Reading Group--Caesar's Legion

[jgbrowning]

the roman war machine

ok here's the longer post, got the book infront of me.

1. roman generalship
2. command and control
3. supply trains and baggage
4. marching camp techniques
5. supporting arms and weaponry
6 waterborne operations
7 siege warfare.

those are the chapters. they cover much of interest on the nuts-and-bolts of moving that many men and equipment.

things i liked,

he shows how the romans would ocassionally use traditionally defensive actions for offense.... marching camps provided a safer area to "fall back to". (this is apoor summation, but i hope you get the drift)

through overview of logistics. honestly logistics are often the most important part of any war, more so than training, command and morale. you MUST feed your men.

the sections about generalship and command and control show the different tecniques the romans used. Strategy and again the nuts-and-bolts about how the hell you communicate over distances given the tech level.

the waterborne section is nice, discusses the building of ships etc...

ok here the chart i was talking about. its his copyright so dont spread it around

column on the march
march timings
Data: a march rate = 3 miles and hour
b distance to camp 2 is 10 miles
c overall lenght of marching column = 22.5 miles
d. departure time is H hour

serial no. time event remarks
1 H hour recce group
departs camp I

2 +0 h 10m VAnguard departs followed by com-
camp I mand group and
main body

3 +3h 20m Recce group arrives Camp II

4 +3h 30m VAnguard arrives camp II followed by com-
mand group and
head of main body

5 +3h 30m CAmp layout commenced Tail of main body
departs camp I

6 +3 h 30m Head of baggage train departs Tail ofmainbody
camp I departs camp I

7 +4h Protective screen deployed after arrival of 1st
legion

8 +4h 30m Fortifications commenced after arrival of 2nd
legion

9 +6h 30m Tail of main body arrives Camp II

10 +7h Head of baggage train arrives sligtly slower march
camp II rate than main body

11 +7h 30m fortifications complete

12 +12h tail of baggage train arrives column complete at
camp II

(his source is Ceaser, de bello gallico, II, 17-28.)


I've heard a few bad reviews about this book as well, mostly about how the author tends to digress abit about his service in WWII and honestly, although there are some simularities between the two time periods (situation wise) i think it would have been a better book if he would have just left them out.

it does have a nice appendix about labour figures for common engineering tasks from the royal school of military engineering. it give the averge man hours expect to accomplish certain tasks (like clearing dense undergrowth with samplings up to 100mm diameter... 1 man could reasonallby be expected to clear 11.7 meters in 1 hour).

though up for debate, this kind of information probably holds true for the roman time. but the romans did not have access to such high grade steel we use, so they may have taken a bit longer. But it helps get you in the ballpark.

anyway, gotta run and eat.

joe b.

(also if you can find the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire : From the First Century A.D. to the Third by edward n luttwak, read it. its a good evaluation of roman strategy.)

edit: sorry the chart didnt turn out right, i hope you can piecemeal it together.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: the roman war machine

1. roman generalship
2. command and control
3. supply trains and baggage
4. marching camp techniques
5. supporting arms and weaponry
6 waterborne operations
7 siege warfare.

It certainly sounds "nuts and bolts" with chapters on supply trains and marching.

On the subject of logistics, I've been eyeing Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton
by Martin L. van Creveld. I never thought logistics would be an exciting topic, but the reviews are glowing and the excerpts look good too.

 

[mmadsen]

Just read the entire thread. Great stuff, folks!

This brings up an interesting tangent, Darkness. From what I can gather, most people on the boards refuse to read a long thread, evidently seeing it as a burden, rather than more of the good stuff they come to the message boards for. Odd...

 

[mmadsen]

Chapter X -- A Taste of Defeat (continued)

Now while some of Pompey's legionaries made a frontal attack, filling in the ditches in front of the Caesarian wall, then bringing up assault ladders and artillery pieces, archers worked their way around the flanks. The only form of missile that the men of the 9th possessed was stones. Pompey's intelligence was so good he even knew this fact, and he'd equipped his storm troops with special wicker coverings for their helmets that created faceguards to protect their faces from flying stones.

I love special countermeasures like that -- wicker faceguards against thrown rocks.

 

[Maldur]

Also the 9th did use stones as missile weapons. To use a SHARK line: the overcame their supply problem and adapted. Improvising weapons is a sign of flexibility and adaptability. Picture a knight throwing rocks

 

[mmadsen]

Chapter X -- A Taste of Defeat (continued)

Pompey's attack overwhelms the men of the 9th, all veterans in their thirties, and most of the 9th's senior centurions fall.

The 9th's fort had been taken and the double walls of the encirclement were breached in numerous places along the shoreline so that Pompey's cavalry could get out and seek fodder, and ships could land supplies.

Then Pompey's troops occupy a deserted Caesarian camp near the sea, tenable now that the 9th has been pushed back.

As they took up defensive positions on the ramparts of the camp, Caesar could see that these troops would be able to cover supplies coming to the beach.

Pompey has outmaneuvered Caesar!

Caesar personally leads an attack on the fort, and Pompey personally leads his own troops against Caesar. Caesar's men become lost in the complex entrenchments.

Encouraged by the sight of their commander in chief [Pompey] coming up with the experienced legions, Puleio and his troops fighting for their lives in the camp regained the initiative and charged Caesar's men, driving them back. Seeing this sudden change of fortune, Caesar's cavalry panicked. They tried to go back the way they had come, down the narrow alley. The troops on the right wing, seeing the cavalry turning and fleeing, seeing Pompey coming with thousands of reinforcements, hearing their comrades inside the camp in trouble, and fearing that they were going to be cut off, jumped into a ten-foot trench that they thought would provide an escape route. Hundreds of Caesar's men were trampled to death in this trench as their own desperate colleagues jumped in on top of them in an attempt to escape.

Trampled by their own men jumping into the trench on top of them! Here's how bad the panic gets:

He [Caesar] grabbed standards to stem the flood, but the standard-bearers simply let go of them and kept going. Appian even writes of a frantic standard-bearer trying to stab Caesar with the pointed bottom tip of his standard in his desperation to get away -- and being cut down by men of Caesar's bodyguard.

 

[mmadsen]

Chapter X -- A Taste of Defeat (continued)

In this encounter, which historians were to call the Battle of Dyrrhachium, Pompey's troops captured thirty-two standards from the 9th Legion and other units involved in the right wing of Caesar's counterattack and from the Caesarian cavalry....But had Pompey followed up on his success, Caesar could have lost the war.

A taste of defeat -- but just a taste. Caesar demoted standard-bearers who had fled, and spoke to his men:

"The setback we have sustained cannot be blamed on me. I gave an opportunity for battle on favorable ground. I took possession of the enemy camp. I drove the enemy out. Through your fear, or some mistake, or some stroke of fate, the victory that was as good as in our grasp was lost. So it falls to you to make an effort to repair the damage, through your valor. If you do, you will turn our loss to gain, as happened at Gergovia."

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't strike me as a great speech. "I did everything right, but then you blew it!"

 

[Maldur]

It almost sound like a spoiled kid:

"I did it right but you ruined my fun"

he's pretty self centered, he is right but could have told his men in a more diplomatic way.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Chapter X -- A Taste of Defeat (continued)

He [Caesar] grabbed standards to stem the flood, but the standard-bearers simply let go of them and kept going. Appian even writes of a frantic standard-bearer trying to stab Caesar with the pointed bottom tip of his standard in his desperation to get away -- and being cut down by men of Caesar's bodyguard.

Since we've already read about the standard-bearer jumping into the water off the coast of Britain -- and how the men had to follow him -- this is even more striking. Roman standard-bearers just dropping the standards? Trying to stab their general with the butt end of the standard to get away? That must have been some serious panic for such profession soldiers!

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Chapter X: A Taste of Defeat
____________________________________________________
Page 110; Quote:

"Gomphi, a town in Thessaly, had gone over to Pompey after the news of his success at Durres, and Caesar decided to make an example of it, to ensure the cooperation of other Greek communities. A little rape and pillage wouldn't do the damaged morale of his men any harm, either. Surrounding the town, he sent his legions against the walls. They began the assault in the early afternoon. As the sun was setting, they broke into the town. Caesar gave his troops permission to plunder Gomphi. It was destroyed, and every one of its inhabitants killed.
____________________________________________________
End Quote.

How's that to wake up to in the morning! Damn. Just wiped that little town off the face of the map. No UN to complain to there. Oh, wait...Rome was the UN...ah, well, it certainly was a different time, then, wasn't it? It is interesting that in towns later encountered, they opened their gates, and cooperated with Caesar. Who says that being ruthless doesn't gain cooperation? Here it seems that Caesar had just had enough of these towns playing games with loyalties, and decided that this town would pay the price for their waffling. Hmmm...interesting implications for when player-characters are in command of forces in the field and they come upon towns that waffle back and forth...what do they do? If you have a paladin order a town "Plundered" so that he can make an example of the town in order to achieve a greater strategic cooperation with nearby towns through the campaign, that isn't going to feel good, or very "chivalrous"--but then again, I have often argued that many of the philosophies that surround paladins are not the ideas of the original ruthless and noble, Knight-Templars, which paladins are clearly based off of, but yet then combined with much of the philosophy from tournament society of some two-three centuries later, where "paladins"--such as they were, were really restricted largely to the neat tournament field where all of these little rules and regulations applying to the paladin could be neatly applied, because everyone else that the paladin encountered in such phony "battlefields" operated by the same standards. Such, it seems, where much of the philososphy comes from, rather from the real mud, slaughter, and difficult decisions that have to be made by everyone involved in ferocious war that is unchained in the real world, rather than the tournament world.

In game terms, I don't think that Caesar was a Lawful Good paladin by any means, but what if a paladin was put in a similar position of desperate command? What if there were Lawful Good paladins serving in such an army, where the army's supreme commander--in this case Caesar--gives the order for you--a junior commander, and a paladin--to "Plunder the city!" The men under your command--including you--are to rape, plunder, and slaughter the entire population. That's certainly a point of tension for a paladin, now isn't it?

Caesar continues though to maintain his luck, and to take advantage of every little thing, to begin adding up to victory. The thing that astonishes me about Caesar, and this is one of the reasons that he is always victorious, is that he is always seeing the opportunities, and exploiting them ruthlessly. There is no device, no strategy, no exploit, no atrocity, no matter how daring, how dangerous, how savage, or how difficult, that he will not pursue if it will lead to victory. Lesser commanders don't do this, and that is why often even when lesser commanders have better position, more equipment, more troops overall, or any number of other advantages, they still end up losing to Caesar, or a commander like him. Pompey doesn't think like Caesar, and so he will not exploit the same opportunities that Caesar will. You can see it in the whole way Pompey operates in his command. Pompey is like an old, regal father playing a grand and noble game, whereas Caesar is like a young, hungry lion, leaping from the shadows, and climbing the mountaintop to the ultimate victory. Very different personalities, and the limitations of Pompey can be seen when compared to Caesar's more ruthless exploitation of every resource, and of every opportunity.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK