Did the mutual choosing of time & place for battle actually exist, Veeky Forums...

Did the mutual choosing of time & place for battle actually exist, Veeky Forums, during the Ancient/Medieval ages or is it just a running meme?

Seems pretty stupid that party A would meet with party B and say "GREETINGS, FOEMAN, LET US AGREE TO MEET HERE ON THE MORROW. WE'LL BE ON A HILL. YOU GUYS GET THE FLAT GROUND."
"Ok."

Like, one party would hold the advantages while another wont and then they'd just agree on it.

I think it was more like army A marching to siege somewhere and then army B marches towards army A where then a battle happens.

See thats another Issue I have.

Wouldn't two armies just happening to stumble each other NOT have the time for battle lines and stuff like it?

Scouts were used for a reason.

What are scouts

They did have the time: they had SCOUTS.

When two armies stumble into each other, scouts get to hear of it first. Usually since the scouts of opposing teams will fight small battles first, run back home, and tell mommy.

Based on news from Intel, armies would then draw up lines and head to the direction of the enemy in formation.

Well they have both scouts most of the time who locate the other army so that they can form lines and formations and march on time.

The two parties agreed only when both of them were fairly confident in their chances of winning no one went ''terrain is against us, we are ournumbered but YOLO'' otherwise medieval warfare was a bunch of sieges or one sided massacres.

And indeed, when scouts failed the other army got to cut through the unprepared army like a knife through butter. Historical examples abound.

Somewhat mutual. Each side would try to get a battlefield beneficial more to themselves, however if one side just had a stupidly powerful position like on top of a huge hill, then the other side would simply not engage. So to an extent they had to compromise.

An army is a huge, ungainly beast. Lacking modern logistics, it needed to move in a way that wouldn't exhaust local foraging prospects, confuse organization and hierarchy, balance centralized command with speed of communication, and maintain slow moving and vulnerable supply lines.

This meant an army, when passing from one place to the next, did so piecemeal in columns and smaller divisions, only consolidating into a wide line of dense formation when it was time to battle. This meant an army was vulnerable to attack by comparatively lesser forces while on the move, and it would take several hours to reorganize a host on the march into fighting formation in the event of enemy contact.

That's why when scouts reported an enemy either approaching or camped someplace already, it was time to halt the march and prepare for battle. To attempt to ignore the enemy force is to open your army up to destruction, piece by piece, as smaller units are overwhelmed by the enemy sending out raiding parties for the whole time your army is attempting to pass through nearby contested territory. It's possible to manage a breakthrough like this, but it's risky and there's no guarantee the army that comes out will be in any shape to organize itself for battle later.

When one side chooses the field, having already reached it first, they necessarily force the enemy to array themselves in response to their position. If the enemy tries to set up someplace different and ignore the enemy's position completely, they'd be open to attack during deployment. If the enemy manages anyway, then it becomes a battle of attrition, and the side that could usually manage to set up positions first probably has the advantage in supplies and logistics anyway.

Armies pretty routinely marched as one single body, user.

No, they usually marched as three or more separate forces. Those that didn't stretch the definition of army and are more warbands instead.

You find it hard to believe because you live in the age of asymmetrical warfare.

Back then they would have been flabbergasted by people blewing civilians up by surprise, suicide attacks, just as you are today by the idea of army representatives talking to one another.

citation needed

>Back then they would have been flabbergasted by people blewing civilians up by surprise, suicide attacks, just as you are today by the idea of army representatives talking to one another.
Not really, only by the technology. Killing civilians would have been very common for an army in a foreign land.

It's a commonality you find studying lots of Medieval campaigns. There's almost always a vanguard and rearguard operating as smaller units, as well as army flanks that varied depending on culture. The Battle of Dorylaeum in the First Crusade is a famous example of an army moving in smaller, separate units for logistical purposes only to get attacked and almost wiped out until the arrival of the other half of the army.

>Killing civilians would have been very common for an army in a foreign land.
But not going as far as to kill yourself in order to accomplish such noble goal, nor making it the whole objective of an operation.

It's absolutely incomparable, unheard of, and ridiculous.

Terror in warfare back then had more to do with loading catapults with enemy bodies and heads.

Once made aware of each other they'd do their best to vie for the optimal place.

If you look into Agincourt you'll find that the smaller English army tried to flee the larger French until they realized they weren't going to lose them and so picked Agincourt for a standoff.

You'll also find plenty of forces marching all together.

A lot of battles between Turks and Byzantines involve one force or the other getting ambushed on passes while marching, and they did so as one force, even if the van, middle, and rear had their own commanders.

Actually, cross border raids for the purposes of looting and causing depopulation were a very real thing.

>purposes of looting
But who does a suicide bomber loot?

>You'll also find plenty of forces marching all together.
You don't. You only find sources that don't go into details of marching order and deployment, and only summarize the major action that crippled the army, or they involved raids. This is especially so for Turkish-Byzantine conflicts.

You can't force an army thousands strong consisting of a van, middle, and rear guard through a mountain pass all at once. When they're described as one force, it's done nominally as 'the army' and not in any way describing the exact logistics of said army on the move.

Kind of. A lot of the time, heralds etc would make negotiations before battles (and during), but probably not to that degree. Plus, there's a lot of medieval and ancient history across a lot of space and all sorts of weird stuff happened, so you always need to to paint with a very broad brush.

Actually "even" pitched battles are rarer than you'd think. Nobody wants to committ to decisive action when it might mean losing everything. There are a lot of them more thanks to a lot of time passing than anything else.

What you actually see is a lot of posturing and maneuvering (often for weeks) before pitched battle occurs. When pitched battle does occur usually both sides feel like they have an even chance of winning OR there's some sort of external pressure on one side (usually political or resource driven).

For example, when Caesar beat Pompey it was only because political pressure drove Pompey to attack even though there was literally 0 need and they could have just waited Caesar out.

>that awful helmet
>that shitty breastplate
>no faulds, just tassets
>those shoes
>shitty greaves and poleyns
>no cuisses
The arms are the only decent part

I guess that is probably why when a big pitched battle actually did happen it was remembered for a long time and recorded in big expensive works of art and literature, whereas the little raids and sieges which happen all the time mostly just blend into the background.

>he doesn't want to fight from the low grounds
>he doesn't want the glory of his victory to be doubled from the fact that he was facing off an enemy on the hills
>he doesn't want to be remembered as the "user the Reckless"

Re-evaluate your life choice bruh.

Got any good examples?

During medieval, it was (officially) all about honor and shit. The ideal battle would be two armies standing face to face on a green plain. Attacking from ambush, engaging on unprepared army or running away were deemed as seriously dick moves, and unless you were sucking Pope's/Emperor's or somebody elses dick, you could get into political isolation for that.

this is bullshit

Pic related