I'm going to see if I can't dig it up. No point in even continuing if I can't find my source. I think the article referring to forces maintaining a stand-off distance may have been a separate article. You're right about it probably being Visby.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/...utely.html
What do you think of this?
He concludes men maintained a distance and then would surge, clash, and then separate again. This would occur until a route. You see the same thing during a riot, there's always 5-10 feet in front of the riot police that the crowd stands off at.
I forgot how great that article was. Even the quote, ""Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second" "
I may have misread and confused something about the Visby account. I believe that to be the battle, but can't find the description of the man who was cleaved in half.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/...utely.html
What do you think of this?
Quote:Roman heavy infantry engagements possessed several clear characteristics which must be accounted for by any model of the combat mechanics involved. If not decided at the first clash, the contests often dragged on for an hour or more before one side finally broke and fled. The losers could suffer appalling casualties in the battle itself or in the ensuing pursuit, but the victors rarely suffered more than 5 per cent fatalities even in drawn-out engagements. The fighting lines could shift back and forth over hundreds of yards as one side withdrew or was pushed back by its opponents. Finally, the Romans had a practical system for the passage of lines, and preferred to reinforce or replace tired units with fresh ones rather than maximizing the depth of the initial fighting line. [1]
He concludes men maintained a distance and then would surge, clash, and then separate again. This would occur until a route. You see the same thing during a riot, there's always 5-10 feet in front of the riot police that the crowd stands off at.
Quote:The tempo of their battles would have been decided by fear and terror, as it was with the Romans. Sabin's model of periodic surges of courage temporarily hurling front lines together should be the default image of every mass infantry battle waged in the pre-modern era.
Quote:Why would parts of each line sporadically surge forward into contact? The key individuals would surely be the 'natural fighters' and junior leaders, who would encourage a concerted lunge forward to overcome the understandable reluctance among their comrades to be the first to advance into the wall of enemy blades. Roman sub- units such as centuries, maniples, and cohorts offered an ideal basis for such localized charges, whereas tribal warriors would mount less disciplined attacks led by the bolder spirits among them. The many accounts of Roman standard-bearers carrying or flinging their standards towards the enemy to embolden the onslaught of their comrades (as at Pydna and in Caesar's invasion of Britain) are of obvious relevance in this connection (Plutarch, Aem. 20; Caesar, BG 4.25). Across an overall infantry battlefront many hundreds of yards wide, the back and forth movement of individual sub-units or warrior bands just the crucial few yards to engage in or disengage from hand-to-hand combat would not prejudice the maintenance of the overall line. If such flurries of sword fighting were not quickly decisive, then sheer physical and nervous exhaustion, coupled with the killing or wounding of the key junior leaders who were inspiring their men to engage, would lead the two sides to separate back to the default stand-off.
I forgot how great that article was. Even the quote, ""Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second" "
I may have misread and confused something about the Visby account. I believe that to be the battle, but can't find the description of the man who was cleaved in half.
Christopher Vidrine, 30
