Battle Studies; Ancient and Modern Battle Part 7

"While this carnage was taking place in the center, the Numidians pursued the fugitives of the left wing. Most of them were cut down, others were thrown under their horses; some of them escaped to Venusia. Among these was Varro, the Roman general, that abominable man whose administration cost his country so dearly. Thus ended the battle of Cannae, a battle where prodigies of valor were seen on both sides.

"Of the six thousand horse of which the Roman cavalry was composed, only seventy Romans reached Venusia with Varro, and, of the auxiliary cavalry, only three hundred men found shelter in various towns. Ten thousand foot were taken prisoners, but they were not in the battle. [7]

Of troops in battle only about three thousand saved themselves in the nearby town; the balance, numbering about twenty thousand, died on the field of honor." [8]

Hannibal lost in that action in the neighborhood of four thousand Gauls, fifteen hundred Iberians and Africans and two hundred horses.

Let us a.n.a.lyze:

The light infantry troops were scattered in front of the armies and skirmished without result. The real combat commenced with the attack on the legitimate cavalry of the Roman left wing by the cavalry of Hannibal.

There, says Polybius, the fight grew thickest, the Romans fought with fury and much more like barbarians than like Romans; because this falling back, then returning to the charge was not according to their tactics; scarcely did they become engaged when they leaped from their horses and each seized his adversary, etc., etc.

This means that the Roman cavalry did not habitually fight hand to hand like the infantry. It threw itself in a gallop on the enemy cavalry. When within javelin range, if the enemy's cavalry had not turned in the opposite direction on seeing the Roman cavalry coming, the latter prudently slackened its gait, threw some javelins, and, making an about by platoons, took to the rear for the purpose of repeating the charge. The hostile cavalry did the same, and such an operation might be renewed several times, until one of the two, persuaded that his enemy was going to attack him with a dash, turned in flight and was pursued to the limit.

That day, the fight becoming hot, they became really engaged; the two cavalry bodies closed and man fought man. The fight was forced, however; as there was no giving way on one side or the other, it was necessary actually to attack. There was no s.p.a.ce for skirmis.h.i.+ng.

Closed in by the Aufidus and the legions, the Roman cavalry could not operate (Livy). The Iberian and Gallic cavalry, likewise shut in and double the Roman cavalry, was forced into two lines; it could still less maneuver. This limited front served the Romans, inferior in number, who could thus be attacked only in front, that is by an equal number. It rendered, as we have said, contact inevitable. These two cavalry bodies placed chest to chest had to fight close, had to grapple man to man, and for riders mounted on simple saddle cloths and without stirrup, embarra.s.sed with a s.h.i.+eld, a lance, a saber or a sword, to grapple man to man is to grapple together, fall together and fight on foot. That is what happened, as the account of t.i.tus Livius explains it in completing that of Polybius. The same thing happened every time that two ancient cavalry organizations really had to fight, as the battle of the Tecinus showed. This mode of action was all to the advantage of the Romans, who were well-armed and well-trained therein. Note the battle of Tecinus. The Roman light infantry was cut to pieces, but the elite of the Roman cavalry, although surprised and surrounded, fought a-foot and on horse back, inflicted more casualties on the cavalry of Hannibal than they suffered, and brought back from the field their wounded general. The Romans besides were well led by Consul Aemilius, a man of head and heart, who, instead of fleeing when his cavalry was defeated, went himself to die in the ranks of the infantry.

Meanwhile we see thirty to thirty-four hundred Roman cavalrymen nearly exterminated by six to seven thousand Gauls and Iberians who did not lose even two hundred men. Hannibal's entire cavalry lost but two hundred men on that day.

How can that be explained?

Because most of them died without dreaming of selling their lives and because they took to flight during the fight of the first line and were struck with impunity from behind. The words of Polybius: "Most of them remained on the spot after having defended themselves with the utmost valor," were consecrated words before Polybius. The conquered always console themselves with their bravery and conquerors never contradict. Unfortunately, the figures are there. The facts of the battle are found in the account, which sounds no note of desperation.

The Gallic and Roman cavalry had each already made a brave effort by attacking each other from the front. This effort was followed by the terrible anxiety of close combat. The Roman cavalrymen, who from behind the combatants on foot were able to see the second Gallic line on horse back, gave ground. Fear very quickly made the disengaged ranks take to their horses, wheel about like a flock of sheep in a stampede, and abandon their comrades and themselves to the mercy of the conquerors.

Yet, these hors.e.m.e.n were brave men, the elite of the army, n.o.ble knights, guards of the consuls, volunteers of n.o.ble families.

The Roman cavalry defeated, Hasdrubal pa.s.sed his Gallic and Iberian troopers behind Hannibal's army, to attack the allied cavalry till then engaged by the Numidians. [9] The cavalry of the allies did not await the enemy. It turned its back immediately; pursued to the utmost by the Numidians who were numerous (three thousand), and excellent in pursuit, it was reduced to some three hundred men, without a struggle.

After the skirmis.h.i.+ng of the light infantry troops, the foot-soldiers of the line met. Polybius has explained to us how the Roman infantry let itself be enclosed by the two wings of the Carthaginian army and taken in rear by Hasdrubal's cavalry. It is also probable that the Gauls and Iberians, repulsed in the first part of the action and forced to turn their backs, returned, aided by a portion of the light infantry, to the charge upon the apex of the wedge formed by the Romans and completed their encirclement.

But we know, as will be seen further on in examples taken from Caesar, that the ancient cavalryman was powerless against formed infantry, even against the isolated infantryman possessing coolness. The Iberian and Gallic cavalry ought to have found behind the Roman army the reliable triarians penned in, armed, with pikes. [10] It might have held them in check, forced them to give battle, but done them little or no harm as long as the ranks were preserved.

We know that of Hannibal's infantry only twelve thousand at the most were equipped with Roman weapons. We know that his Gallic and Iberian infantry, protected by plain s.h.i.+elds, had to fall back, turn, and probably lost in this part of the action very nearly the four thousand men, which the battle cost them.

Let us deduct the ten thousand men that had gone to the attack of Hannibal's camp and the five thousand which the latter must have left there. There remain:

A ma.s.s of seventy thousand men surrounded and slaughtered by twenty-eight thousand foot soldiers, or, counting Hasdrubal's cavalry, by thirty-six thousand men, by half their number.

It may be asked how seventy thousand men could have let themselves be slaughtered, without defense, by thirty-six thousand men less well-armed, when each combatant had but one man before him. For in close combat, and especially in so large an envelopment, the number of combatants immediately engaged was the same on each side. Then there were neither guns nor rifles able to pierce the ma.s.s by a converging fire and destroy it by the superiority of this fire over diverging fire. Arrows were exhausted in the first period of the action. It seems that, by their ma.s.s, the Romans must have presented an insurmountable resistance, and that while permitting the enemy to wear himself out against it, that ma.s.s had only to defend itself in order to repel a.s.sailants.

But it was wiped out.

In pursuit of the Gauls and Iberians, who certainly were not able, even with like morale, to stand against the superior arms of the legionaries, the center drove all vigorously before it. The wings, in order to support it and not to lose the intervals, followed its movement by a forward oblique march and formed the sides of the salient. The entire Roman army, in wedge order, marched to victory.

Suddenly the wings were attacked by the African battalions; the Gauls, the Iberians, [11] who had been in retreat, returned to the fight. The hors.e.m.e.n of Hasdrubal, in the rear, attacked the reserves. [12]

Everywhere there was combat, unexpected, unforeseen. At the moment when they believed themselves conquerors, everywhere, in front, to the right, to the left, in the rear, the Roman soldiers heard the furious clamor of combat. [13]

The physical pressure was unimportant. The ranks that they were fighting had not half their own depth. The moral pressure was enormous. Uneasiness, then terror, took hold of them; the first ranks, fatigued or wounded, wanted to retreat; but the last ranks, frightened, withdrew, gave way and whirled into the interior of the wedge. Demoralized and not feeling themselves supported, the ranks engaged followed them, and the routed ma.s.s let itself be slaughtered.

The weapons fell from their hands, says Polybius.

The a.n.a.lysis of Cannae is ended. Before pa.s.sing to the recital of Pharsalus, we cannot resist the temptation, though the matter be a little foreign to the subject, to say a few words about the battles of Hannibal.

These battles have a particular character of stubbornness explained by the necessity for overcoming the Roman tenacity. It may be said that to Hannibal victory was not sufficient. He must destroy. Consequently he always tried to cut off all retreat for the enemy. He knew that with Rome, destruction was the only way of finis.h.i.+ng the struggle.

He did not believe in the courage of despair in the ma.s.ses; he believed in terror and he knew the value of surprise in inspiring it.

But it was not the losses of the Romans that was the most surprising thing in these engagements. It was the losses of Hannibal. Who, before Hannibal or after him, has lost as many as the Romans and yet been conqueror? To keep troops in action, until victory comes, with such losses, requires a most powerful hand.

He inspired his people with absolute confidence. Almost always his center, where he put his Gauls, his food for powder, was broken. But that did not seem to disquiet or trouble either him or his men.

It is true that his center was pierced by the Romans who were escaping the pressure of the two Carthaginian wings, that they were in disorder because they had fought and pushed back the Gauls, whom Hannibal knew how to make fight with singular tenacity. They probably felt as though they had escaped from a press, and, happy to be out of it, they thought only of getting further away from the battle and by no means of returning to the flanks or the rear of the enemy. In addition, although nothing is said about it, Hannibal had doubtless taken precautions against their ever returning to the conflict.

All that is probably true. The confidence of the Gallic troops, so broken through, is none the less surprising.

Hannibal, in order to inspire his people with such confidence, had to explain to them before the combat his plan of action, in such a way that treachery could not injure him. He must have warned his troops that the center would be pierced, but that he was not worried about it, because it was a foreseen and prepared affair. His troops, indeed, did not seem to be worried about it.

Let us leave aside his conception of campaigns, his greatest glory in the eyes of all. Hannibal was the greatest general of antiquity by reason of his admirable comprehension of the morale of combat, of the morale of the soldier whether his own or the enemy's. He shows his greatness in this respect in all the different incidents of war, of campaign, of action. His men were not better than the Roman soldiers.

They were not as well armed, one-half less in number. Yet he was always the conqueror. He understood the value of morale. He had the absolute confidence of his people. In addition he had the art, in commanding an army, of always securing the advantage of morale.

In Italy he had, it is true, cavalry superior to that of the Romans.

But the Romans had a much superior infantry. Had conditions been reversed, he would have changed his methods. The instruments of battle are valuable only if one knows how to use them, and Pompey, we shall see, was beaten at Pharsalus precisely because he had a cavalry superior to that of Caesar.

If Hannibal was vanquished at Zuma, it was because genius cannot accomplish the impossible. Zuma proved again the perfect knowledge of men that Hannibal possessed and his influence over the troops. His third line, the only one where he really had reliable soldiers, was the only one that fought. Beset on all sides, it slew two thousand Romans before it was conquered.

We shall see later what a high state of morale, what desperate fighting, this meant.

CHAPTER IV

a.n.a.lYSIS OF THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUS, AND SOME CHARACTERISTIC EXAMPLES

Here is Caesar's account of the battle of Pharsalus.

"As Caesar approached Pompey's camp, he noted that Pompey's army was placed in the following order:

"On the left wing were the 2nd and 3rd Legions which Caesar had sent to Pompey at the commencement of the operation, pursuant to a decree of the Senate, and which Pompey had kept. Scipio occupied the center with the legions from Syria. The legion from Cilicia was placed on the right wing together with the Spanish cohorts of Afranius. Pompey regarded the troops already mentioned as the most reliable of his army. Between them, that is, between the center and the wings, he had distributed the remainder, consisting of one hundred and ten complete cohorts in line. These were made up of forty-five thousand men, two thousand of whom were veterans, previously rewarded for their services, who had come to join him. He had scattered them throughout the whole line of battle. Seven cohorts had been left to guard his camp and the neighboring forts. His right wing rested on a stream with inaccessible banks; and, for that reason, he had placed all his seven thousand cavalry, [14] his archers and his slingers (forty-two hundred men) on the left wing.

"Caesar, keeping his battle order, [15] had placed the 10th Legion on the right wing, and on the left, the 9th, which was much weakened by the combats of Dyrrachium. To the latter he added the 8th in order to form something like a full legion from the two, and ordered them to support one another. He had eighty very completely organized cohorts in line, approximately twenty-two thousand men. Two cohorts had been left to guard the camp. Caesar had entrusted the command of the left wing to Anthony, that of the right to P. Sylla, and of the center to C.

Domitius. He placed himself in front of Pompey. But when he saw the disposition of the opposing army, he feared that his right wing was going to be enveloped by Pompey's numerous cavalry. He therefore withdrew immediately from his third line a cohort from each legion (six cohorts), in order to form a fourth line, placed it to receive Pompey's cavalry and showed it what it had to do. Then he explained fully to these cohorts that the success of the day depended on their valor. At the same time he ordered the entire army, and in particular the third line, not to move without his command, reserving to himself authority to give the signal by means of the standard when he thought it opportune.

"Caesar then went through his lines to exhort his men to do well, and seeing them full of ardor, had the signal given.

"Between the two armies there was only enough s.p.a.ce to give each the necessary distance for the charge. But Pompey had given his men orders to await the charge without stirring, and to let Caesar's army break its ranks upon them. He did this, they say, on the advice of C.

Triarius, as a method of meeting the force of the first dash of Caesar's men. He hoped that their battle order would be broken up and his own soldiers, well disposed in ranks, would have to fight with sword in hand only men in disorder. He thought that this formation would best protect his troops from the force of the fall of heavy javelins. At the same time he hoped that Caesar's soldiers charging at the run would be out of breath and overcome with fatigue at the moment of contact. Pompey's immobility was an error because there is in every one an animation, a natural ardor that is instilled by the onset to the combat. Generals ought not to check but to encourage this ardor.

It was for this reason that, in olden times, troops charged with loud shouts, all trumpets sounding, in order to frighten the enemy and encourage themselves.