
Originally Posted by
Watchman
My bet is that where the Germans were superior (eventually anyway) was tactics, "what the weak use to overcome the strong" as it's also been described. The shieldwall, which they appear to have been very fond of but which was apparently rather rare among the Celts, is basically the formation for multiplying the fighting power of not-so-well-armed or -trained troops; part-time militias fighting in such fashion regularly proved themselves the match of even quite high-calibre troops, assuming enough confidence and a passable degree of arms and skill. The individual tribal warrior may well have been outmatched by his better-trained Celtic opponent, but there was a lot of the tribesmen - certainly a deeper pool than of the Celtic specialists - and mutual support and cohesion, the raison d'êtres of the shieldwall, very much make a battlefield formation unit more than the sum of its parts.
It is also entirely possible that they lucked out in terms of leaders. A sufficiently capable commander could regularly win battles that lesser leaders would almost certainly have lost, and in the right circumstances tear an empire apart. Given the issues the Celts had with their fighting manpower pool I doubt if it would have taken too many bloody routs in the hands of a capable German war chief or few to leave them so weak that even if the original "great leaders" died off the balance of power would have been irrecovably skewed in favour of the encroaching Germans.
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