Roman Army Drill

[John Conyard]

Excellent post. What I was hoping for in fact. Rather than a discussion on pronunciation, a consideration of early Imperial drill and its basis. I find military drill a very stimulating topic, not least because we can understand it and reference it against different systems from history. Various systems can be judged by their spacings, facings, wheelings, counter marching and the doubling/halving of files.

Something that often strikes me is that in a well disciplined body of troops, with a well established order of precedence – basically who stands where, files are normally doubled by their half files etc. We see this is Hellenistic armies for example, and the drill societies of the 17th century. But in mass conscript armies and often modern ones, files are double by alternate ranks and this is the system advocated by Maurice. I appreciate he was writing, or been written for, long after the height of the legions development in the 4th century, and perhaps his illiterate Anatolian recruits needed a simpler system. And later drill may have needed to accommodate legionaries who had different functions, perhaps getting armati to the front and scutati to the rear.

As ever I am interested in your ideas..

[kranger3]

Very interesting topic! Well, I love everything related to drill, so there you go! I just wanted to add some food for thought out there, to see what you guys think of my reasoning here:

The question raised is: was there a drill manual for the Roman army in the early Principate, and even before? The question I raise is: how do you move a large body of troops without some kind of coherent instruction that will be understood by all, especially if that body of troops is described by ancient authors as being "disciplined"? The very nature of "discpline" require some kind of more or less uniform teachings that make people "react" more than "think". This is what separates a soldier from a warrior: soldiers work together as a single entity, whereas warriors fights as individuals. And to create soldiers, you have to teach them to fight as a coherent entity, hence you need to drill them.

So in my mind, there is no doubt that there was some kind of drill. More specifically, I think that they had, at the very least, fighting techniques and evolutions. By evolutions, I mean common ways of marching and moving as a unit. More modern drill always has evolutions and a Manual of Arms (which is a series of movement you make with your body and/or service weapon: Present Arms, Shoulder Arms, Salute, face right, left, about face and the like).

The very fact that the legion was divided in cohorts and centuries meant that these units had roles within a fighting formation (otherwise, you just need to bunch up everybody in a single mass of men and send them straight at the enemy). If these units had roles, then the must have learned how to fill these roles. For example, at Zama, when Scipio had his men open up their ranks to draw Hannibal's elephant in "corridors of death", this is an evolution that had to be practised again and again before the battle. Whether they had an actual manual for it is irrelevent, it is still considered, by definition, to be some kind of drill (more specifically, an evolution).

Now, were those evolutions and techniques identical across the different legions? Maybe, maybe not. In that regard, I think we can also draw comparisons with more modern periods. For example, in the British Army, we had to wait until the publishing of the 1764 Drill Manual before the government started to try and impose a common set of evolutions and a common Manual of Arms. Before that date, every single regiment learned what their colonel fancied, and a regiment which changed colonel 3 times in 7 years would have had to learn 3, sometimes quite different, drills. So would all the regiments in the British Army under James Wolfe present on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, on September 13, 1759, trained with the same drill book? Curiously, not at all! But were they all able to cooperate as a single army, yes! An important note, however: British regiments in this time frame were raised and partly paid for by their respective colonel, being reimbursed afterward by the state. So, the Colonel had often a big say in what the regiment looked like. But this also reminds us of certain Roman generals who did raise their own legions, mmm...)

Now, this could mean that we could contemplate a possibility that Romans soldiers did not all use the same drill... It could possible that it differed from legion to legion, although retaining a commonality...

By having reenacted several time periods (French and Indian War 1754-1760, American Revolution 1776-1783, War of 1812, American Civil War 1861-1865, Second World War 1939-1945) and by serving a short time in the modern Canadian Army, I was able to learn and study several drill manuals from different authors and different times. Although the small details do change to reflect changes in tactics, esthetics and weapons' characteristics, the basics of moving and marching didn't change that much between Bland's British manual of 1727 and the modern parade drill book of the Canadian Army in 2011 (of course, modern parade drill is not used in battle, but it is a relic of linear tactics in use from the 1600s to the First World War)). Still we're talking about almost 300 years of military evolution and change, but we're still doing the roughly same basic moves today...! So would Vegetius and Maurice be THAT far off? I don't think so, especially since technology was quite similar (although the type of enemies had changed). In details maybe it was different, but the general idea might be quite similar.

However, I don't know if the Roman army did have what we call a Manual of Arms, at least in the form we find it in more modern times (with precise, timed movements and the like). However, they must have used certain words of command to sheath/unsheath swords, turn right, left and so on. But were these commands uniform, even with the same officer? Hard to know from period texts.

[Sean Manning]

I've always wondered how a Republican legion was organized and drilled, since it appears from Polybius that there was no permanent cadre to do training and organization like modern militias have. I think most of the anecdotes refer to generals training their soldiers on campaign. Maybe drill was passed off to the veterans who had been recruited?

It wouldn't surprise me if each legion had its own slightly different drill under the emperors, since the Roman army didn't have a fetish for standardization.

[Crispvs]

"(although the sqaure was used to great effect in the European armies in the Napoleonic era but please don't ask me to cite the VERY last use...my source is 1871)"

OT I know, but just to update your final date, when my great grandfather was killed in 1903 his unit had retreated in good order in the face of a vastly numerically superior enemy for around three and a half miles before they were finally overwealmed by the Mad Mullah's forces. They formed square when first charged by the Mullah's cavalry and then maintained the square to perform a fighting retreat. The effectiveness of the square as late as 1903 is demonstrated by the fact that they managed to cover three and a half miles before numbers were sufficiently reduced that the full formation could not be maintained. It was only after the square was broken they could no longer maintain a sufficient defence. The Mullah's army numbered thousands and they probably surrounded the square to attack it from all sides. So, still in use as an effective defence as late as 1903, despite the amount of lead flying about in both directions.

Sorry to drag this OT

Crispvs