How did ancient battles work? Think how horrifying a sword or spear fight would really be. You wince for five minutes when you hit your shin accidentally, imagine the terror you'd feel at the prospect of getting a spear stabbed into your torso.

Did niggas have insane t levels back then or low IQ or both or was life so abysmal they didn't care if they died? Also they didn't have proper wound care or germ theory so even an injury could be fatal.

>>64020069 (OP)
We don't know. There are some theories and people did experiments through the ages, so we have a few ideas. My pet theory:
>Battles weren't Hollywood shoving matches, but an endurance battle which side could keep their formations intact enough to come out on top.
>Field battles were incredibly rare and only happened when both sides thought they could win.
>Deploying your army took a lot of time and required fast troops to cover the main host, so you had skirmirshing battles between missle troops and light cavalry before it started.
>Once the lines met, soldiers didn't crash into each other, but actually kept some kind of distance, akin to a no mans land between lines.
>Missles, stones and insults were flung until one side commited to a push.
>Pushes were harder to do, because keeping formation on the move was very hard.
>Greeks and Macedons had very long spears or lances to engage the enemy at safe distance and it is safe assume that professional formations had attack rhytms, rotations of the front and other neat things to keep up the pressure.
>Usually a battle was decided when one army broke and ran. On the rout most deaths happened, so most of the time quickest or the bravest survived.
>Formations of troops that didn't run and fought on were more often than not given quarter, as killing them all took too much time or was too costly. Exceptions do apply.
>Persians loved their wicker shield wall to protect their massed archer formations, had light and mobile cavalry as well as chariots. Worked great against everyone except Alexander.
>Greeks and later Alexander liked heavily armored troops with auxiliary formations of peltasts, archers and nobles in armoer on horses.
>Alexander even had his companions, proto knights that could smash into formations and force a routes, opposed to horses just being fast and running around.

I wonder what kind of war in History was most traumatizing for the soldiers taking part in it

>>64020069 (OP)
Plenty of actual books exist on the topic.
Romans took hardened farm boys and turned them into soldiers in a coherent unit, gave them equipment, and gave them pretty good pay, along with advancement opportunities.

>>64020120
Vietnam maybe, I read they spent way more time actually fighting than any other modern war

>>64020069 (OP)
That's a very broad question that can only really be answered by sweeping generalizations, but as a general rule, a typical battle wouldn't have many casualties on either side until one side routed, at which point large amounts of them get killed by the pursuing enemy.
This lines up reasonably well with the obvious fact that people strongly prefer to not die, so somebody in that situation would presumably prioritize protecting themselves and only attempt a blow on the enemy if they're confident they have an opportunity to get away with it.
>why would they rout?
Any individual on the field only has a limited view of what's going on around them, with no information on what's happening elsewhere in the battle; this is surely going to inspire a lot of suspense and uncertainty. If things don't turn out in their side's favor, then the sooner they GTFO, the more likely they are to escape before the enemy catches up with them. This could be due to an obvious credible threat like an incoming cavalry charge on their flank, but even if not, one person at the back deciding to run might panic others into following, maybe even leading to a major collapse in their line.

>>64020069 (OP)
It worked same as most clashes between mobs do in riots, ethnic clashes and border skimishes if you care to look them up. The groups stay formed up as they advance until a point and then try to extend out to the sides to avoid flanking, they square up with the opposing lines keeping several feet apart from eachother and then individuals or clusters of fighters rush forward to attack before retreating back into the safety of the formation when injured/exhausted. Missiles are exchanged the entire time. Once a side shows a visible loss in morale and energy the opposite side may rush and break them for good.

It is neither a pure chaotic melee nor a strictly organized methodic affair, and most of the combat happens in short spurts over an extended time, sometimes hours. Units might be pushed back over time but never in a literal pushing match with shield against shield. A crush like in a human stampede might hapoen but not as a real intended tactic.

>>64020152
Union of salvation has a fairly realistic depiction of a rout
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww5yYZXgZZA (3:30, 4chan doesn't embed timestamps)

>>64020069 (OP)
So first off, everybody who had the slightest desire to live brought either a shield, armor, or both. Shields were especially common since they were cheap and an excellent defense against arrows.

Second, battles usually weren't decided when one side was wiped out. In most battles, one side or the other would panic and run.

Third, soldiers were often so hyped up on adrenaline that they often wouldn't notice anything less than an incapacitating wound.

Fourth, most casualties were inflicted either by disease or during the rout when one side was fleeing. Cavalry would just chase down fleeing soldiers, picking them off one by one.

>>64020165
Also a good example of grapeshot. Shit was terrifying.

>>64020069 (OP)
not gonna lie, it was pretty bad. especially all the untreatable wound infections would make me worried.
now imagine sitting helpless in your muddy trench for weeks, waiting till you get picked by artillery, gas, airstrike, drone or something.
if i compare it to marching into the battle surrounded with my buddies, reasonably armed and protected, relying on my prowess, with the backup option of running away if the things go too bad, i'd rather go ancient

>>64020084
Yep. Pretty much a test of which side loses their nerves first and run away. Battles where an entire side was completely slaughtered were rare. Battles also didn't take very long. Usually a few hours at most of actual fighting.

>>64020131
Yeah about 100 days in contact for the average infantryman, which is fucking wild for a year long tour. About 15x the frequency of combat compared to WW2 draftees.

>>64020069 (OP)
Hema fans do organize large scale field battles:


https://youtu.be/JFWpkWEA5xg?si=Kb5lF30QHmn6ISqc
>>64020152
That and more than half the deaths usually happened after the battle itself, from deseases or untreated wounds.

>>64020069 (OP)
Depends how ancient we are talking, war has always been a constantly evolving process and the nature of battle evolves with it
One thing to consider is psychology, particularly education and propaganda
You would be very wary engaging in melee combat without any access to antibiotics because you know about and (rightly) fear germs - but our boy Grug and all of his descendants through to about the 1800s had no fucking idea about that risk, or indeed any of the other serious risks they were facing when they went to war, and were also operating in an information environment completely dominated by whatever government and religion controlled the area
Most soldiers, for most of history, didn't have any idea of what they were signing up for and that was just the way their leaders liked it

>>64020376
But how many for the viets?

>>64020084
You're spot on, anon. What you described is how ancient warfare has been taught in Classics departments since at least the mid 2000s when I got my degree (Classics, emphasis on Romano-Britain + Latin double bachelor's, minors in history and archaeology). Material artifacts and primary sources all back what you described. Good work doing your own research, very few people outside formal Classics in academia care enough to think about things like this in depth.

>>64020376
Days in contact meant days in range of the enemy, not actual days fighting; and it's not actually more than any modern war. It's a known trend: days in contact have been increasing linearly for every war since WW2. Korea, Vietnam, GWOT, Ukraine, each had more than its predecessors.

It's pretty crazy when you look back at WW2 and realize those guys were getting rotated off the line for wine and hookers outside artillery range on a nearly monthly basis.

>>64020466
You want a room so you can properly suck his dick?

>>64020069 (OP)
>>64020084
Ever been in a proper gang fight, with machetes and staffs? Or at least a violent riot? It's very close to what these armchair historians theorise.

>Battles weren't Hollywood shoving matches, but...
Yes
>...
Yes
>Pushes were harder to do, because keeping formation on the move was very hard
You need a lot of disciplined and determined troops. Most fighters will sway back and forth as their courage wanes and ebbs. Any push will be at the slowest of walks.
>...professional formations had attack rhytms, rotations of the front and other neat things to keep up the pressure.
Yes, essentially drills to "reinforce in place" much like the Army practises today. But only the Imperial Romans were good enough to do that.
>the rout
Is one of the most misunderstood of ancient battle actions. Armchair historians think it's a slaughter where you gun down a fleeing helpless enemy in the back. Actually it's more like the enemy breaking up into small groups and you have to take the time and trouble to run them down, wear them down when they make their final stand, and kill them. Holdouts can delay pursuit by many hours.
>shield wall
>companions
Every army from antiquity till gunpowder is essentially made up of a shield wall, cavalry, and missile troops such as archers, javelin-throwers, or slingers.

>>64020206
>shields
Archers and similar missile troops typically had no shields and wore little armour because it hampers the operation of their weapons. Exceptions apply especially for the well-equipped armies.

>Cavalry would just chase down fleeing soldiers, picking them off one by one
Study the actual timeline of battles and you'll realise that this is armchair theorising
Horses picking off a fleeing rabble would kill thousands within minutes. Routs took hours to mop up. What actually happened was a series of rearguard actions, mini-battles with all the ferocity of the "main" battle, often with one-sided outcomes but no less dangerous to the pursuers.

>>64020530
>Horses picking off a fleeing rabble would kill thousands within minutes
No reason for this. Cavalry was comparatively few and often had to beat down the opposing cavalry first. This meant there was very little cavalry to chase a LOT of infantry.

More than that, a rout was often a chaotic mess so while the cavalry would inflict a lot of damage initially, they'd inevitably miss some and have to spend hours or days chasing deserters out of gullies and bushes.

>What actually happened was a series of rearguard actions
Then it's not a rout, it's a retreat.

>>64020592
>Then it's not a rout, it's a retreat.
Rather, for the reasons that you described, a rout is not actually
>fleeing soldiers picked off one by one
but actually slightly more organised than that. A fine example is Waterloo, because it's the last battle with tactics resembling antiquity (albeit at musket range instead of sword range) which is recent enough to be well-documented with plenty of written records. At Waterloo, remnants of individual French battalions or companies holed up here and there fighting mini-battles, and of course the routed troops ultimately reconvened at their pre-battle base at Genappe.
This is the same as what happened in antiquity even at such a monumentous rout as Cannae.

This IS a rout.
A retreat is when the army remains under coherent top-down command, instead of fragmenting into small bands as above.

>>64020131
>>64020376
not only that, but I've read that Vietnam vets would fly back to Japan/the US with as they individually rotated out. In WWII units would rotate back in groups, usually on ships, so they had a lot more time to decompress around other guys who'd experienced the same things compared to Nam vets. This might be why more Nam vets suffered worse from PTSD and mental issues, in addition to the increased combat tempo

>>64020626
>This IS a rout
A rout /raʊt/ is a panicked, disorderly and undisciplined retreat of troops from a battlefield, following a collapse in a given unit's command authority, unit cohesion and combat morale

What you're describing is NOT a rout.

>>64020665
Directly quoting Wikipedia is meaningless, it's just some Wiki editor's opinion.

>What you're describing is NOT a rout.
Well, since you're citing Wikipedia, so shall I:
>French disintegration
>The French right, left, and centre had all now failed.[222] The last cohesive French force consisted of two battalions of the Old Guard stationed around La Belle Alliance; they had been so placed to act as a final reserve and to protect Napoleon in the event of a French retreat. He hoped to rally the French army behind them,[223] but as retreat turned into rout, they too were forced to withdraw, one on either side of La Belle Alliance, in square as protection against Coalition cavalry. Until persuaded that the battle was lost and he should leave, Napoleon commanded the square to the left of the inn.[95][224] Adam's Brigade charged and forced back this square,[218][225] while the Prussians engaged the other.

The French Army was in rout at this point, even according to the Wiki definition you cited:
>collapse in a given unit's command authority
Napoleon's command of the Armée du Nord had collapsed, only two battalions out of the whole lot were obeying his commands
>unit cohesion
The Armée du Nord was no longer a cohesive Army or even a Corps, but had dissolved into fleeing (remnants of) battalions and companies and small bands of men
>combat morale
The Armée du Nord no longer had the morale to stand and fight as an Army, but was retreating to its base in Genappe.

Furthermore, there was heavy fighting even after Napoleon's last stand at Plancenoit to Genappe, during what is called by virtually all historians a "rout".
Therefore, it is the popular depiction of what the word "rout" means, which you have fixed in your head, that needs changing.

>>64020663
>guys who'd experienced the same things
is a nice way of saying
>people who appreciated what the veterans had gone through
which is the real reason why PTSD affected Nam vets more than WW2 vets; because the anti-war assholes treated them like shit

you won't find this overtly said because the same anti-war assholes are the ones writing history

>>64020069 (OP)
Not as metsl as pike and shot, but still pretty bad lol.
https://youtu.be/4y6agtVxWi8?si=HHqdyT_yrj8cNPmT

>>64020084
>>64020161
I was thinking the Field of Glory games might be relatively more "accurate" at depicting these battles. These games sort of play like an urban riot except with both sides being the riot police.

>>64020393
A more recent analogy might be to clashes between Japanese student leftists and police over construction projects in the 1960s-1980s. The students organized themselves into units with battering rams:
https://youtu.be/eXjd7GkHKfU

>>64020084
>Usually a battle was decided when one army broke and ran. On the rout most deaths happened, so most of the time quickest or the bravest survived.
I'm interested in the psychology of this. Because an enemy routing is thrilling to the winning side. There's a great sense of euphoria. This is also a phenomenon in urban riots. One of the most dangerous things for the police side is the police panicking and retreating. (Okay we can debate whether that typically counts as a rout or not.) The reason for this is that an angry crowd can suddenly feel a sense of great power. Like, the police show up, and meet an angier-than-expected crowd, and the police get the order from higher up to bug out to protect their officers, and then the situation just explodes / all hell breaks loose because the angry crowd is like AW YEAH DAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN BOUT... NOW IT'S GOIN DOWN. This happened during the L.A. riots:
https://youtu.be/enrAWRoXQVA

>>64020988
usually what happens is that the losing side - whether police or mob - do what the armchair historians call
>lose cohesion
>become disorganised
>suffer a collapse in command authority
>breaks and runs

bringing up incidences of riot police failure is interesting, because unlike mobs, which fight the same way ancient "barbarian" tribes did, riot police have better training, at least as much as Roman legionaries did. so from this we can get an idea of how barbarians might have broken the occasional Roman legion.
riot police are trained to always stay in a formation and work as a platoon of 10 to 20. their tactics are to pick off the "barbarian champions" and then form a shield wall to withstand assault. because they essentially have the same equipment as a Roman or hoplite legion - shield and truncheon in place of sword - they fight like a Roman or hoplite legion, minus spears and javelins.
(when they have riot guns then they do get those)

so how do riot police get defeated?
when they're outnumbered and battered down in what the armchair historians call "pushing contests", just like hoplite phalanxes
or flanked unexpectedly, again like Greek phalanxes
or break formation due to broken terrain, like Greek phalanxes (often happens in urban riots)
or due to physical weakness, as at Lake Trasimene
or being surrounded, as at Cannae

>The reason for this is that an angry crowd can suddenly feel a sense of great power
no; that sense is more the result of seeing a great number of tactical weaknesses such as noticing that the riot police are outnumbered, cut off, etc

>and the police get the order from higher up to bug out
usually the rout then is due to the police panicking
which is not surprising. fighting withdrawals are probably the most difficult of all operations.

>>64020466
There's a almost zero chance he just happened to independently formulate and repeat almost verbatim the "face of battle" theory that's several decades old at this point and has been a popular theory that even managed to make it into pop history for at least two decades now.

>>64020749
>Napoleon's command of the Armée du Nord had collapsed, only two battalions out of the whole lot were obeying his commands
Which means two battalions had not routed.

>>64021472
Which means the Armée du Nord had routed.

>>64020069 (OP)
>Did niggas have insane t levels back then
Yes.
>or low IQ
No.
Thanks to eugenic filters such as caste-like breeding practices, exposure of unfit babies and sending young men off on the koryos, IQ and T levels of adult warriors (ie. free men and nobles) were very likely innately higher than now.
>or was life so abysmal
For a warrior of antiquity, life was objectively better than life for the average oversocialized urbanite bugman of today. More family, more social cohesion, less micro-plastics in your testes, less parasites in your bank and state apparatus.
>they didn't care if they died?
Warrior cults did tend to encourage accepting death in a way that is incomprehensible to the modern hedonist.

They also tended to fight for things that mattered...

>>64020759
>you won't find this overtly said
There's entire hollywood franchises based around this.

>>64020120
probably wwi, imagine dipping rags in your own piss and breathing through it just to counterattack a german offensive after a preliminary gas bombardment

>>64021818
>>64020120
Yeah, the more modern the technology the more eldritch horror the battlefield becomes.

https://youtu.be/34oJxSMP6Co?si=o8h23-cQuzg4dWag

>>64021762
I bet this nigga has no chin and the last time he was in the room with an exposed pussy was when he was born

>>64020869
as great this scene was i'm still completely assblasted they took a great book series and decided to make a single two hour movie about it
it would have been a great tv series or movie series for a time period that doesn't get much attention

So there were a number of "systems" of ancient battle. The most effective was the Roman system, which was built around heavy infantry armed with large shields advancing into direct contact with the enemy across the entire line and grinding away until the enemy's lines break.

This type of fighting is absolutely exhausting. There's actually not a ton of killing on the front ranks, but there's lots of wounding and being wounded, and men falling back after the exhaustion and/or wounds are too much to bear so they can take a break and get their bearings, before going back in (if they're not wounded significantly). Eventually, one side can't plug the holes that are developing in their lines, and one side ruptures and a breakthrough happens, and one army collapses as they're getting rolled up, and then when the rout happens, that's when the real killing start.

The reason the Romans tended to win was simple - on a per-man basis, they were far, far better equipped than any of their enemies. The bulk of their army was heavy infantry, and all of their heavy infantry got metal armor, which nobody else really did or could afford to do, and metal armor works really well. When guys in metal armor go up against guys without it, it's a massacre.

>>64022195
>The reason the Romans tended to win was simple - on a per-man basis, they were far, far better equipped than any of their enemies. The bulk of their army was heavy infantry, and all of their heavy infantry got metal armor, which nobody else really did or could afford to do, and metal armor works really well. When guys in metal armor go up against guys without it, it's a massacre.

Not really, Romans succeeded against better equipped enemies all the time. The Carthaginian armies had mercenary units that were heavy hoplites with heavier armor and shields than Romans. Rome fought several Greek states with elite units either fighting as full pike phalanx blocks or as Thureophoroi, oval shielded mail armor troops they called "copycat legions". They fought superheavy Sassanian Cataphracts and Germanic tribes that were even heavier than Roman legionaries because they fought FOR Rome for a long time and adopted many techniques from them.

What made Rome effective was the sheer effectiveness and institutional experience of their professional junior officer corps, both the legates and dux who went to academies and the centurions.

>>64021768
which always stop short of saying "we, the anti-war protesters, are the ones who caused PTSD in those vets". they'll come up with a hundred other excuses to bury the lede.

Hollywood is anti-war, make no mistake about that

>>64023300
You sure it wasn't the Vietnam War? It was the mean protestors t home?

>>64023305
The war caused the PTSD. The protestors at home made sure they would never recover.

>>64023305
other anon said it better than I could

>>64023315
The anti vietnam war protest is actually overstated. There really was a silent majority in this country. It was so overblown that people think Vietnam was the first time soldiers ever came home with PTSD. WWII soldiers just came home, beat their wives, and drank themselves to death Ira Hayes style.

>>64023321
>le silent majority
>le millions of American men just drank themselves to death

>>64022076
>t. anon who forgot to post chin, wedding ring and number of sons
It's okay, I'm sure you'll remember to do so next time.

>>64023300
>which always stop short of saying "we, the anti-war protesters, are the ones who caused PTSD in those vets"
Because that's a retarded take. Hippies don't give anybody PTSD.
But there are tons of movies about vets being ostracized. The narrative of "anti-war pothead hippies made returning vets into dejected homeless loser bums", whether true or false, is so widespread that I don't even have to be american to be aware of it.

>>64023722
>ostracized
who by?

>>64023350
Most people who went to Vietnam never actually saw combat. Its cultural impact is gargantuan but in raw numbers the American involvement wasnt THAT big, especially if you compare it to Korea. The 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan probably have a higher % of combat vets among the total deployed.

>>64023305
The protedtors sure as shit ruined everything by making comtinued support untenable despite the fact that South Vietnam needed very little to beat back the north indefinitely. The fall of Saigon probably did more psych damage than getting shot at because that actually made it all pointless.

>>64023758
>despite the fact that South Vietnam needed very little to beat back the north indefinitely
South Viets weren't putting their backs into it, to be fair
they were not like the South Koreans

>Its cultural impact is gargantuan but in raw numbers the American involvement wasnt THAT big
Maybe

>>64020084
Calling alexanders companions proto knights when the foes he fought had been doing what he did before him is silly.
Cataphracts are the OG shock cav.