Hi His.
One thing that I have always been curious about is the following:
How did soldiers in pre-gun battles know who was friendly and who was enemy?
Before the actual clash of the two armies it was easy becausr they where standing in neat lines.
But when the battle actually commenced how did they know who to kill and who to protect?
Thanks :)
Why do you
put a space
in between every sentence?
I do that too, desu. Something about Veeky Forums's popup window that does it for me.
Anway... Uniforms have existed since the days of Persia. A lot of times, it would be difficult to tell friend from foe. Some armies actively worked on this problem , such as the Crusaders who would wear that templars cross over their armor or romans, who were romans. But some periods in history would no doubt have been more difficult than others.
In the Pelopponesian war or classical greek warfare in general, being able to tell your friend from foe would be difficult. After all, they're all wearing roughly the same outfit. Only Spartans would stand out, with their open helmets and brazen shields.
In the Roman civil wars, it must have been absolutely impossible to differ friend from foe. The only clue would be, who was standing infront of me? Maybe you could recognize the shield designs of the opposite legion, but could you be certain of all the legion shields which fought for you?
In general, I think that lines held fairly well until one front line broke at which point the fight was over anyway.
I've read somewhere that Standarts such as flags were commonly used.
uniforms, officers, standard bearers, armor, formations, etc.
>Before the actual clash of the two armies it was easy becausr they where standing in neat lines.
they did so during and hopefully after that actual clash too. battle isn't a damn pub brawl.
Most enemies looked obviously different to you.
During the English civil war they didn't, so they would tie coloured ribbons on their arms for their side. We can only presume most forces throughout history did something similar but is usually such an insignificant detail it isn't noted down.
and during most of the time the armies were relatively small. you literally knew your comrades by their face and gear.
No not really, most battles had at least 10,000 men, usually about 40,000. You're only thinking about medieval battles.
no, it's just that only the large international conflicts made it into history books. from pre-history up to the renaissance most warfare was small skirmishing between clans and tribes.
They'd wear something to show their side.
The semi-professional English troops invading France in the 100 yrs war had to have a st. George's Cross on their chest.
Fro something more ad-hock like the levies in the Jacobite rebellions they'd just tie a bit of cloth or handkercheif of the right colour somewhere clear.
If they don't make it into the history books then no one cared, clearly. All the decisive battles were huge.
All of this. There would probably be cultural differences that could be seen at a glance too. Different hairstyles (Alexander had all his men shave their beards and hair for that advantage in unarmed combat), different kinds of weapons, even different skin colour. Also, they would often be speaking different languages, or at least different dialects.
Unless you were fighting a neighbouring tribe, the enemy soldiers would probably stick out a mile.
The problem of blue-on-blue casualties has never really gone away though and probably become worse after the invention of gunpowder as targets are harder to identify at a distance. During the WW2 night raid on St Nazaire, British commando raiders used the phrase "world war week," to identify each other during the raid. The idea was that, even if the Germans figured out the passphrase and began using it, they wouldn't be able to say it without their accent giving them away.
There is only handful battles with numbers like that.
Small skirmishes were more common, nobody really wanted to raise and field an army for the whole war.
Back in those days, a formation was lead by a banner, the banner man had literally the tide of the battle in his hands.
When the banner fell, the formation started fleeing. Same goes for the kings banner, when it fell. The battle was accounted
for as a lost battle and everyone gtfo'd.
In middle ages also your armor and clothes gave you away. When you went into the war you usually wore something
that made you represent a bit your Duchy/Kingdom/whatever. For instance some Kingdoms had royal colours red and white
so you could expect their soldiers to rock the same colours, or their variations. This of course could not be applied to
the poor schmugs that would just wear whatever the fuck since they dont want to be there anyway and cant wait for this whole
mess to be over. But they generally were in the same formation, following the same dude who wore the colours and this dude
was non stop looking if the formation banner was standing.
Of course banner men were not treated nicely by the enemy, common practise was chopping off the arms, impaling and forcing the
banner into the throat of the banner man, keep in mind that was thicc fabric and could not be forced down without breaking the jaw
and shattering the windpipe also the order of chopping, impaling, choking with banner would vary a lot. (Cant remember where I read this
one so dont cite me on that)
Basically it followed very simple hierarchy
>serf is keeping an eye out for the faggot local nobleman that took him into the war
>the local nobleman is watching the formation banner
>banner man is watching the kings banner
also when cavalry or anything really regrouped it regrouped under the banner, so as long as the banner stands, you fight.
The importance of a legion eagle (banner of Roman times) can be even seen even in
en.wikipedia.org
Where Romans sacrificed 2 legions to get back the banners that represented their legions.
Also fun fact: Normally until 1st World War when you went into the war with your fellas you would be sure to end up in the
same unit/formation as them. So you knew all those around you pretty well until the formation broke, then after the battle
you would find them once again if they survived and repeated the process. This was abandoned in WW1 because of the
common practise of entire brigades getting wiped out over night which would in turn kill the whole male population
of a village/city. Which wasnt really needed.
Hope I helped somebody get the importance of Banners.
So how did people survive if they were on the front row? Or was it basically a death sentence. If they were skilled/lucky enough they might kill the first guy, but surely there would be row after row of soldiers standing behind him waiting to avenge their fallen comrade?
To add to this, there is a policy in modern armies whereby you never use a looted enemy's gun in battle. One way soldiers identify the enemy is by the particular sound of their guns.
They got paid twice thrice more than the other guys in the formation.
Also being banner man wasnt the best job since everyone wanted to gut you asap, but it was usually great honour and
only great noblemens best knights bore the honour of holding up the banner.
If you were the guy who raised the banner after the knight had fallen you were sure to get anything you wanted from your liege.
>that mountain
youtube.com
There was an army, I think it was Mongolian, in which, as the armies were facing each other about to fight, the first rank would cut off their own heads. I don't mean cut off the head of the soldier next to them, I mean mass suicide, slicing their very own head off with a blade.
The reason was obviously to intimidate the enemy. The way they got men to do this was by taking prisoners and holding their families captive. If the prisoner killed himself on the battlefield as he was told, his family would be safe and relatively comfortable. If not, his family would be killed (and probably in a horrific way).
this is probably the most retarded thing iv'e read in weeks.
It's shite being Celtic! We're the lowest of the low! The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization! Some people hate Romans. I don't! They're just wankers! We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers! Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by! We're ruled by effete arseholes! It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy! And all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference."
I love that movie.
Well at least the pay was good, provided you lived to collect your pay
wut
Thanks for all the answers guys.
It seems like most of the time soldiers would use some kind of band around them like they do in Syria and Ukraine these days.
Melee combat must be fucking frightening.
It's less retarded than your post though. All you did was point and go "DUMDUM! HURR!"
But I looked a little deeper for you and it was a Chinese army, and the passage relating it may have been mistranslated.
en.wikipedia.org
>King Goujian's army was known for scaring its enemies before battle because its front line consisted of criminals sentenced to death who committed suicide by decapitating themselves.[1]
ok
You usually did survive though, the war started getting scary with the artillery.
Not many people were killed usually. The wiki battles you read about are not the norm.
en.wikipedia.org
The numbers of armies and dead were usually only rough guess.
Usually you had like 30% chance to die in any battle, I would guess. Though you had high chances to die after battle unfortunately.
You do that as a courtesy so you don't make a wall of text.
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This is the correct answer. It's overlooked as always.
This is the beautiful job of Veeky Forums experts. This guy didn't know. Now he believes a load of horseshit and is confused about it.
Read books or go to reddit's askhistorians.
Depends on the weapons
In multiple battles of the civil wars, one side would tie a piece of cloth around one arm. How they determined which side would do so is beyond me, but it apparently did a lot to reverse the confusion.
Source?
Melee combat was frightening. The amount of carnage is such a small space must have been... disgusting for lack of a better word. PTSD as we know it today must have plagued any of the survivors. If not permanently, then at least for some time after.
On an unrelated note, King Goujian is one interesting dude. We still have his sword today... it still has its edge after thousands of years
For those who can't read proto-Moonrunes
In the thirty years war it was common to do similar things too. Swedish forces sometimes used different colored ribbons, or sticks/leaves on their hats.
In feudal France and Germany there could be literally hundreds of different liveries represented on the field, what with all the barons and knights and counts having their own.
The "nostalgia" of Swiss pikemen has been connected by some to ptsd I think.
Push of pike must literally have been hell. No way out, being pressed forwards in a tight ass formation into a forest of sharp points that want to spit you.