Were Ancient Battles Utter Chaos?

My last post about The Retreat to Avalon talked about the legends and history behind King Arthur’s military adventures in Europe. Gawain is about to be in his first major battle. Now, most people have an image of ancient battles being utter chaos. A non-stop bloodbath until everyone on one side was dead. But is this reality, or Hollywood? Let’s look at some of the most common portrayals of ancient battles.

Charge!

The charge is a great image on screen and when described in print. Very dramatic. But did real battles start like that? Very unlikely.

Let’s start with infantry. Imagine you’re an average fit person who must carry, at the least, a spear and shield, and run with it. A fit person can sprint for about 30 seconds, covering, at the most, about 100 meters. That being considered, you also need to meet the enemy with enough breath to actually fight. I’ve had to run in full modern combat gear, which isn’t much different in weight from medieval soldiers, and I can tell you, under stress, even moving in short bursts from location to location can leave you gasping pretty quickly.

So these long charges by foot soldiers just aren’t in the cards. A typical engagement would start with the attackers walking towards the defenders, who likely stayed put, having chosen the best location they could find to defend. Archers, if any, would try to soften up either side when they were within range, and the attackers would either hunker down to wait until the enemy was out of arrows, or move quickly forward to close the gap. But still, not at a full run, in most cases.

An example is in the famed Battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks were said to have overwhelmed the much larger Persian army by unexpectedly running at them. The Greek army was composed mostly of heavy infantry (hoplites), while the Persian army employed a great many archers whose effective range was about 200 meters. The Greeks marched towards the Persians, and once the arrows started falling, they began to run, most likely to close the space to the lightly armed Persian archers as quickly as possible, trusting to their heavy armor to protect them. Still, it was probably a jog for most of that 200 meters. Greek hoplites were famed for being in excellent physical condition, but their armor and weapons weighed between 50 and 70 pounds. The real sprint probably didn’t happen until the last 50 to 30 meters, at best.

Returning to our Dark Age warriors, javelins, thrown spears and axes would often be exchanged when the two sides were with range of these hand thrown weapons, about 15 to 30 meters, and then any charge would likely follow while the enemy’s head is down. That’s not too far to sprint and still have some energy left to fight.

What about cavalry? A horse can “sprint” much farther than a human, of course. More than a mile or two, and faster. But cavalry soldiers are pretty careful about their mounts. They’re expensive as well as important. You don’t want your horse blown on contact with the enemy. Another major issue is terrain. A mass of horses in close formation doesn’t have room to maneuver much, and high speed makes it harder for the horse or rider to spot holes and other obstacles that could bring the horse down. So, while the Charge of the Rohirrim in the Return of the King movie is epic, in reality they would not have hit full gallop until at least within bow range. For example, the British cavalry manual, stated:

“Whatever distance a Line has to go over, it should move at a brisk trot, till within 250 yards of the enemy, and then gallop, till within 40 or 50 yards of the point of attack, when the word ‘Charge’ will be given, and the gallop made with as much rapidity as the body can bear in good order.”

Regulations for the Instructions, Formations, and Movements of the Cavalry, 1851

Single Combat in the Chaos

Most Hollywood representations of battles show a massive fight of individual battles. It’s utter chaos, with everyone running different directions, picking out whichever enemy happens to be nearest, with no real problem discerning friend from foe. A good example is the “Battle of the Bastards” scene from Game of Thrones. (Caution – includes graphic violence.)

Even some of the better depictions, like in the Last Kingdom series, might start off with a realistic battleline, but it quickly devolves into a mashup of single combat scenes. If Uhtred wasn’t impaled by a spear as he leapt over the Viking shieldwall, he would have been surrounded by angry Vikings with no support from his own men.

The key to victory has always been teamwork. The Greek historian, Plutarch, wrote of the Sayings of Spartans, “a man carried a shield for the sake of the whole line.” Aside from the protection gained by having friends with shields to either side, there was the most important aspect: psychology. People are braver in groups than they are alone. The love of your friends, their encouragement and boasts, and most importantly, their judgement, all these things drove men to face death. But everyone has a breaking point.

What surprises most people is the fact that the casualties in battle are very low until one thing happens: one side breaks and runs. Whatever causes it, exhaustion, confusion, fear that their side is losing, it only took a few men to lose their nerve and flee, causing more men to run. At a certain point, the dam breaks and instead of a trickle of men running away, it becomes a flood. Those who did not break, who try to hold the line, find themselves at risk of being enveloped as the enemy pushes through on either side, so most of them will turn and run.

Nearly all of the deaths in these battles came, not from the two sides stabbing at each other, but from behind. Roman records give us an idea of just how great a disparity: the winning side suffered about 4-5% casualties, while the losing side suffered 15-30% (sometimes more). To visualize it, imagine a small battle of 100 soldiers on each side. During the battle, each side would only lose four or five men. Yet, when one side broke and ran, the losing side would lose another ten to twenty-five. This is why cohesion is so important in military units to this day.

Just One Round

Another major error is when people think that battles were short, single engagements of non-stop, brutal hacking and stabbing until one side was destroyed. That works well for movies, but not in real battles. Think of a boxing match: those are highly trained athletes wearing shorts and gloves, and even they don’t fight for more than three minutes without a break. When I was in the Army, we sparred with pugil sticks – padded sticks we would use to beat the sense out of each other. Those are the longest three minutes you’ll ever experience, and you are pretty well blown by the end of it.

Raids and skirmishes would have been short, relatively low-casualty affairs. Full on battles (aside from sieges) between significant numbers of combatants would last hours to a full day, or even span multiple days. No one is going to fight, hand-to-hand, non-stop for even an hour. Instead, what is most likely is that when the two battle lines met, there would be several minutes of intense conflict, pushing with shields, stabbing with spears, etc, then the two sides would move apart to rest, reorganize and deal with the dead and wounded as best they could.

A reasonably good Hollywood representation of this is found in this clip from the series, The Last Kingdom. (Caution – includes graphic violence.)

The Roman army was an exception to this. Rome employed full-time professional soldiers that drilled constantly. Therefore, they were able to practice and perform complicated maneuvers such as rotating ranks through a formation. This would allow them to keep a fight going longer to exhaust and break the enemy.

The Romans didn’t leave any details on how they performed this maneuver. This clip from HBO’s series, Rome, shows one idea of how it may have worked. I think this depiction has some flaws, but it is close to what must have been done. (Caution – includes graphic violence.)

This would not apply to most of the medieval period because large standing armies able to train constantly just didn’t exist. Especially in the “Dark Ages”. A warlord typically had a warband of around thirty five warriors. The richest may have had up to one hundred fifty. So a typical battle between two warlords would have been quite small. Larger battles bringing together multiple warlords and their retinues still wouldn’t reach the level of Roman or later medieval battles. The English army at Hastings mustered only about 7-8,000 men, only about a thousand of whom were full time warriors.

In chapter four of The Retreat to Avalon, the men preparing to join Arthur’s army have all grown up with some basic training in fighting together in the “shield wall”. But this was for small battles, skirmishes and raids. They are facing a battle of a size that only the Roman Empire could muster. Their instructor says:

“In practice, it’s a simple thing to rotate through the lines,” Gwalhafed, explained. “But in battle, it’s near impossible. The wounded are often trampled or suffocated. Sometimes the press is so dense the dead cannot even fall to the ground. If the fight goes long, and men must rotate, you’re more likely to be crushed or attacked as the man behind you tries to take your position. The best you can hope for is to cover yourself, let the tide wash over you and pray that you soon find yourself behind the lines of your men, and not of the enemy.”

The Retreat to Avalon

One of my goals in writing The Arthurian Age was to immerse readers in the reality of life in the “Dark Ages”. The era was not as primitive as the term, or Hollywood, would lead you to believe. Most writers have never served in the military, much less actually fought for their lives, so I’m fortunate to have some experience to draw from. Like most writers, I dream of seeing my book on the big screen. But I fear what Hollywood might do to it. Movie directors look for excitement and visual impact over veracity. This results in wildly unrealistic portrayals. It’s too bad, because this need not be the case. Maybe someday I’ll get lucky. 🙂

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