tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post4213565864893383583..comments2024-03-28T00:11:33.489-04:00Comments on bensozia: Eric Kline, "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed"Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-89303811305651077402021-02-08T13:35:42.042-05:002021-02-08T13:35:42.042-05:00"Men occasionally rode horseback as early as ..."Men occasionally rode horseback as early as the 14th century BC."<br /><br />(...)<br /><br />"The difficulty of remaining firmly on a horse's back without saddle or stirrups was, however, very great; and especially so if a man tried to use his hands to pull a bow at the same time -- or wield some other kind of weapon. For centuries horseback riding remained unimportant in military engagements, though perhaps specially trained messengers used their horses fleetness to deliver information to army commanders."<br /><br />-- William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power<br />-- paperback edition, page 14, footnote<br /><br />So that's what he has to say about horses and war. I have no idea why saddles and stirrups wouldn't be available.<br /><br />As to chariots, I'm not sure how valuable they were, either, but they were not worthless on flat ground. They were, though, I believe, expensive to make and maintain at this time. I'm sure well trained armies knew of several strategies to nullify the advantages of chariots, not the least of which would be to pick rocky and hilly terrain to fight on if their opponent was known for chariot fighting. <br /><br /><br />Shadowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05353532874773316117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-20480018050923026012021-02-07T05:37:18.216-05:002021-02-07T05:37:18.216-05:00@John
I said up front, I think they get overrated...@John<br /><br />I said up front, I think they get overrated.<br /><br />But that has nothing to do with how absurd it is to then posit <i>"I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that never in history did a force of chariots defeat a force of disciplined, well-armed infantry."</i> That's a ridiculous sort of metric to apply, even if you do think chariot are overrated - which I do.<br /><br />The "attack helicopter" thing actually works pretty well as a comparative point of value - you don't send in attack helicopters by themselves to take out a force of disciplined, well-armed infantry, because <i>they will get shot down</i>. Helicopters are actually fairly fragile, and can be dropped out of the sky with everything from the classic RPG to simple small arms fire in high enough volume or accuracy. The use of attack helicopters is to fly in quickly, harass the enemy, then fly back out to safety before they get taken down - which is pretty much the exact same usage of a chariot. If chariots stuck around, they'd be destroyed.<br /><br />I agree that some of the people out there talking about chariots definitely overplay their importance, but I know that others (see historian Mike Loades, for example) are reputable experts who are simply trying to find comparisons which help modern audiences understand the comparative role and value of chariots, without trying to argue they were the end all and be all of bronze age warfare.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-91600333620080916882021-02-06T14:46:32.089-05:002021-02-06T14:46:32.089-05:00@G-if you think I am missing the point, go on YouT...@G-if you think I am missing the point, go on YouTube and search for Bronze Age Collapse or Chariot Warfare and tell me those guys don't think chariots were like armed helicopters or something. They are bonkers. You can watch a whole whole video about late Bronze Age states which makes their power entirely about chariots, as if this were 1910 and chariots were Dreadnoughts-class battleships.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-34448371111412199182021-02-06T09:20:01.526-05:002021-02-06T09:20:01.526-05:00I would be willing to bet that disciplined, well-a...I would be willing to bet that disciplined, well-armed troops of any sort are hard to beat in a pitched battle. But in a whole campaign, what's decisive will vary from moment to moment; sometimes it will be battle performance (as John is describing here), but sometimes it will be mobility, sometimes the depth of motive, sometimes the sheer size of one's territory or population, and very often, the depth of one's pockets--or even better, the depth of one's credit. Pure quality of battle performance is a weak reed on which to base power--e.g., early modern Sweden.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-11497582565778973522021-02-06T00:56:09.984-05:002021-02-06T00:56:09.984-05:00I would be willing to bet a large sum of money tha...<i>I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that never in history did a force of chariots defeat a force of disciplined, well-armed infantry.</i><br /><br />Perhaps, perhaps not, but how often in history did a force of purely <i>cavalry</i> defeat a force of disciplined, well-armed infantry?<br /><br />Infantry are always king. That's largely true even today, with aircraft and armor and artillery. You can do a hell of a lot of damage with those specialized forces, but they need a core of infantry to support and <i>to be supported by</i> in order to be truly effective. You can't just build an army out of nothing but tanks and call it a day. You will ultimately lose without a <i>large</i> core of infantry.<br /><br />You might as well say that "<i>I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that never in history did a force of <b>archers</b> defeat a force of disciplined, well-armed infantry.</i> It entirely misses the point.<br /><br />"Combined arms" is an ancient concept, and it exists for a reason. Chariots, like archers and all the others, didn't typically win battle by themselves - instead, they simply made the enemy forces have to defend themselves in a way that made them more vulnerable to the infantry they were also fighting simultaneously. These things are <i>force multipliers</i>, rather than significant forces unto themselves.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-30984140106215860362021-02-06T00:48:30.449-05:002021-02-06T00:48:30.449-05:00Sometimes you may read that people used chariots u...<i>Sometimes you may read that people used chariots until they mastered fighting from horseback, which you will sometimes read was introduced by the Assyrians, but horse-riding is older than chariots. All of these people need to read Soldiers and Ghosts.)</i><br /><br />My understanding has been that yes, horse riding is older than chariot usage... but that riding horses is not the same thing as fighting from them, and that horses of the era were still small, and therefor not suited to being ridden by heavy cavalrymen equipped with weighty bronze armor, large shields, large bows, etc.<br /><br />While I do feel chariots probably get somewhat more credit than they really deserve, it does seem clear that they were useful and filled a niche role. Sure, you could employ your horses as light cavalry, with riders in little to no armor and wielding spears or similar weapons, but that more or less restricts their usefulness to running down routing enemies. Great for "winning more" after a fight, not so great for helping ensure that you win a close battle.<br /><br />What a chariot instead allowed was a skirmishing force that was faster and more mobile than anything else on the battlefield (save horse-riding light cavalry). It combined the ranged punch of archers with the speed and endurance of horses, in a way that simply wasn't possible otherwise at that time.<br /><br />Horse archery isn't terribly feasible without specialized bows which are smaller for use on horseback - see the various recurve bows of every major horse archery tradition. There are exceptions (for example, the samurai of Japan notably used the utterly massive yumi longbow from horseback), but in general if you wanted a force of horse archers (who actually fought from horseback) rather than simply a force of mounted archer (who rode horses for transportation, but dismounted before fighting), you needed large horses and small bows (usually recurve or composite or both), and ideally stirrups as well for even better stability, control, and accuracy.<br /><br />Don't have those things, but still want mobile archers who fight while moving? Put your archers in a chariot, which can be pulled even by small horses, and which have plenty of room to accommodate even large bows. As a bonus, your archer doesn't need to also be trained in managing horses - you have a driver expressly for that purpose, who likewise doesn't need to be a trained archer.<br /><br />And this division of labor introduces certain other logistical benefits - need to move a bunch of troops in a hurry? Turns out, any soldier can jump into a chariot and get dropped off somewhere else to continue fighting far faster than they could travel on foot. Your infantry are out of position and can't engage the enemy? Send in your chariots, have them drop off their archers somewhere they can safely fire from, then have them pick up your stranded infantry to ferry them somewhere more useful. If you have 500 chariots, you can certainly relocate 500 infantry at a time, and perhaps even double or triple that in a pinch if the chariots are sizeable / sturdy enough to temporarily overload with extra passengers.<br /><br />Chariots were a way to respond quickly to weaknesses or even gaps in the enemy lines, and punish your opponents for making mistakes. Yes, they struggled against disciplined, well-armed infantry - <i>but so did literally everything else</i>. And the entire <i>point</i> of a skirmishing force is to harry and harass enemies in order to <i>break their discipline</i>, and <i>blunt their arms</i> by getting them to waste spears and ammunition, damaging or destroying their shields via missiles to inhibit shield walls, and create casualties which require tending to and disrupt the ability to maintain formations.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com