Organised Celts - Unbeatable?

[Gaivs]

You hear this everywhere, repeated in Novels, quoted in movies, etc. Its just one of those things everyone assumes. The whole "These barbarians are incredible warriors, if only they were more organised they would be unbeatable".

Now i was pondering over this at work tonight, and my train of thought strayed towards them being so barbaric as the key to their military prowess. If you sent in a few centurions etc and banged them into shape and a disciplined force, would they lose that inhuman single combat driven fighting skill and just become another standard army? Or would a Roman Legion fitted out with mad Celts with crazy hair and woad designs truly be unbeatable?

I guess im not really asking a specific question as such, just... If the celts did evolve and did form a standardised military training procedure, would they lose their ... sheer ferocity and courage that is typical of Celts?

[mAIOR]

Actually, the warrior class of the Celtic civilisations, had a military training far superior to that of the romans. They were trained since childhood to battle. This was one of the main issues that led to their downfall as replacing losses in battle wasn't easy, fast or cheap.


Cheers...

[Thaatu]

At least their psychological effect would probably be ruined.



Edit: @mAIOR, they were trained to fight as individuals, not as units. The question is what would become of a disciplined Celtic force fighting as a unit. I think part of the answer could be found with the Galatians under Hellenistic employers.

[CirdanDharix]

I think part of the whole "if the barbarians would be united, the Gods themselves would be needed to save us!" thing was the supposition that there were alot more of "them" than there were of "us". That's certainly the case for when Herodotos states that, if united, the Thracians would be invincible. In fact, all of the barbarians could be, and were, defeated in pitched battles with organised armies--the only exception here being horse archers from the steppes--but their strength lay in 'irregular' warfare; with a very large protion of their population under arms, but generally sparsely populated and 'wild' territory--think of the Germanic forests--they had an easy time mounting guerilla operations against invading armies, which would find it hard to supply themselves and be worn down by the constant attacks. It's also the case that often the barbarians would outnumber the 'civilised' folks, even with a less dense population: less slaves, no equivalent to metics/perioeci, and most of them expected all adult males to have at least some simple weapons (like a spear and shield) and to know the basics of using them; some barbarians even resorted to dastardly tactics like allowing women to fight! How uncivilised. Oh, and I forgot to mention, that barbarians generally had an abundance of light troops, that might not produce a great effect during massed battles, but could be very difficult to actually defeat.

[Magister Militum Titus Pullo]

Other examples of militarily organized celts include the Legio V Alaudi, which was levied by Julius Caesar from gallic provincials early in the Gallic Wars. It was said that they distinguished themselves during the Battle of Thapsus on the 6th of April, 46 BCE, when they withstood an elephant charge. Also, the Arverni warriors commanded by Vercingetorix were reportedly trained by their leader in Roman fighting techniques, and were quite formidable. And apart from the Galatian mercenaries whom fought for both the Ptolemies and the Seleukids, there was the Legio XXII Deiotariana, raised by the Galatian king Deiotarus, a Roman client ruler, to fight in the service of his allies.

[unreal_uk]

Yes, there needs to be distinctions between cultures and not just lumping all celtic tribal civilisations under the same banner, here. There's also this idea that the 'Celts' were a bunch of painted, screaming barbarians with no order. This is far from the case, and is a myth popularised primarily by, you guessed it, the 'civilised' nations of the ancient world, and one which has been repeated ad nauseum in most of the entertainment mediums today.

[blank]

"Organized" means a lot of things, not just some specific battle formation. Soldiers in loose formation, for example, could be just as disciplined (and use complicated tactics) as those in closely-packed units. Off the battlefield, organisation in training, logistics, equipment, etc etc would be just as important.

If the Celts had been united (at least the mainland Celts, and not including Galatians), and had made use of advanced battlefield tactics, professional armies (which would need a new type of agriculture to support it), standardized training, sufficiently good cadre of military leaders, equipment supplied by the state and so on, they would have been very hard, nearly impossible to defeat, no matter how big their swords were, how many tattoos they had or how wildly they screamed and danced before battle

That said, pretty much any contemporary faction, with that kind of organisation, would kick some serious ass