Otto was told of the invasion by messengers from Bavaria. He took only a few of his Saxons with him, since the Saxon army was still battling with its Slavic neighbours, and called on levies from Bavaria, Swabia and Bohemia to join him. His son-in-law, Conrad the Red, brought 1,000 Franconian horses. By early August, they had gathered near Ulm to cross the Danube and confront the enemy. Augsburg was not yet captured, thanks in part to a brief sally by Ulrich’s professional soldiers to drive away a Hungarian assault on a weakly held city gate, but when the Hungarians got news of the advance of Otto’s army, they withdrew to their camp on the east side of the River Lech. There they prepared a strategy to lure Otto onto the plain, the Lechfeld, where their mobile archers would surround and annihilate the Germans once again. The infantry were to be put in front, to entice the enemy horsemen, while part of the cavalry would sweep northwest to outflank Otto’s army and attack the rear as the main Hungarian force waited on the edge of the plain to smash the Germans fleeing from the flanking attack. The horsemen each had spare mounts and a large supply of arrows.
The details of the battle are little known, since the two main accounts, both written some years later by contemporaries, gloss over the actual combat. There are no reliable estimates of the size of either force, though Otto’s eventual victory was hailed as a remarkable triumph against overwhelming odds. What is known is that Otto, afraid of exposing his men to encirclement and probable annihilation by the enemy archers, organized his army into six columns, protected at the back by units of Bohemians guarding the baggage train, and marched them through the forest northwest of Augsburg, in rough, wooded terrain where horsemen and arrows were equally disadvantaged. This was too late to prevent the Hungarian horsemen sent to outflank him from attacking the Bohemians and either destroying them or driving them off. Greed or overconfidence led them to loot the baggage rather than finish off the Germans. This was a tactical error, since suddenly out of the forest stormed Conrad’s column of Franconians, who, it seems likely, killed the pillaging Hungarians. No quarter was usually given.
An eighteenth-century engraving shows the aftermath of the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 when the emperor Otto I defeated a large Magyar army. As the Hungarians retreated they were harried by garrison troops in the nearby cities who butchered the cavalry and caught and hanged the Magyar leaders.
The battle that followed was not fought, despite the name, on the Lechfeld, but further north on the edges of the Rauherforst. Otto chose battle with the shelter of the trees behind him and his left flank protected by high cliffs to prevent any outflanking movement. What happened next is not known, but the best estimates suggest that Otto probably did what Epaminondas did at Leuchtra when he routed the Spartans – he concentrated his main force on one wing, and used it to drive the enemy back and encircle them. The strategy, if such it was, seems to have half-worked this time. The Hungarian infantry was pushed back, surrounded and annihilated to a man, but the archers tried to lure Otto onto the plain by feigning retreat. Otto understood the dangers and refused to be drawn. As it was, his army was subjected to volley after volley of light and deadly arrows, which could penetrate armour when shot in a long arc. Conrad the Red fell to an arrow as he loosened his armour to cool off. The critical factor seems to have been the discipline of the Germans, who neither gave way in the face of heavy casualties nor risked pursuit and the danger of encirclement.
Puzzled, exhausted or both, the Hungarian cavalry retreated past Augsburg, allowing Otto to capture their camp. The decisive nature of the defeat, however, was due to what happened next. Over the following two days, the Hungarian cavalry were separated into small groups or ambushed by soldiers from the smaller fortified cities behind them. Most seem to have been killed or captured; their leaders, including Horka Bulksú, were taken to Regensburg to be hanged in public. Why this happened has eluded clear historical explanation, but the best guess is rain, or, as contemporary Christians called it, the ‘tears of Saint Lawrence’, a Christian martyr whose feast day fell on 10 August. Heavy summer storms are now thought to have followed the engagement by the Rauherforst, swelling the rivers that were usually passable by cavalry and, crucially, rendering the highly crafted composite bows, on which Hungarian military success depended, all but useless. Damp and rain led the bows to unravel or limited their operational effectiveness. Left to wield rather brittle sabres, it is thought that the Hungarians had nothing to match the heavy lances and swords of German and Bohemian cavalry. This remains the most plausible explanation for the catastrophic Hungarian defeat, which ended the country’s depredations for good, allowed Otto to claim the title of Holy Roman Emperor a few years later, and earned the fiery Ulrich his sainthood.
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No. 74 BATTLE OF ARSUF
7 September 1191
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Among the great battles of the Christian crusades in Palestine, the Holy Land, one of the most remarkable was the sharp defeat inflicted on the Muslim Kurdish leader, Salah ad-Din (better known as Saladin), by the combined might of a European army led by the king of England, Richard I, the ‘Lionheart’. The Arab chroniclers respected Richard (never, one wrote, was there ‘a subtler or a bolder opponent’). The conflict at Arsuf, near the Mediterranean coast of present-day Israel, was a model of medieval crusading warfare. It involved extraordinary courage and patience under constant harassing attack from Saladin’s mounted archers, who had triumphed at Hattin, four years earlier. The outcome at Arsuf resolved little, but Richard showed that Saladin and his army were not invincible if heavy European cavalry was used in the right way, combined with supporting infantry.
The Third Crusade was going nowhere when Richard arrived in 1191. The crusaders were laying siege to the port of Acre and were themselves besieged by Saladin’s army at their rear. The crusaders had solid defences, but Acre had equally solid walls and did not easily give way. It had taken almost two years to starve the city into submission when Richard arrived in time to march in and plant his standard. Saladin reached an armistice with the crusader leaders, biding his time to raise more fighters from across the Middle East, but he failed to honour his pledge to pay ransom for the prisoners taken at Acre, and on 20 August 1191, Richard ordered 3,000 of them slaughtered in cold blood in sight of Saladin’s men. Richard was a cautious strategist, however, and determined to march on Jerusalem, the key prize for any crusader, only after first securing the ports of Jaffa and Ascalon as supply bases for his march on the Holy City.
The soldiers allegedly left Acre with some reluctance, detained by prostitutes, according to the Arab account, ‘tinted and painted…with nasal voices and fleshy thighs’. But Richard was adamant. The women were ordered to remain behind while he deployed the army in a way that made strategic sense, but which required him to impose a tough discipline on all those under his command. For the march south, he divided his forces into three divisions of heavy cavalry with a strong rearguard composed of the Knights Hospitaller and the Templars. He had the sea on one side as a natural protection and as a source of regular supply by merchant vessels plying down the coast. His numerous infantry and archers were divided into two – one force marching on the seaward side, one on the other flank protecting the horsemen, as was usual in Frankish warfare. They crossed over and exchanged roles as the landward troops became tired from the constant skirmishing with Saladin’s archers, a system of rotation that worked well as the long column wound its way through the hilly and wooded country running down to Jaffa.
The strategy was designed to conserve the force and prevent a second Hattin. Richard knew, just as the Arab strategists knew, that his knights were vulnerable as soon as they were isolated from their main body. Once their horses were killed, they were easy prey. Richard ordered the heavy cavalry to stay in column and on no account to rise to provocation from the enemy or charge them without his order. This meant keeping tight formation for days while Saladin’s shadowing force rode up close, showering the crusaders with missiles. At a distance, their arrows had l
imited penetration and infantry could be seen still fighting with arrows stuck in their thick leather tunics, like so many walking pin-cushions. The danger of not keeping formation was shown when the rearguard fell back too far and enemy horsemen rode in to attack the baggage train, but Richard hurried back from the front of the column to restore order.
The marching army had to show extraordinary perseverance under constant attack, and exceptional patience. For horsemen in armour, in conditions of exhausting heat and dust, the forbearance must have seemed a laborious penance. Heat exhaustion claimed victims as did the spears and arrows of the circling enemy. Somehow Richard stamped his authority on the men toiling through the heat. Saladin decided they could only be halted by a pitched battle and he chose the plain north of Arsuf to mass his army. Richard kept going, commanding an even tighter formation and insisting that no charge should be made by his knights until the right moment, signalled by six trumpet blasts, two each at the rear, in the centre and in the van. The object, if it came to it, was to hit the enemy with a massed charge of concentrated power to destroy his capacity to revive and retaliate. By mid-morning Saladin had seen enough and he ordered his cavalry to attack. Enveloped in a cloud of dust a menacing wave of horsemen bore down on Richard’s column, accompanied by the sound of braying trumpets and pounding drums. This was the critical point for the heavily armoured crusaders, who had to stay in formation, taking casualties but unable to fight back, while their infantry fought off the cavalry as best they could.
This romantic illustration of Richard the Lionheart at the Battle of Arsuf in September 1191 was published by the French engraver Gustave Doré in 1884. Richard, according to Arab chroniclers, displayed a ‘burning passion for war’.
The final charge by Richard’s cavalry began by chance. Provoked beyond endurance, the Hospitallers at the rear, without waiting for the agreed signal, suddenly charged at the encroaching enemy, riding unexpectedly through the ranks of their own infantry. Richard saw at once what had happened and ordered the rest of his knights to charge as well, making a powerful battering ram of horsemen aimed at Saladin’s tiring forces. The impact was exactly what Richard had hoped for. Saladin’s forces retreated, then tried to rally for a counter-blow. Richard and William des Barres then led the Norman and English knights, who had been held back in reserve, for a final hammer blow against the enemy. Richard did not earn his sobriquet ‘Lionheart’ for nothing. The Arab chroniclers described a man with a ‘burning passion for war’. Christian writers praised the ‘force of his arm’, reaping enemy soldiers like corn. But if Richard’s leadership was necessary, victory rested above all on the willingness of the whole crusader army to take remorseless punishment, day after day, and still hold together. Yet for all its bravery, the army never occupied Jerusalem. Richard abandoned the attempt in appalling weather just 19 kilometres (12 miles) from his goal, his reputation tarnished in the eyes of Christian pilgrims for failing to capitalize on his victory.
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No. 75 BATTLE OF BORODINO
7 September 1812
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A round the Russian village of Borodino, lying astride the road that led from Smolensk to Moscow, there took place one of the bloodiest battles fought by any European army before the age of mass slaughter in the trenches of the First World War. It was here that the Grande Armée of the French Emperor Napoleon was confronted for the first time by the bulk of the Russian army under the veteran commander Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov. As the two armies fought back and forth, the soldiers were met by withering musket fire and a deadly cannonade from more than 1,000 guns. Both sides stood their ground with an exceptional courage. At the end of the day, 75,000 were dead or wounded, one-third of all those who took part.
Napoleon had not wanted to fight in Russia, but the vast, ramshackle empire that he had constructed across Europe faced numerous threats. The Russian tsar, Alexander I, refused to accept the trade blockade of Britain (the so-called ‘Continental System’) and was consolidating Russia’s strategic position in the Baltic and Black Sea regions. Napoleon gathered a huge army of almost half a million men (only 200,000 of them were French) to march through Poland and pressure Alexander to accept a humiliating treaty that acknowledged Napoleon’s domination of Europe. He anticipated, at most, a battle or two in Lithuania or Belarus, not a major campaign deep inside Russian territory. Alexander was not to be intimidated, and appointed Kutuzov to meet the threat from France. On 24 June 1812, Napoleon crossed the River Niemen and captured the Lithuanian capital of Vilna (Vilnius). He expected a major battle but the Russian marshals pulled their forces back. On 9 July, he left Vilna and marched into the interior seeking the elusive grand battle that would decide the future.
As Napoleon marched from Vilna towards Vitebsk, the problems that his army was to experience for months became evident. Freak blizzards, burning sun, an absence of fresh water and food, and the slow plod of the baggage wagons far in the rear, resulted in a line of dead and dying men and horses along the road. Napoleon was moved by the loss. ‘I have marched too far,’ he confessed to himself, but he was too committed to battle to give up. Russian armies gathered in defence of Smolensk, but after two days of indecisive fighting, which cost Napoleon 20,000 men, the Russians once again made off in good order, sucking Napoleon inexorably deeper into the savagely hostile terrain. Advised by all around him to halt and recover, Napoleon was driven on by his inner demons. He had left Vitebsk with 185,000 troops; he marched down the Smolensk–Moscow highway with his army reduced to perhaps 130,000 tired, malnourished and anxious soldiers. Napoleon fell ill with a heavy cold; he had swollen legs and a painful bladder.
By chance the Russians chose an opportune moment to stand and fight. Kutuzov stopped at Borodino in early September and set out a prepared battlefield with earthworks and redoubts. He was popular with his men but his marshals saw him as lazy and unimaginative. Dressed only in a green frock coat and white cap, he sat a great deal, wrote little and paid scant attention to the battlefield. Both men, Kutuzov and Napoleon, could have won the battle at Borodino decisively if they had been fit and active enough. As it turned out, the battle was commanded by two men who fought like lumbering punch-drunk boxers, unable to inflict the knock-out blow. Kutuzov deployed approximately 150,000 regular soldiers, Cossack horsemen and Moscow militia in a broad semi-circle with a powerful redoubt in the centre (the Raevsky). The right wing under Marshal Barclay de Tolly was shielded by a small river; here the bulk of the infantry and cavalry were placed. The left wing under Prince Piotr Bagration was much weaker; Kutuzov sent a fresh corps to hide in the woods behind the left wing in order to attack any French effort to outflank Bagration, but the local commander ordered the corps out into the open.
A painting from 1911 by the Russian artist Franz Roubaud (1856–1928) shows the French army in the thick of the battle at Borodino on 26 August 1812. The French and Russian armies took terrible casualties as they stood their ground against artillery fire and repeated charges. The two sides counted 73,000 casualties, making this the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Russian position was weak because it gave little chance for manoeuvre and risked encirclement, but Napoleon failed to exploit the possibilities open to him. After inspecting the Russian dispositions in detail on 5 and 6 September, Napoleon chose a frontal assault, placing his key commanders – Michel Ney, Joachim Murat and Louis Davout – in a strong centre, with the Polish commander Prince Josef Poniatowski on the right and Prince Eugène Beauharnais on the left. His generals found him uncharacteristically indecisive and lethargic. Though his troops were hungry, racked with dysentery and, in some cases, shoeless, Napoleon chose the most dangerous and costliest form of attack. At 6 a.m. on 7 September, the guns of both sides broke out a deafening roar. The troops had to stand waiting while the cannon balls and canister-shot crashed remorselessly into their ranks, removing a head here, an arm there, or tearing a horse literally in half.
Both sides were exposed, and they remained so
for much of the day. Yet they kept formation even while their ranks were decimated by cannon and musket fire, a rare courage displayed by both sides. The Russians in particular stood to the last man, giving ground as little as possible before they collapsed in heaps of dead. Napoleon was puzzled that they did not give up: ‘These Russians let themselves be killed like automatons.’ The result was an ebb and flow on the battlefield in which both sides took horrifying losses as they hacked and stabbed their way forward only to be driven back once again. Reserves waiting to be thrown into the cruel mêlée were too close to the front to avoid being killed by the guns where they stood. One French cavalry unit lost one-third of its men and horses without seeing action. The exceptional bravery in the face of fire owed something to a tough discipline instilled in both armies, but it was also a mark of desperation, since neither side wanted to risk the grisly consequences of defeat. Prisoners were few.
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 33