A few questions about historical combat. (ancient, war, Roman, generals)
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I am curious about exactly what combat was like back in the day, with two in particular.
1. In movies set during the middle ages or there abouts we often see lots of men just charging at each other clashing, and just swinging their swords/shields/whatever weapon they had at each other, but what was it really like? Like say you could go back in time and (from a safe distance) witness something like a battle from the 30 years war or some other battle from medieval times, what would it actually look like? Would you see men's heads getting cut clean off and flying through the air, men getting their arms and legs cut off etc.?
2. Similar to the first question, if one could go back to the 16th/17th/18th century and see a naval battle between ships of the line would it be similar to movies in ships just trying line up with constant fire or would it be more slow pace?
for number 1 - i understand the best way to lose a battle is for your team to rush forward like maniacs. the great generals learned early on to create lines of grouped infantry into units like the phalanx for example.
there was a tv show called Rome on HBO in the last decade. they showed a Roman line fighting and it was pretty neat. not sure how historically accurate but they had a line of guys three deep. the first guy fights the enemy, does not leave the line, until the 'sargeant' perhaps blew a whistle and then the front guy switches out to the back and thenext guy moves up. so they stay fresh.
Vikings, another tv show, also show our favorite barbarians doing the same except they call it "the shield wall" but in any event they line up. no running like madmen at the enemy.
They were called ships of the line because they were large enough/had enough guns to stand in the line of battle so, yes, there was a period of times when fleets lined up and fired broadsides at each other as quickly as they could.
yeah, so just like infantry creating a line , naval ships did the same.
the objective of the enemy is to break the line. In naval combat this was supposedly 'invented' at the Battle of the Saintes - a naval engagement in the Caribbean. this attack allows the ships that break the enemies line to fire their entire broadside through the opposing ships lengthwise 'raking' them with shot.
I am curious about exactly what combat was like back in the day, with two in particular.
1. In movies set during the middle ages or there abouts we often see lots of men just charging at each other clashing, and just swinging their swords/shields/whatever weapon they had at each other, but what was it really like? Like say you could go back in time and (from a safe distance) witness something like a battle from the 30 years war or some other battle from medieval times, what would it actually look like? Would you see men's heads getting cut clean off and flying through the air, men getting their arms and legs cut off etc.?
2. Similar to the first question, if one could go back to the 16th/17th/18th century and see a naval battle between ships of the line would it be similar to movies in ships just trying line up with constant fire or would it be more slow pace?
Obviously movies would be more melodramatic and fast paced because they are selling entertainment.
From historical accounts - middle aged battles would be confusing affairs with ebbs and flows, since physical battle is tiresome you can expect individual forces not too be engaged for two long, a matter of minutes, before disengaging and perhaps reinforcements or reserves engaging. Many of the casualties would come during a retreat. Arms and heads flying off? Extremely unlikely. If armor was in used many of the casualties would come from bludgeoning - broken bones or skulls or ribs. A common method to kill an armour clad knight for instance was to knock him down then push a dagger through his armoured helmet slits, or in the weak spots of the armour in the arm pits.
But you had tactics too, so it wasn't always just too armed mods with swords engaging. You would have skirmishes, ranged combat with missles (bow, etc), mounted charges, etc. Ebb and flow as I said. You typically had one side protected by physical obstacles. Tactics would change and differ when muskets came to the scene. You also had the importance of formation and maneuver. Lets forget about swords, the most effective weapon was probably pikes. What would it look like from a distance? Probably like a bunch of pike bristleling squares and lines pushing and shoving each other and after a few minutes one or the other side running away.
Naval battles would be slow paced, with cannon only able to shoot a few shots per minute. Again tactics would factor in, with a typical strategy being to engage in line, as you say, and pierce the center of the enemies line so that guns on both sides of a ship can be engaged. But much of combat would be not fired a cannon, but maneuvering to gain advantage - the wind gage would be everything.
Not to be a kill-joy, but the question was "middle ages". The main difference being that Rome had a professional army while the middle ages infantry were essentially ether badly equiped peaseants with pikes taking a break from working the fields, or well equipped noblemen.
A common method to kill an armour clad knight for instance was to knock him down then push a dagger through his armoured helmet slits, or in the weak spots of the armour in the arm pits.
And that is only when they actually wanted to kill the knight.
Knights were worth small fortunes in ransom money, so there was a big incentive to keep them alive if possible. Then factor in that the knights on side "A" often had more in common with the enemy knights on side "B" than they did with their own peasants serving as hastily mobilized infantry.
Not only would the victorious knights be displaying cowardiance by allowing a helpless opponent to be killed, but that opponent could well be socially familiar to them. It was also best not let the friendly peasants become too accustomed to killing knights of any sort- lest they get tempted to turn their weapons around one day.
Last edited by Cryptic; 05-10-2016 at 03:37 PM..
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