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Phalangites vs Norman cavalry

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  Posted by pumbar (U1339624) on Friday, 1st June 2007

  In a similar vein to the longbow thread how about we weigh the relative strengths of the Macedonian phalanx army against the Norman army of the late eleventh century? It would seem to be a bit of a one way fight for the Macedonians but if you think about it once the cavalry on the flanks have gone the Macedonians are sitting ducks...

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 1st June 2007

  In such comparisons we should rather take the various units from various eras and civilisations along with their context as said correctly in the longbow versus the legion thread. Legions were accompagnied by other guns, and longbowmen were also accompagnied by light infantry.
  
  Now in an army heavily based on the combined arms like the Macedonian it is rather unfitting to isolate the phalanx that could work only within the context of being directly supported by cavalry and light infantry. In the case you then you have no phalanx but a bunch of men armoured lightly (small shield, light body armour and helmet) but not being flexible like peltasts since carrying an extremely long and heavy spear!!! I.e. in the first 5 minutes of the battle you would have to fight against men armed with light armour, small shields and short swords since most of them would have dropped their spears, i.e. common light infantry, and how to fight against common light infantry is pretty much known.
  
  Now sarissa-formations in their normal context, that is another story. Ok, take out the cavalry but that is easier to say than to do so. Do you think that they had not tried to do so? I am not sure what Normand infantry and cavalry would bring new that was not tried against them by the huge list of enemies that had the bitter experience to fight against them. The only two battles (during Romano-Macedonian wars of the 2nd B.C. century) that are branded as a failure of the long-spear phalangites were actually won by internal treason and not by any specific plan or thought of the moment of the Roman officers. Treason that took out of the battle the cavalry, i.e. the central strategic element of the sarissa-formations. Still the two battles had left bitter taste to Roman generals despite being victorious, due to the amount of stress they went through and the fact that their victory came as an accident reliefing them rather than as a result of their actions!!! Amazing! That is why anyway that the phalanx formation tactic continued being used well into the gunpowder era while the supposed winner legionaire system was briefly dismissed a couple of centuries later having already delivered humiliting defeats against smaller armies and without particular treason involved in most of the cases.
  
  To have an idea for our comparison we should take an example of a battle where Normand infantry and cavalry faced long-spear formations, I do not know if in the 11th century there were already units in western Europe armed with long spears (I know that from the 13th A.D. century there were). If there existed such a battle it would be interesting to note down how Normands reacted to the spear-wall. Again whatever the result one should add the fact that long-spear walls of the later Middle-Ages were made out often of half-trained men and were very static while the Macedonian army included some of the most hardly trained men in the world many of whom were also battle-hardened to amazing degrees - i.e. they had seen it all... thus Normands could hardly bring any surprise to them.

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  Posted by marduk-slayer of tiamat (U2258525) on Friday, 1st June 2007

  i sinerely doubt that the normans could do anything to a phalanx.
  
  yes-tehy could charge home, but they used their spears overhand, and at hastings (if memory serves) used them as javelins. as such they where roughly equatable with mounted heavy peltasts or some such unit.
  
  norman archers wouldve been slightly better off than the greek ones if memory serves, and as asuch would win a skermish.
  
  norman infantry was in all likelyhood not that good, as tehy dont seem to have been a match for fyrd, who where merely militia.
  
  the macedonian cavalry, assuming loyalty was there, wouldve been at least as good as the norman knights.
  
  the macedonians would almost certainly win in my opinion.

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  Posted by GrumpyNick-IOW (U8437974) on Saturday, 2nd June 2007

  Which Macedonian phalanx?, the mobile Alexandrian one which was the anvil to the cav hammer, or the Diadoochian un mobile one that was the battle winner?.

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  Posted by GrumpyNick-IOW (U8437974) on Saturday, 2nd June 2007

  Normans pushed apart shield walls in southern italy/sicily and at Hastings, before charging home at the dislocated shield wall, they could not do that if the pike or long spear did not allow the mounted man to plant his lance on the sheild, use the horse to push the segement of the wall away from the rest, so as to create not a unified frontage of self supporting men, but isolated groups, who with enough space between them allw a horse at speed to pass through while delivering a lance thrust against the end man, and passing through at speed to avoid being brought down.
  
  Braveheart is great entertainement, but before you ride down the oposistion, with a "giddu up horse" you have to break up its cohesion into managable fractions, requiring a lot of team work and hard graft to wear down the oposistion.

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  Posted by GrumpyNick-IOW (U8437974) on Saturday, 2nd June 2007

  Doh, forget to say the length of spear/sarrisa would prevent such a breaking up of the phalanx as had happened to the arabs and southern greeks.

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  Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Saturday, 2nd June 2007

  Formidable as the Norman cavalry were, I really don't think they could do much against pikemen. It was only in the late 16th/17th centuries that cavalry really began to stand a serious chance of breaking a disciplined pike block, thanks to the introduction of pistols and carbines. Even then there had to be some way of neutralising the musketeers (as with Newcastle's Whitecoats at Marston Moor in 1644 - the Whitecoat musketeers ran out of ammunition, allowing the Parliamentarians and Covenenanters to safely shoot their way in, and even then they had substantial infantry support).
  
  To be fair to the Norman infantry, at Hastings they (and the Bretons/Flemish/etc) were having to fight up a fairly steep hill against a shield wall, and they weren't by and large professionals either.

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  Posted by pumbar (U1339624) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  But that's the point Anglo-Norman, Cromwell destroyed the Royalist pikes at Naseby purely by charging disciplined cavalry into the flank. Now considering the improvements that had taken place in horses, tack and armour by the Norman period we can be reasonably confident that Norman cavalry would beat the Macedonian equivalent on both flanks. So all that would be needed is for the Norman infantry to remain solid enough for the cavalry to do its work and turn against the exposed flanks and rear of the phalangites.

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  Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  But the Royalist Foot were having to concentrate their efforts on the New Model Foot at Naseby; thus they were unable to 'charge for Horse' and form a hedgehog to defend themselves against the Ironsides, Ireton's supposedly broken Horse (who had been able to reform because Prince Rupert and the Lifeguard was messing about with the Parliamentarian baggage train instead of concentrating on the main battle) and Okey's Dragoons.
  
  The Phalangites would only be sitting ducks if they were unable to defend their flanks, due to being a) taken by surprise, or b) had their attention diverted. Like the Longbow/Legion debate, once again this basically boils down to whether it's purely the units mentioned in the original question, or whether we include associated groups, and what the context is.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  Well said Anglo-Norman,
  
  Myself also would not want to give sentimentally all the odds for the phalanx but as I see it it would be really difficult for Normand infantry and cavalry to present a new surprise for them. To be honest, and i will do a little bit of mixing with the longbow-legionaire thread my opinion is that of all these aforementioned units it would be rather the longbow men that would present most of the problem against the phalanx. Romans tried the infantry approach (legions) but it only worked well in the fashion of retreating under pressure from pikes but always in order and waiting to exploit the right chance (i.e. the fact that the macedonian cavalry did not intervene and betrayed!).
  
  Now why did I say longbowmen and why preferrably on horses? On the one hand, longbows had a proven record of piercing relatively thick armours (and the macedonian phalanx had average armour to permit flexibility with the spear). Not to mention that at the distance they would shoot they would not have to worry against the relatively slow-moving sarissa formation. On the other longbowmen had a proven record in fighting against cavalry, namely heavily armoured cavalry. All these factors are giving longbowmen a lot of chance to present huge troubles.
  
  Now the problem for longbowmen is that it would be not the first time for the phalanxes that they would face an army based on bows, they had already faced armies based also on mounted archers (that are potentially much more dangerous due to their mobility and elusiveness). However, these longbows would be more strong and more lethal and greater distance and that means the phalanxes would stay at a larger distance which would have to be covered essentially by cavalry and/or light infantry. Thus we would end up in a situation where phalanxes would not enter at all in the battlefield but let the cavalry and light infantry do the job. Macedonian archers and slingers would had helped little since their range would be inferior to that of the longbow. It would depend on the geography of the place, most probably the Macedonians would split their units into smaller fractions and try to encircle the archers who if split would miss to a great extend the advantage of mass-showering with arrows. In close combat and dispite the fact that bowmen were also capably in other arms, they would not stand a chance, however, if Macedonian cavalry and infantry tried a head on collision with these bowmen catastrophe could be in the corner as French had bitterly realised.
  
  Now both Normand infantry and cavalry while being of value would not present anything new such as the longbow (range and strength of arrows). The Normand cavalry would be essentially the Persian cavalry units, ancestors of cataphracts and the Normand infantry would be essentially the short spear phalanxes while the balistra-archers would be a slower version of the Persian archers (balistras were known in ancient times and even greeks used them usually in protecting fortifications). And we know that against all these the phalanx (in its context of course, i.e. cavalry/peltasts etc.) had performed impressively well.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  Oh yes, did not conclude. I think if longbowmen were mounted on horses that would become really difficult for long-spear phalanxes and for any type of phalanxes, infantry as well as cavalry. But as far as I know longbows were rather large and heavy bows that needed stable positions to be used and that is why afterall nobody tried to use them on a horse.

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  Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  The English did employ mounted longbowmen in the 15th century - they were professional liveried troops, of course, whose employers were sufficiently wealthy to provide the mounts - but the horses were mainly used for transport. However, as a result there were, I believe, one or two cases of the longbow being used as a 'horse bow' - but with little success, for the reasons you outline. Alas, as usual the relevant books are many miles from me at present, so I can't specify any examples, but IIRC it was during the Wars of the Roses.
  
  Interestingly, during the same period the Burgundians under Charles the Bold employed English longbowmen as mercenaries, using them in conjunction with - *trumpet fanfare* - pikemen! The result was quite formidable.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 3rd June 2007

  I think a combined arms phalanx of pikemen and longbowmen would had been formidable. It amazes me that not many armies thought of it but then you can say that it had been the gunpowder weapons that were sweeping apart all previous forms of fighting. Still I would much rather prefer to lead a tercio of pikemen and longbowmen than a tercio of pikemen and arquevusiers.

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