After The Charge!?

[skel]

They say no plan survives contact with the enemy. as i sit here watching gladiator, and the opening battle, i thought to myself, "what did the legions do after the intial charge?" was it a free for all and simply stay alive? or was there still a formation they used? in my re-enacting, when our group gets scatterd we sound off the chain of command and regroup and then continue fighting. the romans did something of the like a assume?

 

well what did they do?

[Primus Pilus]

The theory was rolling lines that stayed together. When Roman legions got separated into small units of non uniformed combatants, they were in deep trouble. In the front of the line, complete uniformity would never be complete, but when there was trouble, the men in the rear pushed to the front to try to keep things together. Nothing ever worked quite as simply as this, but it gives the basic impression I hope.

[skel]

i forget where i heard this, i think a documentary of some sort... but i heard that sometimes smaller groups that had been sperated would form up in maybe a semi-circle or some other small defensive formation? is this true?

 

also, you said that if they got to fighitng on their own, they wouldnt last long.. is that saying that the individual skill of the legionares was weak? were they only usefull in a cohesive unit?

[longbow]

I wouldnt say they were weak skilled,more like your pretty knackered fighting individually anyway.Once your out of the line the enemy can swamp you.L

[Germanicus]

Yes - and also the main strength of the legions was in organisation - working together. Their weapons and sheilding was designed so as to work when groups were locked together, covering each others flanks. Most of their training drills I assume revolved around learning to obey commands for formations, in small groups these attacking/defending formations would have been impossible. In a lot of ways the barbarian enemies of Rome were more suited to fighting one on one, thats why when they came up against a disciplined legion with a good commander who could get his troops into the formations he wanted, the barbarians were trashed.

[P.Clodius]

The commander was resposible for overall command, supply, logistics, disposition, etc.... Once the command to advance was given, it was the Centurion that took over, keeping unit in formation, cohesion and all that good stuff. That was the strength of the Roman legion. Its discipline and cohesion. Its ability to be self sufficient.

[Hamilcar Barca]

The legionary was generally encouraged to attack by thrusting forward and killing the enemy in front of him and then stepping into his place and continue doing that until noted otherwise.

[Gajus of Sweden]

But all this lead to the presumption that the individual legionaire was informed of the battleplan in advance and even the backup plan? Out there in the field i guess the only way to communicate with the troops is by sound (horns?). But to enclose an enemy or do something more advanced than just chopping their way through the enemy lines they coldn't very well relie on sound signals alone, could they? Did they have a trained procedure what to do when the lines were breaking up or was it just to fight for your life then? How much controll did the commander really have over the troops when the battle started?

[Lex]

Another thing is, how did the Commander really know what was going on in the battle? He has thousands of troops stretching out quite a distance to either side of him and depending on the conditions the air could be filled with dust, smoke, snow or heavy rain. The sounds of the trumpets could also be muffled by strong winds and the screams, shouts and clashes of battle. It must have been very confusing.

 

Was he perhaps constantly informed by scouts on horseback?

[Scaevola]

Command and control has always been the hardest aspect to pull of effectively.

 

In Roman times, that's why all the centurians were very important. They were the final link to the overall plan. If they lost control of their men, the formation would be endangered and the battle threatened. Below centurian, men were important to keep the myriad small battles that occur in a major battle under control, but the centurian was the buck stopping point for the overall tactical plan. The tribune, through horns, runners and standards kept contact with the centurians in order to win a battle.

 

As far as the individual legionaires, they would be flexible enough to control up to nine feet of frontage in a very loose skirmish order to a bare three feet in heavy doubled formations. The important men were the ones on any corners. they only could rely on one neighbor for cover, everyone else had two in line. In order to keep their formation, Romans practiced to make it second nature to keep ranks and intervals. Scared men will clump together and make it hard to fight effectively. Room is the key to melee.

 

They drilled to assume formation and act in a uniform manner, so even a paniced unit could see what their neighbors were executing and follow suit. And if a group was seperated, quickly adopting a defensive stance or a wedge to breakout would mean the difference between living and dying. No one wants to fight someone who looks like they know what they're doing.

 

So after the charge there was order, control and a plan. But if it was lost or disjointed, well you got the great defeats.

[Onasander]

The spacing is really hard to do, I've been in a few formation snowball fights, we tried once to hold our formation and charge, and it collapsed real quick and turned into team wedge attacks. We got nothing to do in Alaska during the winter time cept to fight while waiting around for the 1SGT's formations, and I've found out it's not natural to fight rank and file..... not at all! People like using thier strengths, not sacrificing for another man's weaknesses. I greatly admire the romans and the other ancients for this, a hundred yards with two platoons going at it is complete chaos, can't hear nothing beyond the group fighting next to you. How they ever managed it in the beginning is a total mystery to me.

[Quintus Artemis Sertorius]

I remember doing some reading online about the post pilum-throwing charge and what happens afterwards. personally i like the theory of one or many pauses in the battle in which the opposing lines stop fighting in a mutual state of exhaustion. you figure, after the initial charge, it comes down to hand to hand with gladius and scutum, repeated thrusts along with having to push off enemy shields and attacks would wear you down quick. as the theory goes, both sides reach a point of exhaustion in the front ranks at which time a kind of rotation within the ranks happens. this rotation could happen on the level of a single century rotating the troops from the rear rank to the front rank, as far as whole cohorts or legions doing so. during these lulls, there is still spradic hand to hand in different areas of the line, as well as shooting matches between opposing archers and slingers. it seems very very unlikely that most battles deteriorated into mindless slug fests after an opening charge. one of the main reasons for the reorganization of the legions between marius and ceasar was in order to make them more manueverable. of course you never see this in any of the movies. i think hollywood just loves to see masses of uncontrolled non-tactical troops running around in an orgy of wild slashing. anyway, thats just my idea about it.

[longbow]

I never understood how they could rotate the front rank?surelly when the front try to disengage,the enemy can swarm into the gaps in the lines.Unless the enemy stop bashing hell out of your shield and leave you alone to finish the manuvre,i cant see that happening.

Longbow

[Onasander]

There's a lot of skill involved in that stuff, I really can't comprehend how they held together. Who would be crazy enough to suggest fighting in a symetrical formation of rank and file? It's so completely unnatural. It's far more rational, but seems to have some major disadvantages.

 

Did the romans have the same spacing problems when moving through obstacles that modern infantry has today, like if a ten foot high brier patch lies infront of a couple guys on the left wing, would they be expected to leap into it to preserve the formation's spacing/integrity as we are today?

 

I've seen guys take out hedges while marching down in Fort Benning just they weren't told to stop or move left quick enough; formations are incredibly logical, but at the same time, they can be extreamly irrational, making you do things you know you just shouldn't do.

[Quintus Artemis Sertorius]

When it comes to obstacles, i think there was some fluidity in the movements. One of the reasons that the actual units of manuever got smaller was so that they could move easier in broken terrains. Look at battles between early legions and phalanx like formations. The romans defeated the phalanxes mainly because the Romans were able to exploit the phalanx's trouble negotiating broken ground. As a phalanx advances, irregularities in the rank and file start to happen as it moves over natural obstructions. The legionaries where then able to get inside the range of the 16 foot pikes, and then it was really all over for the phalanx. I would think that Roman troops knew that the formation was something that had to be flexible in order to work. I don't really think the enemy would swarm into small gaps in the line, because to do so would put yourself in a a tight position with enemy on both sides, especially your un-shielded right side. Looking at it from a subjective point of view, say you have been in the front line stabbing and pushing constantly for say 30 minutes. There was a massive amount of adrenaline surging through your body which eventually comes crashing to a stop. You are tired, probably wounded in some way, covered in blood, and likely extremely thirsty. More importantly, the enemy probably is too. Looking at it that way, I think it is plausible that both sides could come to a momentary spontaneous halt due to sheer exhaustion in the front ranks. Psychologically you would want to get back at least out of immediate sword and pilum range. I could imagine units easing back off each other, and then a quick rotation and redressing of the lines in order to get fresh troops to the front, all the while trying to keep the other guys head down with archers and peltasts. This would eventually turn into a race between opposing units to get rotated, redressed, and ready to once again advance after throwing pilum again hopefully before the enemy is ready yet.

 

Another possibility could be to have troops, say those not in the first 2 or 3 ranks in a kind of open formation with a few feet between them. that way, as the front line troops become exhausted or wounded, they can fall back through the spaces, and the legionaries in the 4th or 5th ranks can step to the right and forward, so they are leading with the scutum into the hole made by the retreating soldier. Either way, I always thought there had to be a way to rotate soldiers off the immediate front without simply turning a whole unit around and marching them off. To simply let a unit sit on the front and get so tired they collapse seems foolish. At least that is my humble opinion.