Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

[dandan_noodles]

Well duh, of course if you remove all other differences, the side with more complete armor and stronger metallurgy will probably win. That's self evident. The point is that when comparing real armies, there are so many other differences that even the biggest 500 BC-1500 AD technological differences are only part of the question. Wars between armies equally matched in all but technology are vanishingly rare; I'd say nonexistent almost, going from memory anyway. We don't have any kind of universal equation where we can just plug in a couple variables to decide victory and defeat, so any examination would probably have to be case by case.

 

[Elfwine]

Only part of the question is something I'd agree with. That an army of around the time of Christ (or "even earlier") is on even footing with an army from fifteen hundred or even a thousand years later because the technological differences don't really matter, not so much.

I could probably set up a situation where, say, Julius Caesar defeats a late medieval army - but I could probably find one where he defeats a post-gunpowder one using most of the same factors because I can set up the side with better technology to be as weakened in every other regard as I like. That's not a test of how much or little technology matters, that's a test of how ideal a situation I can make for Caesar before people call foul on my hypothetical battle.

 

[NotAMyth]

And armor advancements made to response to the weapons currently being used (as far as technology permitted). I'm not sure how well a Roman legion under an average commander vs. a 15th century English army with an average commander is going to fare, even if Julius Caesar would beat Edward II (14th century if we're being fussy).

"Discipline and tactics and leadership (and morale and terrain and...) are important" is timeless, but that doesn't mean that weapons and armor changing is of little importance.

I'm pretty sure the average Roman Legion under the average commander would lose to the average 15th Century English army.
Badly at that.

Post Augustan legions relied on Veteran corp and the meritocratic system that produced them. This allowed smaller Roman armies to adapt quickly to situations and use their discipline to out maneuver and defeat armies numerically or qualitatively superior to them.

English armies substituted veterans with mercenaries and men-at-arms, while possessing much superior cavalry and absolutely devastating ranged combatants.

If it had been English at Cannae instead of the Carthaginians, the battle would have ended in half the time. You'd be substituting slingers with Welsh Bowman, and the cavalry on the flanks would have stirrups.

 

[Elfwine]

If it had been English at Cannae instead of the Carthaginians, the battle would have ended in half the time. You'd be substituting slingers with Welsh Bowman, and the cavalry on the flanks would have stirrups.

On the other hand, and this as far as my comment on hypothetical scenarios above (post #22), if you had a solid but unremarkable Roman general and army at Bannockburn instead of Robert the Bruce, the English still have a decent chance of losing - past the advantage of pikes (1st century or 14th century) for winning this fight vs. gladii and pilum at least.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

If it had been English at Cannae instead of the Carthaginians, the battle would have ended in half the time. You'd be substituting slingers with Welsh Bowman, and the cavalry on the flanks would have stirrups.

The importance of stirrups is overplayed, I think -- re-enactors using Roman-style saddles have found they provide a perfectly steady seat for cavalry charges. The real benefit from stirrups is that they make it much easier to mount and dismount.

 

[alexmilman]

No, I think what he's saying is relatively clear: that a good army is a good army is a good army, regardless if it happened to originate in 100 ad or 1000 ad. The difference in weapons tech was small enough despite the large gap in times to be a deciding factor.

The question is, is that belief correct and why or why not if disagreeing?

His belief is that an army is all about the weapons and this leaves an open question: is there something else that makes an army “good” vs. “bad”? To misquote Lev Tolstoy, in his opinion “all good armies are good in exactly the same way and each bad army is bad in its own way”. 😂

Following author’s logic, if only the weapons’s tech matters, then shouldn’t all armies of the pre-gunpowder iron age be the same as far as their quality is involved? No good and no bad. But author emphasizing the “good” armies. So everybody is on the same technology level and somehow some animals are more equal than other. What makes them better? How about a possibility that an author does not understand subject well enough to be considered seriously?

 

[dandan_noodles]

If it had been English at Cannae instead of the Carthaginians, the battle would have ended in half the time. You'd be substituting slingers with Welsh Bowman, and the cavalry on the flanks would have stirrups.

If the English had been at Cannae, they'd have lost because they would be outnumbered almost 6-1.

 

[RousseauX]

No, I think what he's saying is relatively clear: that a good army is a good army is a good army, regardless if it happened to originate in 100 ad or 1000 ad. The difference in weapons tech was small enough despite the large gap in times to be a deciding factor.

The question is, is that belief correct and why or why not if disagreeing?

No, plate armor/Steel weapons/stirrups etc were decisive technological advances between different eras of pre-gunpowder armies.

 

[Mike D]

If the English had been at Cannae, they'd have lost because they would be outnumbered almost 6-1.

At Agincourt they were outnumbered between 3 and 5 to 1. The problem for the Romans in this situation is that although they outnumber the English, the English have heavily armoured knights on the flanks and English/Welsh bowmen hammering at the Roman formations rather than Carthaginian slingers. If the English are well led there's no reason why they couldn't inflict heavy damage on badly led Romans. If the English can get into a suitable defensive position and Varro still wants to go two up and bags of smoke straight up the middle then they're going to take a hell of a toll on inexperienced legions who don't have the experience to cope with high casualty rates.

 

[Malone]

At Agincourt they were outnumbered between 3 and 5 to 1. The problem for the Romans in this situation is that although they outnumber the English, the English have heavily armoured knights on the flanks and English/Welsh bowmen hammering at the Roman formations rather than Carthaginian slingers. If the English are well led there's no reason why they couldn't inflict heavy damage on badly led Romans. If the English can get into a suitable defensive position and Varro still wants to go two up and bags of smoke straight up the middle then they're going to take a hell of a toll on inexperienced legions who don't have the experience to cope with high casualty rates.

I think when people in the present hear sling they think of a Bart Simpson sling shot. A well trained classical age slinger could launch a projectile with the force of a magnum handgun. Polished sling stones probably best approximated bullets before bullets came to be.

Not mention you can mass much more people with slings than longbows due to how simple they are.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

I think when people in the present hear sling they think of a Bart Simpson sling shot. A well trained classical age slinger could launch a projectile with the force of a magnum handgun. Polished sling stones probably best approximated bullets before bullets came to be.

Rhodian slingers (and probably others) could supposedly outrange archers with their sling stones.

Not mention you can mass much more people with slings than longbows due to how simple they are.

Dunno about that; the sling itself is simple, but from what I can gather, it's harder to learn how to use it (to a militarily useful standard) than it is to use a bow. Presumably there's a reason why more armies used archers than slingers.

 

[Malone]

Dunno about that; the sling itself is simple, but from what I can gather, it's harder to learn how to use it (to a militarily useful standard) than it is to use a bow. Presumably there's a reason why more armies used archers than slingers.

But are we talking about general archers or specifically English/welsh longbowmen like the person I quoted referenced in their army comparison? They famously took a lifetime of practice and molding their bodies to use that specific weapon.

I agree standard auxiliary bowmen weren't too specialized.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

But are we talking about general archers or specifically English/welsh longbowmen like the person I quoted referenced in their army comparison? They famously took a lifetime of practice and molding their bodies to use that specific weapon.

Even with medieval longbowmen, the archery laws only mandated two hours' practice a week, which apparently was considered sufficient to make militarily-useful longbowmen. I suspect that a group of people practising full-time could become proficient in considerably less than a lifetime, subject mainly to how quickly they could develop the requisite upper-body strength.

As for the skeletal effects of longbow use, that's true, but I think it gets overplayed. Most strenuous physical activities, if carried out often enough, will leave a mark on the skeleton. Women's bodies from periods when housewives were expected to grind the family's grain at their querns often show characteristic wear and tear on the upper body, but obviously grain-grinding doesn't take a long time to learn.

 

[dandan_noodles]

At Agincourt they were outnumbered between 3 and 5 to 1. The problem for the Romans in this situation is that although they outnumber the English, the English have heavily armoured knights on the flanks and English/Welsh bowmen hammering at the Roman formations rather than Carthaginian slingers. If the English are well led there's no reason why they couldn't inflict heavy damage on badly led Romans. If the English can get into a suitable defensive position and Varro still wants to go two up and bags of smoke straight up the middle then they're going to take a hell of a toll on inexperienced legions who don't have the experience to cope with high casualty rates.

At Agincourt, only about twice as many French fought the English; six-one is a whole new ballgame. Their flanks are going to be overlapped, and they'll have no reserves to speak of.

 

[alexmilman]

I'm pretty sure the average Roman Legion under the average commander would lose to the average 15th Century English army.
Badly at that.

Taking into an account that in the 15th century the English lost the 100YW and had been kicked out of France, I’m afraid that your opinion about quality of their army is more than a little bit exaggerated. 😂

English armies substituted veterans with mercenaries and men-at-arms, while possessing much superior cavalry and absolutely devastating ranged combatants.

Deadliness of the archers is grossly exaggerated. Even at Crecy the French knights managed to get all the way to the the English ranks and at Agincourt the dismounted French knights managed to walk slowly through a muddy field under barrage of the archers. And it does not look like they were excessively deadly at Fromigny or Patay (in which 5,000 longbowmen had been defeated by 180 heavy knights later reinforced by 1,300 mounted men-at-arms

If it had been English at Cannae instead of the Carthaginians, the battle would have ended in half the time. You'd be substituting slingers with Welsh Bowman, and the cavalry on the flanks would have stirrups.

To start with, all of the above does not make a slightest sense because English armies of the 100YW never were anywhere close to the 50,000 that Hannibal had at Cannae: Poitiers - 6,000, Crecy - 15,000, Agincourt - 6,000-8,000, Patay - 5,000, Halidon Hill - 10,000. Then, an example when a winning side had a military genius as a leader (AFAIK, none of the English commanders of the 100YW ever had been seriously considered equal to Hannibal) and the losing one a complete nincompoop is not a proof of anything (army of the lions led by a sheep, etc.).How about something like Zamia?

But let’s get along with the fantastic assumption about the numbers which your claim implies. The center of the Carthaginian army was not held by the slingers and dismounted knights would not held for a long against the Roman infantry. BTW, a parallel between the slingers and English archers is not working due to the different tactics: unlike the slingers the archers had been acting in a static formation, preferably protected by some natural or artificial obstacle. The archers would not be effective against the infantry having big shields and trained to use testudo formations. So almost as soon as the Roman infantry gets close (suffering minimal damage), the English front is broken: unlike Hannibal’s infantry, the archers are not good in hand-to-hand fighting against high quality infantry.

I quite agree regarding advantages of the medieval cavalry over what the Romans had at the Cannae but not because of the stirrups (popular but phony argument) but because it was much heavier (heavier armor and long lances and swords against the short spears and swords) and destreyers were much bigger than what the Romans had. However, ability of the knights to conduct the same maneuver as the Carthage and Numidian cavalry at Cannae is a big question mark. There is no doubt that they’d break the Roman cavalry but the knights were routinely very bad and in maintaining a discipline during a pursuit and the cases when they managed to stop a pursuit, reform and launch a new attack had been quite rare in the medieval warfare. In the best case scenarios it was taking a considerable time to rally them around the colors. So chances are that by the time they are back on a battlefield the English infantry disappears from the field.

 

[dandan_noodles]

Frankly I'm not even sure the English cavalry would win, or at least not quickly. The strongest force of men at arms deployed for an expeditionary army was about 2500 in the Crecy campaign, iirc, so they'd be outnumbered more than 2-1 in a Cannae hypothetical. Man for man they're much stronger, but they'd have their work cut out for them with strong forces threatening their flanks and waiting in reserve to counterattack when the ranks are broken. Meanwhile their infantry is getting beat down from the front with their flanks rolled up from both ends, owing to the sheer length of the Roman battle line.

The real punchline though is that even if by some incredible fluke the English do win and completely destroy the Roman army, that's not the only army they have. With their immense pool of Italian manpower, they could easily take the field again next year. By contrast, if the English are crushed by vastly superior numbers, they will have extreme difficulty in replacing that army.