07-24-2007, 02:13 PM
From my personal experience in riots (in front of the police line)
1) The excitation is very high, people respond with outburst of courage and panick liberally displayed at every movement. We lacked any training, discipline and, except for a few people, any command organization.
2) From the police line there were, however, similar movements
3) We exchanged insults and bad gestures almost continually, by instinct rather than by design we understood we had to destroy their formation by encouraging individual policemen to attack, so we abused them as best as we could. Some of them actually broke ranks and went after us, and some of them receive some damage because of that. I understand perfectly why Romans were so insistent on no one breaking ranks. While they were in close formation anyone of us trying to beat any of them got more than he asked for.
So, to sum up, in my experience to remain in formation at every cost, and the discipline and command and control to achieve that is the key to success.
1) The excitation is very high, people respond with outburst of courage and panick liberally displayed at every movement. We lacked any training, discipline and, except for a few people, any command organization.
2) From the police line there were, however, similar movements
3) We exchanged insults and bad gestures almost continually, by instinct rather than by design we understood we had to destroy their formation by encouraging individual policemen to attack, so we abused them as best as we could. Some of them actually broke ranks and went after us, and some of them receive some damage because of that. I understand perfectly why Romans were so insistent on no one breaking ranks. While they were in close formation anyone of us trying to beat any of them got more than he asked for.
So, to sum up, in my experience to remain in formation at every cost, and the discipline and command and control to achieve that is the key to success.
AKA Inaki
