What was warfare like with swords on the individual level?

What was warfare like with swords on the individual level?

Like did armies just run together and hack and slash until everyone got tired?

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Yea basically
But there were things like tactics, having cavalry, archers, gunners and in the 14th to 15th century; artillery

Swords were rarely used as primary offensive weapons. In general, lances/spears/pikes and ranged weapons were the primary weapons of war, with swords being reserve weapons, sidearms, and civilian weapons.

The major exceptions are typified by 4 general categories:

1 - Armies that deployed with infantry combat tactics organised and centred around one specific tactic, involving the use of swords. Post-Marian Roman Legions are the best example of this. The sword was the standard weapon around which their infantry tactics revolved. In this kind of warfare, the sword is just a replacement for the spear, the emphasis in combat is on discipline, unit cohesion, and all the other facets of organised warfare.

2 - Individualist swordsmen. Landsknechts, Samurai, and late medieval Knights typify this category. Soldiers who fight individually, with the goal being personal accomplishment either in single combat or in the single-handed breaking of a line. These kind of soldiers generally formed shock battalions or were the result of noblemen fighting on foot for various reasons.

3 - Tribal armies. 18th century highland Scots are by far the best example of this. These armies are large gangs of well armed individuals, who do not fight with organised, disciplined unit cohesion, but rather as a mass of heavy infantry whose goal is simply to close to melee and hack the enemy to pieces. This leads to exceptionally bloody warfare, and can be devastating, even against more technologically advanced and organised opponents through sheer force.

4 - Cavalry armies. 17th, 18th, and 19th century light and heavy cavalry, hussars and irregulars (cossacks and the like) often favoured the sword over the lance due to its flexibility and the lack of long-shafted infantry weapons that needed countering, allowing cavalry to close to melee before facing danger. Everyone knows how this works.

>tribal armies
>1700s Scotland

Am I missing something?

Lot of psychology there as well, if you had the bigger sword or dual wielded shields you could have chased enemy away from shear fear facing your imposing skills.

>dual wielded shields
Nice

The ancient melee was more of a gigantic shoving match.

It was nothing at all like that battle in Braveheart where both armies dissolve together with everyone picking a partner for exciting and dramatic 1 on 1 duels. Both sides maintained careful lines and the objective was to break the enemy line, not necessarily attempt to inflict lots of casualties (though that was of course encouraged.) Most of the actual death took place during the rout, when one side had finally broken and attempted to flee the losing side would turn into sheer chaos and would be systematically run down and exterminated by the victorious forces.

Battles were tedious affairs punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror. Generals would stress over every detail and often times both armies would be paraded out into their battle formations to stand there all day in the pouring rain waiting for the general to give the order to march, who may very well decide that the conditions were unfavorable and order his men to return to camp and do the same thing the next day, for days on end.

Once the battle commenced it was an uneven affair which eddied and flowed. Often times there would be lulls in the fighting where both sides backed away from each other to catch their breaths and regroup. The actual fighting would have been up close and dirty but people would have naturally stayed close to the guy next to him in order to rely on his shield for partial protection.

Swords dominated warfare up until the later medieval period when plate steel armor had become so sophisticated as to completely negate the primary advantages of a sword, and gradually fell into ceremonial and civilian use, and in the field maces and warhammers became more prominent as side arms while pikes became the preferred primary arm and would remain that way until firearms became sophisticated enough to be used by line infantry.

>Am I missing something?

Nope. Clans are a tribal structure based on extended family groups, who's interpersonal politics were focused on the submacro level of the clan above the individual, with all members of such acting as an extended agent in all respects.

Its thought by some scholars that this is one of the reasons the highland regiments had such an easy time associating with the North American native populations, as they could easily identify and understand what most others considered petty squables. They didn't see "indians fighting with indians", but two clans at odds.

So basically only the people on the front few lines did anything?

Depends on the army. For most of them there would have been a natural order where the bravest and most fierce men would make their way to the front while the lesser and more fearful men might stay back. Guys also might have fallen back into the ranks as they fatigued, and some militaries had drill which kept fresh troops cycling to the front so that it wasn't just a handful of guys doing all the work.