KNOWLEDGE OF MAN MADE ROMAN TACTICS.
THE SUCCESSES OF HANNIBAL, THOSE OF CAESAR
Greek tactics developed the phalanx; Roman tactics, the legion; the
tactics of the barbarians employed the square phalanx, wedge or
lozenge.
The mechanism of these various formations is explained in all
elementary books. Polybius enters into a mechanical discussion when he
contrasts the phalanx and the legion. (Book 18.)
The Greeks were, in intellectual civilization, superior to the Romans,
consequently their tactics ought to have been far more rational. But
such was not the case. Greek tactics proceeded from mathematical
reasoning; Roman tactics from a profound knowledge of man's heart.
Naturally the Greeks did not neglect morale nor the Romans mechanics, [2]
but their primary, considerations were diverse.
What formation obtained the maximum effort from the Greek army?
What methods caused the soldiers of a Roman army to fight most
effectively?
The first question admits of discussion. The Roman solved the second.
The Roman was not essentially brave. He did not produce any warrior of
the type of Alexander. It is acknowledged that the valorous
impetuosity of the barbarians, Gauls, Cimbri, Teutons, made him
tremble. But to the glorious courage of the Greeks, to the natural
bravery of the Gauls he opposed a strict sense of duty, secured by a
terrible discipline in the masses. It was inspired in the officers by
a sentiment of the strongest patriotism.
The discipline of the Greeks was secured by exercises and rewards; the
discipline of the Romans was secured also by the fear of death. They
put to death with the club; they decimated their cowardly or
traitorous units.
In order to conquer enemies that terrified his men, a Roman general
heightened their morale, not by enthusiasm but by anger. He made the
life of his soldiers miserable by excessive work and privations. He
stretched the force of discipline to the point where, at a critical
instant, it must break or expend itself on the enemy. Under similar
circumstances, a Greek general caused Tyrtaeus to sing. [3] It would
have been curious to see two such forces opposed.
But discipline alone does not constitute superior tactics. Man in
battle, I repeat, is a being in whom the instinct of self-preservation
dominates, at certain moments, all other sentiments. Discipline has
for its aim the domination of that instinct by a greater terror. But
it cannot dominate it completely. I do not deny the glorious examples
where discipline and devotion have elevated man above himself. But if
these examples are glorious, it is because they are rare; if they are
admired, it is because they are considered exceptions, and the
exception proves the rule.
The determination of that instant where man loses his reasoning power
and becomes instinctive is the crowning achievement in the science of
combat. In general, here was the strength of the Roman tactics. In
particular cases such successful determination makes Hannibals and
Caesars.
Combat took place between masses in more or less deep formation
commanded and supervised by leaders with a definite mission. The
combat between masses was a series of individual conflicts,
juxtaposed, with the front rank man alone fighting. If he fell, if he
was wounded or worn out, he was replaced by the man of the second rank
who had watched and guarded his flanks. This procedure continued up to
the last rank. Man is always physically and morally fatigued in a
hand-to-hand tournament where he employs all his energy.
These contests generally lasted but a short time. With like morale,
the least fatigued always won.
During this engagement of the first two ranks, the one fighting, the
other watching close at hand, the men of the rear ranks waited
inactive at two paces distance for their turn in the combat, which
would come only when their predecessors were killed, wounded or
exhausted. They were impressed by the violent fluctuations of the
struggle of the first rank. They heard the clashes of the blows and
distinguished, perhaps, those that sank into the flesh. They saw the
wounded, the exhausted crawl through the intervals to go to the rear.
Passive spectators of danger, they were forced to await its terrible
approach. These men were subjected to the poignant emotions of combat
without being supported by the animation of the struggle. They were
thus placed under the moral pressure of the greatest of anxieties.
Often they could not stand it until their turn came; they gave way.
The best tactics, the best dispositions were those that made easiest a
succession of efforts by assuring the relief by ranks of units in
action, actually engaging only the necessary units and keeping the
rest as a support or reserve outside of the immediate sphere of moral
tension. The superiority of the Romans lay in such tactics and in the
terrible discipline which prepared and assured the execution. By their
resistance against fatigue which rude and continual tasks gave them
and by the renewal of combatants in combat, they secured greater
continuity of effort than any others. [4]
The Gauls did not reason. Seeing only the inflexible line, they bound
themselves together, thus rendering relief impracticable. They
believed, as did the Greeks, in the power of the mass and impulse of
deep files, and did not understand that deep files were powerless to
push the first ranks forward as they recoiled in the face of death. It
is a strange error to believe that the last ranks will go to meet that
which made the first ones fall back. On the contrary, the contagion of
recoil is so strong that the stopping of the head means the falling
back of the rear!
The Greeks, also, certainly had reserves and supports in the second
half of their dense ranks. But the idea of mass dominated. They placed
these supports and reserves too near, forgetting the essential, man.
The Romans believed in the power of mass, but from the moral point of
view only. They did not multiply the files in order to add to the
mass, but to give to the combatants the confidence of being aided and
relieved. The number of ranks was calculated according to the moral
pressure that the last ranks could sustain.
There is a point beyond which man cannot bear the anxiety of combat in
the front lines without being engaged. The Romans did not so increase
the number of ranks as to bring about this condition. The Greeks did
not observe and calculate so well. They sometimes brought the number
of files up to thirty-two and their last files, which in their minds,
were doubtless their reserves, found themselves forcibly dragged into
the material disorder of the first ones.
In the order by maniples in the Roman legion, the best soldiers, those
whose courage had been proved by experience in battle, waited
stoically, kept in the second and third lines. They were far enough
away not to suffer wounds and not to be drawn in by the front line
retiring into their intervals. Yet they were near enough to give
support when necessary or to finish the job by advancing.
When the three separate and successive maniples of the first cohort
were united in order to form the united battle cohort of Marius and of
Caesar, the same brain placed the most reliable men in the last lines,
i.e., the oldest. The youngest, the most impetuous, were in the first
lines. The legion was not increased simply to make numbers or mass.
Each had his turn in action, each man in his maniple, each maniple in
its cohort, and, when the unit became a cohort, each cohort in the
order of battle.
We have seen that the Roman theory dictated a depth of ranks to
furnish successive lines of combatants. The genius of the general
modified these established formations. If the men were inured to war,
well-trained, reliable, tenacious, quick to relieve their file
leaders, full of confidence in their general and their own comrades,
the general diminished the depth of the files, did away with the lines
even, in order to increase the number of immediate combatants by
increasing the front. His men having a moral, and sometimes also a
physical endurance superior to that of the adversary, the general knew
that the last ranks of the latter would not, under pressure, hold
sufficiently to relieve the first lines nor to forbid the relief of
his own. Hannibal had a part of his infantry, the Africans, armed and
drilled in the Roman way; his Spanish infantrymen had the long wind of
the Spaniards of to-day; his Gallic soldiers, tried out by hardship,
were in the same way fit for long efforts. Hannibal, strong with the
confidence with which he inspired his people, drew up a line less deep
by half than the Roman army and at Cannae hemmed in an army which had
twice his number and exterminated it. Caesar at Pharsalus, for similar
reasons, did not hesitate to decrease his depth. He faced double his
strength in the army of Pompey, a Roman army like his own, and crushed
it.
We have mentioned Cannae and Pharsalus, we shall study in them the
mechanism and the morale of ancient combat, two things which cannot be
separated. We cannot find better examples of battle more clearly and
more impartially exhibited. This is due in one case to the clear
presentation of Polybius, who obtained his information from the
fugitives from Cannae, possibly even from some of the conquerors; in
the other it is due to the impassive clearness of Caesar in describing
the art of war.