From: phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Stephen Harker)
Subject: Re: Altered history of warfare
Organization: Physics Department, Monash University, Australia
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 13:41:32 GMT


From phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Stephen Harker)

In article <BtpCqM.M22@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, c34657b@saha.hut.fi (Tuomas Viljanen) writes:
> 
> In article <BtHx7C.C50@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Stephen Harker) writes:
>>
>>From phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Stephen Harker)
>>
>>In article <BtGJ80.12p@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, c34657b@saha.hut.fi (Tuomas Viljanen) writes:
> 
>>>>This surely depends on the type of cavalry deployed. Crassus had *lots* of
>>>>steady firm close order infantry - the Parthians still cut him to pieces.
>>> 
>>> It was the Parthian _cataphracts_ who rolled them over, _not_ the skirmish-
>>> ing horse archers. Besides, Crassus was a poor general, and let his troops
>>> to go disorganized in pursuing the lights, thus being easy fodder for the 
>>> Parthian super-heavy cavalry. Crassus was an amateur ! Later, the Romans
>>> burned and sacked Ctesiphon so many times they got bored with it.
>>
>>	Actually no it was not the cataphracts.  Surena had a large number
>>of horse archers and a small number of cataphracts.  He used the
>>cataphracts to threaten the Romans so they did not charge the horse
>>archers, and to destroy their cavalry and supporting infantry who did sally
>>out.  However the damage was done by the horse archers due to the small
>>number of missile troops Crassus had.  The Roman legionaries at
>>Tigranocerta (about 30 years before) had charged Mithridates of Pontus's
>>cataphracts and defeated them.  Later Parthian attacks agains Rome with
>>more cataphracts and fewer horse archers were equally unsucessful.  On the
>>whole the Romans had fewer problems with cataphracts than with horse
>>archers as the former were less mobile and so easily charged by their heavy
>>infantry.  All Roman accounts of Carrhae give the cause of their defeat to
>>the horse archers.
> 
> I commented about this for Mr. Askew in my posting to him (my previous article)
> and it was the cataphracts who finally rolled the Romans over, the horse arch-
> ers were used to cause steady stream of casualties (not great, but casualties
> still) to the Legionarii, and to irritate the Romans in a rash charge; as the 
> Romans became tired and disorganized for charging in vain, they fell as easy
> prey for the cataphracts, but this is not to say, that the horse archers did
> not have any part for the Roman defeat. Wheen retreating, the Romans were no
> longer steady nor firm nor close order foot, and therefore fell easily to the
> cavalry. But charging headlong against the Legiones with the lights would
> have been something next to suicide, and the lights simply did not have
> enough firepower to mow the infantry down like the English did for the French
> chivalry; it would have taken too much time, and the Romans could have had
> used their own missile troops if the Parthian heavies had not driven them off.

	The details are complicated, but are well recorded the following
being exerpts from Plutarch's Life of Crassus (well the Penguin English
translation actually):  After some indecision the Romans deployed in a
hollow square with 12 cohorts and a squadron of cavalry per side.  After
they ran into the Parthians Crassus ordered his light troops to charge, but
they were forced back to the main body by arrow fire.  The legionaries now
began to suffer with the Parthian arrows piercing armour and going through
every kind of defensive covering, hard or soft.  The Romans were crowded
together and suffered heavily whether they stood in their ranks or broke
formation and tried to close.  

	When they realised that the Parthians had a resupply of arrows
Crassus ordered his son Publius to take the 1300 cavalry, 500 archers and 8
cohorts of infantry and charge the horse archers.  The Parthians used
feigned flight to lure this force out of touch with the main body and then
counter attacked.  They stationed cataphracts in front of this force, but
did not charge them. "Huddled together in a narrow space and getting into
each others way they were shot down by the arrows".  Publius and a small
group of cavalry then tried to attack the cataphracts but soon fell back to
the rest, the survivors took refuge on  a hill where they were attacked by
horse archers until few were left when a cataphract charge was made.

	The Parthians then returned to the main body who were demoralised
when they realised what had happened.  Cataphracts were used to force the
main body into a compact mass which was then attacked by horse archers. 
The badly weakened main body then escaped after nightfall.  

	So the horse archers caused most of the casualties and did the real
damage.  Of course both cataphracts and horse archers were important in
this sort of battle.  The cataphracts are needed to prevent successful
charges on the horse archers (Parthian horse archers rarely carried
swords), and also to force the infantry force into a compact mass which is
a better target.  The horse archers were able to kill, injure or demoralise
the infantry.  With a weak enough or sufficiently demoralised force a final
cataphract charge could destroy them.  This is analagous to the successful
English battles against the Scots where a combined archer and heavy cavalry
force could destroy the Scottish schiltrons, not that it always worked!

	In practice if you look at the Roman vs Parthian battles listed by
Phil Barker in "The Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome", WREG 4th edition
you get the following:

Carrhae 53BC: 1,000 cataphracts, 10,000 horse archers; Parthians won.
Antigoneia 51BC: no details; Parthians lost.
Taurus 39BC: mainly cataphracts; Parthians lost
Gindarus 38BC: all cataphracts; Parthians lost
Urumia 36BC: 50,000 horse archers, few cataphracts; Antonius forced back.
(This last is more complicated, as Antonius actually won some of the
battles, but lost the war)

>>> Legio - AN TESTUDO ! The Legionarii had their large shields, scuti, 
>>	This _was_ one of their problems at Carrhae, the Parthian bows were
>>more powerful than those they had faced before and the legionaries found
>>the arrows penetrated their shields and armour!  
> 
> Yes, and one could also imagine that the equipment used in the East was not as
> heavy and protective as it was in Europe, where the climate was not so hot.

	Unfortunately I have not seen any evidence of this in any book.  Do
you know of any?  Most references imply that the armour was the same in all
armies, which is not surprising as in this period the Romans did move
troops from one enemy to another.  Later Syrian legions often had a
reputation for laxity such as that described by Tacitus when Corbulo took
charge in the East.

>>	As the Mongols used heavy armour piercing arrows and could fire as
>>fast as the English foot archers the question becomes one of range. 
> 
> Not only of the simple range: also the question of the effective lethal
> range and the density of fire, in which the massed longbow is superior.

	All accounts of the Mongols stress the density of fire which had
dramatic effects on the enemy formations.  The values for effective lethal
range from experiments are equal in what references I have seen, with
perhaps an edge for the composite bows.  However it must be said that the
Mongols preferred to close the range with their horse archers and were
usually firing from less than 100 yards in preference.  Certainly I would
not expect them to destroy a whole force by archery, but neither did anyone
else including the English against French knights on foot at Agincourt!

>>Because of the superior design of the composite bow they could quite
> 
> The construction of the bow is not a factor of how good or how bad a bow is.
> A bow is simply a machine of restoring the muscular energy of the archer, the
> composite construction only allowing it to be reduced in size. The real problem
> is, that most of the 'self' bows are, in fact, of composite construction; the
> wood of the bow has been cut off near the surface of the tree, therefore comb-
> ining the heartwood and sapwood, improving its properties.

	There _is_ a big difference in the performance of a bow depending
on its construction.  I posted an article about this a month or so ago and
don't want to repeat all the details, however Force vs draw graphs in the
following references show that a longbow gives essentially a linear
relationship, while for a composite bow there is a much greater initial
slope which levels out near the full draw length.  The result is the
construction of a composite bow allows it to store more energy for a given
draw length than for a longbow.  The sapwood/heartwood bow is more often
referred to as a compound bow, possibly to make the distinction between
them and true composite bows.  There are a number of other mechanical
problems with the composite bow design which can be seen in the references
given below.  However since composite bows can store more energy they can
have greater penetration _if_ designed to the same drawlength and _if_
designed to fire the same sort of armour piercing arrows.

	Roman Archery Equipment, J. C. Coulston; p 220 
	"The Production and Distribution of Roman Military Equipment", 
	Proc. Second Roman Military Equipment Research Seminar
	Ed. M. C. Bishop (B.A.R. 1985)
	
	The Physics of Bows and Arrows, P. E. Klopsteg
	American J. of Physics, 4, 175-92 (1943)

	The Archers of Islam, W. F. Paterson; 
	J. Economic Social History of the Orient, 9, 69 (1966)

	Early Bow Design and Construction, E McEwen, R L Miller & C A Bergman
	Scientific American, 264, 50-? (1991)


>>possibly achieve accurate fire at the same ranges.
> 
> Accurate - not; the horse archer can not use his whole musculature as the
> foot archer can; he has to also control his horse wit his legs, this again
> reducing the accuracy of his fire. Also fire from a moving, bouncing
> platform is never as accurate than from steady foot: third, a horse and
> a man is much larger target than just a man. 

	There is an advantage of the composite bow over the longbow that
relates to the force - draw curve.  With the longbow as the force increases
linearly with draw there is a great tendence to "creep" of the arrow before
release which leads to a big variation in the energy given to the arrow and
hence the range.  With the composite bow since the force - draw
relationship is essentially constant at full draw this does not occur. 
This advantage tends to counteract the disadvantages you have listed at
_battle_ ranges.  Certainly the ultimate accuracy at full range would
suffer, but this is outside effective range anyhow.

>>What evidence I have seen suggests that Mongol bows were comparable in
>>range and penetrating power to longbows.  I also suspect that the Mongols
>>would have used their mobility to avoid the favourite set piece battles of
>>the English, unlike the French who allowed the English time to set up their
>>formations and then made frontal attacks.
> 
> Certainly, but is there room to manouevre in the Central Europe ? No. Also
> I would think that the castles would have become a great problem for
> the Mongols, who lacked sufficient siege equipment. The only places
> manouevre cavalry warfare vould have successfully employed are Spain, Russia
> and Hungary, where there is enough plains to manouevre, elsewhere a pithc-
> ed battle will happen sooner or later. Would Tulughma tactics have worked
> against well disciplined English, that is another question.

	This gets complicated, but the Mongols had little difficulty with
siege warfare against the Assassin castles, middle east cities and
fortifications and Chinese cities and fortifications.  Admittedly this was
often done using conscripted locals, but there is no reason to think that
Europeans would be more difficult to conscript!  
-- 
Stephen Harker			phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Monash University		Baloney baffles brains: Eric Frank Russell

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