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"Evolution
of Weaponry"
A
Brief Survey of Weapons Evolution
The
Roman System
It must be remembered that the Roman Empire lasted for approximately
half a millennium (and longer if we count the Eastern Roman
Empire) and that to say "the Romans did this" or "the Romans
did that" would generally be inaccurate when referring to
a military system that evolved and changed constantly across
the centuries. But certain things did stay somewhat constant
over the centuries in the Roman legions, and it was these
constant factors that can be generally attributed to the
extraordinary military success of the Roman Empire, starting
in the 2nd and 1st Centuries B.C. and continuing for around
500 years.
The
Greek phalanx required a high degree of training to be effective,
but an efficient phalanx could still be achieved, for example,
as the product of a local militia who trained in their free
time. But the Roman system was a highly complex professional
army that devoted itself full-time to the development of
its skills and to the development of a leadership structure
with systematic professional advancement based on merit,
taking soldiers from the ranks and placing them in charge
of larger and larger groups of men as they demonstrated
competence at each level. The Roman open order of battle
permitted their small-unit leaders to move behind the battle
line, holding their men accountable and rewarding skill
and valor with advancement and reward. Today most professional
armies are designed around a professional small-unit leadership
drawn from the ranks with advancement based on merit, and
small-unit leaders who have proven themselves in combat
(except in emergencies) are expected to stay behind their
men in order to directly influence their actions in battle,
but it must be remembered that the Romans were the first
to truly, systematically introduce these factors to the
battlefield on a large scale over a long period of time.
Another
key aspect of the Roman way of war was the fact that each
of their soldiers carried a variety of throwing spears (the
number and type varied over the years) with which they were
highly proficient. An approaching enemy was greeted with
a series of volleys from these spears, which served to break
up an enemy's ranks and often to strip them of their shields.
These ingeniously designed distance weapons often included
light javelins, which were thrown at a long range, followed
by a standard heavy spear (or pilum), which was thrown at
a medium range, followed by a lead-weighted pilum, which
was hurled, with enormous force, as one final volley before
closing with swords.
After
shattering an approaching enemy force from a distance with
a series of spear volleys, the Romans closed with short
swords designed and intended for stabbing. These swords
were often qualitatively no different from those of their
opponents, but the Romans were systematically trained to
use their swords to stab and thrust in a highly effective
way that was largely unprecedented prior to this. Like the
post-World War II training that was to be developed two
millennia later to condition men to fire in combat, Roman
training used constant, repetitive training, to the point
where it could be accurately described as conditioning,
in order to insure that their soldiers would thrust in combat
rather than use the more natural hacking and slashing blows.
This was a technique that was to be used in later centuries
to train some elite warriors in fencing and swordsmanship,
but never before, nor probably since, has an entire army
been trained to this degree of perfection.
This combination of projectile weapons, intense training,
and the presence of effective small-unit leaders who moved
behind their men and demanded effective killing activities
was a devastating force that smashed approaching enemy formations,
including the phalanx. The final ingredient in a Roman battlefield
victory was the organization of their forces into small
units with reserves with dispassionate, highly trained,
small-unit leaders operating behind their men, ready to
maneuver their unit to exploit any exposed enemy flanks
or penetrate deep into the enemy rear. Once the enemy was
defeated, the final blow (and most of the killing) was executed
by cavalry auxiliaries (which, still without stirrups, were
little different from the cavalry of the Greeks), who would
pursue and kill a broken, fleeing enemy.
The result of this complex process was the Pax Romana: hundreds
of years of relative stability and peace in the western
world. But it was a fragile strength, created through complexity
and economic abundance, difficult to sustain in the best
of times, and impossible to replicate (at least in western
Europe) for almost a millennium after the Roman Empire collapsed.
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