The Military History Thread

[rustler]

I don't think that we can say that Christianity ended the Viking Era, but more probably the lands that were formerly plundered were being better developed, making the chances of raids by small parties of Viking less likely to be successful or profitable. countries were consolidating and getting better organized.
And though slavery per se might have been frowned upon by the church, they didn't in anyway that I know of discourage thralldom, in fact the churches riches were pretty much built with it. Nothing really changed, I think, until the reformation in the 1530's. It was only then that the churches power and abuses were finally curtailed.

[Ernesto75]

Originally Posted by rustler

And though slavery per se might have been frowned upon by the church, they didn't in anyway that I know of discourage thralldom, in fact the churches riches were pretty much built with it. Nothing really changed, I think, until the reformation in the 1530's. It was only then that the churches power and abuses were finally curtailed.

Generally speaking, I agree with you.

Originally Posted by rustler

I don't think that we can say that Christianity ended the Viking Era, but more probably the lands that were formerly plundered were being better developed, making the chances of raids by small parties of Viking less likely to be successful or profitable. countries were consolidating and getting better organized.

Maybe.

Let me rephrase my previous post.

Olaf Tryggvason was said to be Christian and he tried to convert the Norwegians to Christianity.
Yet he could be extremely brutal, which is not very Christian.

Norwegians, like Danes and Swedes, did not convert suddenly; it took them some time.
Eleventh century Church was different from the sixteen century Church.
Although in the eleventh century, the Church knew a crisis, the people were still very religious.
Religion was a part of life, be it for the Christians or the Vikings or others.

So for a Viking to become a Christian necessarily implied some changes in his way of seeing things.
Of course some converted with sincere motivations but not everybody.
Some simply converted with more prosaic reasons:
- this enabled doing business with other Christian countries more easily;
- this even allowed what was seen as some positive evolution.

As to slavery, it disappeared like it had in the Roman Empire.
Of course, it was replaced by thralldom, which was slightly better but far from perfect.

We do not know whether Christianity alone ended the Viking era but it certainly brought changes.

[rustler]

Norway Sweden and Denmark, as they would become, were of course amongst the last European lands to convert to Christianity.

There is a thinking amongst scholars that just as the Communists and the nazis discouraged the church, they couldn't change peoples privately held beliefs, and the church held out. The same thing happened when Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1530's and started the protestant religion. People clung to their old beliefs. And so it is thought did the Vikings.





These two Thors hammer pendants are copies of a hammer from Roskilde in Denmark and Fossi in Iceland. The first is the traditional type. And quite a few have been found. The second is a bit different. Many people today simply think it is an upside down cross, which it isn't. It is believed that when the Vikings were 'officially' Christian, that some of them altered the hammer by adding the bottom part to it, and thus making it into a cross. that satisfied the authorities, but.....
Another theory, is that it was so that they could be Christian on land, but pagan at sea, where it mattered, in their element.

[Ennath]

July 30, 634
Battle of Ajnadain

Arab Muslim forces had appeared on the southern borders of Syria even before the death of Muhammad in 632, but the real invasion began in 634 under his successors, the Caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn Khattab, with Khalid ibn al-Walid as their most important military leader.

After successful campaigns against the Sassanids in 633 and the ensuing conquest of Iraq Khalid established his stronghold there. While engaged with Sassanid forces, fighting also occured with the Byzantine Arab clients, the Ghassanids. Tribal contingents were soon recruited from all over the Arabian peninsula, save only those remaining pagan rebels. Byzantine Syria was the next target.

According to David Nicolle, the Arab army left the capital Medina probably in the autumn of 633, but possibly at the beginning of 634. They first engaged and defeated the Byzantines at Dathin on February 4; after that Emperor Heraclius, then stationed in Emesa (now Homs, Syria), had reinforcements sent south to protect Caesarea Maritima.

The Muslim armies in Syria were now in need of urgent reinforcement, so Khalid was ordered to suspend operations against the Sassanids. He selected a short route to Syria, an unconventional route passing through the Syrian Desert. It is recorded that his soldiers marched for two days without a single drop of water, before reaching a pre-selected oasis. Khalid thus entered Northern Syria and caught the Byzantines on their right flank.

Khalid defeated small Christain Arab forces and moved towards Damascus, then shifted towards Bosra, the capital of the Ghassanid Arab kingdom, a vassal of the Byzantines. He ordered other Muslim commanders to concentrate their armies, still near the Syrian-Arabian border at Bosra. At Maraj-al-Rahab, Khalid defeated the Christian Ghassanid army of Christian Arabs in a quick battle on April 24, after which Arab forces laid siege to Bosra, which surrendered some time in mid July 634. This effectively ended the Ghassanid Dynasty. The various Arab columns were now joined here.

On July 30, the Arab army of some 15,000 clashed with a 10,000-strong Byzantine army at Ajnadain. The battle was apparently closely contested, until Byzantine archers began running out of arrows. The result was a firm Arab victory. The invaders went on to conquer Damascus by the end of September.

[Ennath]

July 31, 1423
Battle of Cravant

In 1422, with Henry V suddenly dead and an infant King Henry VI of England, the Hundred Years War flared up again. In the early summer of 1423, the French Dauphin Charles assembled an army at Bourges intending to invade the territory of the pro-English Duke of Burgundy. This French army contained a large number of Scots under John Stewart of Darnley, who was commanding the entire mixed force, as well as Aragonese and Lombard mercenaries. This army besieged the town of Cravant. The garrison of Cravant requested help from the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, who raised troops and in turn sought support from Burgundy's English allies. The two allied armies, one English, one Burgundian, rendezvoused at Auxerre on July 29.

The combined English and Burgundian forces were led by Thomas Montacute, 4th Earl of Salisbury, with Lord Willoughby as second in command. The Anglo-Burgundian army mustered about 4000 men, including 1500 men-at-arms (500 English and 1000 Burgundian), 2000 English archers, some Burgundian crossbowmen and pioneers and 40 veuglaires (light artillery), manned by the citizens of Auxerre.

The French army was commanded by Sir John Stewart of Darnley with the Comte de Vendome as second in command. The majority of the force were probably Scots. The total force probably numbered about 8000 men.

The allied army marched through July 30 and that evening, four miles short of Cravant, sighted the enemy. The following day, having assessed the enemy position as too strong, they crossed the river Yonne and attempted to reach Cravant by another route. Approaching the town from across the river, the allies saw that the French army had changed position and was now waiting for them on the other bank.

For three hours the forces watched each other, neither willing to attempt an opposed river crossing. Eventually, the Scots archers began shooting into the allied ranks. The allied artillery replied, supported by their own archers and crossbowmen. Salisbury finally took the initiative and his army began to cross the waist-high river under a covering barrage of arrows from the English archers. Meanwhile, another force under Willoughby attacked the Scots across the narrow bridge and divided the Dauphin's army. The French began to withdraw, but the Scots refused to flee and fought on, to be cut down by the hundreds. The fighting was particularly fierce. Perhaps 3000 Scots and their allies fell at the bridgehead or along the riverbanks, and over 2000 prisoners were taken, including Darnley (who also lost an eye) and Vendome. Anglo-Burgundian casualties were just over 1000. The Dauphin's forces retreated to the Loire. On August 2, the English and Burgundian armies withdrew separately from Cravant, the Burgundians marching to Dijon, the English to Montaigullon.

The success at Cravant was the first for a joint English and Burgundian army. Despite this success, the allies would rarely fight together again.

[Ennath]

August 1, 1202
Battle of Mirebeau

After King Richard's death on April 6, 1199 there were two potential claimants to the Angevin throne: John, whose claim rested on being the sole surviving son of Henry II, and young Arthur of Brittany, who held a claim as the son of Geoffrey, John's elder brother. Richard appeared to have tacitly recognized John as his legitimate heir in the final years before his death, but the matter was not clear-cut and medieval law gave little guidance as to how the competing claims should be decided. With Norman law favouring John as the only surviving son of Henry II and Angevin law favouring Arthur as the heir of Henry's elder son, the matter rapidly devolved into open conflict. John was supported by the bulk of the English and Norman nobility and was crowned at Westminster, backed by his mother, Eleanor. Arthur was supported by the majority of the Breton, Maine and Anjou nobles and received the support of Philip II of France, who remained committed to breaking up the Angevin territories on the continent. With Arthur's army pressing up the Loire valley towards Angers and Philip's forces moving down the valley towards Tours, John's continental empire was in danger of being cut in two.

After his coronation, John moved south into France and adopted a defensive posture along the eastern and southern Normandy borders. Both sides paused for desultory negotiations; John's position was now stronger, thanks to confirmation that Counts Baldwin of Flanders and Renaud of Boulogne had renewed the anti-French alliances they had previously agreed to with Richard. The powerful Anjou nobleman William de Roches was persuaded to switch sides from Arthur to John; suddenly the balance seemed to be tipping away from Philip and Arthur in favour of John. Neither side was keen to continue the conflict, and following a papal truce the two leaders met in January 1200 to negotiate possible terms for peace. From John's perspective, what followed represented an opportunity to stabilize control over his continental possessions and produce a lasting peace. John and Philip negotiated the May 1200 Treaty of Le Goulet; by this treaty, Philip recognized John as the rightful heir to Richard in respect to his French possessions, temporarily abandoning the wider claims of his client, Arthur. John, in turn, abandoned Richard's former policy of containing Philip through alliances with Flanders and Boulogne, and accepted Philip's right as the legitimate feudal overlord of John's lands in France. John's policy earned him the disrespectful title of "John Softsword" from some English chroniclers, who contrasted his behaviour with his more aggressive brother, Richard.

The new peace would only last for two years; war recommenced in the aftermath of John's decision in August 1200 to marry Isabella of Angouleme. In order to remarry, John first needed to abandon Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, his first wife; John accomplished this by arguing that he had failed to get the necessary papal permission to marry Isabel in the first place – as a cousin, John could not have legally wed her without this. It remains unclear why John chose to marry Isabella of Angouleme. Contemporary chroniclers argued that John had fallen deeply in love with Isabella, and John may have been motivated by desire for an apparently beautiful, if rather young, girl. On the other hand, the Angoumois lands that came with Isabella were strategically vital to John: by marrying Isabella, John was acquiring a key land route between Poitou and Gascony, which significantly strengthened his grip on Aquitaine.

Unfortunately, Isabella was already engaged to Hugh de Lusignan, an important member of a key Poitou noble family and brother of Raoul de Lusignan, Count of Eu, who possessed lands along the sensitive eastern Normandy border. Just as John stood to benefit strategically from marrying Isabella, so the marriage threatened the interests of the Lusignans, whose own lands currently provided the key route for royal goods and troops across Aquitaine. Rather than negotiating some form of compensation, John treated Hugh "with contempt"; this resulted in a Lusignan uprising that was promptly crushed by John, who also intervened to suppress Raoul in Normandy.

Although John was the Count of Poitou and therefore the rightful feudal lord over the Lusignans, they could legitimately appeal John's actions in France to his own feudal lord, Philip. Hugh did exactly this in 1201 and Philip summoned John to attend court in Paris in 1202, citing the Le Goulet treaty to strengthen his case. John was unwilling to weaken his authority in western France in this way. He argued that he need not attend Philip's court because of his special status as the Duke of Normandy, who was exempt by feudal tradition from being called to the French court. Philip argued that he was summoning John not as the Duke of Normandy, but as the Count of Poitou, which carried no such special status. When John still refused to come, Philip declared John in breach of his feudal responsibilities, reassigned all of John's lands that fell under the French crown to Arthur – with the exception of Normandy, which he took back for himself – and began a fresh war against John.

John initially adopted a defensive posture similar to that of 1199: avoiding open battle and carefully defending his key castles. John's operations became more chaotic as the campaign progressed, and Philip began to make steady progress in the east. John became aware in July that Arthur's forces were threatening his mother, Eleanor, at Mirebeau Castle. Accompanied by William de Roches, his seneschal in Anjou, he swung his mercenary army rapidly south. His forces caught Arthur by surprise at Mirebeau and captured the entire rebel leadership in a sudden attack. It was also probable that Eleanor, elder sister of Arthur, also with a claim to England, was captured in the battle as well. Philip was forced to withdraw in the east and turn south himself to contain John's army.

Though John defeated the Lusignans, he was still contested by Philip II of France. At some indeterminate point soon afterwards, Arthur was murdered and his sister strictly imprisoned. John had secured his throne, but his controversial removal of Arthur turned the support of local counts against him. For the next two years, John dealt so arrogantly with the counts of Anjou and Poitou that large numbers switched sides to support Philip II, who continued to incrementally advance from one hilltop castle to the next in Normandy. This culminated in the Siege of Chateau Gaillard, which ended in 1204. John's relief attempts were defeated, the castle fell, and his position in France was all but destroyed.

[Ennath]

August 2, 216 BC
Battle of Cannae

After early losses to Hannibal, the Romans appointed Fabius Maximus as dictator to deal with the threat. Fabius avoided a pitched battle, harassing Hannibal and threatening his supply lines. These tactics proved unpopular with Romans who began to question the wisdom of the Fabian strategy which had given the Carthaginian army a chance to regroup. The majority of Romans were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war. It was feared that, if Hannibal continued plundering Italy unopposed, Rome's allies might defect to the Carthaginian side for self-preservation. Therefore, when Fabius came to the end of his term, the Senate did not renew his dictatorial powers. In 216 BC, when elections resumed, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus were elected as consuls, placed in command of a newly raised army of unprecedented size, and directed to engage Hannibal.

Ordinarily each of the two consuls would command his own portion of the army but, since the two armies were combined into one, Roman law required them to alternate their command on a daily basis. According to tradition, Hannibal had already realized this and planned his strategy accordingly. The traditional account also puts Varro in command on the day of the battle, and much of the blame for the defeat has been laid on his shoulders. However, his low origins seem to be exaggerated in the sources, and Varro may have been made a scapegoat by the aristocratic establishment. Varro lacked the powerful descendants that Paullus had: descendants who were willing and able to protect his reputation — most notably, Paullus was the grandfather of Scipio Aemilianus, the patron of Polybius.

In the spring of 216 BC, Hannibal took the initiative and seized the large supply depot at Cannae in the Apulian plain, placing himself between the Romans and a crucial source of supply. The consuls, resolving to confront Hannibal, marched southward. After two days' march, they found him on the left bank of the Aufidus River and encamped six miles away.

Varro, in command on the first day, is presented by sources as a proud and reckless man. While the Romans were approaching Cannae, a small portion of Hannibal's forces ambushed them. Varro repelled the attack and continued on his way. This victory, though a mere skirmish with no lasting strategic value, bolstered the confidence of the Roman army, perhaps to overconfidence on Varro's part. Paullus, however, was opposed to the engagement as it was taking shape. Unlike Varro, he is seen as prudent and cautious, and believed it foolish to fight on open ground, despite the Romans' numerical strength. This was especially true since Hannibal held the advantage in cavalry (both in quality and quantity). Despite these misgivings, Paullus thought it unwise to withdraw after the initial success, and camped two-thirds of the army east of the Aufidus River, sending the remainder to fortify a position on the opposite side. The purpose of this second camp was to cover the foraging parties from the main camp and harass those of the enemy.

The two armies stayed in their respective locations for two days. During the second day (August 1), Hannibal, aware that Varro would be in command the following day, left his camp and offered battle, but Paullus refused. Hannibal, recognizing the importance of the Aufidus water to the Roman troops, sent his cavalry to the smaller Roman camp to harass water-bearing soldiers that were found outside the camp fortifications. According to Polybius, Hannibal's cavalry boldly rode up to the edge of the Roman encampment, causing havoc and thoroughly disrupting the supply of water to the Roman camp.

Figures for troops involved in ancient battles are often unreliable and Cannae is no exception. The Roman forces totaled 80,000 infantry, 2,400 Roman cavalry and 4,000 allied horse (involved in the actual battle) and, in the two fortified camps, 2,600 heavily armed men, 7,400 lightly armed men (a total of 10,000), approximately 86,400 men. Opposing them was a Carthaginian army of roughly 40,000 heavy infantry, 6,000 light infantry, and 10,000 cavalry. The Carthaginian army was a combination of warriors from numerous regions. Along with the core of 8000 Libyans and citizens, there were 8000 Iberians, 16,000 Gauls (8000 were left at camp the day of battle) and around 5500 Gaetulian infantry. Hannibal's cavalry also came from diverse backgrounds. He commanded 4000 Numidian, 2000 Iberian, 4,00 Gallic and 450 citizen cavalry. Finally, Hannibal had around 8000 skirmishers consisting of Balearic slingers and mixed nationality javelinmen. The uniting factor for the Carthaginian army was the personal tie each group had with Hannibal.

The conventional deployment for armies of the time was placement of infantry in the center, with the cavalry in two flanking "wings." The Romans followed this convention fairly closely, but chose extra depth rather than breadth for the infantry, hoping to use this added weight to quickly break through the center of Hannibal's line. Even though they outnumbered the Carthaginians, this deployment meant that the Roman lines had a front of roughly equal size to their opponents. Bearing in mind that Hannibal's two previous victories had been largely decided by his trickery and ruse, Varro had sought an open battlefield. The field at Cannae was clear, with no possibility of hidden troops being brought to bear as an ambush.

Hannibal, on the other hand, had deployed his forces based on the particular fighting qualities of each unit, taking into consideration their strengths and weaknesses. He placed his Iberians and Gauls in the middle, alternating the ethnic composition across the front line, with himself right at the front and center. Infantry from Punic Africa was on the wings at the edges of his infantry line. These infantry were battle-hardened, remained cohesive, and would attack the Roman flanks. Hasdrubal led the Iberian and Gaulish cavalry on the left (south near the Aufidus River). Hasdrubal was given about 6500 cavalry, and Hanno had 3500 Numidians on the right.

When the battle was joined, the cavalry engaged in a fierce exchange on the flanks. When the Spanish and Gauls got the upper hand, they cut down the Roman cavalry with no quarter. On the other flank the Numidians engaged in a way that merely kept the Roman allied cavalry occupied. When the victorious Hispanic and Gallic cavalry came up, the allied cavalry broke and the Numidians pursued them off the field.

While the Carthaginians were in the process of defeating the cavalry, the mass of infantry advanced towards each other in the center. Hannibal stood with his men in the weak center and held them to a controlled retreat. The crescent of Hispanic and Gallic troops buckled inwards as they gradually withdrew. Knowing the superiority of the Roman infantry, Hannibal had instructed his infantry to withdraw deliberately, creating an even tighter semicircle around the attacking Roman forces. By doing so, he had turned the strength of the Roman infantry into a weakness. While the front ranks were gradually advancing, the bulk of the Roman troops began to lose their cohesion, as they began crowding themselves into the growing gap. Soon they were compacted together so closely that they had little space to wield their weapons. In pressing so far forward, the Romans had ignored (possibly due to the ision-obscuring dust) the African troops that stood uncommitted on the edges of this now-reversed crescent. This also gave the Carthaginian cavalry time to drive the Roman cavalry off on both flanks and attack the Roman center in the rear. The Roman infantry, now stripped of protection on both its flanks, formed a wedge that drove deeper and deeper into the Carthaginian semicircle, driving itself into an alley formed by the African infantry on the wings. At this decisive point, Hannibal ordered his African infantry to turn inwards and advance against the Roman flanks.

When the Carthaginian cavalry attacked the Romans in the rear and the African flanking echelons assailed them on their right and left, the advance of the Roman infantry was brought to an abrupt halt. The Romans were enclosed in a pocket with no means of escape. The Carthaginians created a wall and began destroying them. Only 14,000 Roman troops managed to escape, most of whom had cut their way through to the nearby town of Canusium. Among the dead was Paullus. Cathaginian casualties are uncertain, but may have been as high as 5500, mostly from the Gallic and Spanish infantry.

For a brief period, the Romans were in complete disarray. Their best armies in the peninsula were destroyed, the remnants severely demoralized, and the only remaining consul (Varro) completely discredited. In addition to the loss of her army, Rome suffered a loss of prestige. Much of southern Italy now joined Hannibal. In the same year, the Macedonian king, Philip V, pledged his support to Hannibal, initiating the First Macedonian War against Rome. Hannibal also secured an alliance with the new King Hieronymus of Syracuse in Sicily. The Romans became so desperate that they resorted to human sacrifice, twice burying people alive at the Forum and abandoning an oversized baby in the Adriatic Sea (one of the last instances of human sacrifice by the Romans, apart from public executions of defeated enemies dedicated to Mars).

Following the battle, the commander of the Numidian cavalry, Maharbal, urged Hannibal to seize the opportunity to march on Rome. It is told that the latter's refusal caused Maharbal's exclamation: "You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use one." Hannibal had good reasons to judge the strategic situation after the battle differently from Maharbal. Due to the high numbers of killed and wounded, the Punic army was not in a condition for a direct assault on Rome. It would have nullified the psychological effect of Cannae on the Roman allies. Even if his army was at full strength, a siege of Rome would have required Hannibal to subdue a considerable part of the hinterland to secure his own and cut the enemy's supplies. Even after the tremendous losses suffered at Cannae and the defection of a number of her allies, Rome still had abundant manpower to prevent this and maintain considerable forces in Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and elsewhere despite Hannibal's presence in Italy.

Immediately after Cannae Hannibal sent a delegation led by Carthalo to negotiate a peace treaty with the Senate on moderate terms. Despite the multiple catastrophes Rome had suffered, the Senate refused to parley. Instead, they redoubled their efforts, declaring full mobilization of the male Roman population, and raised new legions, enlisting landless peasants and even slaves. So firm were these measures that the word "peace" was prohibited, mourning was limited to only 30 days, and public tears were prohibited even to women. The Romans had at this point learned their lesson and re-established trust in Fabius. For the remainder of the war in Italy, they did not amass such large forces under one command against Hannibal; they utilized several independent armies, still outnumbering the Punic forces in numbers of armies and soldiers. The war still had battles, but was focused on taking strongpoints and constant fighting according to the Fabian strategy. This gradually wore down Hannibal’s army.

[henryf]

Originally Posted by Ennath

August 2, 216 BC
Battle of Cannae

Ordinarily each of the two consuls would command his own portion of the army but, since the two armies were combined into one, Roman law required them to alternate their command on a daily basis.

For a state that prided itself on its military might, that's about as stupid command system as could be imagined.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by henryf

For a state that prided itself on its military might, that's about as stupid command system as could be imagined.

For a state that was appropriately concerned about the dangers the military posed to civil authority, it made good sense. The Romans often split authority, to prevent any one person dominating.

The Romans of the Republican era were simultaneously attached to their form of government, and to militarism.

They worried, very appropriately, about the dangers that military leaders posed to the State, and the Republic did in fact meet its end at the hands of, not an enemy, but of their own military leader.

[henryf]

I can understand spitting the authority to avoid dominance, but alternate days in command? Ennath's post indicates they were very different characters with different command styles. A sure recipe for disaster. It makes about as much sense as it would have done to put Patton and Montgomery in overall command of the post D-Day forces, taking it on alternate days.