In the summer of 414, the second Syracusan counter wall was captured by the Athenians (see map 5). The Syracusans had built a stockade out from the city and through the marsh with a ditch alongside it, so as to make it impossible for the Athenians to carry their wall down to the sea. The Athenians, once they had finished their fortifications on the cliff, attacked the stockade and ditch. They then ordered the fleet to sail around from Thapsus into the Great Harbour of Syracuse and, at dawn, the army came down from Epipolae into the plain and made their way over the marsh by laying down doors and planks over the parts where the mud was thickest and the ground firmest. By daybreak, they had captured the ditch and the whole of the stockade except for a small section, which they captured later. The Athenians had won this confused battle, but their general Lamachus was killed.78
For the last decade of the Peloponnesian war we lose Thucydides, whose history stops in 411. Fortunately we have Xenophon whose work, Hellenica, is a continuation of Thucydides’ history.79 He reports a dawn attack that took place in the Hellespont in the winter of 411. Shortly after the Spartans had defeated the Athenians in a sea battle, Dorieus, son of Diagoras, sailed from Rhodes into the Hellespont at dawn with a Spartan flotilla of fourteen ships. They were spotted by the Athenian lookout on shore, who informed the generals of their presence. The generals then sailed out against Doreius with twenty ships, but he escaped from them. As he got away he attempted to beach his triremes in the area around Rhoeteum (see map 1). When the Athenians approached, they fought from both the ships and the land. When the Athenians realised they were accomplishing nothing, they sailed away to Madytus to join the rest of their forces.80
Sometimes the opportunity for a surprise attack arose spontaneously. In 406 Lysander’s term as Spartan nauarchos (naval commander) came to an end, and he was replaced by Callicratidas. The new nauarchos learned that his relief fleet was already at Samos. He left fifty of his ships at Mytilene with Eteonikos as commander and sailed to meet the relief fleet with 120 ships. The Spartans stopped for their meal at Cape Malea on Lesbos on the same day the Athenians just happened to be taking their meal on the Arginousae islands. These sites were opposite one another – Cape Malea on Lesbos, across from Mytilene. Callicratidas saw the Athenian fires at night and tried to put to sea in the middle of the night with the intent of staging a surprise attack. However, heavy rain and lightning prevented the attempt. When the rain let up, he sailed again at dawn to the Arginousae islands. The battle eventually took place in better weather, but Callicratidas was killed when his ship rammed another and he fell overboard. The Spartans were defeated and the Athenians sailed back to the Arginousae islands.81
The Sicilian Greek cities that became tributary to Carthage after 405 are the context for a story related by Polyaenus at Acragas in 406. Himilco, the Carthaginian general, encamped near the wall at Agrigentum (see map 7). A large force advanced from the city. Himilco divided his army and attacked with one part, giving secret orders to flee voluntarily. They fled, and the Agrigentans who chased them were drawn far away from the city. Himilco set fire to wood in front of the wall and hid the rest of his men in an ambush. When the pursuers saw the smoke rising from the walls they thought the enemy was burning their city, so they turned around and retired to the city with those who were earlier fleeing from them, now attacking them from the rear. When they reached the ambush, Himilco’s men rose up, killed some of them and captured others.82
Book 4 of Xenophon’s Hellenica chronicles the campaigns of the Spartan king Agesilaus in Asia Minor in 395 and provides us with another attack on a camp. Based on intelligence supplied by Spithradates about the location of Pharnabazus’ camp, Heridippas attacked the camp at dawn with cavalry and infantry, killing many Mysians who were Pharnabazus’ advance guard. Pharnabazus and his men escaped, but the camp was captured along with many drinking cups and other possessions of the sort that Pharnabazus could be expected to have, as well as much baggage and many pack animals.83
The Fourth Century
The same kinds of tactics can be observed in the wars of the fourth century: the Corinthian war, the Theban war (378–372) and beyond. The Spartans showed their skill at deception in a daring, nighttime, amphibious raid aimed at Athen’s harbour-fortress of Piraeus (see map 10). In 387, Teleutias, brother on the Spartan king Agesilaus II, decided to raid the harbour at Piraeus at dawn. When he was five or six stades* from the harbour he stopped and had his men rest, and when day dawned he led them on, and they followed. He commanded his men not to sink or incapacitate any merchant vessel with their own ships when the encounter came, but if they saw any trireme at anchor they were to try to damage it and render it unseaworthy. In addition, they were to tow any loaded merchant ships out of the harbour and to board the larger vessels whenever they could and capture the men on board. Some of his troops went so far as to leap on to the Deigma, an area in the middle of the quayside in the commercial quarter of the Piraeus where merchants displayed their wares. They captured some merchants and shipowners and carried them away.84
Even a Theban general such as Epaminondas, famous for his tactics in the open field, found night movements useful. When he wanted to invade Sparta, but knew the Spartan garrison held Oneium, he declared that he intended to take the army past at night. He slept at the foot of the mountain. The guards of the pass were worn out from staying awake the entire night under arms. When dawn began to appear, the Thebans launched a dawn attack on the Spartan camp and routed them from their position.
We actually have three different accounts of the incident. In Polyaenus’ version Epaminondas attacked the guards, who had gone to sleep, defeating them easily, and went through the pass. The Spartan commander concluded a truce which was considered to be to the advantage of the Thebans and led his troops away. In Frontinus’ version, Epaminondas, with the help of a few light-armed troops, harassed the enemy all night long. Then at daybreak, after he had recalled his own men and the Spartans had also retired, he suddenly moved forward the entire force, which he had kept at rest, and burst directly through the ramparts, which had been left without defenders. In Xenophon’s Hellenica, in an episode from 369, Epaminondas had calculated perfectly, and fell upon the Spartans and Pelleneians just when the night watches were finishing and the rest of the men were rising, each one going about his task. Xenophon illustrates the perfect use of a surprise attack: the Thebans were prepared and in good order, while their opponents unaware and in disorder.85
The Greek tyrant, Dionysius of Syracuse, was famous for his use of mercenaries in surprise attacks.86 He used such an attack on a siege wall in 357/6. First, he detained a group of emissaries from Syracuse, then towards morning plied his mercenaries with strong wine and sent them on a dash against the siege wall about the acropolis. The attack was unexpected, and mercenaries, with great boldness and loud tumult, began to tear down the cross-wall and attack the Syracusans, so that no one dared to stand on the defensive, except the mercenaries of Dio, who first noticed the disturbance and came to the rescue. Plutarch moralises that it was a ‘treacherous pretence’ on the part of the tyrant because he detained the deputation that came to him from Syracuse and then pulled a sneaky stunt to take the city. The attack was unsuccessful, giving fuel to the argument that surprise attacks are neither nice nor effective.87
Assaults on Cities
Various assaults on cities are reported as surprise attacks. Diodorus describes an assault on Athens in 408 from Decelea (see map 11). Agis, the king of Sparta, was in Decelea with his army, when he learned that the best Athenian troops were engaged in an expedition with Alcibiades. He led his army on a moonless night to Athens. He had 28,000 infantry, one-half of whom were picked hoplites and the other half light-armed troops. He also had some 1,200 cavalry, of whom the Boeotians furnished 900 and the rest had been sent with him by Peloponnesians. As Agis drew near the city, he came upon the Athenian outposts before they were aware of him and easily dispersed them because they were taken by surprise. He slew a few and purs
ued the rest within the walls. We should take notice of the mention of light-armed and cavalry troops; they become much more common later in the war, and will be the subject of the next chapter.88
Diodorus reports another attack on a city that occurred in Sicily in 405. Dionysius of Syracuse covered 400 stades at night in order to arrive at the Achradine gate of Syracuse in the middle of the night. He had a hundred cavalry and his 600 infantry bodyguard. Finding the gate closed, he piled reeds brought from the marshes up on the doors and set them on fire. While the gates were being burned down, he gathered his troops and made his way into the city. The staunchest soldiers in the city were gathered in the market place and killed by mercenaries. Dionysius himself ranged through the city killing anyone who came out to resist him.89
Polyaenus reports a series of Thracian nocturnal attacks in 402–401. After plundering Thrace, Clearchus did not return to Byzantium, but rather encamped near the mountains. When he detected the Thracians gathering, he knew that they would attack from the mountains drunk and rushing at them in the night. He ordered his men to remain in arms and to wake themselves up frequently. To be sure they were on guard, he took part of the army out in the dark then appeared, striking his arms in the Thracian manner to scare his men and be sure they were ready for a fight. Therefore, when the Thracians really did appear, intending to catch them asleep, they met the attackers, awake and armed, and killed most of them.90
Ambush in the Classical Age
The breakdown of military decorum during the Peloponnesian war, about which Thucydides writes, led to year-round fighting, unsuspecting cities being attacked at night, and atrocities against citizens. Much of this is the result of a thirty-year war, economic exhaustion and desperation. One might add, that a breakdown in the hoplite system also led to the use of more innovative tactics. When Griffith writes that Athens began to make use of ‘foreign auxiliaries, who showed the way to the light infantry and guerrilla tactics of the fourth century’ he was ignoring the fact that Demosthenes had already been applying these ‘guerrilla tactics’ with success in the fifth century during the Peloponnesian war.91 Thucydides himself was conscious of the new developments in warfare taking place in the Peloponnesian war. The speech he puts in the mouth of Brasidas before Amphipolis emphasises the innovative nature of the actions. He had to explain to the men trained in hoplite battle the fighting advantage of the use of a small striking force separated from the whole army.92
As we have seen from all the above examples, surprise attacks occurred throughout the Classical Age. They are not entirely ignored by ancient writers, but they are certainly undervalued by modern ones. When the evidence for ambush and surprise attack was collected by W. Kendrick Pritchett, he found so many examples he had to divide them into several categories: night attacks, dawn attacks, daytime attacks occurring when the enemy was disorganised, sea assaults and ambushes.93 These divisions are based on function, and they were all performed by Greek armies – mostly against each other. There is no division into ‘good people’ who do not ambush and ‘immoral people’ who do. Using ambush and surprise attack is a function of two variables: what kind of troops one has, and what kind of situation presents itself.
Some Greeks had always used ambush – mostly those who lived in mountainous country and were too poor to field a hoplite phalanx. Others, who had previously relied on hoplites, had to adapt to a new environment where ambush was now used against them. A commander such as Demosthenes, once ambushed by light-armed soldiers and defeated, would learn quickly to use the same tactics to his advantage. His calamitous defeat in Aetolia had taught him a lesson. His operations and those of other generals would now consist of laying ambushes behind the enemy along roads and in other suitable places, followed by surprise attacks, reconnaissance expeditions and the occupation of dominating positions to ensure the safety of the route taken by their own soldiers and as a precaution against surprise attacks by the enemy.94 Demosthenes became famous for using innovative tactics that were both the cause of some of his successes and of his greatest failure. Joseph Roisman, in his study of Demosthenes’ use of surprise, warns against an unwarranted faith in the effectiveness of military surprise. He argues that Demosthenes’ choice of a night battle at Epipolae was an appalling risk and, in the end, an appalling fiasco.95 It is true that Demosthenes’ predilection for military surprise led him to plan, without adequate military intelligence, the catastrophic night attack on Epipolae, which set the stage for the ultimate defeat of the Athenian expeditionary force.96 This can be attributed as much to overambition as it can to the choice to strategies. It is one of the great ironies that Demosthenes himself succumbed to the very tactics with which he had proved himself to be a strategist of exceptional quality.97
One of Mao Tse Tung’s premises is that guerrilla activities should be, if possible, combined with those of regular troops. And that is exactly what Demosthenes did with his light infantry and peltasts. There is no absolute proof that Brasidas and Cleon were influenced by the strategy of Demosthenes, but once a commander has success with a certain strategy word spreads. Clinging to an old strategy that no longer works can be dangerous. In Gomme’s discussion of the Battle of Amphipolis, he suggests that ‘… one cause of Athenian failure in the Archidamian war was too close adherence to old-fashioned hoplite tactics, in Aetolia, at Spartolus and Amphipolis’. Demosthenes had not carried enough weight.98
Even a conventional Spartan commander such as Brasidas, who was much more comfortable commanding hoplites and using conventional Spartan tactics, resorted to ambush for his greatest victory. This was not an aberration; he was learning from other commanders. He captured cities with the help of traitors and peltasts. He seemed to have a special talent for small operations – night attacks and surprises that required cunning, speed and daredevil courage. Had he lived in a later age when light-armed troops were more common, he might have become a great guerrilla leader.99 Handicapped by his slender reserves of men and money, and not having the vast resources of the Athenians or command of the sea, he knew he had to avoid prolonged campaigns and sieges, and especially pitched battles.100 It has been suggested that he lacked any larger strategic vision and that what he was even doing in Thrace is obscure. But whatever wider war aims were envisaged, Brasidas did a fine job on the ground with the few battles in which we see him fight, and his success was due to the very tactics scholars argue are so un-Greek.
In The Greek State at War, W. K. Pritchett remarks that the Greek language never developed a word for ‘surprise attack’, implying that the deed was a rarity.101 Yet it was exactly this strict etiquette of behaviour that made ambushing so easy. The ruse of attacking during the midday siesta was never unsuccessful because no one expected it. The possibility of an ambush while on the march was so great that hostages were routinely taken as a preventative measure against the possibility: for example, Thucydides reports that in the Spartan operations in Ozolian Locris in 426 (see map 1) the Spartans sent an army of 3,000 men to help the Aetolians. Hostages were taken from the Amphissans, however, just to ensure that they would not ambush the Spartans along the way to Aetolia.102
Modern commentators have explained what they call ‘the sparse use of surprise’ by infantry in Classical Greece by postulating cultural inhibitions,103 and yet the idea of a surprise attack when the enemy is off-guard, even during a celebration, is as old as the story of the fall of Troy itself. Aeneas Tacticus warned that a particularly dangerous time for a city was a festival.104 On at least three occasions this idea was used by fifth columnists. Plataea (see map 3) was betrayed on a night during a festival period.105 The oligarchic coup d’état at Argos was carried out during a festival and Aeneas Tacticus uses it as an example of the danger inherent in holding a festival outside the city.106 Added to this is the Athenian plan to catch the population of Mytilene by surprise while they were celebrating a festival to Apollo outside the city.107 Surprise attacks were used to cause panic and confusion, so attacking at night or during a festiva
l would make the odds of this much greater. People roused from their beds at night could not mount any organised resistance. They would not know how many invaders there were, or even tell friend from foe in the dark. In the betrayals of Amphipolis,108 Torone109 and Plataea we see this kind of suspicion and confusion among the inhabitants.
The use of ambush became more frequent, but it was neither invented in the fifth century nor contrary to what the Greeks had been doing in previous ages. Despite being dismissed as being of no real military significance by Clausewitz and other modern commentators, ambushes and surprise attacks did yield some impressive results.110 The Boeotian ambush of the Athenians at Coronea in 447 compelled the Athenians to evacuate Boeotia. The Phliasians’ ambush of the invading Argives in 416 ended their campaign. Brasidas’ surprise attack at Amphipolis in 422 earned him hero-worship,111 while Lysander was worshipped as a god on Samos after his surprise attack at Aegospotami ended Athenian naval supremacy in 404.112 Demosthenes’ ambush of an army and subsequent surprise attack on its reinforcements in 426 inflicted what Thucydides called ‘the greatest disaster that happened to any one Greek city in an equal number of days during the war’.113
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