Polybian (mid-Republic) Roman infantry tactics

[Shahbahraz]

I've seen the full spectrum of riot police. To watch the pros regaining ground is quite something.

To fall back in a controlled fashion requires drill and a clear chain of command, otherwise it's fight till you drop or flee. Throughout history only extremely well drilled troops have been able to fall back in good order.

Hence my reference to riot police. Well trained riot police can keep their line straight rather than have part of it overwhelmed, by retreating. A line of cops just wearing the gear will break if their leaders try to retreat for any reason. You see them take a few steps back, the shield wall opens, a guy with a pickaxe handle gets inside, his mate helps him widen the gap, and like a dam wall, they fail at that point and wind up fleeing. A good crew will keep their line intact use their shields to tire out the enemy and lure the pickaxe handle men forward beyond the protective ranks of women and children. They wait till the pickaxe men get tired and regain the ground with a baton charge, forming up their line again back where they started.

Believe me, if there was no such thing as a well trained riot squad I wouldn't be typing this.

At the risk of telling you you're talking bollocks, there is a huge difference between a largely passive and unarmoured and unarmed bunch of miners and a screaming crowd of Celts with large slashing swords, axes and spears. Also with shields.

And unless you were a PNG district officer up the Seppik river in the 70s, you probably haven't seen how warfare happens in that environment either. So go on. Tell me a name. I still have a photograph of a good mate with a crossed Webley and a Colt 45. He was an Aussie tanker.

[grizzlymc]

Upper Maramuni, 1990, the first fight involved 6 women being stolen from a village. When the village realised who stole them, they offered 3 large sows and a boar. The offer was rejected and one of their houses was burned down. Each party started choosing allies and two weeks later they agreed to settle their differences , no guns, in and around a patch of kunai down below my helipad. They claimed the fight had 4000 men there, I reckoned about half that.

And, since you mentioned talking bollocks:
There was no traditional tribal fighting in the Sepik in the 70s, it had been largely pacified by then. Banditry, but no fighting.
During my eight years in PNG, four of them in the highlands, I would have my work disrupted every 3-4 months by a fight involving between a dozen and fifty people, never more than a thousand. It still goes on in the highlands today and may or may not involve firearms. There is an awfully big world out there and I doubt that you have seen it all.

I won't go into the sophisticated nature of organised violence in South America, but legionarries were unlikely to face dynamite sticks nor molotovs raining down on them whilst having their line broken by less than passive people armed with mattock handles studded with nails. Nevertheless, that is a useful analogue for a disciplined organised force exhausting people armed with swinging weapons. Particularly interesting is the amount of force required and the frontage needed to break a shield wall compared to that required to maintain it.

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

Re: well trained riot police

I've never encountered any

I thought that line would amuse you!

[ochoin]

What an interesting - if robust - discussion.

Could I make a point that's possibly bollocks (sadly, I rarely talk anything else....)?

Modern analogies are useful to a point. Clearly we use them because we have to ground our speculations in something. But distortion & incorrect conclusions are possible - even probable - because they are analogies & not the exact thing.

It's frequently done to to compare a phalanx with a rugby scrum. Y-e-s. But the players don't carry edged weapons, aren't experiencing life or death (unless they're facing the All Blacks) and their town won't get sacked etc if they lose. So, sure, a bunch of chaps pushing each other in both instances but not really the same thing.

OK. That's me done. Please continue.

donald

[Shahbahraz]

I see, so the upper Seppik in the 70s was a nice peaceful place was it? They were still head hunting then.

It reminds me of a guide in Vanuatu who told me they hadn't eaten anyone in years, and when I asked about one the year before, said that they only ate a little bit of her, and that was witchcraft not cannibalism.

I still maintain that police riot squads are not a good parallel, they aren't usually facing fully armed and aggressive opponents of equal or greater stature. The tactics that work against Greenpeace wouldn't necessarily work at Alesia.

[DCRBrown]

Just to feed the rioting flames a bit more:

a) I'm sure that the rugby scrum analogy is rubbish, in the most part. The idea that hundred of blokes are all squished up, trying to push, just seems daft. If that were the case why bother training for hours with sword/spear, as you can't deploy your weapon in a rugby scrum!

b) The one aspect you can compare from public order situations to combat is the exhaustion factor. Exhausted "soldiers" all tend to act in a certain way, i.e. they are fairly static and act slowly to orders. There is a significant lag between orders given and orders executed, if at all.

So, maybe some parallels can be drawn.

DB

[grizzlymc]

Shahbahraz, if you are talking April River, it was pacified in the fifties, the mountain clans were brought down to the river to be nearer medical facilities and schools. The Frieda river area was done 10 years later. The Torricelli Mountains were cleared barring one village in the sixties, again to get the people nearer facilities. These are matters of record you can confirm by reading Kiap reports in the provincial records at Wewak and Aitape.

So, if you've had people claiming to have been pre independence Kiaps in the upper Sepik, feeding you stories about headhunters, I hope you responded with your usual ill considered personal attack because that was absolute bollocks.

Meantime, as you can see by googling "Post Courier" tribal fight, you don't have to be a 1970s Kiap to see tribal fights. And take it from me, Post Courier journalists have an annual helicopter budget less than I spent in a day.

[Shahbahraz]

Okay. I have a good friend who was a Kiap in PNG in the late 60's. It wasn't pacified although officially 'under government control' in 1969. let's leave it at that.

[grizzlymc]

DCR
It is a while since I read my Polybius, but I note that the greeks started shortening their spears, which suggests they may have started to realise the issue you raise. It is a bit hard to see that people with 18 foot spears, pushing overarm would have been able to inflict more than incidental damage over all but a prolonged battle. Even the Saxons with a shorter spear found that when shield walls closed, a long knife was the best way of killing someone.

I have seen riot police spend a full day hold back violent assaults, and I have seen poorly trained ones broken in a few seconds. My guess is that Roman troops sweated in exercises until they could respond to orders irrespective of exhaustion. It works with soldiers today. Obviously the centurion would be signalling his assesment of his troops condition to his commander and the troops would be relieved in time. I can't see barbarians doing that.

I would dispute that orders were a thing in a barbarian horde. They would fight till they dropped from exhaustion or wounds, or they would run, hopefully around the wave behind them, but you'd need a test to see whether they disordered or shook the next wave.

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

a) I'm sure that the rugby scrum analogy is rubbish, in the most part. The idea that hundred of blokes are all squished up, trying to push, just seems daft. If that were the case why bother training for hours with sword/spear, as you can't deploy your weapon in a rugby scrum!

I wonder how much this myth owes to ECW re-enactment (probably the first true re-enactment period to take off in the UK), in which, for obvious "safety" reasons, pike blocks pressed up against each other, pushed and shoved a lot, and relied on numbers, halitosis, and an occasional "knee in the nads" at an opportune moment, in order to prevail, rather than the far more likely holding back and stabbing at each other's faces (whilst specially selected midgets ducked underneath and ran about slitting people's hamstrings - I think we've all seen that TYW film on You Tube, haven't we)?