The doubts raised about Companions charging formed hoplites from the front has gone hand-in-hand with the notion that they would have no problem charging them in the flank.
On the face of it though there is a problem. It is generally agreed that if a cavalryman comes to a halt in the middle of a formation of hostile infantry he will very soon be a dead cavalryman. Charging the flank however seems to imply penetrating the infantry line from the side, which means having to get, not through 8 or 16 ranks of men, but hundreds of files. In other words, a horse is far more likely to come to a halt penetrating an infantry line from the flank than from the front. What then is so advantageous about charging infantry in the flank?
Add to that the fact that only about half a dozen files of the cavalry force will actually be able to contact the infantry line on its edge; the rest just gallop into space in front of or behind the infantry.
Just saying the infantry are shocked/demoralised and subsequently panic doesn't cut it. They must be shocked/demoralised for a reason. An earlier thread (http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=661.0) examined how infantry, by overlapping around to the rear of another infantry line, could put their opponents under pressure, deny them recoil and fighting space, and finally crack their will to fight. A cavalry charge however is a different story - the cavalry must keep moving: hitting home then retiring to hit home again. Unless they are cataphracts they cannot afford to remain in contact with the infantry and put them under pressure.
So what is so effective about a flank charge?
Because when you think about it, the enemy that are behind your flank are almost certainly across your rear. The morale effect of that is probably the most important thing.
I think when you talk about ranks, yes obviously they do have an impact, but the willingness to fight is more important
Jim
There is the morale effect for definite but also, and I am happy to be corrected, a side impact may mean there is not enough time to reorganise the infantry and "brace for impact"?
Quote from: Holly on May 03, 2014, 09:47:57 PM
There is the morale effect for definite but also, and I am happy to be corrected, a side impact may mean there is not enough time to reorganise the infantry and "brace for impact"?
All the infantry need to do to prepare for a flank charge is turn 90 degrees to face the chargers. That takes half a second, surely easy to do in good time?
Remember that with the front (or rear) of a unit you've got the veterans as file leaders and veterans at the back as file closers.
The guys in the middle who suddenly find themselves in the front rank might just be the men who were put towards the back because they weren't so well trained, equipped or motivated.
Another thing to remember is that if you're attacked from the flank, your flank support has gone. Hoplites are the men whose formation drifted so that they snuggled under their neighbour's shield.
If your flanks have gone and enemy cavalry is to your flank and rear your army is in deep trouble, but not half as much trouble as you are in
Jim
Quote from: Justin Swanton on May 03, 2014, 10:08:08 PM
All the infantry need to do to prepare for a flank charge is turn 90 degrees to face the chargers. That takes half a second, surely easy to do in good time?
An infantry unit in combat is expecting to deal with an enemy to its front.
If attacked from the side, while for an individual who becomes aware of that fact in advance, turning would be relatively quick, at least theoretically, assuming the press of bodies, length of weapons and any shield carried might allow them to turn to face the new threat, how many people will even be aware of it? Many further down the line won't be able to see it, though they may be aware there is a problem because a commotion is going on before the charge hits. A good proportion of those who theoretically could see it won't realise until their comrades nearby point it out to them - if you're scared (as everyone is in battle) and facing as directed by the unit commander, or as most of your colleagues are regardless of the presence/existence of officer-class leaders, you won't be looking around much on the off-chance somebody might be approaching from a different direction. At which point panic could easily set in and morale factors take over, even before the attack presses home.
Plus as Jim rightly said, the cavalry will be partly behind the infantry group in a flanking attack, so what you'll quickly end up with is a formation crumbling as some people turn to the side and others to the rear, not really knowing which is best, to try to counteract the threats suddenly posed in wholly unexpected directions.
Hence the preferred to doctrinal use of square formations for infantry defending against cavalry in later (gunpowder) times - no flank, no rear, no panic in trying to turn.
Quote from: Justin Swanton on May 03, 2014, 10:08:08 PM
Quote from: Holly on May 03, 2014, 09:47:57 PM
There is the morale effect for definite but also, and I am happy to be corrected, a side impact may mean there is not enough time to reorganise the infantry and "brace for impact"?
All the infantry need to do to prepare for a flank charge is turn 90 degrees to face the chargers. That takes half a second, surely easy to do in good time?
Under battle stress and perhaps maybe unsighted until the last moment with the best of your men in the front ranks not the side? If nothing else, the confusion caused by a flank attack at the same time as a possible frontal attack would put even an organised veteran unit under extreme pressure
I think the directionality of a formation is a key factor. As has already been said, a body of close-combat infantry is organised to fight to the front. It has a "grain" as it were. It is physically aligned in on one direction, its weapons and defences point that way, its leaders are positioned to fight it in that direction, its situational awareness is forward. Hit from the flank (or as has already been said, enveloped from the flank - most of a linear formation is going to flow round the rear) causes immediate confusion. In a body where you are quite literally relying on someone to cover your back, uncertainty about whether you are covered is unnerving and will cause unit cohesion to at least falter, if not fail. Given your situational awareness faces forward and inside a formation is going to be limited anyway, a load of shouting and weapons clashing to your left or right that you can't see the cause of is not going to do your focus and motivation much good.
The point about penetrating the formation is a good one. The cavalrymen are going to bog down hitting a dense milling crowd, even if they are not getting much resistance. If the infantry don't disintegrate and reform a defence, they are in trouble. So, the infantry's morale, experience and leadership are important. Also, I think, the infantry are more likely to hold together if being attacked from only one direction. The hoplite scenario discussed, with a phalanx attacking the front and a cavalry attack from the flank would be very hard to recover from.
At Adrianople the effect of the Gothic cavalry attacking from the flank appears to have been to crush in the Roman infantry. This prevented them using their weapons effectively and IIRC caused them ti injure each other. I think the effect of the Africans at Cannae on the Romans is something similar.
I surmise that flank attacks cause the victims to recoil backwards, probably instinctively, which destroys the spacing and the small unit cohesion and cooperation which gives mutual support and confidence.
I do often raise this business of small group coordination in Ancient warfare. Units that keep the same men in the same positions have an immense advantage over any that just split men arbitrarily into ranks and files. The Hoplites have a system that allocates men to file positions so that a good man is at the back, the best men at the front. The Strategikon does much the same. When we debated the Greeks sending men out by age group I postulated that this had to be by ranks because otherwise the integrity of the unit would be compromised. No one picked that up. When a unit organised this way is attacked in flank it cannot just turn as though everyone was equal in ability. Moreover there is the question of who will order this turn?, how many men in each file will turn? Do the Front three ranks keep fighting to the front and the back five turn to the flank? Unless a formed square or circle is set up the unit will collapse away from the attack and end up too jammed together to be anything but victims.
I recall too that in Plutarch there is an example of Parthian cataphracts driving in the Legionaries so that they were too close together to protect themselves against incoming arrows.
Roy
A good set of responses which seem to touch on all the significant factors.
The original question is still important, because if we take the phalanx-to-front-cavalry-to-flank hypothesis concerning Chaeronea, Companion cavalry arriving from the Theban flank can run through the (say) ten deep sacred Band, although the likely 20-yard wide wedge formation woudl give half the cavalry nothing to do, but then we have 12,000 or more hoplites, 8-10 deep and hence 1,200 to 1,500 wide, for the cavalry to get through if they continue travelling in the same direction. That would mean about three quarters of a mile of constant prodding, stabbing and hewing before they arrive at - the centre of the enemy army. To me this seems like rather exhausting work, and if they want to continue in the same direction they will have at least another three quarters of a mile to go.
For this reason I would see a flank attack by cavalry as attempting to 'bite off' the rear corner of an enemy infantry formation, then pouring past and redeploying (or at least refacing) for an attack on the opponents' rear. Successive cavalry formations might attempt to gouge out another chunk of hapless enemy infantry from the end of the line, while friendly infantry should in theory make short work of the remaining attenuated ranks. All in all, the effect of a cavalry flank charge against an eight-deep line or similar seems a bit like trying to use a razor to slice butter off a piece of bread. Far more effective, it would seem, would be to ride round to the rear and hit that, meanwhile delivering a javelin or two while passing the flank, which would be especially effective if done against the unshielded flank (the right) of the opponents.
This assumes that the attacked infantry do not suffer a failure of morale as a result of cavalry swarming round their flank and rear. If they do then they break and the pursuit and slaughter stage begins.
An opponent with a deeper deployment, e.g. Romans, would seem more vulnerable to the immediate consequences of a cavalry flank attack. Rather than just one line to skim there are three, and proceeding between these lines could in theory allow several simultaneous 'close shaves' progressively to scour men off the front and rear corners of each formation. In practice the lines may have deployed sufficiently close together to make this practice extremely risky: at Bagradas and Cannae the Carthaginian cavalry curled around the rear rather than try to pour between the lines as part of a flank attack.
The effect of a cavalry flank attack on an infantry formation might thus be likened to a scourer wearing down the corner as it goes past, with cavalry squadron after squadron striking down a few more men each as they ride past en route to the hapless infantry's rear and hence thinning out the line on that flank. Once they line up along the rear the real fun begins.
At least that may be one way to understand the likely process. Other suggestions welcome.
My small take on it would be to liken the infantry formation to a football fan "scrum". If you've ever been to a massive football game and come out of it with several thousand other people you will understand what I am about to say!
If you have a tightly packed infantry formation fighting to the front, a hit on the flank gives you problems in addition to the mentioned the "turning to face in time/shieldless/not your best men" aspects
Tightly packed men have a problem with movement in that once a direction of flow is started its very difficult to change that. So lets suppose the front of the infantry formation is engaged heavily and is being pushed backed (or pushing forward) and the first few ranks are very compact. If hit in the flank,
a) it will be difficult for tightly packed men to turn to face this threat (other than a few immediately facing the new threat) and
b) the formation will be compressed in a new direction (ie perpendicular to the forward/backward pressure of the frontal motion/combat).
If thats the case, we now have a football scrum with men in the middle of the formation unable to effectively operate in support of the front or side facing troops in combat. They have to choose which line to support and even if there were all of one mind they are "pinned" by the movement of their fellow comabatants in two directions. Having been in a football scrum, you have no control over where you are going as an individual and its quite frightening in its own right. Add to that the thought of sharp pointy things coming your way and panic will set in.
I think to take Patricks point about depth/distance to cover by a flank attack forward, the flank engaged troops would take a fearful hammering until ultimately the "scrum" behind the combat interface would eventually fragment (as an effective force) under bilateral pressure/movement
I, like patrick, think we are closing in on the answers. Dave's point about crowd behaviour is significant. It is a mistake to see a military formation as a crowd, even an irregular one. It is spaced to allow people to be able to move, use weapons and be relatively sure of their footing. If you compact this, especially from multiple directions, it risks becoming Dave's crowd, in which you can do little other than move with the herd. So this is one thing that is in play in a flank attack, even if it is only fear of it happening.
Another thing is that there tends to be a lack of understanding of the difficulties in delivering attacks other than straight ahead. I think wargamers are particularly prone to this because many rules allow troops not engaged to the front to pivot round onto the flanks of the enemy. In reality, you needed space to manouever into position - it took time. As to attacks against the rear, they probably were preferred, but took even longer to set up. A flank attack is going to envelope the rear anyway, applying three way pressure on the enemy.
Quote from: Erpingham on May 05, 2014, 10:06:55 AM
I, like patrick, think we are closing in on the answers. Dave's point about crowd behaviour is significant. It is a mistake to see a military formation as a crowd, even an irregular one. It is spaced to allow people to be able to move, use weapons and be relatively sure of their footing. If you compact this, especially from multiple directions, it risks becoming Dave's crowd, in which you can do little other than move with the herd. So this is one thing that is in play in a flank attack, even if it is only fear of it happening.
Another thing is that there tends to be a lack of understanding of the difficulties in delivering attacks other than straight ahead. I think wargamers are particularly prone to this because many rules allow troops not engaged to the front to pivot round onto the flanks of the enemy. In reality, you needed space to manouever into position - it took time. As to attacks against the rear, they probably were preferred, but took even longer to set up. A flank attack is going to envelope the rear anyway, applying three way pressure on the enemy.
Taking it a bit further Anthony, a thought just occured to me regarding our "crowd" analogy.....what if a flank impact could be likened to a domino effect. As a force hits the flank, people get rapidly compressed against their surrounding fellows which could set up a ripple effect throughout the entire formation, possibly knocking people off their feet or at worst unbalancing them badly and thus forming our disorganised, compressed crowd. Then we have the continued forward pressure from the flank attack which generates further motion and the crowd is pulled this way and that as per my original musings
I go for the ripple effect and the degradation that crowding and compressing imoses on troops, especially with shields and shafted weapons. There is no need for attacking cavalry to bite off a cirner, in fact that would be pointless as the enemy formation would re assert itself. The flanking units just keep up a steady pressure and lap round the rear and keep the crowding effect going. They have no need to try and get through the enemy formation for theoretical 3/4 mile because the hoplites are being attacked from the front and the crush from the side interacts with this sequentially along the line.
Isn't it Ardant du Picq who describes a shudder running through a formation . Human beings in a crowd, or mass formation have a group mind which overtakes their individual reactions. When fighting and pushing to the front the impact of men recoiling from the flank destroys the cohesive firward fighting system so the majority of men cannot resist in either direction,
Of course it takes time for the panic from the flank to reach the centre which may break through to the front before it is fixed.
Roy
Quote from: aligern on May 05, 2014, 11:04:55 AM
The flanking units just keep up a steady pressure and lap round the rear and keep the crowding effect going. They have no need to try and get through the enemy formation for theoretical 3/4 mile because the hoplites are being attacked from the front and the crush from the side interacts with this sequentially along the line.
Agreed and in our proposal, a compacted infantry mass (resulting from the initial flank impact and possible frontal combat pressure) will necessarily lead to a flattening and lapping effect of the flank chargers....thus leading to more compaction as the flank is enveloped possibly to include the rear as well
Its a chain reaction and one that I can see would be irrestitable once started (and if maintained rather than broken off for another charge)
So, I think we may have identified our mechanismfor how the shock of a flank attack moves deeper into a formation. I would speculate the the "shudder" is felt well beyond the ability to understand its cause. Thus a relatively small force could cause a lot of damage, its effect magnified by uncertainty/fear. As to whether a body struck like this will inevitably fail, I think a lot depends on how far and fast the ripple goes, and whether it successfully crosses unit boundaries - a body deeper in the block might be able to co-ordinate its resistance to the ripple effect if it peters out or slows down. Two ways to prevent it becoming decisive might be to break through to the front or to charge reserves into the now disordered outflankers. Both would convert that flank into a confused melee, as opposed to a source of directional pressure deeper into the formation. Though, from what I've read, flank attacks are often fairly decisive
Anyone like to suggest the mechanisms by which this effect could work in a wargame?
I guess you would get a bonus score when added to morale (or similar) dice for moving forward and perhaps a larger bonus if you "win your melee to the front" ?
In effect, it would seem that the developing consensus is that the flank attack has at least as great a moral effect as a physical one. The physical effects can be summarised as unbalancing and constriction (and of course casualties) while the moral effects are disorientation and spreading anxiety (or uncertainty tinged with anxiety).
This suggests that on the wargames table one effect of a flank attack will be to affect morale: force a check or force a (possibly temporary) drop or, in like the DB-series which do not have separate morale ratings, penalise combat effectiveness.
To clarify my suggestion this would be in the form of....
If hit in the flank........when calculating morale.........add +1 if moving forward or following up and add +2 if breaking through/routing your opponents to the front
Another thought then occured to me.
We are looking at dense infantry formations hit in the flank. What about more open formations? The ripple effect and condensing of troops into a crowd would be lessened for more open infantry BUT would allow greater penetration by a mobile flank charge as there would be less "resistance"
Quote from: Holly on May 05, 2014, 12:37:02 PM
We are looking at dense infantry formations hit in the flank. What about more open formations? The ripple effect and condensing of troops into a crowd would be lessened for more open infantry BUT would allow greater penetration by a mobile flank charge as there would be less "resistance"
True. The most noticeable effect would probably be more men cut down more quickly - and as soon as the remainder realised what was happening they would tend to panic individually rather than wait to panic collectively. Overall effect - extra casualties, with a morale check into the bargain.
Agreed....
can we summarise thus far that dense infantry bodies hit on the flank by mounted would be pinned initially but heavily disordered to the point of structural (organisational/effectiveness) and eventually break spectacularly. Looser formation infantry bodies would suffer greater initial penetration/casulaties and probably break quicker
Well, what the sources say is that the victim units suffer a dramatic loss of fighting power. There might be a morale effect, but I suggest that either occurs before the attack goes in or later when the slaughter has reduced men to panic. It might be instructive for us to search out examples of what actually gets reported. I have cited Cannae and Adrianople. There is a battle where Totila sends a small force of around 300 round to the rear of an Early Byzantine army and these, thinking they ay are the advance guard of a large force, collapse before the impact of the 300. Actually such a small force would probably not have made a huge difference to the actual fighting except where they were committed, however seeing them every Byzantine unit probably thought that they would be the point of the attack.
Roy
Philip Sabin in his book Lost Battles (pages 54-55) mentions that he feels the massive combat bonuses for attacking the enemy in the flank or rear may in fact be exaggerated. He mentions the battles of Ibera, Telamon, and Ruspina is battles where troops fought for a long time despite having to fight to the front and rear. Philip Sabin does feels that some troops are more vulnerable to flank or rear attacks. These troops would include hoplites, phalangites, and massed archers.
I think we have to consider if the troops being attacked have time to respond to the threat before they are attacked either front or rear. Changing direction with a body of troops isn't as easy as some gamers think. It's basically a problem of time and distance; will you have enough time to turn your unit before those other people with murderous intent reach you with sharp pointy things. It's easier to have some men do an about face to face a rear attack than moving an entire unit through an arc of 90 degrees.
I think it boils down to a question of whether the troops under a flank or rear attack attack have time and ability to prepare and counter the threat. For a gaming point of view, we would also have to consider perhaps reducing the attacked unit combat value when fighting in two directions rather than increase the attacking units combat value.
Good points Chuck.
In addition I would like to say that if fighting in 2 different directions, apart from the possible compression/disruption effect of this, a loss of manpower from the "front" of the unit in the form of less shoving, encouragment and filling in of gaps immediately behind those engaged could also play a part
Quote from: Chuck the Grey on May 06, 2014, 01:34:34 AM
Philip Sabin in his book Lost Battles (pages 54-55) mentions that he feels the massive combat bonuses for attacking the enemy in the flank or rear may in fact be exaggerated. He mentions the battles of Ibera, Telamon, and Ruspina is battles where troops fought for a long time despite having to fight to the front and rear. Philip Sabin does feels that some troops are more vulnerable to flank or rear attacks. These troops would include hoplites, phalangites, and massed archers.
What Prof Sabin's thinking omits is that these troops were not fighting to front and rear as a single formation, but as separate battlelines facing in different directions, so each battleline was fighting only to its front. Cannae would have been a much better example to consider - and interestingly enough, Phil Sabin's Cannae scenario in
Lost Battles - and especially the analysis of it in chapter 3 of the eponymous book - has problems.
That said, he is certainly right on the other point - that phalangites never performed well when attacked in flank (and rear) - though whether hoplites or massed archers were especially vulnerable when attacked this way when compared to, say, legionaries or tribal troops is an open question, which may be difficult to resolve because legionaries may have been faster to respond to an attack in flank, judging by Caesar's accounts (although this did them little good at Cannae).
Quote
I think it boils down to a question of whether the troops under a flank or rear attack attack have time and ability to prepare and counter the threat. For a gaming point of view, we would also have to consider perhaps reducing the attacked unit combat value when fighting in two directions rather than increase the attacking units combat value.
Very much agree here. If unengaged troops perceive a threat to flank before that threat becomes operative, they can change front (which with classical formations is much better than changing facing) so that when the opponent closes to melee the combat will not be a flank attack. If they can at least change facing (turn left or right 90 degrees) then it will still be a flank attack, but an opposed one.
Taking the classical era, the question is how aware particular troops would be about what is happening on their flank amid the noise and dust of a typical Mediterranean battle. If the lines have not closed, a threat to the flank could be obvious from a long way off: at Raphia in 217 BC the right wing Ptolemaic cavalry slipped round the opposing elephants to catch their cavalry opponents in flank with surprise and quickly saw them off. This was perceived by the Seleucid phalanx who, aware of the threat to their flank, became very reluctant to advance and in fact retired off the field. At Bagradas in 255 BC the Roman infantry perceived the defeat of their own cavalry and presumably adopted an all-round facing because Polybius describes them as being 'shot down' as opposed to 'ridden down' by the Carthaginian cavalry. At Cannae in 216 BC the Romans, with the Volturnus wind blowing dust in their faces, seem not to have perceived the Carthaginian enveloping manoeuvre until it was upon them.
Wargame rules could introduce a visibility rating based on the climate and the terrain. For games of a suitable level of abstraction (e.g. DB-system) high visibility could decrease the effect of flank attacks (except on pikes) and low visibility could enhance it. For more tactical systems which allow parts of units to change facing/direction the reaction time available for this could be increased or decreased accordingly.
Good points Patrick. I agree that pike armed units seemed especially vulnerable to flank and rear attacks, and I think that may have carried over to hoplite units. The question that I have been pondering is this vulnerability due to the difficulty in handling pikes, the depth and density of the formation, or the level of training and morale of the unit. I don't have a real answer at this time since I'm still mulling it over in my mind.
As far as the Roman legions at Cannae, consideration must be given to the compression of the units preventing effective use of weapons, the loss of unit cohesion as the various units were forced together, and perhaps some shock and dismay as the reality of the situation became apparent to the Romans. So from a gaming point of view, to simulate a situation like Cannae the unit being attacked on the flank in the rear would have to have a reduction in their combat effectiveness and take a loss in morale.
The point about visibility is a good one and deserves consideration. However, we also have to consider the effect of tunnel vision. It is very common for soldiers, police, and other people in stressful situations to focus on one threat and be totally unaware of any additional threats. I believe this can apply to even massed units that are common in our historical era of interest. A secondary threat may be visible to a unit, but will they recognize the threat and then react to it. Wargame rules would have to have some mechanism, regardless of the level of abstraction, to account for this in some way.
The tunnel vision thing is a good point to make Chuck. I have seen a documentary whereby individuals are given something to focus on and inadvertently they zone out alot of what is around them (in the example I saw, over 50% of the subjects in the study completely failed to observe a fight between 6 men 3 metres away!)
In addition, the whole visibility thing within massed units is important. Unless you are head and shouldes above your fellow soldiers, the average infantryman would not be able to see much if not in the first few ranks (of front or flank) of the unit. On the flat and in the "middle" mass of infantry, your visibility of what's happening is virtually nil until something happens like an impact of a charge. I am surmising that the reaction of the middle mass of infantry is based more on perception and morale than anything else during combat.
Quote from: Chuck the Grey on May 07, 2014, 04:42:24 AM
The point about visibility is a good one and deserves consideration. However, we also have to consider the effect of tunnel vision. It is very common for soldiers, police, and other people in stressful situations to focus on one threat and be totally unaware of any additional threats. I believe this can apply to even massed units that are common in our historical era of interest. A secondary threat may be visible to a unit, but will they recognize the threat and then react to it. Wargame rules would have to have some mechanism, regardless of the level of abstraction, to account for this in some way.
I think you have a good point here Chuck. Not only is the formation organised to fight forward, its threat awareness points that way too. This would be particularly true of troops not on the very edges of the line. Whether some formations were organised in ways that helped or hindered, I don't know. Didn't Romans have their officers on the front and back corners of the formation for example?
The question of visibility is one our WWII colleagues spend a lot of time on, because it is critical for any kind of period feel. Earlier periods it is less of an issue so we put less time into it. Yet, the biggest curse we have is the giant general who can take in the whole of his line and the enemies at a glance. He can even see that flank march not yet deployed sitting on a side table. So, while we can creation reaction factors for units menaced from the flank, we can't stop a subtle redeployment to take into account troops which the unit (and general) couldn't actually see.
Quote from: Erpingham on May 07, 2014, 08:22:57 AM
Quote from: Chuck the Grey on May 07, 2014, 04:42:24 AM
The point about visibility is a good one and deserves consideration. However, we also have to consider the effect of tunnel vision. It is very common for soldiers, police, and other people in stressful situations to focus on one threat and be totally unaware of any additional threats. I believe this can apply to even massed units that are common in our historical era of interest. A secondary threat may be visible to a unit, but will they recognize the threat and then react to it. Wargame rules would have to have some mechanism, regardless of the level of abstraction, to account for this in some way.
I think you have a good point here Chuck. Not only is the formation organised to fight forward, its threat awareness points that way too. This would be particularly true of troops not on the very edges of the line. Whether some formations were organised in ways that helped or hindered, I don't know. Didn't Romans have their officers on the front and back corners of the formation for example?
The question of visibility is one our WWII colleagues spend a lot of time on, because it is critical for any kind of period feel. Earlier periods it is less of an issue so we put less time into it. Yet, the biggest curse we have is the giant general who can take in the whole of his line and the enemies at a glance. He can even see that flank march not yet deployed sitting on a side table. So, while we can creation reaction factors for units menaced from the flank, we can't stop a subtle redeployment to take into account troops which the unit (and general) couldn't actually see.
Excellent point Anthony re the "giant general" curse as you put it. We are all guilty of getting sucked into the modern wargaming perception of battlefield visibility at some point or other. I sometimes try to visualise battles as if I was on the ground and this is actually quite instructive if you are able to visit an actual battlefield that we are reasonably confident of the relative positions of troops on the topography of the ground. It gives you a better feel for what is easy or otherwise to see.
Back to our question at hand and I maintain that the majority of troops within an infantry unit will have poor visibility of movement and positions of other troops around them and so possibly their reaction to stimuli, be it shouts from officers or co-combatants or actual physical shock waves fo the crowding effect after a combat impact will be greatly magnified in psychological terms if nothing else.
Agreed: Chuck makes a good point, because in addition to (usually) wearing a helmet that restricts peripheral vision, our troops have noise all round them and are cued up to focus on and evaluate the threat in front, not least because that is what is occupying everyone else's attention at the moment. Man does tend to be something of a herd animal (or group mind sentient) and when in a mass of other men with a shared single purpose tends to develop tunnel vision centred on the immediate goal.
Veteran troops will sometimes have an intuitive feeling that all is not well in a certain sector, and will check out their feeling by a glance round, but even if a threat is noticed by an alert veteran there remains the problem of conveying the discovery before everyone finds out the hard way.
Dave's point about the sheer limits of visibility when surrounded by other soldiers will mean that any shift of perception (realising that trouble is arriving on the flank) will of necessity be a rude and abrupt awakening and a sudden transition from 'everything OK' to 'what the **** is going on and is it about to kill me?'
Anthony mentions officers being stationed at points which would enable them to watch, or at least glance without hindrance to, the flanks and rear: this could have cued troops in reasonable time to take any countermeasures of which they were capable. Interesting in this regard are the Roman tales from Cannae of Carthaginian 'deserters' who later 'picked up Roman shields' and 'joined the fighting' from behind the Roman army. Hannibal had re-equipped his veteran Liby-Phoenicians Roman-style (Polybius III.87), and these were the troops who carried out the double envelopment at Cannae: one wonders if they were spotted by inexperienced Roman officers as they closed in and were assumed to be Romans (perhaps the 10,000 men sent to attack Hannibal's camp being redeployed, if they thought about it at all). This would have meant that the potential early warning system of having officers able to look around actually worked against itself in this instance.
I read somewhere about animal behaviour that states that in a pack, individuality (and free will) suffers and "pack mentality" takes over especially under stress/threat conditions. Not sure if anyone did a study on humans in this way but it would make sense to say that we retain basic animal instincts that (autonomically) take over in certain circumstances.
That's what all that drill is about. When the cannonballs are flying at you and men are going down the familiar voice of sergeant or officer takes over from independent thought and keeps you standing or advancing.
No doubt the Romans had something similar and for mediaevals it would be more about following a lord's banner or the next man up the line in terms of social standing. There is a lot of substructure in Ancient units that we do not see, that keeps a man in place and trusting. What impresses me is the relatively few times that armies bolt and run. Mostly it takes hard fighting before an army collapses, even one whose position has been fatally compromised. That is why I plump for the effect of flank attacks being a degradation of fighting ability through crushing together, not a big break-down in morale.
In fact, could the morale failure school cite many examples of flank attacks resulting in instant collapses?
Roy
A worthy point.
Thucydides V.73 records that at the Battle of Mantinea (418 BC) the Spartan right and the Argive and Mantinean right were both victorious, but then the Spartans, instead of pursuing their defeated opponents, marched to attack the Argives and Mantineans. These, "seeing ... the Spartans ... bearing down on them ... took to flight."
I am not sure we can count this as a 'proper' flank attack because the morale failure came about for reasons of feeling isolated rather than being hit in the flank
per se.
Xenophon in the Hellenica (IV.2.21-22) describes the later stages of the Battle of the Nemea:
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But the Lacedaemonians themselves overcame that part of the Athenians which they covered, and wheeling round with their overlapping wing killed many of them, and then, unscathed as they were, marched on with lines unbroken. They passed by the other four tribes of the Athenians before the latter had returned from the pursuit, so that none of these were killed except such as fell in the original encounter, at the hands of the Tegeans; [22] but the Lacedaemonians did come upon the Argives as they were returning from the pursuit, and when the first polemarch was about to attack them in front, it is said that some one shouted out to let their front ranks pass by. When this had been done, they struck them on their unprotected sides as they ran past, and killed many of them. The Lacedaemonians also attacked the Corinthians as they were returning. And, furthermore, they likewise came upon some of the Thebans returning from the pursuit, and killed a large number of them.
One may note how the Spartan use of an overlap to make a flank attack caused or at least contributed to their rapid success against the Athenians. The Spartans were then able to take advantage of their ability to hit the right flanks of opponents returning from pursuit to fight a series of one-sided actions against the Theban and allied contingents.
Of note is the Battle of Amphipolis in Thucydides V.10:
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Upon hearing this he [Cleon] went up to look, and having done so, being unwilling to venture upon the decisive step of a battle before his reinforcements came up, and fancying that he would have time to retire, bid the retreat be sounded and sent orders to the men to effect it by moving on the left wing in the direction of Eion, which was indeed the only way practicable. [4] This however not being quick enough for him, he joined the retreat in person and made the right wing wheel round, thus turning its unarmed side to the enemy.
[5] It was then that Brasidas seeing the Athenian force in motion and his opportunity come, said to the men with him and the rest, 'Those fellows will never stand before us, one can see that by the way their spears and heads are going. Troops which do as they do seldom stand a charge. Quick, some one, and open the gates I spoke of, and let us be out and at them with no fears for the result.' [6] Accordingly issuing out by the palisade gate and by the first in the long wall then existing, he ran at the top of his speed along the straight road, where the trophy now stands as you go by the steepest part of the hill, and fell upon and routed the centre of the Athenians, panic-stricken by their own disorder and astounded at his audacity.
[7] At the same moment Clearidas in execution of his orders issued out from the Thracian gates to support him, and also attacked the enemy. [8] The result was that the Athenians, suddenly and unexpectedly attacked on both sides, fell into confusion; and their left towards Eion, which had already got on some distance, at once broke and fled.
Brasidas hits the Athenian centre while it has its flank turned, with immediate results. Clearidas hit the Athenian right, which also had its flank turned, but this held him off for a while and did not give way until surrounded (apart from Cleon, who ran at the beginning of the action).
Perhaps the key question in the above instances is: if these forces had instead been attacked in front, or entirely in front (i.e. no flank attack to muddy the waters), would they have collapsed? The answer, based on their combat performance to that point, would seem to be no. It would appear that in these cases at least being attacked in flank made a significant morale as well as material difference.
Not every flank attack will result in an immediate collapse: troops of good quality are more likely to withstand one, at least for a while, and seeing it coming allows countermeasures of a sort, including psychological (if, that is, the psychology holds up when the oncoming attack is perceived - as we have seen above, sometimes it did not). At Pharsalus (Caesar, Civil War III.92-95), Pompey's cavalry collapsed when unexpectedly flanked by Caesar's 'surprise force' of six cohorts. When these and Caesar's surviving cavalry flanked Pompey's infantry line, Pompey's high-quality First Legion, which was hit by the manoeuvre, held out for awhile and seems to have collapsed at around the time the rest of the line did so.
I trust this discussion will not polarise into one that maintains that
either flank attacks have morale effects
or they have physical effects; they have both, and if morale holds up the physical effects will be the more important while if morale does not hold up the physical effects will be icing on the cake.
I'm pretty sure i recall sabins analysis of the punic wars putting the emphasis on the surprise effect of seeing a new threat to the flank.
If its telegraphed, that surprise is largely meaningless, and the fight continues. The next big effect being physical rather than moral, caused by having to fight to two faces - which i think includes crowding as a logical consequence in many cases.
So that's mostly morale, but morale in anticipation of the problems expected if you stick around long enough to make it physical - in the same way that running from a stampede is morale based on knowing what happens if you don't.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on May 09, 2014, 12:22:08 PM
I trust this discussion will not polarise into one that maintains that either flank attacks have morale effects or they have physical effects; they have both, and if morale holds up the physical effects will be the more important while if morale does not hold up the physical effects will be icing on the cake.
Completely agree with that Patrick. They go hand in hand. The question is which is the more devastating in what circumstances and why?
Of course we could ask the question 'Is cavalry more effective than infantry when it comes to charging troops in the flank?'
If compaction and physical causes are the important ones, infantry can compact enemy infantry more than cavalry can because infantry can push the men in front so the compacting of the enemy would be even more noticeable
But you could imagine the speed and size of cavalry would give them a greater morale effect.
Jim
Quote from: Jim Webster on May 10, 2014, 07:11:55 AM
Of course we could ask the question 'Is cavalry more effective than infantry when it comes to charging troops in the flank?'
If compaction and physical causes are the important ones, infantry can compact enemy infantry more than cavalry can because infantry can push the men in front so the compacting of the enemy would be even more noticeable
But you could imagine the speed and size of cavalry would give them a greater morale effect.
Jim
Good question Jim :)
I would propose that the cavalry flank charge might be the more physically disrupting initially because of the speed and momentum. If we accept that the cavalry physically crashes into the wall of men on the flank then the speed and mass of the horse and rider is higher individually than an infantryman. The speed thing also possibly sets up a ripple/shock wave to a greater extent with cavalry than infantry. After the initial impact, I would agree that the infantry would exert more compacting pressure as mass begins to tell with shoving etc