Gang combat

[Sean Manning]

The crowding could result from any flank attack, whether hand to hand or with arrows. Kelly de Vries' Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th Century would be a good place to start; Hardy and Strickland's The Great Warbow is another (but keep in mind that Hardy has some extravagant ideas about the ability of arrows to kill men in armour ... Strickland's chapters are more measured). The basic idea of late Medieval English tactics, when they had a large force of archers and less men-at-arms and spearmen (which wasn't always the case), was to watch the enemy shy away from the arrows and mass in front of the part of the line which was made up of spearmen. Then short-range clouds of arrows, or a charge to the flanks, would complete the work of crowding and disordering. It might not have worked so well if any of their opponents had been drilled to Hellenistic standards.

Keegan's The Face of Battle quotes a primary source on Agincourt who describes the French first line starting out as a continuous formation but dividing into three groups facing the three groups of English men-at-arms as it approached the English. Part of that was the desire to avoid the English arrows, part was a desire to get at the English nobles (fighting them was worth money and glory; dismembering archers less so). Evidence is so scarce in studying ancient warfare that I think its important to use all the anthropological parallels- and scientific evidence- as we can.