Guerrilla fighters in the town of Santa Clara attack a Cuban army post at Camajuani in December 1958. As the revolutionaries consolidated their position, more civilian Cubans joined their ranks, armed only with what they could find.
CHAPTER 3
INNOVATION
An early tank supports an advance of the British 40th Division on 23 November 1917 at Graincourt les Havrincourt, part of an offensive against the German lines during the Battle of Cambrai on the Western Front.
A good case can be made for the proposition that innovation in war, whether technological, tactical or organizational, has been continuously evolving over the last few thousand years in a straight line from the stone axes and spear-tips of prehistoric man to today’s nuclear weapons and electronic battlefield. But this would be a misleading judgement of the way in which the practical nature of fighting has changed over the past 4,000 years. For most of that period the battlefield was dominated by foot soldiers carrying shields, spears, swords and axes and by horsemen wielding lances, sabres, axes and broadswords. In some cases both foot and horse used bows and arrows. There were tactical changes and variations in the balance between foot and horse; armour as a protection fluctuated in extent and quality. But a Bronze Age warrior and a medieval spearman would have recognized each other without difficulty.
Much the same can be said of the first 3,000 years of naval warfare. Ships using oarsmen and sails, carrying missiles and marines, characterized the battlefield at sea until the coming of cannon. Even with added firepower, naval battles could be decided by more skilful seamanship and aggression, while boarding the enemy vessel continued long into the gunpowder age. Tactical differences fluctuated over time, while small changes in the height or length of fighting ships, or the number of oarsmen, could make a significant difference, as was the case at Lepanto and Actium. Major naval engagements were less common than battles on land and were usually designed to prevent a ground invasion – the Spanish Armada or Trafalgar are obvious examples – or to enable ships to supply a shore-based army.
The major technical changes came with gunpowder, developed first in Asia then taken up and exploited rapidly in the Western world. Musket fire and cannon shot did not change the shape of a battlefield a great deal – it still depended on cavalry and infantry in combination driving one or other combatant from the field – nor did it render the lance, sabre and spear (in the form of a long bayonet) redundant. The major changes in technology are those of the very modern age – all metal warships, tanks, aircraft, radio, radar, submarines, nuclear weapons and rockets. These were all the products of new science-based industry and they have defined battle on land, at sea and in the air only over the course of the last century. Today’s electronic battlefield is only a quarter-century old. Even today, much of the irregular warfare conducted in insurgencies and civil wars uses a simpler technology and relies on tactics of surprise and terror to counterbalance the advantages enjoyed by powerful adversaries. These are battlefield strategies with a long pedigree.
Innovation in the way armies and navies are organized has also changed remarkably little over time, and was driven chiefly by the increased size of armed forces. The armies of Genghis Kahn were based on divisions of 10,000 men organized in a decimal system right down to a unit of ten. Roman armies were a model of unit organization. Even battles fought between less organizationally sophisticated armies relied on careful disposition of the soldiers. The Anglo-Saxon shield wall, the ranks of medieval archers or Genghis Kahn’s steppe horsemen all needed careful training for the moment they would be tested, even if they were peasants or labourers in everyday life. Conscription and regular military practice are features of all ages of battle.
This painting depicts the first encounter between ironclad ships at the Battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862 during the American Civil War (1861–65). On the left is the Confederate Virginia, on the right the Union Monitor, built to a design by a Swedish engineer in just 100 days.
The tactics of the battlefield have also remained remarkably constant over thousands of years. Commanders imitate the practice of others or devise their own ways of coping with unorthodox threats. The variations in the way forces are deployed on land or at sea did not develop in a linear way, but relied on a constant search for some form of tactical advantage, which often required not innovation but imagination and cunning. In the battles described here, a tactical breakthrough – as at Carrhae or Lepanto – can have decisive effects. But it is generally the case that one side tries to outmanoeuvre the other, an aim that has resulted in the constant repetition of battlefield patterns from the ancient world to today. Encirclement, flank attack, oblique formation, column or line, are not the tools of the modern battlefield commander but are as old as battle. When General Longstreet at Gettysburg tried to persuade Lee to allow a wide flanking attack on the Union line, he had Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Attila the Hun as his supporters. None of this is to suggest that innovation is not significant, since it has decisively changed the modern battlefield, but simply a reminder that novelty in tactics, organization or the exploitation of weaponry is not a monopoly of the recent Western way of war.
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No. 32 BATTLE OF LEUCTRA
6 July 371 BCE
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When King Cleombrotus of Sparta marched along the Peloponnesian coast towards the town of Leuctra at the head of 10,000 Spartan and allied hoplites, the heavily armed infantry of Greek warfare, he must have been confident of victory. Sparta, with its rigorous military training and ethos of tough combat, had dominated the Greek world for a generation. Prudent city-states threw in their lot with Sparta and provided a good proportion of the men marching behind the Spartan king. To defeat a Spartan host of this size would require either special courage or a novel battle plan. The commander who opposed Cleombrotus was the Theban soldier Epaminondas, and he possessed both. On a plain outside Leuctra, Sparta’s fearsome reputation was about to be blunted by a startling battlefield innovation.
The Spartans were marching to punish the city of Thebes for its efforts to dominate a cluster of cities in Boeotia, in central Greece. The Thebans were adept horsemen, in territory not well adapted to horse warfare. Together with some 6,500 hoplites raised from Thebes and their reluctant Boeotian allies, Epaminondas had 1,500 cavalry and 1,000 lightly armed peltasts, or skirmishers. The Theban hoplites had at their core the famous ‘Sacred Band’ of 300 selected men, who trained and fought in pairs and were also lovers, so it was said, in order to cement the soldierly bond between them. They were led by Pelopidas, the key commander on the Theban side. Cleombrotus had with him 1,000 cavalry and 1,000 peltasts (the figures may be conjecture, but they give a sense of scale), but he relied on his powerful hoplite phalanx with its 400 royal guard, armed with breastplate, helmet and the deadly hoplite spear, the hoplon. When his force arrived on the plain near Leuctra he drew them up in conventional linear form, with a strong right wing containing the king and his guard, his weaker allies on the left and a force of cavalry and skirmishers in front. His phalanxes were twelve rows deep.
A nineteenth-century print of the plan of the Battle of Leuctra in July 371 BCE shows clearly the novel tactic of the Theban leader, Epaminondas, in strengthening his left wing at the expense of his right in order to challenge the flat Spartan line.
Epaminondas was already in position on higher ground. The Theban commander drew up his army in defiance of convention. On his left wing he created a narrow phalanx fifty rows deep, with an extraordinary weight of attack. At the centre and right he placed much shallower units, each one staggered back from the one in front in echelon formation. The cavalry was probably to the front, together with the peltasts. This was a risky strategy. If the Spartans could hold back the massive Theban phalanx, their left wing could sweep through the Theban right and encircle the enemy. Epaminondas perhaps gambled that the shock of his novel tactic would disorient the more numerous Spartans before they could adapt to the new battlefield situation. He
also wanted to bring his best troops to battle first, leaving his unreliable Boeotian allies in the weaker echelons to the right. Whether that was the true motive for his novel formation, rather than a stroke of military genius, as some historians have argued, remains speculation.
The ancient sources, on which the account of the subsequent battle is based, differ considerably in detail. Only Xenophon, who was in Sparta at the time and is almost certainly the most reliable guide, described the use that Epaminondas made of the Theban cavalry. The battle opened, according to Xenophon, with a cavalry engagement that in some ways proved as decisive as the hoplite struggle that followed. The clash of horsemen produced an immediate panic among the Spartan cavalry, who rode back in confusion into their own hoplite ranks, breaking up the tight and disciplined formation typical of Spartan warfare. Before the Spartans had a chance to regroup, the powerful Theban phalanx was pushing forward, with the Sacred Band at the front. Bloody hand-to-hand combat convulsed the Spartan right wing, while the left wing, uncertain of how to respond and composed of less reliable allies, found it difficult to engage with the weaker Theban front because of its staggered formation. By the time the left wing moved forward, the right wing was collapsing, exposing the whole Spartan force to encirclement.
The Theban strategy was fully justified by the results. Cleombrotus and most of his royal guard were slaughtered and the Spartans retreated, leaving at least 1,000 dead on the field (4,000 according to a later account). The remaining Spartan commanders requested a truce so that the dead and wounded could be carried away. The Thebans, rather than pursue the beaten enemy and risk a confrontation with Spartan reinforcements in the Peloponnese peninsula, withheld the coup de grâce, but the reputation of Sparta for invincibility was destroyed and the Thebans went on to wage victorious but more destructive battles at Cynoscephelae in 364 BCE, in which Pelopidas was hacked to death, and Mantinea two years later, where Epaminondas died from a spear thrust. His strategy survived him. A young Macedonian, Philip, was almost certainly present at the time of Leuctra and was impressed by the Theban ploy. When he became King of Macedonia, Philip used the tactic to devastating effect, while his son Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire with a polished version of the oblique attack. Millennia later, Frederick II, King of Prussia, understood the significance of a battlefield innovation that was capable of evaporating Sparta’s aura of invincibility, and used it to his own advantage at the Battle of Leuthen in 1757.
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No. 33 BATTLE OF CARRHAE
53 BCE
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The English expression ‘parting shot’ derives from ‘Parthian shot’, a term used to describe the deadly tactical practice of the mounted archers of the Parthian Empire, who could swivel on their horses and fire an arrow while riding away from their enemy. This skill was used to catastrophic effect against a large Roman army led by Marcus Crassus, famous for his ruthless suppression of the Spartacus revolt. In the context of the ancient world, where military innovation was slow to evolve, the Parthians made the most of their unorthodox military equipment and fluid battle tactics against a Roman army used to fighting and winning on its own terms. What followed on the arid plains of what is now southeast Turkey was probably the worst defeat suffered by a Roman army throughout the entire period of Roman domination of the Mediterranean basin and Middle East.
There is no general agreement about why Crassus was there in the first place. The Parthian Empire, stretching across modern Iran and Iraq, was founded in the late third century BCE by invaders from northeast Persia, and its powerful warrior caste successfully kept the menacing Roman Empire at bay roughly along the line of the River Euphrates. Crassus was a member of the First Triumvirate, ruling the empire together with Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey. Their rule was divided up territorially and Crassus claimed Syria, where he arrived in 54 BCE, intent either on adding to his already legendary wealth or securing military victories against a new enemy to enhance his own political stock in Rome. His son Publius, who had been campaigning in Gaul with Caesar, was keen to raise his own reputation and obtained permission to travel with 1,000 Gallic horsemen to join his father in the campaign planned against distant Parthia.
An engraving of the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE shows the Parthian cavalry engaging the legions of Marcus Crassus in what proved to be one of the greatest military disasters suffered by the Roman army.
The Parthian king, Orodes II, knew well in advance of the arrival and probable intention of the invading Roman army, but he needed to be sure that Crassus would not join up with other local kings in an anti-Parthian alliance. The King of Armenia, Artavasdes II, not only offered Crassus large bodies of men, including 6,000 cavalry, but also advised him to attack the Parthians by moving through the mountains in southern Armenia, where infantry were better able to fight and the Parthian cavalry would be at a disadvantage. Crassus refused both offers (though the 6,000 horsemen joined his army), perhaps because he thought the size of the army he had gathered – around 40,000 legionaries, 4,000 cavalry and 4,000 light infantry – would easily overcome a force of desert horsemen. In spring 53 BCE, he set off with his army from northern Syria to attack Parthia directly and seize the major city of Seleucia. He knew almost nothing about his enemy or his whereabouts.
Orodes had not been idle. He moved a large army to Armenia to intimidate the king and prevent Armenian forces from linking with Crassus. He left his lieutenant Surena as commanding general (spahbod) of 9,000 light horsemen and 1,000 heavily armoured cavalry, or cataphracts (no more than a quarter the strength of the approaching Roman army), with orders to harass and hold up the Roman approach. The light horsemen were armed with a powerful composite bow made of laminated wood and sinew, which they fired as they rode. The impact of the arrows from close range was considerable. There remains dispute about whether they could penetrate Roman body armour effectively, though the barbed arrows could inflict serious wounds on exposed arms, legs and faces. The real innovation on the Parthian side was the cataphract, a warrior covered with scale armour of bronze and steel plates protecting most of the rider’s body, as well as the horse. They each carried a long heavy lance, or kontos, twice the length of the Roman javelins. The Roman legionaries were armed with the standard short sword, spear and shield, but had nothing that would allow them to come to grips with their mobile opponents, forerunners of the knights who later dominated medieval warfare.
The novel warfare practised by the Parthians proved enough to compensate for the great gulf in size between the two sides. Crassus relied on an Arab guide, Ariamnes, for his route, but he was in the pay of Orodes and led Crassus into a trap across largely waterless desert, where the Parthian horsemen would be in their element. They passed the small town of Carrhae, which was already garrisoned by Roman soldiers, crossed a minor stream (where it is alleged that Crassus would not allow his thirsty troops to drink) and finally saw and heard the Parthian enemy ahead of them. Loud drums beat out a constant rhythm while the horsemen kicked up clouds of sandy dust around them. The cataphracts advanced with blankets shrouding their armour. Crassus was uncertain how to meet this odd formation. After trying a conventional line, he opted for a large square, with the cohorts each protected by a small squadron of Roman cavalry. It turned out that this was the worst formation he could have chosen.
At some point towards mid-day the Parthians attacked. The cataphracts threw off their covering, revealing armour, according to one ancient account, ‘blazing like fire’ in the hot sun. Surena sent his horsemen first, galloping at speed around the whole Roman square, firing arrows at will because the Roman soldiers were so closely packed together. Crassus first sent his light infantry to try to drive them off, but they were deluged with arrows and hurried back to the shelter of the square. Frustrated at being unable to get at an enemy who had already inflicted heavy casualties on his soldiers, Crassus sent his son Publius with 1,300 cavalry, 500 archers and 4,000 infantry to eliminate the threat from the enemy bowmen. Publius rash
ly followed where the Parthian horses fled only to discover, at some distance from the main army, that the cataphracts were drawn up in a solid phalanx waiting to charge. The heavily armoured cavalry crashed into the Roman force, while the lighter horsemen kept up a volley of arrows, replenished throughout the battle by a large reserve of missiles carried by 1,000 camels. All but 500 of the force were slaughtered. Badly injured, Publius ordered his shield-bearer to kill him, while his Gallic horsemen fought to a blood-soaked standstill.
An nineteenth-century manuscript depicts the Parthians’ use of metal plates to protect both rider and horse, and the technique of turning to shoot the arrow over the back of the horse, a tactic to which the Roman infantry found no answer.
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 16