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 masses 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 mass; 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, assured 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. Space has
tempted them. They will not return to the fight.
Then by that natural instinct of the soldier to worry, to assure
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
mass into the other, but never confusion, or a jumble of ranks, by the
men forming these masses. [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 mass 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 assault 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 mass without order, a flock of panic-stricken sheep
falling over each other.
In a mob hard-pressed men prick 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 mass 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 analyze 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 massacre the vanquished. [27]
In cavalry against cavalry, the moral effect of a mass 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
harassed with its arrows, with the lance perhaps, while passing
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 harassings, 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
passage 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
massacred, because chivalry had established a fraternity of arms
between noblemen, 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.