Contributions Of Roman Warfare

[Kosmo]

I don't see any link between roman and "modern" armies. Some similarities exist because they face similar chalanges, but the same can be said about any ancient army.

The biggest innovation was the small complete army called legion.

This did not survive and was reinvented much later during napoleonic wars as today division.

My view of military history is that sometime in the III AD a horse "revolution" happened and for 1000 years the horseman ruled unoposed the battlefields.

[caldrail]

It wasn't a revolution- that implies a sudden change. The dominance of cavalry developed from roman times through the dark ages and reaches its height in the later medieval period. Gunpowder of course pulls it down to earth.

 

Cavalry in ancient times was evolving. It was a learning process. At just to emphasis the point, it was the barbarians who became europes knights in shining armour, not the romans.

[Caius Maxentius]

(Ovidius @ Mar 24 2006, 02:21 PM)

 

I think these are the crucial contibutions of the Roman Warfare.

 

1. Emphasis on drill, uniformity of weapons, equipment, and training

2. Europe's first civil service

3. Roads and other infrastructure

4. The spread of the Roman Legal system to much Europe and some parts of Asia.

 

 

 

No I don't think so. Only the last has any real lasting significance. Roads almost went out of service as soon as the roman legions left. The roman civil service vanished and wasn't replaced for centuries. The emphasis on drill, weaponry, equipment, and training comes when an army (any army) is constantly in the field and must improve to gain the upper hand.

 

With regard to number 3, almost every book I read that has pictures of Roman architecture and engineering that stresses that "this bridge" or "that aqueduct" are still serving some kind of practical purpose today, so it's not a long stretch to assume that some of the infrastructure continued to be used for some time after the end of antiquity, is it?

 

With regard to number 2, many aspects of the Roman civilian and military bureaucracy remained after the fall of the empire (admittedly, many of these were late Roman inventions, not from the High Empire). The Roman command system of the duces and comites became the "dukes" and "counts" of medieval times. There are examples of the Franks and Arabs continuing to use the tax collectors, record keepers and other bureaucrats left over from the late Roman/Byzantine administration. I don't think it's fair to say that all these things simply vanished.

[caldrail]

(Ovidius @ Mar 24 2006, 02:21 PM)

 

I think these are the crucial contibutions of the Roman Warfare.

 

1. Emphasis on drill, uniformity of weapons, equipment, and training

2. Europe's first civil service

3. Roads and other infrastructure

4. The spread of the Roman Legal system to much Europe and some parts of Asia.

 

 

 

No I don't think so. Only the last has any real lasting significance. Roads almost went out of service as soon as the roman legions left. The roman civil service vanished and wasn't replaced for centuries. The emphasis on drill, weaponry, equipment, and training comes when an army (any army) is constantly in the field and must improve to gain the upper hand.

 

With regard to number 3, almost every book I read that has pictures of Roman architecture and engineering that stresses that "this bridge" or "that aqueduct" are still serving some kind of practical purpose today, so it's not a long stretch to assume that some of the infrastructure continued to be used for some time after the end of antiquity, is it?

 

With regard to number 2, many aspects of the Roman civilian and military bureaucracy remained after the fall of the empire (admittedly, many of these were late Roman inventions, not from the High Empire). The Roman command system of the duces and comites became the "dukes" and "counts" of medieval times. There are examples of the Franks and Arabs continuing to use the tax collectors, record keepers and other bureaucrats left over from the late Roman/Byzantine administration. I don't think it's fair to say that all these things simply vanished.

 

Well it wasn't a clean break I agree, but continuance? Thats more difficult to swallow. Roads for instance almost fell out of use despite being major through routes. Some were maintained if the locals thought it useful, but it required labour and techniques that were being forgotten. To some extent thats also true of bridges and aqueducts. They weren't maintained like they would once have been, instead they were used until they... erm... stopped being usable.

 

Also I don't think the medieval system of dukes and counts was anything close to romanesque despite the use of latin-derived names. They were hereditary titles, not offices.

 

The fall of the west is sometimes seen as a discreet event in its own right - it wasn't. It was like a rickety old building collapsing in stages. Bits fell here, then there. I'm very interested that the Franks/Arabs used existing administration, but as mentioned in other threads, isn't that just ordinary people trying to keep their part of Rome alive? Sooner or later it fell into disuse leaving the medieval people to begin a slow recovery.

[Divi Filius]

The rediscovery of Vegetius and his handbook(well I should word it bettwe by saying the usage of his first three books, since the Medieval era used book 4 I believe, sieging, but the feudal system hindered the establishment of the army necessary to use the books) in the military influenced discipline and training heavily. To this day the military model of the US has adopted tons of aspects of the Romans. Down to the very marching songs so glorified("I dont know what I've been told" yada yada)

Edited April 29, 2006 by Divi Filius

[caldrail]

No they haven't. They learned the hard way in WWI after the amateurism in the 18th and 19th century. Fighting a european war forced the american armed forces to adopt a different approach. The same lesson was reinforced inWWII, Korea, and finally in Vietnam. Why did it take so long for the US to become more professional? Because they didn't want to fight foreign wars. Now that the US is involved in constant brush wars (particularly now that the media has made the horror of war too real for the stay-at-home public), the need for professionalism has become a major factor.

[Divi Filius]

Caldrail. Im not arguing against what your saying. What I am saying is that the methods which America used to get it to this point, were already there, known, the drills and everything. The entire book of vegetius was known and well in use since the 18th century. It came into the hands of the American army in the 30's. What followed from there, were crafts that the Romans had into use during their greatest time. How it evolved into the American military, thats another story. America may have not wanted to be the power it was, but during World War 2, they were hard pressed to find a better military hand book the Vegetius. Look into the many different military journals on him during that era.

 

No I don't think so. Only the last has any real lasting significance. Roads almost went out of service as soon as the roman legions left.

 

If that were so it would mean that the Via Appia, Via Egnatia and all the famouse roads of the empire were not there. The solidification of the roads as common highways took centuries to evolve. The remains which we have of the Via Appia today are not from the Samnite wars but from the varius centuries of the Principate, its "infastructure" was solidified during Augustus. yet they were there, after the wars they became tools commerce. This is a well known fact.

Edited May 2, 2006 by Divi Filius

[Spurius]

small nitpick, then back to the subject at hand;

 

No they haven't. They learned the hard way in WWI after the amateurism in the 18th and 19th century. ...

 

Actually it was the Europeans that failed to learn from the ACW and suffered so badly in WWI. The Americans foolishly followed the European leed and forgot what they had learned 56 years earlier.

 

IMHO: What Rome passed on to modern times was proof of what is happening now. The professional army is the deadliest army and also the one that a country takes to its grave. The armies of the Republic while less disciplined were more able to survive along with Rome itself.

 

Look at the overall cost of losing a hardened professional legion vs a well trained up citizen legion. You could train up an effective replacement citizen legion much faster than replacing veterans. While a country is vital enough to survive with a minimal professional army and fight wars with citizen armies, it is a growing power. If it comes to rely on purely professional units, it is dead after the next big war with no real number of replacements to fill veteran boots.

[Felix Marcellus]

No they haven't. They learned the hard way in WWI after the amateurism in the 18th and 19th century.

 

What was amateur about the 18th and 19th century? I may be biased, but the American military during the Civil War, including the Confederate military which was made from scratch, was a very talented military machine. Nobody before the Union Navy used Naval Gunfire Support as effectively. Combined Arms was born in the US Civil War and perfected by Germany with the blitzkrieg.

 

The American leadership was very well educated in military history. I'd say some pretty brilliant leaders (some of the most brilliant were born in the American Civil War.

 

The German Army of 1860 that defeated France and united Germany was a pretty fine military machine itself.

 

Definitely none of them were perfect, but they could hold their own. Amateur would be the armies of WWI which was 20th century. And I wouldn't really call them amateur. I'd say the ineffectiveness of the various militaries in WWI was due more to the fact that technology had by far surpassed known tactics which gave the appearance of incompetence.

 

Napoleon didn't do badly for his time but not perfect.

 

Didn't do badly? Holy Cow man! He revolutionized the way militaries organize. He created the battle staff. There were no corps before Napolean. THe man was an organizational genious. Didn't do badly???? C'mon now. Give the little guy some credit.

 

As for what we learned from Rome, here's one thing.

 

Rome gave modern day armies one of its first looks, if not the first look, at preparatory fires. And looking at how the US preps an objective today I'd say it's probably one of the most important lessons we learned from Rome.

[Felix Marcellus]

small nitpick, then back to the subject at hand;

 

No they haven't. They learned the hard way in WWI after the amateurism in the 18th and 19th century. ...

 

Actually it was the Europeans that failed to learn from the ACW and suffered so badly in WWI. The Americans foolishly followed the European leed and forgot what they had learned 56 years earlier.

 

 

Spurius,

 

I hear a lot of people say that. Lessons from the American Civil War were lost in WWI. I don't know what they could've learned that would've made a difference. Cavalry and therefore maneuver warfare was temporarily made obsolete by very accurate artillery and exponentially more improved machine guns.

 

Maneuver is what was lacking in WWI. That's why WWI ended up becoming a conflict fought in trenches. They could've studied the ACW backwards and forwards and it still would not have prevented WWI from being a war of attrition fought in the trenches.

 

There was no precedent for this type of war with the type of technology being used to fight it. Technology surpassed Tactics. Improvements typically were slow and new technology had time to be integrated. In WWI the technology exploded and entered the conflict before military leadership could figure out how to properly use it or counter it.

 

The answer was the tank. And the tank slowly made its way onto the battlefield. Unfortunately it wasn't perfected enough to break the stalemate and kickstart maneuver warfare again. At least not until after the war was basically already over.

[Spurius]

Early on in WWI both sides had been fooled by the Franco-Prussian War. The lesson from the ACW was that concentrated rifle fire (like the BEF used at Mons against the Germans) could brake any openly manouvering unit despite any elan factor, even without machine guns. The Boer War had re-taught that to the British, so they used it well early on.

 

The seige of Vicksburg, the slaughter at Cold Harbor, the seige of Petersburg and the advance on Richmond were the same type of trench warfare as mid-WWI. The heavy artillery of WWI did keep the tactic of advancing the trench from being effective, but the use of explosive mines and sapping as well as night patrols were all present in the ACW. Slow going, but after Cold Harbor there was no equivalent attacks to "going over the top." Why it was used time and again in WWI, failure re-enforcing failure, doesn't speak well of the professional officer corps in WWI versus the war trained corp of the ACW. Both seemed to have the same learning curve, so why have a professional corp after quarter mastering is accomplished?

 

Now if you had a corp of regular professional, ala the BEF, at the start of the war you could have had them manouver and burn like Sherman's columns or Stuart's "foot calavry." Imagine the BEF cutting loose and raiding the Rhur before retiring back to the coast. The Germans tried to do this, but became too tied down to mass versus manouver. Also the use of sucessive waves or short rushes had to be re-learned since the ACW.

 

Mostly what I think could have been taken from the ACW was how to avoid unnecessary casualties. The bloody work of 1915 through 1917 could have been avoided if it was simply remembered that dug in defense was so superior to offense.

 

Of course I could be all wet too....