Historical usefulness of swordsmen

[lonewolf371]

This was posted a long time ago I'm not sure if anyone noted it but fenir I believe you mentioned that the invention of the stirrup helped the original advent of heavy cavalry. If you look around I believe you will find that this has been disproven by multiple people, it is actually very feasible to get an effective charge without a stirrup, the stirrup was actually supposed to help horse archery much more, as it allowed the rider to balance himself better while shooting.

The Companion Cavalry of Alexander, regarded by some as the best cavalry of all time, would have operated without the stirrup and they still proved remarkably effective.

As to an explanation to why barbarians began using cavalry extensively around the end of the roman period, I'm afraid I can't give you a sure answer. One would be the invention of the saddle (though I'm not sure when this was) in addition to the Roman Empire disentigrating from within, the legionairries that faced the Goths at Adrianople were far different from the ones centuries earlier and would have been much poorer in quality.

On topic: Swordsmen most certainly would have been useful in many situations, but the reason for their lack of use is more likely due to practicality than anything else. Why did inaccurate, dangerous and impotent guns replace the bow at such an early time period? With the gun it was much easier to use it to get effectiveness out of un-trained peasant levies than to train bowmen. Men could be armed with it more easily and still be effective, because you would have more men to shoot something at the enemy. With a spear, it is far easier to point and say "Point your spear that way" than to actually have to train someone for weeks in the use and finesse of a sword. To have a swordsman in your army costed money, and when it comes to money most people tend to get real stingy.

Another reason, and probably the more important one, is a tight well-trained unit would be much more effective than a unit of swordsmen.
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Obviously, the legion is an exception, but the legion was something born out of need. All areas around Greece had prior to Alexander the Great used armies which were light and quick. The staple of these armies, would often be the elite, the heavy cavalry or infantry. The Greeks first destroyed these armies on their own turf, destroying them in confined areas where mobility was of no use and then Alexander went off and destroyed them on battlefields where mobility could be used, but with one of the greatest armies of all time. As a result the areas around Greece adopted the phalanx, but they could not support it properly, as Alexander the Great did. The men trained for the phalanx were not as well trained, the cavalry wasn't as skilled or experienced, and the generals were not as skilled.

The Roman legion was developed to take advantage of this, even barbarians in Gaul and Germany used tightly packed units of spearmen with little or no outside support. The legion was much more flexible than the phalanx and could take a much better advantage of any terrain and out-flank, out-maneuver, and out-perform anything any nation outside Rome put up against it, provided it was led by an able general. Adrianople is an example of a slow but slow return to the armies of Alexander the Great, a massive unit of spearmen supported by heavy cavalry. While the knights of the Middle Ages might not have been as skilled as Alexander's Companions, the new armor of the age and the sheer mass of all their equipment made up for it on the battleground.

Thanks to those of you who read my rant, most of it is philosphical, you can make your points and try to correct if you will...

[Watchman]

I think the Romans went from hoplite spear-wall tactics to swords and javelins A) because they met some folks who used the latter combination to good effect, and if something the Romans were keen copycats of good ideas B) the hoplite lines failed them miserably against the Celts and the Samnites.

So they adapted.

Anyway, as for why "offensive" infantry (often sword-armed) was used so much whereas cavalrymen could do many of the same jobs better, 1) there are things infantry can do cavalry simply cannot and, more importantly, 2) heavy cavalry are frightfully expensive buggers in most circumstances. They require some serious and specialized training and a whole infrastructure more or less specifically to furnish them with suitable mounts; this was even the case with the otherwise horse-affluent steppe nomads, who used special breeds of horses for their armored cavalry. And let's not even touch the logistical issues of the fodder-consuming beasts on campaigns.

Trained attack infantry, whatever their armament, are way cheaper, available in larger numbers, work far better in lousy terrain and among other things aren't as flighty as horsemen - cavalry by necessity operate in comparatively loose order and are comparatively bad at maintaining formation and unit cohesion. Cavalry combat is inherently fluid and freewheeling. And even though heavy cavalry are usually elite troops who won't rout lightly, once they do it tends to become nigh impossible to rally them - they're pretty good at running away really fast...

They also have the nasty tendency to get carried away in pursuit if and when they break an enemy formation and can be very difficult to recall and regroup, which is less of an issue with infantry.

[DemonArchangel]

Lonewarrior, the saddle was seen on a roman frieze showing a dead celtic warrior sometime during the republican era.

I think the saddle itself was invented on the steppe, but i'm not sure.

[lonewolf371]

Lonewarrior, the saddle was seen on a roman frieze showing a dead celtic warrior sometime during the republican era.

I think the saddle itself was invented on the steppe, but i'm not sure.

Heh, I can be honest here and say I know almost nothing about horses. After the saddle, the only other invention I can think of that might have had an effect on mounted warfare was simply a slow adaption process over time. BTW, I think you're confusing me with the real Lonewarrior, I'm lonewolf.

I think the Romans went from hoplite spear-wall tactics to swords and javelins A) because they met some folks who used the latter combination to good effect, and if something the Romans were keen copycats of good ideas B) the hoplite lines failed them miserably against the Celts and the Samnites.

While areas around Rome might have used swords and javelins the difference in HOW they were used is the key aspect. Even if the tribes around Rome used the one-two javelin-sword tactic they did not use it in the fashion and level organization demonstrated in the Roman Legions, which is why none of those tribes became a dominant military power. I'm pretty sure at least some barbarian tribes used phalanxes, in fact I believe Caesar faced one in his first major battle in Gaul while fighting the Helvetii.

[Watchman]

The Romans copied their signature short sword from the Iberian Celts, God only knows where they learned the sword-and-javelins combo from. But as far as I know it wasn't their Latin neighbors, who at the time were fighting with shields, spears and swords just like themselves.

I've read they copied the manipular deployement system from the Samnites, on the perfectly sensible grounds of using their foes' own techniques to beat them. The flexible maniples worked far better than the hoplite shieldwall in the Samnites' highland haunts.

Just to point out, but if Caesar or any other semi-contemporary Roman author saw a classic shield-wall of the sort that stayed in use right until the end of Middle Ages and had to call it by some term, odds are he'd call it a phalanx. That was quite possibly the closest descriptor for the tactic they were familiar with, and certainly it'd communicate to idea to their audience.

None of which means what they saw and described had much anything to do with the proper pike phalanx... The hoplite shieldwall maybe, but then the hoplite tactic wasn't fundamentally too different from what you'd see for example at Hastings, 1066 AD.

[Kraxis]

Red Harvest and I have discussed the whole Triplex Acies in his thread about the early roman troops. And indeed it involved the Samnites.

Remember that the Romans didn't just come out of the phalanx with the perfect manipular legion, it changed and adapted and conformed until it was best at what the Romans it to be best at. But it doesn't change the fact that the Romans had copied it.

[DemonArchangel]

I suspect the saddle was invented on the steppe anyway, probably by samartians, as it really helps keep your ass in the saddle upon impact by cataphract.

[SwordsMaster]

Well, I think swords were the primary use against pikes. Because they could get BETWEEN the pikes and shafts and do enormous damage in close combat (A 20 foot pike isnt all that useful if the guy is 3 feet away and you are in tight formation...) and they could exploit little gaps in pike formations much more easily than cavalry and-or other pike infantry.

The spanish Tercios used pikes and swords. I can give you links to pictures if you want, to stop the attacking swordsmen and occasional cavalrymen that could break thru the pikes. The arquebusiers all wore swords, and fought as swordsmen after firing the 2-3 shots they could before the enemy closed in.

[Watchman]

The primary weapon to fight pikes was other pikes. Lots of them. What you used to support the pikes during the push varied - the Spanish had their sword-and-buckler men, a legacy from the fast-paced skirmishing warfare and extensive siege operations they'd done against the Moors in the mountainous southern Iberia during the later phases of the Reconquista, and undoubtly used the same mix of halberds and greatswords for "heavy close support" as their Swiss and German colleagues.

It's not like the Renaissance and Early Modern pikemen didn't carry swords of their own, but the reason the Spanish swordsmen were such a murder for the Swiss was really pretty simple - superior armor and training. The Swiss usually went with only light armor, in order to keep the formation fairly fast-moving, and pikemen naturally didn't carry shields. In comparision the Spanish swordsmen might well wear up to three-quarter plate armor, had shields (steel bucklers, usually), and were on the whole rather better trained for face-to-face close combat.