Medieval combat?

[Last Hussar]

Morning all (Orcs, quiet about me posting during the weekday daytime - I'm on leave!)

Question about medieval combat.

As mentioned elsewhere, I tend towards the 'splody stick end of things - Sunjester is the stabby stick one.

I've recently got Fields of Glory 11 - Medieval.

Battles start with two lines (with a 2nd line of gap pluggers). After a bit of skirmishing where the archers muck about, the two lines crash into each other.

As units start to retreat, gaps appear in the line. The now freed winner then can help the unit to their side out. This means the battle devolves into a number of pockets of fights, until one side frees a big enough flank to sweep across the line.

My questions...

1) is this also normal in actual tabletop wargaming?
2) Was it normal in actual historic battles?

Thanks

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds about right

[d_Guy]

What is your rough date range for medieval?

[Last Hussar]

About 1100 to about 1500

[d_Guy]

Thanks, that seems to be the way it normally plays out on the tabletop (unless some sort of army break point is used).

Historical, when one side begins to waver and 2nd line begins to retreat it often quickly devolved into a rout. (The reason for army break points in some rule).

[Last Hussar]

In FoG when a unit breaks, adjacent units have to make a morale test.

[sunjester]

Sunjester is the stabby stick one.

At what point have I ever stated this?

[fred.]

I tend to find this is what happens in most games - turning a flank is key. With Hail Caesar it often came down to which unit your heavy cavalry could overmatch the best, break them and pivot into the flank of the adjacent unit. 

As to what happened in actual battles - most approximately real time accounts rarely go into this level of detail. 

[tony of TTT]

Medieval battles were not all as simple as that. Unlike wargamers, who tend to want every unit in the front line, even Medieval generals tried to keep a reserve and they tried ruses and stratagems too. True, we don't know the nitty-gritty of a lot of battles, but we do know enough to know that command and control was just as important then as it was in earlier and later times. Look to Byzantine military manuals and see that they are just as sophisticated as those of the 17th & 18th centuries.

[Last Hussar]

That's a good point, one I try to remind myself of. Modern people think history was stupid; they weren't, they just didn't have our technology,  so of course it was more basic.

I have been keeping a second line, but that plugs gaps as front line units rout. I wonder how it really went; we tend to go for solid unbroken lines.

I know the Romans used a checkerboard formation, I wonder how that works.

If I can ever get the designer function to work, I am going to set up various learning scenarios, to try and teach myself what was passed down 800 years ago.

Bonus point. An example of things they knew in the 13th century. Snails in manuscripts.  Look at medieval manuscripts,  the margins have lots of pictures of giant snails; knights killing snails, snails killing knights, knights riding snails in jousts.

We just don't know why. It is theorised that this was a well known representation of something in the Middle Ages, so well known, nobody thought to write it down. And then the reason was forgotten.

Combat from the period may be the same.

[Ithoriel]

To me the checker-board formation makes no sense as a combat formation but a lot of sense as a formation when advancing the the point where the battle line will be formed. I don't imagine we will ever know if or how it was used.

I do wish the ancients had had the sense to explain things properly.  

No forethought, clearly.

[d_Guy]

Don't forget the rabbits. They were equal to the snails and more expressive.

[steve_holmes_11]

To me the checker-board formation makes no sense as a combat formation but a lot of sense as a formation when advancing the the point where the battle line will be formed. I don't imagine we will ever know if or how it was used.

I do wish the ancients had had the sense to explain things properly. 

No forethought, clearly.

There's all manner of speculation among reenactors and the more geometrically minded historian.

I'm not aware of any existing drill manuals that solve the mystery.
As we well know, contemporary art simply adds confusion.

It is unfortunately impractical to assemble enough reenactors to do much drill.
That leaves historians and diagrams, with three main hypotheses.

1. The gaps in the front line are small enough to represent a kill box which no sensible enemy will enter.
    This relies on sensible enemy (a catch-22 when the enemy have already taken arms against the military power of the age).
    It also assumes a roman formation that doesn't respond to enemy action.

2. The Romans are drilled to fight with at least three frontal densities. Packed in similar to testudo, ordinary for marching and shield work, more open for fencing against lighter enemy.
    This idea says the gaps in each line are filled if a formation deploys into the open order.

3. The second line will quickly advance into the gaps to present a solid shieldwall when needed.
    This combines with #1 against "impetuous" enemy, who charge and hit the frontline, but are countercharged by the second line in the gaps.


In reality there's probably a little of each happening depending on the skill and training of the Legion.

Big battle wargaming tends to regiment us into thinking about troops in fixed geometry blocks - unable to negotiate that 38mm wide gap.
I find it helpful to imagine what's taking place within an imaginary "zone of control".

[Ithoriel]

Don't forget the rabbits. They were equal to the snails and more expressive.

[Last Hussar]

Don't forget the rabbits. They were equal to the snails and more expressive.

Bastards!

[Big Insect]

I tend to find this is what happens in most games - turning a flank is key. With Hail Caesar it often came down to which unit your heavy cavalry could overmatch the best, break them and pivot into the flank of the adjacent unit.

As to what happened in actual battles - most approximately real time accounts rarely go into this level of detail.

Which historically is actually a nonsense.

Very few ancient battles and fewer 'medieval' ones are decided by a force winning on a flank and turning the flank of its opponent. Most classical ancient battles have the cavalry (on the flanks) seeing off their opposite number and then rushing off the field after them. There are (of course) notable exceptions (much quoted instances of returning victorious Carthaginian cavalry wings being the case regularly cited). But most cavalry forces were spent by the time they defeated their opposite numbers and most battles are won by breakthroughs in the centre.

With regards to 'medieval' battles - even in large battles its mostly about retinues. You read of this lords retinue (or household troops etc.) breaking and leaving a gap and that weakens the line which then collapses into a series of vicious 'scrums' until one side has had enough. The loyalty of retainers to their lieges is why in certain battles you can get such high casualties - Towton is a good example. It is often stated (with no good authority) that it was the asymmetrical archery dual that caused the high casualty rate, but if you review Towton through another lens, it was also one of the WotR battles with the highest number of nobles involved, on both sides.
It's why town levies like Coventry and York etc. were not really viewed as being as good as the retinues, as they has limited loyalty and staying power. Even the 'professional' garrison at Calais was viewed as 'flakey' outside the defense of the town and its pale.
 
 

[d_Guy]

Bastards!

Please, you're making my hare stand on end.

[d_Guy]

Pretty fowl, Mike.

[Last Hussar]

Dad jokes aside... 

That makes some sort of sense - an infantry 'base' is usually 8 figures, cavalry 3. The manual/rules states 60:1 figure scale, but at the number reported in-game, it appears more like 40:1. A local retinue of about 320 seems reasonable (to someone who knows very little about gaming the period). When a unit breaks, the adjacent units take a morale test, but this could be more 'beggar'*, there's a gap' rather than 'Young Jonny has run off'.

*Other words available.

[fred.]

Most rules focus far more on combat and its effects rather than the morale side of battle - I think there is a lot of wargames habit / familiarity here. We are used to rolling dice and killing things. 

Morale affects are there, but they are often secondary to weapons, armour and their impacts on the game. 

But I'm not sure a morale centric game would really appeal to people - or not to those of us who have spent decades playing games that conform to a expected norm of rules behaviour!

And earlier when I referred to flank - I was thinking more of smashing a hole in the line, and turning into the flank of the next unit. Rather than the flank of the whole army.