Line relief for NON-Roman troops

[Imperial Dave]

Just browsing through the forum pages and I see a reasonable amount of stuff about line relief in Roman armies. I am intrigued about thoughts regarding line relief of non-Roman armies and in particular what we might class as 'tribal' or 'irregular' or 'warrior'

As added context I am more interested in  the early through to late Imperial Roman and early medieval period(s) than say Hellenistic/classical or high Medieval.

Did it exist at the 'line' level or was it more 'unit' level?

Thoughts?

[Keraunos]

An interesting thought.

I am not aware of any literary evidence for it, but am equally aware that my knowledge of the literary evidence is not exactly comprehensive, to put it mildly.  I do think it fair to say that Greek and Roman authors are not necessarily comprehensive or comprehending in their descriptions of the methods of warfare of their opponents.

However, if one thinks about how the members of a war band might behave in the course of a battle, the possibility of replenishment of the forward ranks as men fall or retire wounded is not far fetched.  A lot will depend on motivation.  If the brawny lads who jeered at your puny muscles in the past and boldly pushed into the front to show off their pectorals start falling down or falling back, what do you do?  You might decide that it is a good time to head off for a cup of tea yourself, or you might think that here is a chance to show those 'heroes' what a humble man with pluck can do, especially if your home, your cattle and your wife are at stake. 

I doubt if this could be said to amount to line relief in the Roman sense.  There is no line of triarii equivalents, as far as I know, for men to fall back behind to gather their breath and steel themselves to continue the conflict while others take their place on the front line.  However, since we have never seen a Roman army in action, it is hard to fathom how exactly their system worked in the press of combat.  Falling back - or advancing through the front line(?) during a lull in fighting would be possible, but less so when hairy savages are in your face with spears, axes or what have you.  And, if Romans could take advantage of lulls in combat to reorder their lines, why not others?

[Imperial Dave]

this is my thought process and especially when such armies faced other armies that did do line relief over time must have learned and adapted their 'systems'

humans are humans and they get tired, scared, hungry etc regardless of background and training (to a lesser or greater extent!). It may only be 'simple' line relief ie there's a gap...fill it on an individual soldier basis but I am intrigued

[Erpingham]

Exactly what went on inside units in battle outside the Classical period before the Renaissance isn't well well recorded in my experience. You might consider the Eastern Romans (aka Byzantines) and what they thought.  I think it's in the Strategicon that helpfully informs us that, if you close up to locked shield order, people like medics can no longer move about among the ranks.  Implication therefore, in normal order, some movement was possible/expected.  We might also consider the observation (perhaps exaggerated) that the Saxons at Hastings were so closely packed, the dead and wounded were held in position until the line moved, when they fell down.  Which implies this was not the normal state of affairs.

If we look at the evidence for shieldwall fighting, we note that people have a place in a formation which they are expected to keep, and you certainly have seasoned fighters at the front, also rans behind. Guessing, if a fighter went down, the man behind (probably another fighter) stepped up and extraction of wounded was done by the common herd.  These could probably keep the formation solid, throw stuff and kill any wounded the band advanced over, but once you started needing to put them in the fighting line because you run out of experienced fighters, things were getting a bit hairy.

But, as I say, while not a complete unknown, this stuff isn't as well recorded as we might like.

[Imperial Dave]

exactly so i guess I am asking the hive mind whether we take the very simple mechanism that is almost instinctive  or do we explore whether there were more complicated versions either at line level or unit level

[Justin Swanton]

Line relief implies multiple lines, and the earliest mention of those is 496BC, when the Latin League attempted to restore Tarquinius Superbus to the throne in Rome:

As Postumius was drawing up his men and encouraging them in the first line [prima in acie], Tarquinius Superbus, though now enfeebled by age, spurred on his horse with great fury to attack him; but being wounded in the side, he was carried off by a party of his own men to a place of safety. In the other wing also, Aebutius, master of the horse, had charged Octavius Mamilius; nor was his approach unobserved by the Tusculan general, who also briskly spurred on his horse to encounter him. And such was their impetuosity as they advanced with hostile spears, that Aebutius was run through the arm and Mamilius struck on the breast. The Latins received the latter into their second line [in secundam aciem]. – Livy: 2.19.

I think everyone knows my take on line relief by now (a hypothesis that nobody agrees with but nobody refutes  ). It does require a modicum of organisation and was probably beyond the ability of a tribal army. The Romans  didn't invent it but copied it from the Latins after they dumped the Etruscan phalanx. I don't know of anyone else using it.

[Erpingham]

If we ignore the eastern Romans (who were not non-Romans in military terms), the question is, do we have much evidence of armies in multiple lines in the Early Middle Ages?

Multiple cavalry lines, or cavalry lines with an infantry support line, seem common enough.  The Normans at Hastings had two infantry lines and a cavalry line.  But we might read this as a skirmish line in front of an infantry line.  Whatever, clearly, the bits in front ended up behind the rear parts, which suggests the lines replaced each other. 

If we move on to The Standard (High Medieval but still not late, so permitted by Dave's parameters), the English have two infantry lines and the Scots three.  However, the battle didn't pan out to allow any organised replacement of one line by another, so we can't draw much from it.

[Nick Harbud]

We might also consider the observation (perhaps exaggerated) that the Saxons at Hastings were so closely packed, the dead and wounded were held in position until the line moved, when they fell down.

Ghastly flashbacks to playing hooker in a rugby scrum... 

[Justin Swanton]

If we ignore the eastern Romans (who were not non-Romans in military terms), the question is, do we have much evidence of armies in multiple lines in the Early Middle Ages?

Multiple cavalry lines, or cavalry lines with an infantry support line, seem common enough.  The Normans at Hastings had two infantry lines and a cavalry line.  But we might read this as a skirmish line in front of an infantry line.  Whatever, clearly, the bits in front ended up behind the rear parts, which suggests the lines replaced each other. 

If we move on to The Standard (High Medieval but still not late, so permitted by Dave's parameters), the English have two infantry lines and the Scots three.  However, the battle didn't pan out to allow any organised replacement of one line by another, so we can't draw much from it.

Interesting. I don't know much about Mediaeval dispositions, but cavalry in Antiquity had files spaced quite far apart, which would allow for countermarching and one body of cavalry passing through another. Skirmishers passing through infantry was certainly a thing - psiloi through hoplites, etc. Seems it could be done well or badly:

There should be intervals within the ranks, so that, when the light-armed troops have discharged their weapons while the enemy is still advancing, before the two armies come to close quarters, they may about-face, pass in good order through the centre of the phalanx, and come without confusion to the rear. For it is not safe for them to go around the whole army, encircling the flanks — since the enemy would quickly anticipate them in this manoeuvre, coming to close quarters and intercepting them on the way — nor is it safe for them to force their way through the closed ranks, where they would fall over the weapons and cause confusion in the lines, one man stumbling against another. - Onasander, Strategikos: 19.1

[Erpingham]

I don't know much about Mediaeval dispositions, but cavalry in Antiquity had files spaced quite far apart, which would allow for countermarching and one body of cavalry passing through another.

I'm not sure where it is covered in detail.  Early/High Medieval cavalry probably manoeuvred in a looser formation (Clifford Rogers suggests four feet between files).  But a tighter stirrup-to-stirrup formation was also used for charging.  Cavalry fighting seems to have been more fluid than we sometimes imagine, with the individual conrois and their parent squadrons fighting their own battles.  Co-ordinated formation fighting was probably the reserve of the pros, like the Templars.  So, I suspect that conrois moved between rather than through each other, leaving a scatter of displaced individuals scanning the field trying to find where their standard had gone to rally on it.

[DBS]

Zama has Hannibal, whilst not practising line relief, at least forming up in three lines of infantry with an apparent expectation that, unless the Romans collapsed quickly, they all might end up engaged at some point.

One problem might be that, of the armies and battles of the classical period on which we have some (maybe even vaguely accurate!) information, other than the Romans not many civilised nations fielded forces that might have lent themselves to line relief. Hellenic and Hellenistic phalanxes, for example, are arguably seeking endurance, cohesion and solidity by another route, namely the phalanx itself.