"What was hand to hand combat actually like in ..." Topic

…ancient battles?.

"Most movies portray large armies scything through each other, and some warriors killing their opponents with each blow. However that seems suspect that their enemies would just line up assembly-line fashion to be lopped off. My questions:

1. What did the average foot solder's combat portfolio look like? How many opponents did he spar with? How long did a typical duel take?

2. What was the combat life expectancy of a typical warrior? Did they survive more than a few battles?

3. Did most combatants die on the field or die post-battle because of their injuries?…"
More here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Lots of new books out on hoplite warfare, for starters. Check for titles by or edited by Victor Hanson Davis.

I have a PhD in ancient armour and warfare. The questions you are asking are quite general – you need to be more specific about the period and nationality as the way in which soldiers/warriors were recruited, trained and equipped changes over time. The nature, scale and duration of warfare also changes. In most instances however we just do not have any reliable historical sources to answer these questions accurately. Attempts by modern historians to deduce the numbers of casualties in a typical battle, or even the length of time an engagement lasted are highly speculative. Victor Hanson Davis' book on hoplite warfare 1989, which describes an incredible crush of carnage are quite evocative but they have long since been shown by subsequent studies to be inaccurate. There are quite a few new studies on Greek, Roman and Hellenistic warfare which are worth looking at 'Roman Republican Heavy Infantryman in Battle (IV-II centuries BC)' by Alexander Zhmodikov. 'Hoplites at War' by Paul Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray. 'Greek Warfare: Myth and Realities' by Hans Van Wees. You might also want to check out the Roman Army Talk forum and ask your questions there

First, most casualties are caused when the enemy run away. Is a lot easier to kill someone with their back turned to you. They also tended to throw anything that would slow them down way. So no shield and pike!

But there are different styles of hand to hand combat. The heroic Gaul hacking with his sword, the Roman killing machine stab withdraw and the phalanx with spears seeking out gaps in the enemy armour.

As for life expectancy, Roman term of service was 25 years, then you got to retire and plenty did.

1)Read the Iliad. Sounds like combat was a pretty personal thing. Each man sizing up and choosing an opponent.
2)Try fencing. Hitting your opponent while not getting hit yourself is not easy. Remember the goal of most soldiers was not to get killed.
3)Try fighting two people at the same time. This will give you an indication of how formed troops fighting cooperatively had an advantage over unformed troops fighting individually, that is until the formation was broken.

Pretty horrible and tiring I should think. I was involved in a few minor punchups in my much younger days; bad enough with fists flying, hate to think what it would be like with sharp, pointed things around.

Haven't thought about it in real historical accounts more in fantasy battles but as a young carpenter very often had jobs that would be very similar to a mid evil or ancient battle. Swinging a 20 pound sledgehammer smashing cinder block walls for instance in a 8 hr workday will tire you out.

Scholarly opinion seems to come and go. A vogue in history for a while has been the idea that formation battles as we understand them didn't really happen: rather that lines would reach a certain distance after which both sides would stop, and then combatants would summon up the nerves to venture forward from each side in small groups to fight each other.

I'm not entirely convinced by this suggestion and it seems to be falling out of favour among ancient historians. It fails to take account of any morale bonus entailed by being in a large group, and the momentum from rear ranks which would make it hard for the front ranks to chicken out even if they wanted to. It also seems to run counter to some of the ancient sources and the way that battles there are described.

One thing everyone is agreed on is that combat is tiring. Having said that, warriors would have been strong and fit, and pumping with adrenaline, so they could probably keep fighting longer than the Oxford don who stands up from his desk to swing a sword around for two minutes and feels rather out of puff supposes. But it does seem probable that warriors could only fight continuously mano a mano for a few minutes at a time. In combat between champions, which seems to have been a feature of ancient warfare at least until the late Roman Republic, it seems likely that a duel which goes on "all afternoon" would probably involve a number of periods where both combatants step back and pause to size each other up once more and catch their breath before re-engaging.

The Roman manipular system is sometimes seen as an answer to this issue of tiring troops, and that this holds the key to why the Roman army was so effective. By cycling troops out to rest and replacing them with fresh ones every couple of minutes, the theory goes, the Romans were able to feed fresh troops into the combat constantly and thus keep up a higher collective level of stamina for longer than their opponents. The extent to which legionaries fought as a single unit rather than individuals is debated (and depends what you take as the canonical gap between soldiers), but if they were able to fight, say, Gauls, two on one, that would also help significantly. It's worth mentioning though that of the Republic's major enemies the Gauls were something of an exception in the way they purportedly fought: the Italians, Greeks, Carthaginians and Spanish all seem to have been close-order troops, some of them not dissimilar to the Romans in that respect (indeed, the Romans may have filched their trademark combat formation from Italian or Spanish foes).

Life expectancy would be dependent on a vast number of factors, I imagine. One thing I do know is that Roman centurions had (or are believed to have had) an appallingly high casualty rate, relative both to any reasonable standard and to the rest of the troops. They were expected to lead from the front, by example, and fight as champions for their units. A high-ranking centurion would therefore be one of the most experienced and dangerous warriors in the legion, not someone to tangle with lightly, and a rare systemic instance of Authority Equals Asskicking in real life.

Good threads boys… thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Look at a modern day boxer. One could say they represent the peak of physical conditioning. However, notice after several rounds how exhausted they become, and that is with a short break between rounds. Add to this the fact that soldiers are fighting for their life, wearing sometimes heavy armor and wielding weapons and many times shields, usually fighting outside in the sun in the summer,and sometimes doing this without adequate food, and you get the idea how physically demanding this all was. Unfortunately, we don't get the sense of that pushing lead or plastic soldiers on a table. :)

Certainly, we would expect that the rigours of combat would quickly sap the energy of even the most enthusiastic protagonists. I suspect that a very large part of ancient military training would have had the purpose of careful conservation of energy, and economy of physical effort. A short, quick thrust of a gladius straight into centre of mass (assuming we have a woolly-headed, bare-chested Gaul running at us) is clearly more economical than several swinging slashes of a sword at the opponent's hard-to-hit head. The boxing analogy is a good one, and what tires boxers out really quickly is sloppy footwork. Ancient soldiers who were better trained, and in superior formations would, I suspect, also be able to economise on footwork, as your personal "flanks" are secured by your buddies on either side.

If I could reduce my fighting effort to step, thrust, pull the blade back, repeat… I can dish out a world of hurt on a Barbarian force. Imagine a whole line of such troops, shoulder to shield, basically doing a human combine-harvester on a wild bunch of savages, and you get organised slaughter. … when the savages realise they can't breach the shield wall, and turn and run…

I saw a documentary once of a chap re-enacting a Saxon huscarle. Swinging a double handed axe in a continuous figure of eight pattern. He said, when I hit something it gives me a break.

But don't forget, they came from a time when manual labour was the norm and they practised.