I was watching the Gaugemala bit from Oliver Stone’s ‘Alexander’ the other day and thinking about how unit cohesion was maintained in large scale ancient battles.
Stone shows unit commanders using flags to direct their phalanges to lower their spears. In the opening episode of HBO’s Rome, depicting a battle against the Gauls (Alesia presumably?), we see a centurion blowing a whistle in order to signal rotation of troops in and out of front ranks.
Is there any primary documentation of command-and-control in Herodotus, Thucidydes, Tacitus, et al.? All ancient depictions of combat that I have read talk about troop numbers and deployments but not really how they communicated with each other or maintained cohesion.
There’s also the question of how much ‘cohesion’ there really was once the battle got going. As units like Greek phalanxes and roman cohorts depended for their effectiveness on maintaining close ranks I have to suppose well-fought ancient battles didn’t typically dissolve into the sort of chaotic brawl you too often see in movies. But warfare is never as clean and straightforward as a bunch of blue bars and arrows on a map.
So how do you think it was done, apart from drill-drill-drill, small unit commanders (a la centurions) and lots of shouting? Signal flags? Lots of horseback pages riding back and forth? Whistles, horns, drums? All of the above?
I would think that discipline as much as anything made those units effective. The first groups that break ranks in most ancient battles usually lose. You see that up to the age of repeating rifles and artillery pretty much.
At least in the classical era, they didn’t try a lot of tricky maneuvers during battle. They made a simple plan and rolled the dice on it.
To come up with an army of more than a few thousand men you would have to bring together troops from many cities and probably many nations. For example, within 50 kilometers of Athens there were Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians plus Dryopians who weren’t even Greek. These different units wouldn’t have trained together or even share a common language, so you couldn’t just call an audible and expect them to respond as one coherent army.
I thought first they had to build a Lab. Then they had to research Military. Then they had to research Communications. Then they…
To be honest, I’m not sure of the exact method for Alexandrine communications, besides the despatch of messengers (foot or horseback) between commanders. Much of the battle plan was discussed in advance, and when Parmenion’s left flank crumbled under Mazeus’ attack at Gaugamela, it was a rider dispatched to Alexander who brought Alexander the information he needed to make his famous charge. Of course, I wasn’t there, so I don’t actually know that. But that’s what I’ve read.
Roman battlefield command and control was better, but of course was later. Romans used standards in a fashion that continued up through the American Civil War, as well as trumpets with different tones, etc. they also had well trained NCOs.
There is a good book by Philip Sabin about recreating ancient battles from available sources called Lost Battles but I don’t recall whether he discusses battlefield command directly. I was trying to find it just now but I must have moved it.
I don’t know if I can get Troy to comment, but we did fight an ancient battle of Gaugamela against each other a couple years ago, and made a video about it.
Sabin’s whole point is that it’s really hard to impossible to know specifics, and thus the method he develops to try to assess the dynamics or ancient battles. The game that comes out of the study is really good, though. I read it recently and other than talking about couriers and personal leadership (when the commander fought on the line of battle) I don’t remember anything else on command methods.
The takeaway is, iirc, that control and maneurability is limited to almost nonexistent but for cavalry and that morale and cohesion (driven by troop experience) was the most important factor on victory, that troop numbers where somewhat irrelevant and that generals where perhaps less determinant than mid level commanders except in exceptional cases (Caesar, Hannibal and the usual culprits). So basically initial deployment (and logistics to get there and make the enemy accept combat) is where commanders mostly won or lost their battles.
I do remember reading that much later Japanese armies used signal arrows to trigger different plans, but that’s so removed from ancient warfare as to be off topic.
Well, even something like Hannibal’s controlled withdrawal of his center at Cannae that drew the Romans into the double envelopment. Was it executed by:
Telling the unit commanders what to do beforehand (e.g., “when the Romans get this far, start to withdraw in good order”)
Some kind of signalling during the battle (flags, riders to the unit commanders, something else)
Troops just withdrawing because they were under pressure, Hannibal seizing an opportunity and later saying ‘I meant to do that’
Honestly, even getting 10,000 people to walk forward at approximately the same pace seems to me a difficult proposition. Suppose you have 20 unit commanders; how are they all aligning with each other? Just ‘keep up with the guy on your left’ as a general rule? Of course I guess that’s also another reason for drill – walking develops a consistent, predictable tempo with variants like ‘on the double quick’ etc.
Hannibal setting up troops that he knew would give up space on their own (due to them being worse quality) beforehand (planning, but without necessarily relying on C&C). The center was deeper and lower quality after all.
IIRC the larger picture of command and control was done through music (horns, drums, etc…). Each unit generally knew their battle plan already, but the timing of the execution was done through some instrument. For example, the calvary on the left flank heard some musical phrase, then they knew it was time to charge. Or of the army heard some other phrase it might me, reform ranks or retreat, etc…
Unexpected changes in the battle plan were up to runners or unit commanders to deal with.
