Battle Studies; Ancient and Modern Battle Part 9

CHAPTER V

MORALE IN ANCIENT BATTLE

We now know the morale and mechanism of ancient fighting; the word melee employed by the ancients was many times stronger than the idea to be expressed; it meant a crossing of arms, not a confusion of men.

The results of battles, such as losses, suffice to demonstrate this, and an instant of reflection makes us see the error of the word melee.

In pursuit it was possible to plunge into the midst of the fugitives, but in combat every one had too much need for the next man, for his neighbor, who was guarding his flanks and his back, to let himself be killed out of sheer wantonness by a sure blow from within the ranks of the enemy. [22]

In the confusion of a real melee, Caesar at Pharsalus, and Hannibal at Cannae, would have been conquered. Their shallow ranks, penetrated by the enemy, would have had to fight two against one, they would even have been taken in rear in consequence of the breaking of their ranks.

Also has there not been seen, in troops equally reliable and desperate, that mutual weariness which brings about, with tacit accord, falling back for a breathing spell on both sides in order again to take up the battle?

How can this be possible with a melee?

With the confusion and medley of combatants, there might be a mutual extermination, but there would not be any victors. How would they recognize each other? Can you conceive two mixed ma.s.ses of men or groups, where every one occupied in front can be struck with impunity from the side or from behind? That is mutual extermination, where victory belongs only to survivors; for in the mix-up and confusion, no one can flee, no one knows where to flee.

After all, are not the losses we have seen on both sides demonstration that there was no real melee?

The word is, therefore, too strong; the imagination of painters' and poets' has created the melee.

This is what happened:

At a charging distance troops marched towards the enemy with all the speed compatible with the necessity for fencing and mutual aid. Quite often, the moral impulse, that resolution to go to the end, manifested itself at once in the order and freedom of gait. That impulse alone put to flight a less resolute adversary.

It was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the ma.s.s; the preoccupation [23] of the rank was very great, as the behavior of Caesar's troops at Pharsalus shows in their slow march, timed by the flutes of Lacedaemonian battalions. At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord, because the men of the first rank, of necessity and instinctively, a.s.sured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbors in the same line, their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movements to strike and parry. There was a contact of man with man; each took the adversary in front of him and attacked him, because by penetrating into the ranks before having struck him down, he risked being wounded in the side by losing his flank supports. Each one then hit his man with his shield, expecting to make him lose his equilibrium, and at the instant he tried to recover himself landed the blow. The men in the second line, back of the intervals necessary for fencing in the first, were ready to protect their sides against any one that advanced between them and were prepared to relieve tired warriors. It was the same in the third line, and so on.

Every one being supported on either side, the first encounter was rarely decisive, and the fencing, the real combat at close quarters, began.

If men of the first line were wounded quickly, if the other ranks were not in a hurry to relieve or replace them, or if there was hesitation, defeat followed. This happened to the Romans in their first encounters with the Gauls. The Gaul, with his shield, parried the first thrust, brought his big iron sword swooping down with fury upon the top of the Roman shield, split it and went after the man. The Romans, already hesitating before the moral impulse of the Gauls, their ferocious yells, their nudeness, an indication of a contempt for wounds, fell then in a greater number than their adversaries and demoralization followed. Soon they accustomed themselves to this valorous but not tenacious spirit of their enemies, and when they had protected the top of their shields with an iron band, they no longer fell, and the roles were changed.

The Gauls, in fact, were unable either to hold their ground against the better arms and the thrusts of the Romans, or against their individual superior tenacity, increased nearly tenfold by the possible relay of eight ranks of the maniple. The maniples were self-renewing.

Whereas with the Gauls the duration of the combat was limited to the strength of a single man, on account of the difficulties of close or tumultuous ranks, and the impossibility of replacing losses when they were fighting at close quarters.

If the weapons were nearly alike, preserving ranks and thereby breaking down, driving back and confusing the ranks of the enemy, was to conquer. The man in disordered, broken lines, no longer felt himself supported, but vulnerable everywhere, and he fled. It is true that it is hardly possible to break hostile lines without doing the same with one's own. But the one who breaks through first, has been able to do so only by making the foe fall back before his blows, by killing or wounding. He has thereby raised his courage and that of his neighbor. He knows, he sees where he is marching; whilst the adversary overtaken as a consequence of the retreat or the fall of the troops that were flanking him, is surprised. He sees himself exposed on the flank. He falls back on a line with the rank in rear in order to regain support. But the lines in the rear give way to the retreat of the first. If the withdrawal has a certain duration, terror comes as a result of the blows which drive back and mow down the first line. If, to make room for those pushed back, the last lines turn their backs, there is small chance that they will face the front again. s.p.a.ce has tempted them. They will not return to the fight.

Then by that natural instinct of the soldier to worry, to a.s.sure himself of his supports, the contagion of flight spreads from the last ranks to the first. The first, closely engaged, has been held to the fight in the meantime, under pain of immediate death. There is no need to explain what follows; it is butchery. (Caedes).

But to return to combat.

It is evident that the formation of troops in a straight line, drawn close together, existed scarcely an instant. Moreover each group of files formed in action was connected with the next group; the groups, like the individuals, were always concerned about their support. The fight took place along the line of contact of the first ranks of the army, a straight line, broken, curved, and bent in different directions according to the various chances of the action at such or such a point, but always restricting and separating the combatants of the two sides. Once engaged on that line, it was necessary to face the front under pain of immediate death. Naturally and necessarily every one in these first ranks exerted all his energy to defend his life.

At no point did the line become entangled as long as there was fighting, for, general or soldier, the effort of each one was to keep up the continuity of support all along the line, and to break or cut that of the enemy, because victory then followed.

We see then that between men armed with swords, it was possible to have, and there was, if the combat was serious, penetration of one ma.s.s into the other, but never confusion, or a jumble of ranks, by the men forming these ma.s.ses. [24]

Sword to sword combat was the most deadly. It presented the most sudden changes, because it was the one in which the individual valor and dexterity of the combatant had the greatest and most immediate influence. Other methods of combat were simpler.

Let us compare pikes and broadswords.

The close formation of men armed with pikes was irresistible so long as it was maintained. A forest of pikes fifteen to eighteen feet long kept you at a distance. [25] On the other hand it was easy to kill off the cavalry and light infantry about the phalanx, which was an unwieldy ma.s.s marching with a measured step, and which a mobile body of troops could always avoid. Openings in the phalanx might be occasioned by marching, by the terrain, by the thousand accidents of struggle, by the individual a.s.sault of brave men, by the wounded on the ground creeping under the high held pikes and cutting at the legs of the front rank. Men in the phalanx could scarcely see and even the first two lines hardly had a free position for striking. The men were armed with long lances, useless at close quarters, good only for combat at shaft's length (Polybius). They were struck with impunity by the groups [26] which threw themselves into the intervals. And then, once the enemy was in the body of the phalanx, morale disappeared and it became a ma.s.s without order, a flock of panic-stricken sheep falling over each other.

In a mob hard-pressed men p.r.i.c.k with their knives those who press them. The contagion of fear changes the direction of the human wave; it bends back upon itself and breaks to escape danger. If, then, the enemy fled before the phalanx there was no melee. If he gave way tactically before it and availing himself of gaps penetrated it by groups, still there was no melee or mixture of ranks. The wedge entering into a ma.s.s does not become intermingled with it.

With a phalanx armed with long pikes against a similar phalanx there was still less confusion. They were able to stand for a long time, if the one did not take the other in flank or in rear by a detached body of troops. In all ancient combat, even in victory achieved by methods which affected the morale, such methods are always effective, for man does not change.

It is unnecessary to repeat that in ancient conflicts, demoralization and flight began in the rear ranks.

We have tried to a.n.a.lyze the fight of infantry of the line because its action alone was decisive in ancient combat. The light infantry of both sides took to flight, as Thucydides states. They returned later to pursue and ma.s.sacre the vanquished. [27]

In cavalry against cavalry, the moral effect of a ma.s.s charging in good order was of the greatest influence. We rarely see two cavalry organizations, neither of which breaks before such reciprocal action.

Such action was seen on the Tecinus and at Cannae, engagements cited merely because they are very rare exceptions. And even in these cases there was no shock at full speed, but a halt face to face and then an engagement.

The hurricanes of cavalry of those days were poetic figures. They had no reality. In an encounter at full speed, men and horses would be crushed, and neither men nor horses wished such an encounter. The hands of the cavalrymen reined back, the instinct of men and horses was to slacken, to stop, if the enemy himself did not stop, and to make an about if he continued to advance. And if ever they met, the encounter was so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the swinging of heads, that it was a face to face stop. Some blows were exchanged with the sword or the lance, but the equilibrium was too unstable, mutual support too uncertain for real sword play.

Man felt himself too isolated. The moral pressure was too strong.

Although not deadly, the combat lasted but a second, precisely because man felt himself, saw himself, alone and surrounded. The first men, who believed themselves no longer supported, could no longer endure uneasiness: they wheeled about and the rest followed. Unless the enemy had also turned, he then pursued at his pleasure until checked by other cavalry, which pursued him in turn.

There never was an encounter between cavalry and infantry. The cavalry hara.s.sed with its arrows, with the lance perhaps, while pa.s.sing rapidly, but it never attacked.

Close conflict on horseback did not exist. And to be sure, if the horse by adding so much to the mobility of man gave him the means of menacing and charging with swiftness, it permitted him to escape with like rapidity when his menace did not shake the enemy. Man by using the horse, pursuant to his natural inclination and sane reasoning, could do as much damage as possible while risking the least possible.

To riders without stirrups or saddle, for whom the throwing of the javelin was a difficult matter (Xenophon), combat was but a succession of reciprocal hara.s.sings, demonstrations, menaces, skirmishes with arrows. Each cavalry sought an opportunity to surprise, to intimidate, to avail itself of disorder, and to pursue either the cavalry or the infantry. Then "vae victis;" the sword worked.

Man always has had the greatest fear of being trampled upon by horses.

That fear has certainly routed a hundred thousand times more men than the real encounter. This was always more or less avoided by the horse, and no one was knocked down. When two ancient cavalry forces wanted really to fight, were forced to it, they fought on foot (Note the Tecinus, Cannae, examples of Livy). I find but little real fighting on horseback in all antiquity like that of Alexander the Great at the pa.s.sage of the Granicus. Was even that fighting? His cavalry which traversed a river with steep banks defended by the enemy, lost eighty-five men; the Persian cavalry one thousand; and both were equally well armed!

The fighting of the Middle Ages revived the ancient battles except in science. Cavalrymen attacked each other perhaps more than the ancient cavalry did, for the reason that they were invulnerable: it was not sufficient to throw them down; it was necessary to kill when once they were on the ground. They knew, however, that their fighting on horseback was not important so far as results were concerned, for when they wished really to battle, they fought on foot. (Note the combat of the Thirty, Bayard, etc.)

The victors, arrayed in iron from head to foot, lost no one, the peasants did not count. If the vanquished was taken, he was not ma.s.sacred, because chivalry had established a fraternity of arms between n.o.blemen, the mounted warriors of different nations, and ransom replaced death.

If we have spoken especially of the infantry fight, it is because it was the most serious. On foot, on horseback, on the bridge of a vessel, at the moment of danger, the same man is always found. Any one who knows him well, deduces from his action in the past what his action will be in the future.

CHAPTER VI

UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS REAL COMBATANTS ARE OBTAINED AND HOW THE FIGHTING OF OUR DAYS, IN ORDER TO BE WELL DONE, REQUIRES THEM TO BE MORE DEPENDABLE THAN IN ANCIENT COMBAT

Let us repeat now, what we said at the beginning of this study. Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second. The continued improvement of all appliances of war has no other goal than the annihilation of the enemy. Absolute bravery, which does not refuse battle even on unequal terms, trusting only to G.o.d or to destiny, is not natural in man; it is the result of moral culture. It is infinitely rare, because in the face of danger the animal sense of self-preservation always gains the upper hand. Man calculates his chances, with what errors we are about to see.

Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the ma.s.s always cowers at sight of the phantom, death.

Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees. "Stop, stop, hold out a few minutes, an instant more, and you are victor! You are not even wounded yet,--if you turn your back you are dead!" He does not hear, he cannot hear any more. He is full of fear. How many armies have sworn to conquer or perish? How many have kept their oaths? An oath of sheep to stand up against wolves. History shows, not armies, but firm souls who have fought unto death, and the devotion of Thermopylae is therefore justly immortal.

Here we are again brought to the consideration of essential truths, enunciated by many men, now forgotten or unknown.