Greek Armies

[Mark]

The Fred Eugene Ray book has "maybe 3,000" of "might be 4-5,000" mercenaries being Thessalian, and number set at a third of that (i.e. 1,000) for the Thessalian cavalry contribution. Polyaenus mentions 1600 horsemen. My reading is that Ray extrapolates having to find 1,000 horsemen to add to 600 Thebans, then extrapolates the 3,000 hoplites from that as a cavalry:infantry ratio, then extrapolates the 4-5,000 from that (so that the Thessalians provide the majority of the mercenary infantry).

You can find the relevant section on Google books (or anyhow, I just did - I have the book at home though - it's good for this kind of thing).

[dwkay57]

Patrick,

I was using my own rules (as featured in Slingshot 282). Each group of units (a division in my terminology) moves a hex at a time unless all mounted or in column on a road.
The Spartan's King unit did indeed die to the last man. The other Spartiate unit in the division was at 13% of initial strength and their skirmishers were long gone, so the combined effect of casualties and the King's death (being also their divisional commander) caused them to break. Command then passed to the reserve King with the Laconians who held on for a while longer.

The number of very poor quality Spartan peltasts arose from the Plataea question from last year of "What shall we do about the helots?" and are my personal interpretation of what they might have been. With his nearly last breath the Spartan King did utter "Tell the light troops to deal with those Athenian cavalry behind us" which meant they run back into the wood and then stayed there as they saw the Spartiates collapse.

[aligern]

David,
I do wonder at how a Spartan king would give his skirmishers an instruction to go in a direction and deal with a specific enemy once the battle had been joined. Was there a chain of command to these lights or did they get a specific and probably traditional mission at the beginning of a battle and just complete that, then falling back to behind or to the sides of the phalanx?
Did these chaps have officers that kept them together as units that could be recalled and rest asked? I tend to think that in most sets of Ancient Rules light troops have way too much ability to see a threat and respond to it. Once an order had been transmitted wouldn't  skirmishers be on autopilot.

Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

The number of very poor quality Spartan peltasts arose from the Plataea question from last year of "What shall we do about the helots?" and are my personal interpretation of what they might have been. With his nearly last breath the Spartan King did utter "Tell the light troops to deal with those Athenian cavalry behind us" which meant they run back into the wood and then stayed there as they saw the Spartiates collapse.

Understood.  My own reading (for what it is worth) of post-Plataea developments is that all Greek armies cut down on light troops (possibly after a think about the supply difficulties in the Plataea campaign) so that Athenians only fielded a few (witness their problems when fighting Aetolians and their struggle to raise light troops for the Sicily campaign) and Spartans seem to have dispensed with them altogether: they are conspicuous by their absence in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War accounts and Xenophon's battle narratives in the Hellenica.

Now that you describe the circumstances of the Spartan king's demise one can definitely see why it happened.  ("Men, I know you are dead but one more push will give us ... arrgh!")

[Mark G]

that stands in contrast to the view that the Peloponnesian war saw a great increase in the use of mercenaries (Thracian and Greek), who were basically peltasts since they could neither afford hoplite equipment or horses.

Iphikrates figures in this equation as well, and that the demands of the Peloponnesian war marked the end of the 'classic' hoplite warfare model which we know, and saw the beginnings of a proper combined arms warfare model that developed into the Macedonian machine over time.

Chris Webber has a very good summary of the argument and evidence for the use of peltasts in his book on the Thracians, Gods of War, and I think I remember correctly that this also fits in with Wheeler and co in the Cambridge history of G and R warfare.

[Patrick Waterson]

We certainly see a peltast contingent (about one tenth of the overall force) performing in Xenophon's Anabasis (March of the Ten Thousand) and subsequently Iphicrates' peltast contingent makes a mess of a Spartan mora near Corinth, but are there any pointers in sources about the role and function (or even presence) of peltasts in a Greek hoplite battle?

[dwkay57]

Roy,

Yes there is a command structure in my rules that goes along the lines of side - army - corps - division - unit. When I did start playing I didn't record any orders and found myself constantly second-guessing myself. So I now record as cell comments in one of the spreadsheets the current orders at each level down to corps. All the divisions in a corps normally move around in adjacent hexes and usually assume the same orders as their Corps commander who they can see waving at them in the next hex, although I can see an argument for them to have their own instructions. If a division is despatched on a special flanking or holding mission then it gets its own specific instructions. All units in a division stay in the same hex and are assumed to have the old WRG "move in company" and "attack/skirmish in support" type instructions but only for their own division. Changes of orders can be issued down the chain of command so a side CinC can issue an order to an army general who can then issue a further order to his corps commanders. I normally add the new order as cell comment in a cell appropriate to when it would be received, so it prompts me to deal with it at the right point. The time it takes for an order to be received does depend on the distance between the sender and the receiver.

So in this specific example: The King's Spartiates did have their own skirmishers who milled around near the hoplites throwing sticks and making flank attacks. The main Spartan light troop contingent were in a separate corps lead by their own commander with his own "character". So the King did issue an order which took time to get there before it was acted upon.

I don't know if that clears the mud to any extent.

[Patrick Waterson]

Just a quick comment here: at First Mantinea in 418 BC the Spartan king issued orders directly to two unit commanders (who obeyed) and two other unit commanders (who disobeyed as they felt there was not enough time to carry out the orders).  The king then countermanded the orders for the two units which had obeyed and the result was a right royal mess on that wing.

What this shows us of the Spartan command structure is that (at least as of 418 BC) there were no intermediate command levels between king and unit commander - the individual contingents of 500-700 men were directly subordinate to the king (who was on the right of the line).  Once he got into melee everyone acted 'on autopilot' but once he beat his immediate opponents (which happened very fast as the Athenians opposing him fled just prior to contact) he issued new orders to his wing (turn and attack the other enemy wing).  His Argive and Mantinean opponents either did not or could not issue fresh orders and the Spartans rolled up their opponents' hitherto victorious right.

There may be something in this for rules for the period, but I leave that to those who actually write rules ...

Patrick

[dwkay57]

Patrick,

I remember reading somewhere that it was wrong to install a modern command structure on an ancient army, although you could probably find examples (most likely later in the period) where there was. But I did it anyway just to suit what I was trying to achieve from my games, which are more for my own entertainment than precise historical accuracy. But as you say this is probably a subject for a different discussion thread.

[Patrick Waterson]

Not a problem, David: it depends upon what one is trying to simulate (and also what information one had and did not have at the time one was rule-writing: nobody ever tells you at the time).  I may have the opportunity to bore everyone to death on the subject in a joint article with George Falco de Mats in a few Slingshots' time about command in classical armies, but the long and short of it here and now is that the corps-division-brigade/regiment-battalion structure that developed for the extended battlefield (initially for long lines of musket-armed troops in 3 ranks, subsequently even longer lines of dispersed infantry) was not present in classical armies, where there was a single OC and a number of battalion-size units (Greek hoplite and some tribal armies) or commanders for the left, right and centre each of whom had a number of battalion-size units (most others).  This is a huge generalisation but gives the basic idea.

Of great importance were 1) continuity of the battleline and 2) signalling.  1) was achieved both by lining units up side by side and by giving them someone or something to follow, often a standard or other tall object, while 2) was the key to controlling troops on the battlefield.  Being clever generally meant doing a bit of pre-planning, as generals who could improvise on the fly - at least successfully - were comparatively few and far between.

Anyway, the important thing is that none of this should be allowed to put you off writing rules, playing out battles and/or sharing the results. 

[gavindbm]

I for one look forward to the command article....as understanding the command and control mechanisms and their relationship to army structure on the battlefield (units/sub-units) is key to designing rules mechanisms that capture its effect (as you can see I tend to believe in top down simulation/rules design, rather than a bottom up simulation/rules). 

So any chance of a sensible thread on C2, army structure (units/sub-units) on battlefield, and ability to move elements around the battlefield (particularly from sector to sector in reaction to unfolding events (as opposed to in accordance with an initial plan)?  By sensible I mean what and how to structure the evidence?

[Patrick Waterson]

So any chance of a sensible thread on C2, army structure (units/sub-units) on battlefield, and ability to move elements around the battlefield (particularly from sector to sector in reaction to unfolding events (as opposed to in accordance with an initial plan)?  By sensible I mean what and how to structure the evidence?

Good idea: in fact, please feel free to start one. 

A few thoughts.

Most (perhaps all) civilised armies had a distinct hierarchical unit formation and officer structure.  In many cases this was not unlike the present platoon-company-battalion-regiment/brigade-division hierarchy in size and organisational relationship.  However this seems to have had a different emphasis on the battlefield: low-level unit commanders seem not to have acted as tactical thinkers and leaders so much as organisers of the minutiae of deployment and sustainers of cohesion and orientation.  In other words, rather than lead men in action (implying individual responsibility) they commanded men in action - basically a glorified NCO role.

It was very unusual to see units operating independently, and those that did were usually cavalry.  One famous case in classical times was when at Sellasia (222 BC) Phocion, commanding the Achaean cavalry, charged without orders when he saw a dangerous situation developing (Spartan cavalry working round a friendly flank) and saw off the problem.  His own cavalry commander was not pleased that he had acted without orders, but King Antiogonus praised him for it.  At Raphia (217 BC) Echecrates, commanding Ptolemy's cavalry on the right, used his initiative to circumvent the opposing elephants and attack the Seleucid left wing cavalry in flank, deciding the battle.  One searches in vain for the exercise of similar initiative by infantry contingents.

Alexander's army had a left-wing commander, a right-wing commander (generally Alex) and sub-commanders for the left and right of the phalanx plus the occasional detached role, e.g. the contingent watching the 20,000 Persian light infantry clustered on the high ground at Issus.  The phalanx usually had a commander of the left three phalanxes and a commander of the right three phalanxes, and at Gaugamela the former is recorded as deciding on his own initiative to halt in order to stay in touch with Parmenio's cavalry while his counterpart carried on piking Persians.  This non-movement on Simmias' initiative seems to have been a straight decision that it would be less harmful to lose touch with the right of the phalanx than to lose touch with the cavalry and auxiliaries on the left, and so he chose.  If he had not needed to choose which part of the army to stay with he would have carried on as part of the whole.

The infantry contingents on both sides at Raphia had a commander for each ethnic contingent, but lined up in a single block and advanced or retired in a single block.  It would seem that the role of the contingent commanders was to make sure that orders were passed on in the right language and everyone kept their place rather than being available for independent activities.

It was possible for contingents to be detached for separate activities prior to a battle: Hannibal's Mago-led surprise force at the Trebia, Paullus' 10,000-man detachment sent to seize Hannibal's camp and the popular if often conterproductive Late Roman habit of sending a c.5,000-strong force to get astride the enemy's line of retreat all show that independent command was possible.  Command and organisational structures permitted this sort of detachment, but it was rarely done on the battlefield and if done seems to have been limited to special-role units (Alexander at the Hydaspes sends ahead his horse archers to harass the Indian left and detaches Coenus to ride round the Indian right, 'marking' the cavalry from that flank; Pelopidas and the Theban Sacred Band at Leuctra in 371 BC appear to have detached from the main Theban mass and possibly flanked the Spartan right).

All in all, just getting a significant mass of men to move forward in coordination appears to have consumed most of the 'command points' available to most armies.  Clever moves by subunits seem not to have been a usual part of the repertoire, not least because with two cohesive lines facing each other there is little scope for clever manoeuvring.  But there were occasions when they were possible.

[dwkay57]

What section was meant by "C2"? I'm willing to start it off if you can clarify which is the right section.
My initial thought is that it is under either the history or more probably the rules discussion arena.

[aligern]

C2 often means Command and Control. If so then it means starting a thread on those topics as related to Ancient armies?
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

Here we go:

http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=777.0