in the rear, attacked the reserves. [12] Everywhere there was combat, unexpected, unforeseen. At the moment when they believed themselves conquerors, everywhere, in front, to the right, to the left, in the rear, the Roman soldiers heard the furious clamor of combat. [13]

The physical pressure was unimportant. The ranks that they were fighting had not half their own depth. The moral pressure was enormous. Uneasiness, then terror, took hold of them; the first ranks, fatigued or wounded, wanted to retreat; but the last ranks, frightened, withdrew, gave way and whirled into the interior of the wedge. Demoralized and not feeling themselves supported, the ranks engaged followed them, and the routed mass let itself be slaughtered. The weapons fell from their hands, says Polybius.

The analysis of Cannae is ended. Before passing to the recital of Pharsalus, we cannot resist the temptation, though the matter be a little foreign to the subject, to say a few words about the battles of Hannibal.

These battles have a particular character of stubbornness explained by the necessity for overcoming the Roman tenacity. It may be said that to Hannibal victory was not sufficient. He must destroy. Consequently he always tried to cut off all retreat for the enemy. He knew that with Rome, destruction was the only way of finishing the struggle.

He did not believe in the courage of despair in the masses; he believed in terror and he knew the value of surprise in inspiring it.

But it was not the losses of the Romans that was the most surprising thing in these engagements. It was the losses of Hannibal. Who, before Hannibal or after him, has lost as many as the Romans and yet been conqueror? To keep troops in action, until victory comes, with such losses, requires a most powerful hand.

He inspired his people with absolute confidence. Almost always his center, where he put his Gauls, his food for powder, was broken. But that did not seem to disquiet or trouble either him or his men.

It is true that his center was pierced by the Romans who were escaping the pressure of the two Carthaginian wings, that they were in disorder because they had fought and pushed back the Gauls, whom Hannibal knew how to make fight with singular tenacity. They probably felt as though they had escaped from a press, and, happy to be out of it, they thought only of getting further away from the battle and by no means of returning to the flanks or the rear of the enemy. In addition, although nothing is said about it, Hannibal had doubtless taken precautions against their ever returning to the conflict.

All that is probably true. The confidence of the Gallic troops, so broken through, is none the less surprising.

Hannibal, in order to inspire his people with such confidence, had to explain to them before the combat his plan of action, in such a way that treachery could not injure him. He must have warned his troops that the center would be pierced, but that he was not worried about it, because it was a foreseen and prepared affair. His troops, indeed, did not seem to be worried about it.

Let us leave aside his conception of campaigns, his greatest glory in the eyes of all. Hannibal was the greatest general of antiquity by reason of his admirable comprehension of the morale of combat, of the morale of the soldier whether his own or the enemy's. He shows his greatness in this respect in all the different incidents of war, of campaign, of action. His men were not better than the Roman soldiers. They were not as well armed, one-half less in number. Yet he was always the conqueror. He understood the value of morale. He had the absolute confidence of his people. In addition he had the art, in commanding an army, of always securing the advantage of morale.

In Italy he had, it is true, cavalry superior to that of the Romans. But the Romans had a much superior infantry. Had conditions been reversed, he would have changed his methods. The instruments of battle are valuable only if one knows how to use them, and Pompey, we shall see, was beaten at Pharsalus precisely because he had a cavalry superior to that of Caesar.

If Hannibal was vanquished at Zuma, it was because genius cannot accomplish the impossible. Zuma proved again the perfect knowledge of men that Hannibal possessed and his influence over the troops. His third line, the only one where he really had reliable soldiers, was the only one that fought. Beset on all sides, it slew two thousand Romans before it was conquered.

We shall see later what a high state of morale, what desperate fighting, this meant.



CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS OF THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUS, AND SOME CHARACTERISTIC EXAMPLES

Here is Caesar's account of the battle of Pharsalus.

"As Caesar approached Pompey's camp, he noted that Pompey's army was placed in the following order:

"On the left wing were the 2nd and 3rd Legions which Caesar had sent to Pompey at the commencement of the operation, pursuant to a decree of the Senate, and which Pompey had kept. Scipio occupied the center with the legions from Syria. The legion from Cilicia was placed on the right wing together with the Spanish cohorts of Afranius. Pompey regarded the troops already mentioned as the most reliable of his army. Between them, that is, between the center and the wings, he had distributed the remainder, consisting of one hundred and ten complete cohorts in line. These were made up of forty-five thousand men, two thousand of whom were veterans, previously rewarded for their services, who had come to join him. He had scattered them throughout the whole line of battle. Seven cohorts had been left to guard his camp and the neighboring forts. His right wing rested on a stream with inaccessible banks; and, for that reason, he had placed all his seven thousand cavalry, [14] his archers and his slingers (forty-two hundred men) on the left wing.

"Caesar, keeping his battle order, [15] had placed the 10th Legion on the right wing, and on the left, the 9th, which was much weakened by the combats of Dyrrachium. To the latter he added the 8th in order to form something like a full legion from the two, and ordered them to support one another. He had eighty very completely organized cohorts in line, approximately twenty-two thousand men. Two cohorts had been left to guard the camp. Caesar had entrusted the command of the left wing to Anthony, that of the right to P. Sylla, and of the center to C. Domitius. He placed himself in front of Pompey. But when he saw the disposition of the opposing army, he feared that his right wing was going to be enveloped by Pompey's numerous cavalry. He therefore withdrew immediately from his third line a cohort from each legion (six cohorts), in order to form a fourth line, placed it to receive Pompey's cavalry and showed it what it had to do. Then he explained fully to these cohorts that the success of the day depended on their valor. At the same time he ordered the entire army, and in particular the third line, not to move without his command, reserving to himself authority to give the signal by means of the standard when he thought it opportune.

"Caesar then went through his lines to exhort his men to do well, and seeing them full of ardor, had the signal given.

"Between the two armies there was only enough space to give each the necessary distance for the charge. But Pompey had given his men orders to await the charge without stirring, and to let Caesar's army break its ranks upon them. He did this, they say, on the advice of C. Triarius, as a method of meeting the force of the first dash of Caesar's men. He hoped that their battle order would be broken up and his own soldiers, well disposed in ranks, would have to fight with sword in hand only men in disorder. He thought that this formation would best protect his troops from the force of the fall of heavy javelins. At the same time he hoped that Caesar's soldiers charging at the run would be out of breath and overcome with fatigue at the moment of contact. Pompey's immobility was an error because there is in every one an animation, a natural ardor that is instilled by the onset to the combat. Generals ought not to check but to encourage this ardor. It was for this reason that, in olden times, troops charged with loud shouts, all trumpets sounding, in order to frighten the enemy and encourage themselves.

"In the meanwhile, our soldiers, at the given signal advanced with javelins in hand; but having noticed that Pompey's soldiers were not running towards them, and taught by experience and trained by previous battles, they slowed down and stopped in the midst of their run, in order not to arrive out of breath and worn out. Some moments after, having taken up their run again, they launched their javelins, and immediately afterwards, according to Caesar's order drew their swords. The Pompeians conducted themselves perfectly. They received the darts courageously; they did not stir before the dash of the legions; they preserved their lines, and, having dispatched their javelins, drew their swords.

"At the same time Pompey's entire cavalry dashed from the left wing, as had been ordered, and the mass of his archers ran from all parts of the line. Our cavalry did not await the charge, but fell back a little. Pompey's cavalry became more pressing, and commenced to reform its squadrons and turn our exposed flank. As soon as Caesar saw this intention, he gave the signal to the fourth line of six cohorts. This line started directly and, standards low, they charged the Pompeian cavalry with such vigor and resolution that not a single man stood his ground. All wheeled about and not only withdrew in full flight, but gained the highest mountains as fast as they could. They left the archers and slingers without their defense and protection. These were all killed. At the same time the cohorts moved to the rear of Pompey's left wing, which was still fighting and resisting, and attacked it in rear.

"Meanwhile, Caesar had advanced his third line, which up to this moment had been kept quietly at its post. These fresh troops relieved those that were fatigued. Pompey's men, taken in rear, could no longer hold out and all took to flight.

"Caesar was not in error when he put these cohorts in a fourth line, particularly charged with meeting the cavalry, and urged them to do well, since their effort would bring victory. They repulsed the cavalry. They cut to pieces the slingers and archers. They turned Pompey's left wing, and this decided the day.

"When Pompey saw his cavalry repulsed and that portion of the army upon which he had counted the most seized with terror, he had little confidence in the rest. He quit the battle and galloped to his camp, where, addressing his centurions who were guarding the praetorian gate, he told them in a loud voice heard by the soldiers: 'Guard well the camp and defend it vigorously in case of attack; as for myself, I am going to make the tour of the other gates and assure their defense.'

"That said, he retired to the praetorium, despairing of success and awaiting events.

"After having forced the enemy to flee to his entrenchments Caesar, persuaded that he ought not to give the slightest respite to a terrorized enemy, incited his soldiers to profit by their advantage and attack the camp. Although overcome by the heat, for the struggle was prolonged into the middle of the day, they did not object to greater fatigue and obeyed. The camp was at first well defended by the cohorts on watch and especially by the Thracians and barbarians. The men who had fled from the battle, full of fright and overcome with fatigue, had nearly all thrown their arms and colors away and thought rather more of saving themselves than of defending the camp. Even those who defended the entrenchments were unable long to resist the shower of arrows. Covered with wounds, they abandoned the place, and led by their centurions and tribunes, they took refuge as quickly as they could in the high mountains near the camp.

"Caesar lost in this battle but two hundred soldiers, but nearly thirty of the bravest centurions were killed therein. Of Pompey's army fifteen thousand perished, and more than twenty-four thousand took refuge in the mountains. As Caesar had invested the mountains with entrenchments, they surrendered the following day."

Such is Caesar's account. His action is so clearly shown that there is scarcely any need of comment.

Initially Caesar's formation was in three lines. This was the usual battle order in the Roman armies, without being absolute, however, since Marius fought with two only. But, as we have said, according to the occasion, the genius of the chief decided the battle formation. There is no reason to suppose that Pompey's army was in a different order of battle.

To face that army, twice as large as his, Caesar, if he had had to preserve the disposition of cohorts in ten ranks, would have been able to form but one complete line, the first, and a second, half as numerous, as a reserve. But he knew the bravery of his troops, and he knew the apparent force of deep ranks to be a delusion. He did not hesitate to diminish his depth in order to keep the formation and morale of three-fifths of his troops intact, until the moment of their engagement. In order to be even more sure of the third line of his reserve, and in order to make sure that it would not be carried away by its enthusiasm for action, he paid it most particular attention. Perhaps, the text is doubtful, he kept it at double the usual distance in rear of the fighting lines.

Then, to guard against a turning movement by Pompey's seven thousand cavalry and forty-two hundred slingers and archers, a movement in which Pompey placed the hopes of victory, Caesar posted six cohorts that represented scarcely two thousand men. He had perfect confidence that these two thousand men would make Pompey's cavalry wheel about, and that his one thousand horsemen would then press the action so energetically that Pompey's cavalry would not even think of rallying. It happened so; and the forty-two hundred archers and slingers were slaughtered like sheep by these cohorts, aided, without doubt, by four-hundred foot [16] young and agile, whom Caesar mixed with his thousand horsemen and who remained at this task, leaving the horsemen, whom they had relieved, to pursue the terror-stricken fugitives.

Thus were seven thousand horsemen swept away and forty-two hundred infantrymen slaughtered without a struggle, all demoralized simply by a vigorous demonstration.

The order to await the charge, given by Pompey to his infantry, was judged too severely by Caesar. Caesar certainly was right as a general rule; the enthusiasm of the troops must not be dampened, and the initiative of the attack indeed gives to the assailant a certain moral influence. But with trusted soldiers, duly trained, one can try a stratagem, and the men of Pompey had proven their dependability by awaiting on the spot, without stirring, a vigorous enemy in good order, when they counted on meeting him in disorder and out of breath. Though it may not have led to success, the advice of Triarius was not bad. Even the conduct of Caesar's men proves this. This battle shows the confidence of the soldier in the material rank in ancient combat, as assuring support and mutual assistance.

Notwithstanding the fact the Caesar's soldiers had the initiative in the attack, the first encounter decided nothing. It was a combat on the spot, a struggle of several hours. Forty-five thousand good troops lost scarcely two hundred men in this struggle for, with like arms, courage and ability, Pompey's infantry ought not to have lost in hand-to-hand fighting more than that of Caesar's. These same forty-five thousand men gave way, and, merely between the battle field and their camp, twelve thousand were slaughtered.

Pompey's men had twice the depth of Caesar's ranks, whose attack did not make them fall back a step. On the other hand their mass was unable to repel him, and he was fought on the spot. Pompey had announced to them, says Caesar, that the enemy's army would be turned by his cavalry, and suddenly, when they were fighting bravely, step by step, they heard behind them the shouts of attack by the six cohorts of Caesar, two thousand men.

Does it seem an easy matter for such a force to ward off this menace? No. The wing taken in rear in this way loses ground; more and more the contagion of fear spreads to the rest. Terror is so great that they do not think of re-forming in their camp, which is defended for a moment only by the cohorts on guard. Just as at Cannae, their arms drop from their hands. But for the good conduct of the camp guards which permitted the fugitives to gain the mountains, the twenty-four thousand prisoners of the next day might have been corpses that very day.

Cannae and Pharsalus, are sufficient to illustrate ancient combat. Let us, however, add some other characteristic examples, which we shall select briefly and in chronological order. They will complete our data. [17]

Livy relates that in an action against some of the peoples in the neighborhood of Rome, I do not recall now which, the Romans did not dare to pursue for fear of breaking their ranks.

In a fight against the Hernici, he cites the Roman horsemen, who had not been able to do anything on horseback to break up the enemy, asking the consul for permission to dismount and fight on foot. This is true not only of Roman cavalrymen, for later on we shall see the best riders, the Gauls, the Germans, the Parthanians even, dismounting in order really to fight.

The Volsci, the Latini, the Hernici, etc., combined to fight the Romans; and as the action nears its end, Livy relates: "Finally, the first ranks having fallen, and carnage being all about them, they threw away their arms and started to scatter. The cavalry then dashed forward, with orders not to kill the isolated ones, but to harass the mass with their arrows, annoy it, to delay it, to prevent dispersion in order to permit the infantry to come up and kill."

In Hamilcar's engagement against the mercenaries in revolt, who up to then had always beaten the Carthaginians, the mercenaries endeavored to envelop him. Hamilcar surprised them by a new maneuver and defeated them. He marched in three lines: elephants, cavalry and light infantry, then heavily armed phalanxes. At the approach of the mercenaries who were marching vigorously towards him the two lines formed by the elephants, the cavalry and light infantry, turned about and moved quickly to place themselves on the flanks of the third line. The third line thus exposed met a foe which had thought only of pursuit, and which the surprise put to flight. It thus abandoned itself to the action of the elephants, horses and the light infantry who massacred the fugitives.

Hamilcar killed six thousand men, captured two thousand and lost practically nobody. It was a question as to whether he had lost a single man, since there had been no combat.

In the battle of Lake Trasimenus, the Carthaginians lost fifteen hundred men, nearly all Gauls; the Romans fifteen thousand and fifteen thousand prisoners. The battle raged for three hours.

At Zama, Hannibal had twenty thousand killed, twenty thousand prisoners; the Romans two thousand killed. This was a serious struggle in which Hannibal's third line alone fought. It gave way only under the attack on its rear and flank by the cavalry.

In the battle of Cynoscephalae, between Philip and Flaminius, Philip pressed Flaminius with his phalanx thirty-two deep. Twenty maniples took the phalanx from behind. The battle was lost by Philip. The Romans had seven hundred killed; the Macedonians eighty thousand, and five thousand prisoners.

At Pydna, Aemilius Paulus against Perseus, the phalanx marched without being stopped. But gaps occurred from the resistance that it encountered. Hundreds penetrated into the gaps in the phalanx and killed the men embarrassed with their long pikes. They were effective only when united, abreast, and at shaft's length. There was frightful disorder and butchery; twenty thousand killed, five thousand captured out of forty-four thousand engaged! The historian does not deem it worth while to speak of the Roman losses.

After the battle of Aix against the Teutons, Marius surprised the Teutons from behind. There was frightful carnage; one hundred thousand Teutons and three hundred Romans killed. [18]

In Sulla's battle of Chaeronea against Archelaus, a general of Mithridates, Sulla had about thirty thousand men, Archelaus, one hundred and ten thousand. Archelaus was beaten by being surprised from the rear. The Romans lost fourteen men, and killed their enemies until worn out in pursuit.

The battle of Orchomenus, against Archelaus, was a repetition of Chaeronea.

Caesar states that his cavalry could not fight the Britons without greatly exposing itself, because they pretended flight in order to get the cavalry away from the infantry and then, dashing from their chariots, they fought on foot with advantage.

A little less than two hundred veterans embarked on a boat which they ran aground at night so as not to be taken by superior naval forces. They reached an advantageous position and passed the night. At the break of day, Otacilius dispatched some four hundred horsemen and some infantry from the Alesio garrison against them. They defended themselves bravely; and having killed some, they rejoined Caesar's troops without having lost a single man.

In Macedonia Caesar's rear-guard was caught by Pompey's cavalry at the passage of the Genusus River, the banks of which were quite steep. Caesar opposed Pompey's cavalry five to seven thousand strong, with his cavalry of six hundred to one thousand men, among which he had taken care to intermingle four hundred picked infantrymen. They did their duty so well that, in the combat that followed, they repulsed the enemy, killed many, and fell back upon their own army without the loss of a single man.

In the battle of Thapsus in Africa, against Scipio, Caesar killed ten thousand, lost fifty, and had some wounded.

* * * * *

In the battle under the walls of Munda in Spain, against one of Pompey's sons, Caesar had eighty cohorts and eight thousand horsemen, about forty-eight thousand men. Pompey with thirteen legions had sixty thousand troops of the line, six thousand cavalry, six thousand light infantry, six thousand auxiliaries; in all, about eighty thousand men. The struggle, says the narrator, was valiantly kept up, step by step, sword to sword. [19]

In that battle of exceptional fury, which hung for a long time in the balance, Caesar had one thousand dead, five hundred wounded; Pompey thirty-three thousand dead, and if Munda had not been so near, scarcely two miles away, his losses would have been doubled. The defensive works of Munda were constructed from dead bodies and abandoned arms.

In studying ancient combats, it can be seen that it was almost always an attack from the flank or rear, a surprise action, that won battles, especially against the Romans. It was in this way that their excellent tactics might be confused. Roman tactics were so excellent that a Roman general who was only half as good as his adversary was sure to be victorious. By surprise alone they could be conquered. Note Xanthippe,—Hannibal—the unexpected fighting methods of the Gauls, etc.

Indeed Xenophon says somewhere, "Be it agreeable or terrible, the less anything is foreseen, the more does it cause pleasure or dismay. This is nowhere better illustrated than in war where every surprise strikes terror even to those who are much the stronger."

But very few fighters armed with cuirass and shield were killed in the front lines.

Hannibal in his victories lost almost nobody but Gauls, his cannon-fodder, who fought with poor shields and without armor.

Nearly always driven in, they fought, nevertheless, with a tenacity that they never showed under any other command.

Thucydides characterizes the combat of the lightly armed, by saying: "As a rule, the lightly armed of both sides took to flight." [20]

In combat with closed ranks there was mutual pressure but little loss, the men not being at liberty to strike in their own way and with all their force.

Caesar against the Nervii, saw his men, who in the midst of the action had instinctively closed in mass in order to resist the mass of barbarians, giving way under pressure. He therefore ordered his ranks and files to open, so that his legionaries, closed in mass, paralyzed and forced to give way to a very strong pressure, might be able to kill and consequently demoralize the enemy. And indeed, as soon as a man in the front rank of the Nervii fell under the blows of the legionaries, there was a halt, a falling back. Following an attack from the rear, and a melee, the defeat of the Nervii ensued. [21]



CHAPTER V

MORALE IN ANCIENT BATTLE

We now know the morale and mechanism of ancient fighting; the word melee employed by the ancients was many times stronger than the idea to be expressed; it meant a crossing of arms, not a confusion of men.

The results of battles, such as losses, suffice to demonstrate this, and an instant of reflection makes us see the error of the word melee. In pursuit it was possible to plunge into the midst of the fugitives, but in combat every one had too much need for the next man, for his neighbor, who was guarding his flanks and his back, to let himself be killed out of sheer wantonness by a sure blow from within the ranks of the enemy. [22]

In the confusion of a real melee, Caesar at Pharsalus, and Hannibal at Cannae, would have been conquered. Their shallow ranks, penetrated by the enemy, would have had to fight two against one, they would even have been taken in rear in consequence of the breaking of their ranks.

Also has there not been seen, in troops equally reliable and desperate, that mutual weariness which brings about, with tacit accord, falling back for a breathing spell on both sides in order again to take up the battle?

How can this be possible with a melee?

With the confusion and medley of combatants, there might be a mutual extermination, but there would not be any victors. How would they recognize each other? Can you conceive two mixed masses of men or groups, where every one occupied in front can be struck with impunity from the side or from behind? That is mutual extermination, where victory belongs only to survivors; for in the mix-up and confusion, no one can flee, no one knows where to flee.

After all, are not the losses we have seen on both sides demonstration that there was no real melee?

The word is, therefore, too strong; the imagination of painters' and poets' has created the melee.

This is what happened:

At a charging distance troops marched towards the enemy with all the speed compatible with the necessity for fencing and mutual aid. Quite often, the moral impulse, that resolution to go to the end, manifested itself at once in the order and freedom of gait. That impulse alone put to flight a less resolute adversary.

It was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the mass; the preoccupation [23] of the rank was very great, as the behavior of Caesar's troops at Pharsalus shows in their slow march, timed by the flutes of Lacedaemonian battalions. At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord, because the men of the first rank, of necessity and instinctively, assured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbors in the same line, their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movements to strike and parry. There was a contact of man with man; each took the adversary in front of him and attacked him, because by penetrating into the ranks before having struck him down, he risked being wounded in the side by losing his flank supports. Each one then hit his man with his shield, expecting to make him lose his equilibrium, and at the instant he tried to recover himself landed the blow. The men in the second line, back of the intervals necessary for fencing in the first, were ready to protect their sides against any one that advanced between them and were prepared to relieve tired warriors. It was the same in the third line, and so on.

Every one being supported on either side, the first encounter was rarely decisive, and the fencing, the real combat at close quarters, began.

If men of the first line were wounded quickly, if the other ranks were not in a hurry to relieve or replace them, or if there was hesitation, defeat followed. This happened to the Romans in their first encounters with the Gauls. The Gaul, with his shield, parried the first thrust, brought his big iron sword swooping down with fury upon the top of the Roman shield, split it and went after the man. The Romans, already hesitating before the moral impulse of the Gauls, their ferocious yells, their nudeness, an indication of a contempt for wounds, fell then in a greater number than their adversaries and demoralization followed. Soon they accustomed themselves to this valorous but not tenacious spirit of their enemies, and when they had protected the top of their shields with an iron band, they no longer fell, and the roles were changed.

The Gauls, in fact, were unable either to hold their ground against the better arms and the thrusts of the Romans, or against their individual superior tenacity, increased nearly tenfold by the possible relay of eight ranks of the maniple. The maniples were self-renewing. Whereas with the Gauls the duration of the combat was limited to the strength of a single man, on account of the difficulties of close or tumultuous ranks, and the impossibility of replacing losses when they were fighting at close quarters.

If the weapons were nearly alike, preserving ranks and thereby breaking down, driving back and confusing the ranks of the enemy, was to conquer. The man in disordered, broken lines, no longer felt himself supported, but vulnerable everywhere, and he fled. It is true that it is hardly possible to break hostile lines without doing the same with one's own. But the one who breaks through first, has been able to do so only by making the foe fall back before his blows, by killing or wounding. He has thereby raised his courage and that of his neighbor. He knows, he sees where he is marching; whilst the adversary overtaken as a consequence of the retreat or the fall of the troops that were flanking him, is surprised. He sees himself exposed on the flank. He falls back on a line with the rank in rear in order to regain support. But the lines in the rear give way to the retreat of the first. If the withdrawal has a certain duration, terror comes as a result of the blows which drive back and mow down the first line. If, to make room for those pushed back, the last lines turn their backs, there is small chance that they will face the front again. Space has tempted them. They will not return to the fight.

Then by that natural instinct of the soldier to worry, to assure himself of his supports, the contagion of flight spreads from the last ranks to the first. The first, closely engaged, has been held to the fight in the meantime, under pain of immediate death. There is no need to explain what follows; it is butchery. (Caedes).

But to return to combat.

It is evident that the formation of troops in a straight line, drawn close together, existed scarcely an instant. Moreover each group of files formed in action was connected with the next group; the groups, like the individuals, were always concerned about their support. The fight took place along the line of contact of the first ranks of the army, a straight line, broken, curved, and bent in different directions according to the various chances of the action at such or such a point, but always restricting and separating the combatants of the two sides. Once engaged on that line, it was necessary to face the front under pain of immediate death. Naturally and necessarily every one in these first ranks exerted all his energy to defend his life.

At no point did the line become entangled as long as there was fighting, for, general or soldier, the effort of each one was to keep up the continuity of support all along the line, and to break or cut that of the enemy, because victory then followed.

We see then that between men armed with swords, it was possible to have, and there was, if the combat was serious, penetration of one mass into the other, but never confusion, or a jumble of ranks, by the men forming these masses. [24]

Sword to sword combat was the most deadly. It presented the most sudden changes, because it was the one in which the individual valor and dexterity of the combatant had the greatest and most immediate influence. Other methods of combat were simpler.

Let us compare pikes and broadswords.

The close formation of men armed with pikes was irresistible so long as it was maintained. A forest of pikes fifteen to eighteen feet long kept you at a distance. [25] On the other hand it was easy to kill off the cavalry and light infantry about the phalanx, which was an unwieldy mass marching with a measured step, and which a mobile body of troops could always avoid. Openings in the phalanx might be occasioned by marching, by the terrain, by the thousand accidents of struggle, by the individual assault of brave men, by the wounded on the ground creeping under the high held pikes and cutting at the legs of the front rank. Men in the phalanx could scarcely see and even the first two lines hardly had a free position for striking. The men were armed with long lances, useless at close quarters, good only for combat at shaft's length (Polybius). They were struck with impunity by the groups [26] which threw themselves into the intervals. And then, once the enemy was in the body of the phalanx, morale disappeared and it became a mass without order, a flock of panic-stricken sheep falling over each other.

In a mob hard-pressed men prick with their knives those who press them. The contagion of fear changes the direction of the human wave; it bends back upon itself and breaks to escape danger. If, then, the enemy fled before the phalanx there was no melee. If he gave way tactically before it and availing himself of gaps penetrated it by groups, still there was no melee or mixture of ranks. The wedge entering into a mass does not become intermingled with it.

With a phalanx armed with long pikes against a similar phalanx there was still less confusion. They were able to stand for a long time, if the one did not take the other in flank or in rear by a detached body of troops. In all ancient combat, even in victory achieved by methods which affected the morale, such methods are always effective, for man does not change.

It is unnecessary to repeat that in ancient conflicts, demoralization and flight began in the rear ranks.

We have tried to analyze the fight of infantry of the line because its action alone was decisive in ancient combat. The light infantry of both sides took to flight, as Thucydides states. They returned later to pursue and massacre the vanquished. [27]

In cavalry against cavalry, the moral effect of a mass charging in good order was of the greatest influence. We rarely see two cavalry organizations, neither of which breaks before such reciprocal action. Such action was seen on the Tecinus and at Cannae, engagements cited merely because they are very rare exceptions. And even in these cases there was no shock at full speed, but a halt face to face and then an engagement.

The hurricanes of cavalry of those days were poetic figures. They had no reality. In an encounter at full speed, men and horses would be crushed, and neither men nor horses wished such an encounter. The hands of the cavalrymen reined back, the instinct of men and horses was to slacken, to stop, if the enemy himself did not stop, and to make an about if he continued to advance. And if ever they met, the encounter was so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the swinging of heads, that it was a face to face stop. Some blows were exchanged with the sword or the lance, but the equilibrium was too unstable, mutual support too uncertain for real sword play. Man felt himself too isolated. The moral pressure was too strong. Although not deadly, the combat lasted but a second, precisely because man felt himself, saw himself, alone and surrounded. The first men, who believed themselves no longer supported, could no longer endure uneasiness: they wheeled about and the rest followed. Unless the enemy had also turned, he then pursued at his pleasure until checked by other cavalry, which pursued him in turn.

There never was an encounter between cavalry and infantry. The cavalry harassed with its arrows, with the lance perhaps, while passing rapidly, but it never attacked.

Close conflict on horseback did not exist. And to be sure, if the horse by adding so much to the mobility of man gave him the means of menacing and charging with swiftness, it permitted him to escape with like rapidity when his menace did not shake the enemy. Man by using the horse, pursuant to his natural inclination and sane reasoning, could do as much damage as possible while risking the least possible. To riders without stirrups or saddle, for whom the throwing of the javelin was a difficult matter (Xenophon), combat was but a succession of reciprocal harassings, demonstrations, menaces, skirmishes with arrows. Each cavalry sought an opportunity to surprise, to intimidate, to avail itself of disorder, and to pursue either the cavalry or the infantry. Then "vae victis;" the sword worked.

Man always has had the greatest fear of being trampled upon by horses. That fear has certainly routed a hundred thousand times more men than the real encounter. This was always more or less avoided by the horse, and no one was knocked down. When two ancient cavalry forces wanted really to fight, were forced to it, they fought on foot (Note the Tecinus, Cannae, examples of Livy). I find but little real fighting on horseback in all antiquity like that of Alexander the Great at the passage of the Granicus. Was even that fighting? His cavalry which traversed a river with steep banks defended by the enemy, lost eighty-five men; the Persian cavalry one thousand; and both were equally well armed!

The fighting of the Middle Ages revived the ancient battles except in science. Cavalrymen attacked each other perhaps more than the ancient cavalry did, for the reason that they were invulnerable: it was not sufficient to throw them down; it was necessary to kill when once they were on the ground. They knew, however, that their fighting on horseback was not important so far as results were concerned, for when they wished really to battle, they fought on foot. (Note the combat of the Thirty, Bayard, etc.)

The victors, arrayed in iron from head to foot, lost no one, the peasants did not count. If the vanquished was taken, he was not massacred, because chivalry had established a fraternity of arms between noblemen, the mounted warriors of different nations, and ransom replaced death.

If we have spoken especially of the infantry fight, it is because it was the most serious. On foot, on horseback, on the bridge of a vessel, at the moment of danger, the same man is always found. Any one who knows him well, deduces from his action in the past what his action will be in the future.



CHAPTER VI

UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS REAL COMBATANTS ARE OBTAINED AND HOW THE FIGHTING OF OUR DAYS, IN ORDER TO BE WELL DONE, REQUIRES THEM TO BE MORE DEPENDABLE THAN IN ANCIENT COMBAT

Let us repeat now, what we said at the beginning of this study. Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second. The continued improvement of all appliances of war has no other goal than the annihilation of the enemy. Absolute bravery, which does not refuse battle even on unequal terms, trusting only to God or to destiny, is not natural in man; it is the result of moral culture. It is infinitely rare, because in the face of danger the animal sense of self-preservation always gains the upper hand. Man calculates his chances, with what errors we are about to see.

Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees. "Stop, stop, hold out a few minutes, an instant more, and you are victor! You are not even wounded yet,—if you turn your back you are dead!" He does not hear, he cannot hear any more. He is full of fear. How many armies have sworn to conquer or perish? How many have kept their oaths? An oath of sheep to stand up against wolves. History shows, not armies, but firm souls who have fought unto death, and the devotion of Thermopylae is therefore justly immortal.

Here we are again brought to the consideration of essential truths, enunciated by many men, now forgotten or unknown.

To insure success in the rude test of conflict, it is not sufficient to have a mass composed of valiant men like the Gauls or the Germans.

The mass needs, and we give it, leaders who have the firmness and decision of command proceeding from habit and an entire faith in their unquestionable right to command as established by tradition, law and society.

We add good arms. We add methods of fighting suitable to these arms and those of the enemy and which do not overtax the physical and moral forces of man. We add also a rational decentralization that permits the direction and employment of the efforts of all even to the last man.

We animate with passion, a violent desire for independence, a religious fanaticism, national pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession. An iron discipline, which permits no one to escape action, secures the greatest unity from top to bottom, between all the elements, between the commanding officers, between the commanding officers and men, between the soldiers.

Have we then a solid army? Not yet. Unity, that first and supreme force of armies, is sought by enacting severe laws of discipline supported by powerful passions. But to order discipline is not enough. A vigilance from which no one may escape in combat should assure the maintenance of discipline. Discipline itself depends on moral pressure which actuates men to advance from sentiments of fear or pride. But it depends also on surveillance, the mutual supervision of groups of men who know each other well.

A wise organization insures that the personnel of combat groups changes as little as possible, so that comrades in peace time maneuvers shall be comrades in war. From living together, and obeying the same chiefs, from commanding the same men, from sharing fatigue and rest, from cooperation among men who quickly understand each other in the execution of warlike movements, may be bred brotherhood, professional knowledge, sentiment, above all unity. The duty of obedience, the right of imposing discipline and the impossibility of escaping from it, would naturally follow.

And now confidence appears.

It is not that enthusiastic and thoughtless confidence of tumultous or unprepared armies which goes up to the danger point and vanishes rapidly, giving way to a contrary sentiment, which sees treason everywhere. It is that intimate confidence, firm and conscious, which does not forget itself in the heat of action and which alone makes true combatants.

Then we have an army; and it is no longer difficult to explain how men carried away by passions, even men who know how to die without flinching, without turning pale, really strong in the presence of death, but without discipline, without solid organization, are vanquished by others individually less valiant, but firmly, jointly and severally combined.

One loves to picture an armed mob upsetting all obstacles and carried away by a blast of passion.

There is more imagination than truth in that picture. If the struggle depended on individuals, the courageous, impassioned men, composing the mob would have more chance of victory. But in any body of troops, in front of the enemy, every one understands that the task is not the work of one alone, that to complete it requires team work. With his comrades in danger brought together under unknown leaders, he feels the lack of union, and asks himself if he can count on them. A thought of mistrust leads to hesitation. A moment of it will kill the offensive spirit.

Unity and confidence cannot be improvised. They alone can create that mutual trust, that feeling of force which gives courage and daring. Courage, that is the temporary domination of will over instinct, brings about victory.

Unity alone then produces fighters. But, as in everything, there are degrees of unity. Let us see whether modern is in this respect less exacting than ancient combat.

In ancient combat there was danger only at close quarters. If the troops had enough morale (which Asiatic hordes seldom had) to meet the enemy at broadsword's length, there was an engagement. Whoever was that close knew that he would be killed if he turned his back; because, as we have seen, the victors lost but few and the vanquished were exterminated. This simple reasoning held the men and made them fight, if it was but for an instant.

Neglecting the exceptional and very rare circumstances, which may bring two forces together, action to-day is brought on and fought out from afar. Danger begins at great distances, and it is necessary to advance for a long time under fire which at each step becomes heavier. The vanquished loses prisoners, but often, in dead and in wounded, he does not lose more than the victor.

Ancient combat was fought in groups close together, within a small space, in open ground, in full view of one another, without the deafening noise of present day arms. Men in formation marched into an action that took place on the spot and did not carry them thousands of feet away from the starting point. The surveillance of the leaders was easy, individual weakness was immediately checked. General consternation alone caused flight.

To-day fighting is done over immense spaces, along thinly drawn out lines broken every instant by the accidents and the obstacles of the terrain. From the time the action begins, as soon as there are rifle shots, the men spread out as skirmishers or, lost in the inevitable disorder of a rapid march, [28] escape the supervision of their commanding officers. A considerable number conceal themselves; [29] they get away from the engagement and diminish by just so much the material and moral effect and confidence of the brave ones who remain. This can bring about defeat.

But let us look at man himself in ancient combat and in modern. In ancient combat:—I am strong, apt, vigorous, trained, full of calmness, presence of mind; I have good offensive and defensive weapons and trustworthy companions of long standing. They do not let me be overwhelmed without aiding me. I with them, they with me, we are invincible, even invulnerable. We have fought twenty battles and not one of us remained on the field. It is necessary to support each other in time; we see it clearly; we are quick to replace ourselves, to put a fresh combatant in front of a fatigued adversary. We are the legions of Marius, fifty thousand who have held out against the furious avalanches of the Cimbri. We have killed one hundred and forty thousand, taken prisoner sixty thousand, while losing but two or three hundred of our inexperienced soldiers.

To-day, as strong, firm, trained, and courageous as I am, I can never say; I shall return. I have no longer to do with men, whom I do not fear, I have to do with fate in the form of iron and lead. Death is in the air, invisible and blind, whispering, whistling. As brave, good, trustworthy, and devoted as my companions may be, they do not shield me. Only,—and this is abstract and less immediately intelligible to all than the material support of ancient combat,—only I imagine that the more numerous we are who run a dangerous risk, the greater is the chance for each to escape therefrom. I also know that, if we have that confidence which none of us should lack in action, we feel, and we are, stronger. We begin more resolutely, are ready to keep up the struggle longer, and therefore finish it more quickly.

We finish it! But in order to finish it, it is necessary to advance, to attack the enemy, [30] and infantryman or troopers, we are naked against iron, naked against lead, which cannot miss at close range. Let us advance in any case, resolutely. Our adversary will not stand at the point-blank range of our rifle, for the attack is never mutual, we are sure of that. We have been told so a thousand times. We have seen it. But what if matters should change now! Suppose the enemy stands at point-blank range! What of that?

How far this is from Roman confidence!

In another place we have shown that in ancient times to retire from action was both a difficult and perilous matter for the soldier. To-day the temptation is much stronger, the facility greater and the peril less.

Now, therefore, combat exacts more moral cohesion, greater unity than previously. A last remark on the difficulty of obtaining it will complete the demonstration.

Since the invention of fire arms, the musket, the rifle, the cannon, the distances of mutual aid and support have increased among the different arms. [31]

Besides, the facility of communications of all kinds permits the assembling on a given territory of enormous forces. For these reasons, as we have stated, battle fields have become immense.

Supervision becomes more and more difficult. Direction being more distant tends more often to escape from the supreme commanders and the subordinate leaders. The certain and inevitable disorder, which a body of troops always presents in action, is with the moral effect of modern appliances, becoming greater every day. In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and commanding officers often lose each other.

Troops immediately and hotly engaged, such as companies and squads, can maintain themselves only if they are well-organized and serve as supports or rallying points to those out of place. Battles tend to become now, more than they have ever been, the battles of men.

This ought not to be true! Perhaps. But the fact is that it is true.

Not all troops are immediately or hotly engaged in battle. Commanding officers always try to keep in hand, as long as possible, some troops capable of marching, acting at any moment, in any direction. To-day, like yesterday, like to-morrow, the decisive action is that of formed troops. Victory belongs to the commander who has known how to keep them in good order, to hold them, and to direct them.

That is incontrovertible.

But commanders can hold out decisive reserves only if the enemy has been forced to commit his.

In troops which do the fighting, the men and the officers closest to them, from corporal to battalion commander, have a more independent action than ever. As it is alone the vigor of that action, more independent than ever of the direction of higher commanders, which leaves in the hands of higher commanders available forces which can be directed at a decisive moment, that action becomes more preponderant than ever. Battles, now more than ever, are battles of men, of captains. They always have been in fact, since in the last analysis the execution belongs to the man in ranks. But the influence of the latter on the final result is greater than formerly. From that comes the maxim of to-day: The battles of men.

Outside of the regulations on tactics and discipline, there is an evident necessity for combating the hazardous predominance of the action of the soldier over that of the commander. It is necessary to delay as long as possible, that instant which modern conditions tend to hasten—the instant when the soldier gets from under the control of the commander.

This completes the demonstration of the truth stated before: Combat requires to-day, in order to give the best results, a moral cohesion, a unity more binding than at any other time. [32] It is as true as it is clear, that, if one does not wish bonds to break, one must make them elastic in order to strengthen them.



CHAPTER VII

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WHAT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO COMPLETE IT

Any other deductions on this subject must come from the meditations of the reader. To be of value in actual application such deductions should be based upon study of modern combat, and that study cannot be made from the accounts of historians alone.

The latter show the action of troop units only in a general way. Action in detail and the individual action of the soldier remain enveloped in a cloud of dust, in narratives as in reality. Yet these questions must be studied, for the conditions they reveal should be the basis of all fighting methods, past, present and future.

Where can data on these questions be found?

We have very few records portraying action as clearly as the report on the engagement at the Pont de l'Hopital by Colonel Bugeaud. Such stories in even greater detail, for the smallest detail has its importance, secured from participants and witnesses who knew how to see and knew how to remember, are what is necessary in a study of the battle of to-day.

The number of killed, the kind and the character of wounds, often tell more than the longest accounts. Sometimes they contradict them. We want to know how man in general and the Frenchman in particular fought yesterday. Under the pressure of danger, impelled by the instinct for self-preservation, did he follow, make light of, or forget the methods prescribed or recommended? Did he fight in the manner imposed upon him, or in that indicated to him by his instinct or by his knowledge of warfare?

When we have the answers to these questions we shall be very near to knowing how he will conduct himself to-morrow, with and against appliances far more destructive to-day than those of yesterday. Even now, knowing that man is capable only of a given quantity of terror, knowing that the moral effect of destruction is in proportion to the force applied, we are able to predict that, to-morrow less than ever will studied methods be practicable. Such methods are born of the illusions of the field of fire and are opposed to the teachings of our own experience. To-morrow, more than ever, will the individual valor of the soldier and of small groups, be predominant. This valor is secured by discipline.

The study of the past alone can give us a true perception of practical methods, and enable us to see how the soldier will inevitably fight to-morrow.

So instructed, so informed, we shall not be confused; because we shall be able to prescribe beforehand such methods of fighting, such organization, such dispositions as are seen to be inevitable. Such prescriptions may even serve to regulate the inevitable. At any rate they will serve to reduce the element of chance by enabling the commanding officer to retain control as long as possible, and by releasing the individual only at the moment when instinct dominates him.

This is the only way to preserve discipline, which has a tendency to go to pieces by tactical disobedience at the moment of greatest necessity.

It should be understood that the prescriptions in question have to do with dispositions before action; with methods of fighting, and not with maneuvers.

Maneuvers are the movements of troops in the theater of action, and they are the swift and ordered movement on the scene of action of tactical units of all sizes. They do not constitute action. Action follows them.

Confusion in many minds between maneuvers and action brings about doubt and mistrust of our regulation drills. These are good, very good as far as they go, inasmuch as they give methods of executing all movements, of taking all possible formations with rapidity and good order.

To change them, to discuss them, does not advance the question one bit. They do not affect the problem of positive action. Its solution lies in the study of what took place yesterday, from which, alone, it is possible to deduce what will happen to-morrow.

This study must be made, and its result set forth. Each leader, whose worth and authority has been tested in war and recognized by armies, has done something of the sort. Of each of these even might be said, "He knew the soldier; he knew how to make use of him."

The Romans, too, had this knowledge. They obtained it from continuous experience and profound reflexion thereon.

Experience is not continuous to-day. It must be carefully gathered. Study of it should be careful and the results should stimulate reflexion, especially in men of experience. Extremes meet in many things. In ancient times at the point of the pike and sword, armies have conquered similar armies twice their size. Who knows if, in these days of perfected long-range arms of destruction, a small force might not secure, by a happy combination of good sense or genius with morale and appliances, these same heroic victories over a greater force similarly armed?[33]

In spite of the statements of Napoleon I, his assumption that victory is always on the side of the strongest battalions was costly.



PART II

MODERN BATTLE



CHAPTER I

GENERAL DISCUSSION

1. Ancient and Modern Battle

I have heard philosophers reproached for studying too exclusively man in general and neglecting the race, the country, the era, so that their studies of him offer little of real social or political value. The opposite criticism can be made of military men of all countries. They are always eager to expound traditional tactics and organization suitable to the particular character of their race, always the bravest of all races. They fail to consider as a factor in the problem, man confronted by danger. Facts are incredibly different from all theories. Perhaps in this time of military reorganization it would not be out of place to make a study of man in battle and of battle itself.

The art of war is subjected to many modifications by industrial and scientific progress. But one thing does not change, the heart of man. In the last analysis, success in battle is a matter of morale. In all matters which pertain to an army, organization, discipline and tactics, the human heart in the supreme moment of battle is the basic factor. It is rarely taken into account; and often strange errors are the result. Witness the carbine, an accurate and long range weapon, which has never given the service expected of it, because it was used mechanically without considering the human heart. We must consider it!

With improvement in weapons, the power of destruction increases, the moral effect of such weapons increases, and courage to face them becomes rarer. Man does not, cannot change. What should increase with the power of material is the strength of organization, the unity of the fighting machine. Yet these are most neglected. A million men at maneuvers are useless, if a sane and reasoned organization does not assure their discipline, and thereby their reliability, that is, their courage in action.

Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell.

At any time a new invention may assure victory. Granted. But practicable weapons are not invented every day, and nations quickly put themselves on the same footing as regards armament. The determining factor, leaving aside generals of genius, and luck, is the quality of troops, that is, the organization that best assures their esprit, their reliability, their confidence, their unity. Troops, in this sense, means soldiers. Soldiers, no matter how well drilled, who are assembled haphazard into companies and battalions will never have, have never had, that entire unity which is born of mutual acquaintanceship.

In studying ancient battle, we have seen what a terrible thing battle is. We have seen that man will not really fight except under disciplinary pressure. Even before having studied modern battle, we know that the only real armies are those to which a well thought out and rational organization gives unity throughout battle. The destructive power of improved firearms becomes greater. Battle becomes more open, hindering supervision, passing beyond the vision of the commander and even of subordinate officers. In the same degree, unity should be strengthened. The organization which assures unity of the combatants should be better thought out and more rational. The power of arms increases, man and his weaknesses remain the same. What good is an army of two hundred thousand men of whom only one-half really fight, while the other one hundred thousand disappear in a hundred ways? Better to have one hundred thousand who can be counted upon.

The purpose of discipline is to make men fight in spite of themselves. No army is worthy of the name without discipline. There is no army at all without organization, and all organization is defective which neglects any means to strengthen the unity of combatants. Methods cannot be identical. Draconian discipline does not fit our customs. Discipline must be a state of mind, a social institution based on the salient virtues and defects of the nation.

Discipline cannot be secured or created in a day. It is an institution, a tradition. The commander must have confidence in his right to command. He must be accustomed to command and proud to command. This is what strengthens discipline in armies commanded by an aristocracy in certain countries.

The Prussians do not neglect the homogeneity and consequent unity of organization. They recognize its value. Hessian regiments are composed, the first year, of one-third Hessians, two-thirds Prussians, to control the racial tendencies of troops of a recently annexed country; the second year, of two-thirds Hessians, one-third Prussians; the third year, all Hessians with their own officers.

The Americans have shown us what happens in modern battle to large armies without cohesion. With them the lack of discipline and organization has had the inevitable result. Battle has been between hidden skirmishers, at long distance, and has lasted for days, until some faulty movement, perhaps a moral exhaustion, has caused one or the other of the opposing forces to give way.

In this American War, the melees of Agincourt are said to have reappeared, which merely means a melee of fugitives. But less than ever has there been close combat.