Part 9 (1/2)

CHAPTER V

MORALE IN ANCIENT BATTLE

We now know the morale and mechanism of ancient fighting; the word melee employed by the ancients was many times stronger than the idea to be expressed; it meant a crossing of arms, not a confusion of men.

The results of battles, such as losses, suffice to demonstrate this, and an instant of reflection makes us see the error of the word melee.

In pursuit it was possible to plunge into the midst of the fugitives, but in combat every one had too much need for the next man, for his neighbor, who was guarding his flanks and his back, to let himself be killed out of sheer wantonness by a sure blow from within the ranks of the enemy. [22]

In the confusion of a real melee, Caesar at Pharsalus, and Hannibal at Cannae, would have been conquered. Their shallow ranks, penetrated by the enemy, would have had to fight two against one, they would even have been taken in rear in consequence of the breaking of their ranks.

Also has there not been seen, in troops equally reliable and desperate, that mutual weariness which brings about, with tacit accord, falling back for a breathing spell on both sides in order again to take up the battle?

How can this be possible with a melee?

With the confusion and medley of combatants, there might be a mutual extermination, but there would not be any victors. How would they recognize each other? Can you conceive two mixed ma.s.ses of men or groups, where every one occupied in front can be struck with impunity from the side or from behind? That is mutual extermination, where victory belongs only to survivors; for in the mix-up and confusion, no one can flee, no one knows where to flee.

After all, are not the losses we have seen on both sides demonstration that there was no real melee?

The word is, therefore, too strong; the imagination of painters' and poets' has created the melee.

This is what happened:

At a charging distance troops marched towards the enemy with all the speed compatible with the necessity for fencing and mutual aid. Quite often, the moral impulse, that resolution to go to the end, manifested itself at once in the order and freedom of gait. That impulse alone put to flight a less resolute adversary.

It was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the ma.s.s; the preoccupation [23] of the rank was very great, as the behavior of Caesar's troops at Pharsalus shows in their slow march, timed by the flutes of Lacedaemonian battalions. At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord, because the men of the first rank, of necessity and instinctively, a.s.sured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbors in the same line, their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movements to strike and parry. There was a contact of man with man; each took the adversary in front of him and attacked him, because by penetrating into the ranks before having struck him down, he risked being wounded in the side by losing his flank supports. Each one then hit his man with his s.h.i.+eld, expecting to make him lose his equilibrium, and at the instant he tried to recover himself landed the blow. The men in the second line, back of the intervals necessary for fencing in the first, were ready to protect their sides against any one that advanced between them and were prepared to relieve tired warriors. It was the same in the third line, and so on.

Every one being supported on either side, the first encounter was rarely decisive, and the fencing, the real combat at close quarters, began.

If men of the first line were wounded quickly, if the other ranks were not in a hurry to relieve or replace them, or if there was hesitation, defeat followed. This happened to the Romans in their first encounters with the Gauls. The Gaul, with his s.h.i.+eld, parried the first thrust, brought his big iron sword swooping down with fury upon the top of the Roman s.h.i.+eld, split it and went after the man. The Romans, already hesitating before the moral impulse of the Gauls, their ferocious yells, their nudeness, an indication of a contempt for wounds, fell then in a greater number than their adversaries and demoralization followed. Soon they accustomed themselves to this valorous but not tenacious spirit of their enemies, and when they had protected the top of their s.h.i.+elds with an iron band, they no longer fell, and the roles were changed.

The Gauls, in fact, were unable either to hold their ground against the better arms and the thrusts of the Romans, or against their individual superior tenacity, increased nearly tenfold by the possible relay of eight ranks of the maniple. The maniples were self-renewing.

Whereas with the Gauls the duration of the combat was limited to the strength of a single man, on account of the difficulties of close or tumultuous ranks, and the impossibility of replacing losses when they were fighting at close quarters.

If the weapons were nearly alike, preserving ranks and thereby breaking down, driving back and confusing the ranks of the enemy, was to conquer. The man in disordered, broken lines, no longer felt himself supported, but vulnerable everywhere, and he fled. It is true that it is hardly possible to break hostile lines without doing the same with one's own. But the one who breaks through first, has been able to do so only by making the foe fall back before his blows, by killing or wounding. He has thereby raised his courage and that of his neighbor. He knows, he sees where he is marching; whilst the adversary overtaken as a consequence of the retreat or the fall of the troops that were flanking him, is surprised. He sees himself exposed on the flank. He falls back on a line with the rank in rear in order to regain support. But the lines in the rear give way to the retreat of the first. If the withdrawal has a certain duration, terror comes as a result of the blows which drive back and mow down the first line. If, to make room for those pushed back, the last lines turn their backs, there is small chance that they will face the front again. s.p.a.ce has tempted them. They will not return to the fight.

Then by that natural instinct of the soldier to worry, to a.s.sure himself of his supports, the contagion of flight spreads from the last ranks to the first. The first, closely engaged, has been held to the fight in the meantime, under pain of immediate death. There is no need to explain what follows; it is butchery. (Caedes).

But to return to combat.

It is evident that the formation of troops in a straight line, drawn close together, existed scarcely an instant. Moreover each group of files formed in action was connected with the next group; the groups, like the individuals, were always concerned about their support. The fight took place along the line of contact of the first ranks of the army, a straight line, broken, curved, and bent in different directions according to the various chances of the action at such or such a point, but always restricting and separating the combatants of the two sides. Once engaged on that line, it was necessary to face the front under pain of immediate death. Naturally and necessarily every one in these first ranks exerted all his energy to defend his life.

At no point did the line become entangled as long as there was fighting, for, general or soldier, the effort of each one was to keep up the continuity of support all along the line, and to break or cut that of the enemy, because victory then followed.

We see then that between men armed with swords, it was possible to have, and there was, if the combat was serious, penetration of one ma.s.s into the other, but never confusion, or a jumble of ranks, by the men forming these ma.s.ses. [24]

Sword to sword combat was the most deadly. It presented the most sudden changes, because it was the one in which the individual valor and dexterity of the combatant had the greatest and most immediate influence. Other methods of combat were simpler.

Let us compare pikes and broadswords.