How well did the Roman Legions cope with Guerrilla Warfare?

[Guest SassinidAzatan]

In many Roman-themed movies such as the recently released Centurian,the Roman Legions are often portrayed as faring badly against Guerrilla barbarians and guerrilla warfare. Movies often portray the Roman Legion as acting like idiots and marching in a path where guerrillas are able to hide in such as forests abd swamps without caution and marching in formation as though everything is safe. Then suddenly Barbarians start shooting arrows and sending melee troops and the Roman Legions are slaughtered because they are completely caught by complete surprise. If they do go into formation during the attack, they often go into Turtoise Formation and are portrayed as being stuck in the Middle of the forests constantly being shot at. These movies portray that even though the Romans are able to go into protective formation, part of the Barbarians guerrilla tactics was to send melee troops while the Romans are stuck in Turtoise formation statically in one place. The Roman Legions are shown as being slaughtered in the melee as they are too busy worrying about arrows and staying stuck in turtoise so they couldn't effectively fight in melee or go into proper formation to counter Barbarian infantry attacks.

 

Iam curious, how accurate is it when films portray of the slaughter of Roman Legions by guerrilla because they are complacent while on march and completely surprise when the raids start?Some of the mistakes the Roman Legions makes when fighting Barbarian guerrills in movies are so idiotic and basic that anybody without military training and just having good old common sense would never commit such mistakes the Romans make when fighting guerrillas in movies! Really, the Romans must have at least learned to cope with guerrilla warfare considering they fought guerrillas for centuries particularly in Brittania!

Edited March 24, 2011 by SassinidAzatan

[GhostOfClayton]

There's no doubt that the source of this kind of portrayal is the loss of Varus' 3 legions in the Teutoberg Forest, and there is also no doubt that the Legions were at their most effective (certainly up to around the fourth century) in formation on an open plane.

 

Having said that, though, plenty of people will point at Varus and list all the terrible mistakes he made, not scouting properly, and trusting Arminius, not heeding warnings, and so on. Still, Legions must, from time to time, have had to pass through terrain where ambush was possible. Surely, given all that extra forest and swamp that was about the place at the time, these situations could only be minimised.

 

So, a wiser General than Varus, or one that needed to learn from his mistakes, would surely have:

 

a - Where possible, chosen routes that minimised the possibility of ambush

b - Used cavalry and scouts to reccie

c - Used intelligence to guage the probability of attack

 

It's also worth pointing out that the Pax Romana was very effective, and the barbarian hoardes weren't continually out for Roman blood, as the movies may have you believe.

 

One question remains, and it's really at the nub of what you asked. How would the Roman military have changed their battle tactics to react to this type of situation? Over to the rest of you . . . I've done my bit.

Edited March 24, 2011 by GhostOfClayton

[Melvadius]

I would suggest having a look at Frontinus: The Strategemata for an indication of how Roman's were taught to deal with such questions by the late 1st century AD. This version of the Bennet Loeb text is on Bill Thayer's excellent Lacus Curtius site.

 

One caveat to the above is that this seems to be an 'almost complete' extract/ retyping of the Loeb Classic version but seems to be without the introduction which IIRC states the view that Book IV is basically a recompilation or reworking of entries elsewhere so may not have formed part of the original work.

[Kosmo]

What you describe is an ambush but you name it guerrilla warfare. They are different things. Romans had some defeats in ambushes like Lake Trasimene and Teutoburg Forest. Guerrilla warfare was uncommon with Viriathus and his Lusitanians maybe the best example.

[caldrail]

The Roman legions after Marius had been primarily designed and fine-tuned for formal warfare. Apart from a security role (Besides guard duty,some serving legionaries might be assigned as spies - legions had men doing all sorts of peripheral activities including hunting animals for the arena. Patrols on the frontier were often left to 'lower value' troops like auxillaries) there was little else to engage them other than civil engineering where available.

 

However - increasingly the Roman legions began to indulge in raids at their own initiative, designed not for military or politcal objectives but purely for reward. In fact, by the fourth century, raiding had become a viable strategy for the lighter and less formal legions of the time. Sebastianus attempted to prove the value of guerilla warfgare by sending specially men ahead of the main column with notable success against the Goths.

 

In general, the Roman legions prior to Constantines reforms did very poorly against guerilla fighters. The reason was simple. When the legions dictated where and how the battle was to be fought, chances are they would do very well. If the enemy dictated the course of the conflict, the Romans usually failed utterly. An obvious examples is the the campaign againt Spartacus. Since guerilla warfare is all about fighting whilst denying the enemy a clear and present objective, we can say the Romans weren't well equipped to deal with such strategies.

 

With suitable intelligence and a clear objective the Romans could tip the balance in their favour, such as finishing off the jewish zealots at Masada or the druidic resistance at the Battle of Mona in the 1st century. Notice though the Romans had forced both factions to a retreat and assaulted it directly - a typical Roman ploy.

[Ingsoc]

Like Kosmo wrote what you describe is an ambush and not a guerrilla war. A good example to a guerrilla war would be the Bar Kochba revolt in Judea (132-136)

 

12 At Jerusalem he founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, 2 for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposely made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them; but when he went farther away, they openly revolted. 3 To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the p449Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.

 

13 At first the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; 2 many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. 3 Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived. 14 Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were p451razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. 2 Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. 3 Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, "If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health." (Cassius Dio, 69.12-13)

 

Archaeological evidence show that the Romans suffer great loses at the start of the revolt and one legion, the XXII Deiotariana, was completely wiped out and the revels strike coins to celebrate their new found independence.

 

The Romans respond by concentrating their army in Judea in great numbers and they virtually wiped out any places in Judea that could show sympathy to the rebels, in simply terms the Romans were force to enter an attrition war until the overcome their enemy.

[Virgil61]

Like Kosmo wrote what you describe is an ambush and not a guerrilla war. A good example to a guerrilla war would be the Bar Kochba revolt in Judea (132-136)

 

... 3 To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the p449Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.

 

13 At first the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; 2 many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. 3 Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived. 14 Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were p451razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. 2 Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. 3 Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, "If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health." (Cassius Dio, 69.12-13)

 

Archaeological evidence show that the Romans suffer great loses at the start of the revolt and one legion, the XXII Deiotariana, was completely wiped out and the revels strike coins to celebrate their new found independence.

 

The Romans respond by concentrating their army in Judea in great numbers and they virtually wiped out any places in Judea that could show sympathy to the rebels, in simply terms the Romans were force to enter an attrition war until the overcome their enemy.

 

This Roman method of counter-insurgency here is interesting in that there is something familiar to the approach involved. It's a tried and true strategy of 'draining the swamp' of support for insurgents; supplies and sympathizers (villages) are eliminated decreasing the ability of guerrillas to move freely. During the Boer War the Brits corralled the civilian populace and used a block house strategy to whittle down the Boer area of operations. In Iraq company and platoon sized elements were sent to Sunni areas to live in the smaller towns and villages for 12 month tours lessening the ability of insurgents to move anonymously [we avoided the Roman approach of razing villages].

 

I'm simplifying of course, the Roman approach was blunt, cruel and harsh (some argue the Brit approach was), but its a sound one.

 

The Romans were engaged in Spain for several years during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The terrain and guerrilla operations of some of the indigenous tribes being to blame for the difficulty if I remember correctly.

 

Off the top of my head I recall at one Roman commander in another region adjusting to the local battle by having his cohorts conduct operations in mountainous areas without armor in order to track and engage the enemy.

 

EDIT to add: There's always this Air Force Command and Staff College paper. A lot to quibble with maybe, but still an interesting read;

 

[Opens PDF File] LESSONS FROM ANTIQUITY: WHAT THE ROMANS TEACH US ABOUT INSURGENCIES

Edited March 26, 2011 by Virgil61

[caldrail]

Like Kosmo wrote what you describe is an ambush and not a guerrilla war.

Nonsense.

 

The Romans typically sought to contain the enemy and force him to gather at a single location where they could deal with the issue in one final action, fighting on their terms rather than the enemies. Notice that they effectively utilise the same means as catching animals en masse.

[barca]

My mistake, see next post

Edited March 27, 2011 by barca

[barca]

I don't think that the Roman Legion was any more susceptible than any other formation to guerilla warfare. Consider for example a Macedonian phalanx trapped in Teutoberger Wald - those Sarissas would be useless, getting tangled up in overhead branches. Would result in a much quicker victory by barbarians.

 

The manipular legion which evolved somewhere between the battle of Allia and the Samnite wars was actually well suited for dealing with unexpected events. The ability hold maniples in reserve to deal with rapidly-occurring changes in the front lines and the flanks made it a very adaptable formation, but no system is perfect. I would say they suffered catastrophic events because of blunders, not an inherent weakness of the formation itself.

 

As far as the depiction of the tortoise formation in a pitched battle, that is highly inaccurate. The Tortoise or testudo was only used in two situations:

1. for sieges

2. a modified form for receiving a cavalry charge

 

The late Roman army was actually well-adapted for smaller skirmishes, since they frequently dealt with small barbarian raiding parties. There were few large-scale battles between Strassburg and Adrianople.

Edited March 27, 2011 by barca

[Ingsoc]

Like Kosmo wrote what you describe is an ambush and not a guerrilla war.

Nonsense.

 

The Romans typically sought to contain the enemy and force him to gather at a single location where they could deal with the issue in one final action, fighting on their terms rather than the enemies. Notice that they effectively utilise the same means as catching animals en masse.

 

Guerrilla war is fighting by conducting small scale hit and run attacks on the enemy, and them retreating to your base, this tactics often aided by sympathizing local population.

 

That certainly wasn't the tactic of Arminius at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

[Guest SassinidAzatan]

 

As far as the depiction of the tortoise formation in a pitched battle, that is highly inaccurate. The Tortoise or testudo was only used in two situations:

1. for sieges

2. a modified form for receiving a cavalry charge

 

Strange since movies, PC games(Rome:Total War), and general history books always portray the Turtoise formation as a static formation for protection against arrow volleys in pitched battle.

 

I don't think that the Roman Legion was any more susceptible than any other formation to guerilla warfare. Consider for example a Macedonian phalanx trapped in Teutoberger Wald - those Sarissas would be useless, getting tangled up in overhead branches. Would result in a much quicker victory by barbarians.

 

The manipular legion which evolved somewhere between the battle of Allia and the Samnite wars was actually well suited for dealing with unexpected events. The ability hold maniples in reserve to deal with rapidly-occurring changes in the front lines and the flanks made it a very adaptable formation, but no system is perfect. I would say they suffered catastrophic events because of blunders, not an inherent weakness of the formation itself.

Doesn't surprise me that other armies of the era had troubles with guerrillas(including the Germanic barbarians and Celtic warriors frequently portrayed as guerrilla fighters in hollywood and PC games).However Hollywood and popular media begs to differ.

The late Roman army was actually well-adapted for smaller skirmishes, since they frequently dealt with small barbarian raiding parties. There were few large-scale battles between Strassburg and Adrianople.

General history books state the opposite.

 

Iam really glad I joined this site. So many misconceptions of the Romans are done away thanks to the knowledgable experts of this site!

Edited March 28, 2011 by SassinidAzatan

[Virgil61]

 

The late Roman army was actually well-adapted for smaller skirmishes, since they frequently dealt with small barbarian raiding parties. There were few large-scale battles between Strassburg and Adrianople.

 

I think there's a strong argument that the Roman army under the late-Republic/Principate could hold their own at

[caldrail]

The manipular legion which evolved somewhere between the battle of Allia and the Samnite wars was actually well suited for dealing with unexpected events. The ability hold maniples in reserve to deal with rapidly-occurring changes in the front lines and the flanks made it a very adaptable formation, but no system is perfect. I would say they suffered catastrophic events because of blunders, not an inherent weakness of the formation itself.

It was the command structure that caused the problem, not the formation. Since the Romans were geared for exclusive single command, they did not react well to situations where cooperative reaction was essential, because inter-unit communication was not catered for on a formal basis. In fact, we know that legionaries regarded their centurion as the boss and in some cases refused outright to obey orders from a commander of another century. Neither was there any standard inter-unit signalling system, or even any kind of formal messaging system. It was standard practice among the legions to rely on co-operative intiative - which was fine if everyone understood what was going on, and ambushes are not the easiest situations to gain initiative of. Bear in mind that as an aggressive conquest state, the legions were designed for offence, not defence, and their tactics and training reflected that doctrine.

 

The late Roman army was actually well-adapted for smaller skirmishes, since they frequently dealt with small barbarian raiding parties. There were few large-scale battles between Strassburg and Adrianople.

Couldn't agree more.

 

Guerrilla or insurgency warfare is messy stuff. If you're fighting on the enemy's terrain you can always burn his villages, sell his kinsfolk into slavery. If he's raiding you--as in Tacifarinas--it requires a different approach.

The Roman approach, as I mentioned earlier, was indeed to root the enemy out. By containment they attempted to force the guerillas into a situation where their own chosen strategies were preferable. In other words, the Romans - as always - preferred an offensive posture.

Edited March 28, 2011 by caldrail

[Melvadius]

Some good points made here but we are dealing with several centuries of Roman history and I am uncertain that a 'possible' Roman preference for 'containment' necessarily would have always translated into avoiding fighting 'guerilla' units except by attempting pitched battles.

 

My impression of the Roman army drawn from the writings of Frontinus and other modern interpretations is one which could and did react to opponents who fought in a number of different ways. Consequently for most of their 'Imperial' history if not before the Romans must have developed the means of bringing their enemies either to battle or by other means ensuring that they ceased to be a viable opposition.

 

As has been pointed out above the Roman's had a number of different units which could be called on to fight in combination or singly against a range of opponents. Equally the very fact hat they had the occasion to fight in combination with other units argues for some, at least reasonably efficient, 'forma' means of passing supplementary orders on the battlefield to multiple units whether by signal flags, trumpets, drums or some other means.

 

On this basis I can't agree with the argument that they never found some means of successfully fighting 'guerilla' forces.