"How effective were warbands?" Topic

By "warband" I mean a group of people who relied on the initial shock of their charge, and fought as individuals.

How effective were these types of troops?
How often did these hordes overrun legionaries? How easy was it for them to break other types of troops?

Let me know
Thanks
Austin

The German warbands at Teutoburgerwald in AD 9 were very effective.

One example of an ambush does not indicate actual effectiveness across the spectrum of warfare. In the end, the trained, cohesive, disciplined army will, more times than not, defeat the howling mob. 'Twas Rome that ruled, not the war bands.

They were quite effective against Hellenistic style troops. It prompted the Romans to change their tactics from the Phalanx to something else. Against a more fluid and well disciplined force, not so effective.

'Twas Rome that ruled, not the war bands.

For quite a while. But in the end, the warbands overran the western Empire, helped in no small measure by constant civil war and usurpation among the Romans.

As for the Teutobergerwald, your rules should give the barbarian types an edge fighting in the woods.

Reasonably effective, I'd say. There are examples of Roman defeats during their various army reforms. Just a couple "for examples" of Rome losing to Gauls:Roman hoplites lose Allia 390 BC; Camillan army loses at Arretium 285 BC; Polybian army loses 225 BC at Faesulae (though not by weakness of maniples); I've heard of a 216 defeat same year as Cannae; then the Polybian army is beaten by Cimbriae and Teutones several times in the late 100's before Marian reforms).

Of course in between those times were Roman victories, but be careful! Livy likes to pair up a Roman defeat with a Roman victory that completely reverses the bad situation and turns it all into a positive.

An Osprey author writing about the switch from maniple to cohort claims that the maniples were too thin to handle the Germanic warbands, and thus a switch to cohort tactical units. Given this and the occasional successes even against the phalanx, it would suggest to me that the warband charge was pretty fierce and took good control and discipline to repel.

I don't think "warbands" were any different then say vikings. I firmly belive infantry with shields all fought broadly the same way. With small differences based on structure, training and command & control.

I don't think "warbands" were any different then say vikings. I firmly belive infantry with shields all fought broadly the same way. With small differences based on structure, training and command & control.

Hmmm, can't really say I can see this. The Dark Age 'shieldwall' tactic doesn't really match descriptions we have of Gallic or Germanic behavior while in combat.

-Will

Very nice, Terrement. Been a while sine I last heard those.

In a different era, but similar concept, the Highland charge as demonstrated in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and 1689. Early in each rising, Highland charges were successful at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans, where the charge was able to shock their opponents into flight. Later in each rising, Government troops were better prepared for the charge, held their ground and won the battle (e.g. at Dunkeld in 1689 and Culloden at 1745).

then the Polybian army is beaten by Cimbriae and Teutones several times in the late 100's before Marian reforms).

Not just beaten, but crushed. The Roman armies at Noreia and Burdigala were effectively eliminated, i.e., not completely wiped out but no longer of any military significance. The final success, Arausio, saw two entire Consular armies (100,00+) slaughtered almost to a man.

In the end, they won… with a little help from the heavy cav.

Joe Collins

bands overran the western Empire, helped in no small measure by constant civil war and usurpation

That's not a criticism of disciplined forces, but of a fracturinng society. By the point of its fall, Rome had abandoned its truly disicplined armies, and even hired the warbands as their defense (boy, was that stupid). That's what happens when the citizens think life is all about bread and circuses and not actually doing the work to preserve one's society. The warbands as a field force did not win out because they were warbands, but because there's always a howling mob around when civilization gives up.

But note your own distinction-- "the western empire."
The eastern Empire maintained a disiciplined military system, and did not fall to warbands.

"Hmmm, can't really say I can see this. The Dark Age 'shieldwall' tactic doesn't really match descriptions we have of Gallic or Germanic behavior while in combat.

-Will"

Reality overides old sources.

Any army fighting with single individuals, will be beaten by an army of formed men. We know that human psychy was the same then as now. Groups of fighting men lump together. Its automatic. Reading battles with romans and Greeks is the same as reading viking battles. Highly ritualised.
If vikings and romans with 1000 years between them only had minor differences in fighting style. I don't see why gallic and germninc fighters would be much different.

Small differences that might make then unique, but broadly the same,

During the Marcomannic Wars warband armies defeated the Romans several times. An alliance of Vandals and Sarmatians defeated the army of Governor Calpurnius Proculus in 167. In 168 the Marcomanni defeated the army of the Praetorian Prefect Furius Victorinus. A Roman army of 20,000 was annihilated by the Marcommani again at Carnuntum. The tide was not turned until Marcus Aurelius took personal command of the army and defeated the Germanic groups piecemeal. It should be noted that while Roman historians consider the emperor's campaigns a great victory and of course a column was erected, the actual result was that the Germans turned over their 100,000 Roman prisoners and provided auxiliary cavalry (one source claims 8000) to the Imperial Army, but the Romans did not gain any territory and in fact Germans began settling in Dacia, Pannonia, the provinces of Germania, and Italy!! Later Marcus Aurelius would be forced to drive out the settlers in Italy because the Germans managed to seize Ravenna. In effect the Germans and Romans fought a two costly wars so the Germanic and Sarmatian kings could re-negotiate their treaties.

I suspect the reason for the movement of the German settlers into the frontier provinces was because they were depopulated following the Marcomannic wars.

I forgot to add that following the Marcomannic Wars the Romans considered the Germanic groups enough of a problem that about half the Roman legions were stationed along the Rhine and Danube.

That's what happens when the citizens think life is all about bread and circuses

The bread and circuses were there from the inception of the Empire, as was civil war and usurpation. Something was wrong with Roman society, even though the Eastern half went on for another 1,000 years.

The Empire was founded on professional armies who answered to their generals, not their political leaders. That's what killed the Republic.

The Jacobite examples you cite, Willthepiper, don't really have any bearing on the question because of the poor close combat potential of the anti-Jacobite forces. The Williamite army at Killiecrankie was hit before it had time to fix its plug bayonets, and after its defensive fire was partially masked by the terrain, and the Government army at Prestonpans was composed of raw, second line units.

A trick that Marius and Caesar used when fighting warband types was to build up the courage and fighting spirit of the men prior to the decisive encounter.

This indicates that the Germanic tribes in particular must have had a fearsome reputation, and also that Romans properly led, on favourable ground and with high morale, would generally defeat them.

So yes, effective against poorly led, ill-prepared or fainthearted troops, or in unfavourable terrain, but likely to lose against a determined and disciplined army led by a good general.

Cheers,
Aaron

I think it kind of makes the point, Henry. Warbands beat up on unprepared, second rate troops, but lose to properly prepared regulars. Boadicea's Iceni massacred the Roman colonists at Colchester/Camulodunum, but then a much larger British army gets wiped out by Suetonius and his legions at Watling Street.

The West conquered the rest of the world because it's soldiers were trained to stand close together and fight as a unit. Such military units will always have an edge over warriors, however ferocious. An absolute guarantee of tactical victory? No, clearly not.

Agree with gunfreak, there is not so much difference between troops that are classified as warband and those of more regular armies when it comes to fighting frontally.nThe warband do not appear to make massed yelling charges or fight as individuals. Most accounts have the Germans or Celts standing to recieve with shields overlapped or advancing in good order using chanting to keep in step and hold an rdered line. I don't doubt that the Northern barbarians won battles against Romans and Greeks, but we do nt have descriptions of full on frontal aroman defeats, but we do have descriptions of losses in ambushes by, for example the Eburones against Caesar's lieutenants and Arminius against Varus. That's not to say that there were not frontal victories, just that we do not have the details.
As to the legions that were defeated by the Cimbri and Teutones, are they Pokybian? We do not know this and there is a good likelihood that the changes that led to the use of the cohort as a tactical unit, the absorption of the Velites into the legionary body and the equipment of the triarii with pila were already happening at different paces in different theatres.

The West conquered the rest of the world because it's soldiers were trained to stand close together and fight as a unit. Such military units will always have an edge over warriors, however ferocious. An absolute guarantee of tactical victory? No, clearly not.

Agreed. But the victories of civilisation were strategic rather than tactical. The 'civilised' side could rebuild and attack again, and they had professional armies that could stay in the field. See, for example, the New Zealand Wars.

It seems that warbands worked very well when the enemy wasn't quite ready to deal with them. The Hellenistic armies had evolved from "shock" hoplite armies into "wall" armies who expected to face a similar enemy and duke it out over so many rounds. Warbands didn't play by those rules and bowled over them. It seems that the charge caused just enough of a disruption in the phalanx for the warbands to break them. The Romans tried to fix this by making their close order fighting more flexible and make the management of reserves easier.

Reading battles with romans and Greeks is the same as reading viking battles. Highly ritualised. If vikings and romans with 1000 years between them only had minor differences in fighting style. I don't see why gallic and germninc fighters would be much different.

I'd suggest you check out 'A Lying Legacy?' by Abels and Morillo. They make a very compelling case that later Dark Age/Medieval battles appear to be much like earlier ancient battles due to the writers 'borrowing' ancient descriptions of battles and changing the names to match the participants and add a little embellishment of their own. The actual battles probably resembled these earlier ancient battles in a very general fashion, if they had any resemblance at all. They pull in quite a few examples of dark age chronicles where when held up against ancient accounts of entirely different battles are clearly the same text with some minor changes.

-Will

Effective enough that a major part of Roman military and diplomatic effort was directed toward keeping them from being politically and militarily united.

On balance, I would go with the strategic level favoring the civilized, as resources are mobilized more consistently and quickly, but that tactically, anything other than a straight-up frontal battle with limited flanks often became a matter of combinations of motivation, numerical odds, and a lack of expert leadership. Further improvements for either side came with ambushes, good ground, etc. Hmmm, just like "normal" warfare.

After all, Caesar was renowned for his generalship skills at both a strategic and tactical level. This suggests, even ignoring his self-promotion, that there was something extraordinary in comprehensively defeating large warband armies in open combat and being able to contain them strategically through military and diplomatic means.

We must be reading different sources then . Barbarian foot armies just do not cut t against the civilised armies frontally . Its not because the barbarians are less brave, but because they are less well trained and do not last the pace. Germans fighting Caesar are described as so exhausted that they stand whilst the Romans rip away their shields to stab down at them. The oft repeated Roman saw that the barbarians are dangerous at first and then decline in effectiveness reflects this.,Zif you are a barbarian you do some hubting and weapon practice and raid other tribes, but ypu don't do day long training with imitation weapons heavier than the real ones or long route marches. Generally barbarians don't do a days march and then build a camp. Given that the civilised army is usually much better armoured than a barbarian one its soldiers will survive that bit longer on the battlefield and when people tire their guard drops and they are more likely to be wounded or killed. .
Significantly the Gauls in Italy try direct batles first and then move to ambushes in the woods of the Po valley, In Gaul they do the same, In Germany the same too, they start ith direct confrontation, find that it does not work and then move to ambushes in the forests.
The difficulty with the Aurelian battles is that we have no reasonable descriptions of them that tells us whether they were ambushes or frontal attacks.
And the problem with Abels and Morillo is that later writers may lift stuff wholesale from earlier works, but would they do this if the descriptions were not like the battles that were fought in their time. After all, there is going to be a similarity betweenthe performance of one lot of guys with a sword and spear and shield or bow with that of another, even 1000 years later. Giraldus Cambrensis is a good exampke of this, he both describes Welsh warfare and lijens it to the warfare of Celts and Germans. Zit is obvious to us that there are key differences, but in the areas that he compares them such as rushing into battle and fleeing when they do not have success he is making an accurate comparison.

And the problem with Abels and Morillo is that later writers may lift stuff wholesale from earlier works, but would they do this if the descriptions were not like the battles that were fought in their time.

Yes, that's the rub. Other writers make the competing claim that they lifted the descriptions specifically because they *were* reasonably accurate. Abels and Morillo make a pretty compelling case that this isn't true (even if you disagree with it the article is a good read, I recommend it) and many of the historical accounts on the Dark Ages/Early Middle Ages can't be relied upon unless you can compare with another body of evidence.

The bottom line is that professional military historians don't agree on this topic (military continuity vs. discontinuity post-fall of Rome), so it's still very much open for interpretation. :)

-Will

Agreed @wminsing. they make a reasonable argument that somene writing a century later, providing a description of a battle and using sentences from a Roman source is likely just creating a battle description to flesh out his narrative. However, the description is not taken wholesale and there are alterations that make it fit, in their view, warfare in the writer's period, the XIIth century than the early XIth century when the battle took place. However, we would all believe tyat a source a century after any battle would be dubious unless it had some proven link to a source that was contemporary to the battle and that the author was either at the action or had access to those that were..
We have to remember, too that the authors are involved in a debate about how much Roman inflyence continued on after the fall of the Empire in the West and are arguing with an historian (B Bachrach ) who beleives that Roman methods still carry on through the Early Mediaeval period. I part of the article they present the likelihood that the actions of the earldorman commanding the English are based on a Roman literary model to the extent that they cannot be trusted at all as a description of what occurred. However, it is much more likely that his actions, telling the men how to stay in line and use their weapons are generic , its the sort of reassuring address and back to basics message a general might give today. They also adduce the use of legion and cohort by mediaeval authors shows a problem because the units of the Xth to XIth century are clearly not legions or cohorts, but that was well known and very likely well known at the time. Contemporaries will not have known what the composition of a Roman legion was, they will, however, have understood what the author meant and we should bear in mind that there may not have been a good word in the kanguage of the Early Middle Ages to describe a unit.
If they can prove that a description is lifted wholesale and contradicts either a better source or the logic of the warfare of the period then we should doubt it severely. However, if it has been altered enough to suggest that the author is simply using prestigious Latin phrases or fits well with the general view of battles of the period then we should probably believe it……..its not as if we are overprovided with evidence anyway.

"Barbarian foot armies just do not cut it against the civilised armies frontally"

Really. Those damned Galatians must have stripped naked and limed their hair because that's what civilised troops do!

Many "civilised" armies were barbarian in large part. Hannibal's Carthaginian contingent was small. The Hellenistic armies recruited Galatians for a long time after their initial victories.

We don't get histories written by Galatians, Spaniards, ancient Germans, Dacians or Franks. So we never hear their side of the story. We do see the civilised armies recruiting them -- in ethnic units -- however. Which suggests they can't have been that bad.

Hannibal trained his barbarians so arguably he converted them to 'civilised' or 'regular' troops. However, at Cannae he puts them frontline against the Romans and caculates that they will be pushed back and eventually break.
His other big victories are ambushes or rear attacks before his barbarians are broken. At Zama his barbarians are ground down frontally. by the Romans .
Sure its a generalisation to say that the barbarians lise frontally against the civilised forces, I was asking if anyone could come up with examples of frontal battles that the barbarians unequivocally won.
Barbarians were recruited into the Hellenistic and Roman armies, but I doubt that the Seleucids thought their Galatians were going to take on the opposing phalanx. they are pkaced in position to attack enemy peltasts and expose a phalanx flank which is much more their sort of target….bashing a few Thracians.
In the Roman army the Germans are shown on Trajan's column, in cihort sized units, operating in woods, fighting other barbarians. What emperor would think that a bunch of bare chested chaps with with clubs are going to take on legionaries frontally in an open field.
So if you have a good example of barbarians (Northern) taking on good civilised troops frntally,mlets hear it.

But Hannibal had to put someone in the front line, and as Mark points out, Gauls and Spaniards comprised the majority of his army, so if not them, who? Even his best trained troops, the African spearmen, who one might presume should have been capable of taking on the legions frontally, were reserved for the flank attacks. It seems to me that his deployment could equally be interpreted as a blanket acknowledgement of Roman tactical superiority – not just over Gauls – a superiority he cleverly turned against them..

Or simply the fact romans outnumbered him over 2:1

On the whole the warband should be better than it is treated by quite a few rules sets. I favor Early Imperial Danube gaming, (Dacian, Marcomanni Wars), and it is disturbing how many rules sets have the Barbarians brittle at contact, and unlikely to beat a Roman unit anywhere across the line. (Typically the warband first round bonus is neatly trumped by the Roman pila special rules)

The result this is that you start to seeing the Barbarian players shying away from a central engagement, while pushing ever more extreme forces on the flanks. This tendency grows more pronounced the more you re-fight this matchup.

In short, almost exactly the opposite of what the real-life Germanics/Dacians/Gauls really did.

Now how effective a warband should be all in all is hard to assess from this far back in history. But you can make a great case that it should be at least the equal of anything out there short of a Legion, based on track record.

I reject the point of view that everyone starts with the "crappy" warband, and then evolves up from there. If nothing else, most of western combat revolves around shock attacks, and the warband does practice it.

Lke Hoplites, it requires a certain type of culture to arise in. Getting totally worked up and charging 10,000+ armed enemies directly forward is not something you can really see in every culture. Not en masse. (I am referring to John Keegan's History of Warfare here).

They just don't seem to be quite as good at it on a whole as the Ancient superpower-- Rome. But even with "the greatest of all time" as their primary dancing partner, the warband scored enough wins that it deserves to be taken seriously.

Not really unlike "could only beat Muhammad Ali in 1 out of 4 fights". In my book, that's a heck of a fighter.

Shan