HAHA! every one of EB's unit should fight like that...
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HAHA! every one of EB's unit should fight like that...
"Modern day barbarian battle", I presume ?:viking:
ya it was kinda funny how it worked out. I mixed in some of my own music into the EB music mix. some of my original and some real heavy moshcore for the battles to get it all suspenceful. Well, my wolves of wodann weren't fighting, they were just thrashing it up hardxcore!
Oh no partner.. Every single soldier, wheather a guerrila, lowly militia, terrorists, etc, will always try to deck himself out to look good/bad-ass/make-a-statement whenever possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Fair enough, but some have to try to pull it off while remaining all stealthy & sneaky. Tall order, no ?
Europeans were fond of it, actually, they just used more primitive missile weapons, like the hurlbat, or heavier throwing spear. They lost the javelin aerodynamic shape or thongs used to give them greater range.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Javelin throwing is a learned skill, and Roman infantry practised it until the 1400s. The problem in Europe is that most soldiers were merely farmers given some rudimentary training ;)
You could always get a bunch of guys to hide by a well used road and then jump up in all your scary make up and crap and attack. When in doubt, get out of the line of sight. IE Behind a bush in your shiny armour.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Heh shiny armour behind a bush? Say hello to Mr. Sniper.Quote:
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky
All these posts and the original question still has not been answered. Shame really, because i also would love to know.
I believe Watchman answered the Q in post #4. The thread was kinda hijacked after that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dayve
Interesting sig choice btw :inquisitive:
Tell that to a front line officer in a drawn out confrontation any time after the development of decent sniper rifles.Quote:
Every single soldier, wheather a guerrila, lowly militia, terrorists, etc, will always try to deck himself out to look good/bad-ass/make-a-statement whenever possible.
On parade or charging yes, lying in the mud with poor cover no :no:
Well, yes. There is a difference between line battles and modern combat, but in peacekeeping duties (which take up the majority of troops) troops have always tried to look as imposing and/or professional as possible.
Firstly, it is really quite easy to look imposing whilst still being camaflaged. To begin with, modern soldiers do all sorts of things to their faces, helmets and hats, it might not be visible until close range but in the end having some guy just appearing out of the bushes is pretty scarry, I can tell you.
To the OP: The reason our Princepes have spears is quite simply that this is what the evidence tells us. As to the why of that, well there are several reasons.
Tactical flexability: It's easier to fend off cavalry or even form a phalanx.
Cost/reliability: Spears are cheap, reliable and very effective. Remember, Princepes also have a sword as a backup weapon. A spear is also easy to use
Hastati carry two javalins, early princepes only one, so another way of looking at it would be to say the Hastati (which ironically means "spearman") have no room for a spear.
Most importantly though, the spear is in general an excellent weapon for soldiers fighting in close formation and it allows you to keep others, such as swordsmen at bay.
Later Roman soldiers are the exception that proves the rule, they were highly trained to work together as a unit, the gladius was ideal as a weapon for them because it was quick and unlikely to get stuck, as a spear might. Later Roman warfare was about momentum and it's interesting to not that when momentum was lost individual units would easily get bogged down.
Look at the invasions of Greece and Macedonia, the Hellenes were well past their prime but in several cases the pikemen and hoplites were able to push back the Roman sword-infantry and only the lack of dicipline on the Greek side allowed the Romans victory.
I hope that answers your question.
Oh, and the pila may be Italian, or Spanish, it's even possible it was developed from two distinct weapons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by K COSSACK
I've always wondered why javelins fell out of use also, I know levies might of unable to learn, with all that getting thrown in the battlefield as meatshields and stuff, but why couldn't professional soldiers who tend to live a bit longer buy or get some javelins to learn how to use to help kill a few of the enemies before they killed them. Was it the armor of the time being good enough to turn away a Javelin? Was it considered dishonorable by the Knight Class?; Or were Generals/Kings just to lazy to equip there soldiers with javelins.
I'm pretty sure the eastern european and mid-east nations still used javalinsQuote:
Originally Posted by Rilder
The countries on the iberian penisular were of course famous for still using the javelin during this period as well.
Foot
Not the armor. Not even the best quality Gothic Plate armor could not whitstand a bolt from an arbalest. The longbowmen used the bodkin arrow with more pointy ends to shoot down drowes of heavily armed French knights.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rilder
With a similar tip a javelin would have sufficient mass and penatrating power to go trough any armor.
Someone else posted on another thread that the reason some weapons fell out of use, even though they were better than their more modern replacements was due to human laziness.
The same may apply to the use of javelins. The use of javelins was to break up enemy formations and if you were good in it's use, inflict some amount of ranged casualties before engaging in a melee.
How long do you think it would take you learn the use of a javelin and become sufficiently proficient to hit a man-sized target, on the move in the heat of battle. Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
Now consider a crossbow. Give it to a common peasant. Give him some rudimentary training and in a matter of hours he should be proficient enough to hit most of what he's aiming at. A good crossbow can kill a heavily armored knight who spent his whole life training for war.
Give the crossbow to a hundred peasants and you got a respectable force of nearly certain killers at a short-medium range. With an arbalest you can increase that range to long. With a musket you have even further reach.
Neither weapon (crossbow, musket) requires a fraction of the time to become proficient at as a javelin.
Good javelin throwing requires a comparatively long training time as opposed to simple, almost fullproof crossbow or musket. Not surprisingly a general or a king would propably favor such modern, simple and efficient weapons to all his troops regardless were they levies or professionals.
A professional soldier would propably choose the crossbow for that same ease of use and efficiency as opposed to spending years to learn the proper throwing technique of a javelin.
How many javelins can a soldier carry 3 or 4. How many crossbow bolts or leadshots can he carry in comparison.
Ease of use and efficiency in killing has always been man's priority in warfare. You can teach a monkey how to use a gun. Can you teach a monkey to throw a javelin?
Which do you think is faster? And which has more guaranteed results...
You can build a javalin quicker...
GREAT POST ERRANT!!!
Nah buddy... you can build a crappy javeling really fast (just cut a peice of wood and sharpen its tip) but a good quality one takes time. But besides, wheather it takes less time or more time to make javelings compared to a crossbow or musket is not the important part.
Errant, it takes a few hours to learn to hurl a javalin provided you don't have a woman's elbows (women's elbows are actually built differently), nor do you need to learn to hit a moving target. You lob the javalin into the formation and it'll hit something.
The problem, I believe, was the lack of dicipline in later Mediaeval armies. Franks, Saxons, Danes and Norse all used angons, (barbed pila) or fransciscas (axes) before a charge but it requires cohesion from the attacking unit to be effective. Such weapons rely on volley fire, every man hurling his own when he feels like it is a lot less effective.
Hmmm, to be VERY speculative on why javelins became outdated in the middle ages, I would guess that the reason may be that medieval feudal warfare was mainly based on capturing alot of your opponents. The medieval knights were much happier with capturing the enemy than killing them, because they earned some coin by that. Other reasons may be the upcoming of heavier armour (though the roman legions form an exception) and the much developed cavalry warfare.
Just some reasoning though, with not a lot of historical research involved :embarassed:
The catalonian almogaveres were probably the most known exemples of medieval soldiers using javelins in combat, and were reportedly very effective agains mounted kinghts. Mind you, they weren't properly the most orderly or disciplined soldiers ( read the history of the Catalan Company in the Byzantine Empire...), but at least they were professional foot soldiers, which wasn't that common at the time , though that started changing with the 100 years war.
I think i am agreeing with Ailfertes, because in the Middle Ages the knights were all about ransom. It was a gentlemen's war. They would all have there own banners and look for who has the richest parents.
Have you tried hurling a javelin. I have. Part of PE where I come from. We kept practicing a couple of hours a day for a few weeks. None of us could hit anything with accuracy. Sometimes we got lucky. Most of the time we were fortunate to get the javelin going in the right direction.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Granted those were the sport javelins used in modern competitions but the principle is still the same.
As for volleys, your right. A volley is more effective since "the general area" is basically what your aiming at. But volleys can also be used by crossbows and longbows.
Muskets aren't all that accurate either, but when your enemy marches against you in neat rows, to the pace fo drums and trumpets, and stand in brightly colored uniforms just waiting for you to take aim and shoot, the general direction will suffice. With the tightly packed formations it's harder to miss than hit.
I'll never understand the Napoleonic era of warfare. It's more like duels where you march politely at your opponent, take time to aim, and shoot. If you missed the enemy will do the same to you. If he misses you're back to where you started. :dizzy2:
Could be your right about the lack of discipline in medieval armies, but the Byzantines used a professional army a long way into the medieval time. Even they gave up javelins and heavy infantry in favor of heavy cavalry and light foot archers.
edit. Why am I arguing history? Better to ask a EB team-member. Why did javelins fall out of use during medieval times?
I think it was more a question of range and the quantity you could carry with you than other thing.
Mid east countries must've used them, and when thet coquered most of spain I guess they kept that weopon. Byzantines used them because they still used the old Roman military traditions and tactics. I also believe eastern European countries used them because there technology was not as advanced as the west ( no offense, correct me if I'm wrong:sweatdrop: ).
And look up the song "gangstas paradise" by coolio.:hijacked:
Yes I have, and I have watched others. A few hours of doing nothing else and most people can get them going in the right direction. Which is all you need, aiming is superfluous, otherwise the Franks wouldn't have used throwing-axes but instead javalins. In a couple weeks you'd be plenty good enough to hit massed ranks of men.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Errant
Quote:
As for volleys, your right. A volley is more effective since "the general area" is basically what your aiming at. But volleys can also be used by crossbows and longbows.
True, but bowmen take months to train rather than weaks and both weapons are more expensive, have one-use ammunition and suffer in wet weather. Javalins also have a higher lethality and penetrating power, they go strait through steal plait, so I have read.
Exactly the same principle as javalins, just with a longer range.Quote:
Muskets aren't all that accurate either, but when your enemy marches against you in neat rows, to the pace fo drums and trumpets, and stand in brightly colored uniforms just waiting for you to take aim and shoot, the general direction will suffice. With the tightly packed formations it's harder to miss than hit.
Actually the idea was to advance into range and keep shooting until one group gives up. It was a hang-over from a time when the main ranged weapon was a bow and you could stop that with a shield. The British usually won because they fired twice as fast with a greater frontage. We also used rifles.:2thumbsup:Quote:
I'll never understand the Napoleonic era of warfare. It's more like duels where you march politely at your opponent, take time to aim, and shoot. If you missed the enemy will do the same to you. If he misses you're back to where you started. :dizzy2:
Actually Byzantine infantry retained javalins for a long time. In the end though they switched over to light cav because of manpower problems as much as anything else. Not to mention infantry never has done well against massed horse archers. Ask Crassus.Quote:
Could be your right about the lack of discipline in medieval armies, but the Byzantines used a professional army a long way into the medieval time. Even they gave up javelins and heavy infantry in favor of heavy cavalry and light foot archers.
Yes, poor Crassius, but the Romans did make some headway against Parthia... The only real way not to escalate a anti-HA -since the main way to really combat it is get mroe HA - is to used massed foot archers force them from the field.
Also, Arbalests don't suffer in wet weather and arrows can be collected after or during lulls in the battles. Roman Pilum on the other hand were one use due to their inherent bending.
arbalasts most certainly do suffer in wet weather. Unless they're steel the laminate bow itself will be weakened and the string will get loose and soggy either way.Quote:
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky
Bows, on the other hand, can be strung in moments.
...no. Let's just say that it didn't quite work this way and leave it at that so I don't have to spend half an hour going over the relationship between the longbow, crossbows and armour. Suffice to say that even steel-stave arbalests and reasonably man-portable firearms had major trouble with good plate, and the longbow had issues already with mail+add-ons except at rather too short ranges to stop cavalry.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Errant
Lorica segmentata stops a bolt from a scorpion at reasonable ranges, and it's not even tempered steel. Decent plate more often than not bounced lance tips in full-tilt cavalry encounters. Javelins tend to get stuck halfway in wooden shields. So, not really.Quote:
With a similar tip a javelin would have sufficient mass and penatrating power to go trough any armor.
That was also politely put somewhat full of it, and rather ignored for example the psychological effect massed musketry has IIRC. Or in general the fact that the evolution of warfare port Middle Ages went from individuals to units, and that cohesive units of otherwise poorly trained men walked all over much more skilled but less drilled warriors. The bayonet was a bit of ultimate expresison of that really.Quote:
Someone else posted on another thread that the reason some weapons fell out of use, even though they were better than their more modern replacements was due to human laziness.
Seems to have been popular enough among simple, dregs-of-the-barrel peasant levy skirmishers. And I'm pretty certain those Republican Roman farmer-soldiers didn't spend most of their training time practising pila-throwing. Ditto for their "barbarian" opponents.Quote:
How long do you think it would take you learn the use of a javelin and become sufficiently proficient to hit a man-sized target, on the move in the heat of battle. Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
Now consider a crossbow. Give it to a common peasant. Give him some rudimentary training and in a matter of hours he should be proficient enough to hit most of what he's aiming at. A good crossbow can kill a heavily armored knight who spent his whole life training for war.
Give the crossbow to a hundred peasants and you got a respectable force of nearly certain killers at a short-medium range. With an arbalest you can increase that range to long. With a musket you have even further reach.
Neither weapon (crossbow, musket) requires a fraction of the time to become proficient at as a javelin.
Good javelin throwing requires a comparatively long training time as opposed to simple, almost fullproof crossbow or musket. Not surprisingly a general or a king would propably favor such modern, simple and efficient weapons to all his troops regardless were they levies or professionals.
Once the technology base exists however, crossbows and guns give them simple soldiers a way more reach and killing power however. Both were readily adopted as hunting weapons for example, and in forested regions most of the peasantry had a decent grasp of archey anyway (javelins were incidentally used for large game AFAIK, so many would have been skilled with those too). All of them require a degree of training and practise to be effective - reloading crossbows and firearms can be quite tricky, and smoothbore guns are horrendously inaccurate - of course, but then again that's why there was a market for skilled mercenary crossbowmen and the like.
Clever fellows can probably manage a fair bundle of javelins, but yes, bolts, arrows and balls plus powder are rather easier to carry.Quote:
How many javelins can a soldier carry 3 or 4. How many crossbow bolts or leadshots can he carry in comparison.
On the other hand, that's really only a concern for dedicated skirmishers and missile troops. For close-combat troops the throwing-spear would seem rather more useful, as it is very easy to carry around a few and you don't have to put away some cumbersome missile weapon before charging in...
Pistols are of course a different story, but then again those only really started turning up in the 1500s.
...what ? Au contraire, the later Medieval armies were quite specifically more disciplined and professional than almost anything seen in Europe since the Legions to that date. The 'renaissance' of infantry forced even the for a while rather impetuous and tactically unwieldy knights to become reasonably disciplined and controllable again. And for example pikemen are quite useless without some quite high degrees of discipline and excellent drill.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Gentlemen and gentlemen. It was really more of entirely practical considerations between highly trained professional warriors many of whom also were part of the ruling social classes. Systems for ransoming senior warriors and general high-rankers also developed in all the war zones where the Europeans were in contact with Muslims, the Baltic pagans and Eastern Christians as well, after all, for exactly the same reasons. The efforts of the Church to keep intra-Christian bloodletting down didn't exactly hurt either. Neither did the good armour worn by the military elite, which duly made temporary disablement more likely than flatly dying against most weapons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Swebozbozboz
None of that really applied to the common soldiery, who weren't aristocrats and wouldn't fetch ransoms either. And as the European military elite became shock lancers par excellence they also developed a distaste for ranged combat as a means of war for the exact same reasons the Greek hoplites had once scorned archers and other skirmishers - although bows were often enough wielded skillfully by knights on the hunt for example, it must be added.
Not much to do with the decline of javelins I'd say, given that the elite wouldn't have used them in the first place and the common soldiery never had any scruples about any weapon anyway.
You'd be surprised how easily the musketeers could actually miss the entire enemy formation... Long story short, what you're talking about is AFAIK termed "fully evolved linear tactics" (and came about with the appereance of the bayonet, which allowed for the ditching of the pikemen who'd until then been necessary to keep cavalry away) and it was all about maximum frontage and maximum weight of fire. Accuracy was quite secondary; when you have a line two hundred meters long in three ranks discharging all at once the sheer number of balls in the air ensures casualties will be severe among nigh anyone withing effective range (which, alas, is rather short wiht smoothbore muskets) and the sheer psychological shock of that kind of barrage will be too much for most soldiers. If they're still holding their groind, well, odds are they won't be after a bayonet charge.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Errant
Basically the infantry formations acted as giant shotguns.
One problem was, however, that already at quite short distances the horrible ballistics of the round balls fired from smooth barrels caused such dispersion that at any longer range the entire volley would be all but wasted, and the whole line sitting ducks for about the next half a minute or so while they reloaded (the ranks could of course fire in turns and counter-march behind their fellows to reload, but that's another story). The psychological effect was also at its greatest at close ranges. So, the units tried to get as close to the enemy as possible before unleashing their volleys, which made foot vs. foot clashes a kind of game of "Chicken!" en masse - hold too long and the enemy will blast you to shreds, fire too soon and the nearly intact enemy can march right up to you to blast you to shreds while your boys are busy reloading... Unsurprisingly, this led to the developement of assorted psychological-warfare ploys to intimidate enemies hopefully into firing early. The colourful uniforms, tall plumes etc. were part of that.
Heavy infantry was always necessary, if only to anchor the line for cavalry to operate around and missile troops to take cover behind as needed. The Byzantines were relatively early in ditching javelins by what I know of it - they had horse- and foot archers of their own anyway quite sufficiently for ranged combat, the heavy cavalry had lances and often bows as well, and the heavy infantry was better served by large shields and long spears to hold the enemy -particularly cavalry- at bay. Doesn't mean they weren't still used, they just weren't very "standard issue". AFAIK it was actually largely the same for the Middle Eastern Muslims as well - they had a strong infantry archery tradition of their own after all and inherited the Persian horse-archery one, and got the Turco-Mongol steppe tradition on top of that later. I'm under the impression javelins were commonly employed mainly by troops drawn from mountain peoples (one gets the impression such terrain is well suited for the weapon), and of course western North Africans and the Iberian Moors. Again, they weren't unknown in other contexts, just somewhat unusual and often rather region- or situation-specific.Quote:
Could be your right about the lack of discipline in medieval armies, but the Byzantines used a professional army a long way into the medieval time. Even they gave up javelins and heavy infantry in favor of heavy cavalry and light foot archers.
You're probably thinking of the "forest belt" like Lithuania and the Baltics, and highland regions, here, as the more open areas had the steppe archery tradition. Not that poor levies wouldn't probably use javelins there too mind you, as not everyone could afford a decent bow or practised archery in everyday life.Quote:
Originally Posted by K COSSACK
Anyway, "low tech" had little to do with it. Rather it was the nature of geography and warfare there just as in Iberia I think. Most fighting quite simply was done as quick hit-and-run raids often in quite lousy terrain, so even the aristocratic cavalry favoured the tactical flexibility and ease of transport of shorter spears and javelins over the cumbersome lance (Iberian Christian knights were a little unusual, as European chivalry went, in that they quite often opted to fight as light javelin cavalry - although this was perfectly sensible given the "border skirmish" nature that dominated the fighting in the peninsula; their Muslim peers similarly often fought as "lighter" troops than they actually possessed the gear for).
Although AFAIK the "forest zone" regions were also pretty archery-crazy. Came from having lots of good lumber, lots of hunting ground and not too many people I guess. Melee combatants long favoured some sort of heavy throwing spear for "opening shots" before the contact, but bows were AFAIK regarded as a perfectly normal part of a warrior's kit even if those intending to fight hand-to-hand rarely used them in battle. By Medieval times a combination of spear, shield, bow and an axe or sword for sidearm appears to have become something of a norm, judging by some royal degrees I've seen referenced. Of course, most fighting-spears were throwable if necessary...
Nonsense, and not in the least because rifles and rapid fire were mutually exclusive. Without going into the technical details (I can explain them if someone wants), before the advent of the chamber-expanding Minié bullets muzzle-loader rifles took about twice as long to reload as smoothbore muskets. So they were quite out of the question for line infantry, which wasn't trained for accurate shooting anyway ("waste of expensive powder"). Light infantry, sharpshooters and the open-order skirmishers that screened line infantry formations often used them though (as did some cavalry, partly to compensate for the short barrels of their carbines; cavalry also sometimes used rifled pistols with detachable stocks for keeping enemy skirmishers away), although smoothbores were used for the job as well; the riflemen had to work in pairs where one guarded the other during the slow reloading process.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
The Crusader Kingdoms generals would retort that stupid Crassus didn't have enough archers along. They did well enough against the clouds of Turkish horse-archers with a combination of armoured spearmen and crossbowmen curiously reminiscent of the ancient Achaemenid sparabara combined-arms tactics, which were incidentally also used by the quite effective Northern Italian communal militias.Quote:
Not to mention infantry never has done well against massed horse archers. Ask Crassus.
The Romans also always did a lot better against both the Parthians and the Sassanids when they brought enough missile troops of their own along.
Per defintion arbalests have steel staves. The kind with horn-composite bows are still called crossbows. Those latter can incidentally be waterproofed, as any composite bow; they would hardly have been used in the wet and cold British Isles and Scandinavia otherwise...Quote:
arbalasts most certainly do suffer in wet weather. Unless they're steel the laminate bow itself will be weakened and the string will get loose and soggy either way.