Much as the ruling junta might have wished the war to be tightly controlled, the truth is that Bronze Age battle was in all probability an extension of the tactical messiness of earlier warfare. There was a good deal of long-range missile fire, a fair amount of ritualized “posturing,” and some dueling between champions or principals (who may or may not have been kings or their equivalents). It has been claimed that the tight formation depicted on the stele reflects a willingness of the troops to “confront adversaries at close quarters and face danger in a cooperative fashion. This is a commitment virtually impossible to draw from any but highly motivated troops, those who view themselves as having a true stake in not just the fighting, but changing the course of their politics.”29 But there seems little reason to imagine that the levies who served a Bronze Age autocrat would have fought in the hope of influencing their fate through political change. Nor is it exclusively true that only those with a stake in the political outcome of battle fight with self-sacrificing resolve. Throughout history there have been dedicated groups of mercenary professionals who have great pride in their skills, a fierce commitment to their fellow mercenaries, and a willingness to fight to the death, irrespective of the political cause.
EVER SINCE THE introduction of relatively long-range missile weaponry, the tactical shape of battle has conformed to a fairly predictable pattern. First comes the “softening-up” barrage. It was arrows in the Bronze Age; high-explosive shells, delivered either by artillery or by aircraft, in ours. Following that there has to be a closure, a physical confrontation that claims territory. In the Bronze Age it would have been a combination of chariot-borne warriors and infantry; in ours it is soldiery borne in a variety of armored vehicles, delivered by aircraft (and parachute), or, occasionally, by helicopter.
The earliest chariots may have been used by Sumerians from Uruk in Mesopotamia around 3500–3000 BCE. They were, in their earliest incarnation, lumbering, solid-wheeled battle wagons, drawn by onagers, draft animals somewhere between horses and asses, and intended more as transport than shock weapon. Their primary function was to deliver into the heart of combat the highborn warrior-duelist who, protected from arrows and slingshots by an accompanying shield bearer, sought out his enemy peer. It was extremely important that there was an appropriate social match: a characteristic found not only in ancient warfare but vestigially into the modern era, where an officer would surrender only to a fellow officer.
Another role of the early chariot was to carry archers and spear throwers closer to the enemy, where they could loose off some shots and then make their retreat (a tactic that was resurrected with the mounted gunmen of the seventeenth century who performed an intricate maneuver known as the caracole, in which pistoleers would ride up to the enemy and fire, then turn back to make way for the next wave). Lighter chariots were developed around 1700 BCE, perhaps in China, and these faster versions not only became a characteristic of Chinese combat but also spread down through Anatolia, Crete, and mainland Greece (they were an important element in Homeric battle) to Mesopotamia and New Kingdom Egypt. The action was swift—a mêlée in which chariot might square off against chariot but also be unlucky enough to find itself the target of several enemy chariots. It was combat not unlike the swirling confusion of aerial dogfighting. If a chariot capsized, the occupants might be rescued if friendly troops were close enough; if not, they would be quickly overwhelmed and dispatched. In The Iliad, chariot-borne warriors usually dismount to fight as infantry, “using their chariots for transport to and from the field, as taxis and as ambulances.”30 Chariot warfare was a rough and problematic business: The passenger, whether archer or spearman, was banged and rocked about as the unsprung vehicle lurched, raced, and swung along. In consequence, the killing they meted out must have been somewhat random.
Horses are brilliant on the approach and in pursuit of a fleeing enemy (and decidedly useful in retreat, as Richard III discovered to his profound regret) and may on occasion be persuaded to crash through a line of infantry, but they can also be easily spooked by any kind of resolute defense, particularly if it involves something sharp, like spearpoints or bayonets, or by having arrows fired into them. Understandably, no matter how well trained, they fear greatly for their safety and will remove themselves with alarming alacrity, despite the wishes of the mounted warrior or charioteer. This may account for the success of the horse archers of the Asiatic steppes, who used their mounts not as shock weapons but as swift archery platforms. Their skills at firing while guiding the horse only with their knees were astonishing. They could deliver a prodigious rate of accurate fire and had the ability to contort themselves in such a way as to deliver fire behind themselves (the legendary “Parthian shot”) while riding forward at full tilt, which made them almost as dangerous in retreat as attack. This style of warfare had a profound effect on much of the area that formed a great crescent of the Russian steppes, Mongolia, through what is now Iraq and Iran, and including the eastern Mediterranean (and was echoed in the cavalry combat style of the North American Plains Indians).
A horse-based style of war-making presented an enormous tactical challenge to the infantry-based military model that characterized settled, agricultural societies in the ancient world. Cavalry archery would stamp itself on the military ethos of the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean (particularly Persia and, later, the Ottoman Empire) in a way that was not seen in Greece or western Europe, where traditional cavalry tended to be more like mounted infantry, armed with lance, sword, ax, or mace, rather than the bow.
Nevertheless, it is something of a mystery why horses, domesticated in Central Asia by about 5000 BCE, were not pressed into service as cavalry mounts until about 1000 BCE.31 And, although chariot warfare was a characteristic of Homeric warfare, cavalry as a separate arm was absent, as it was in the hoplite warfare of the Hellenic city-states. The Greek phalanx placed so much emphasis on the virtue of face-to-face combat, for all ranks irrespective of social status, that fighting on horseback was considered, if not cowardly, then not quite appropriate.32 The Athenian aristocrats Cimon, Alcibiades, and Pericles fought in the phalanx, as did Spartan kings.33
Horses are expensive to maintain and, in a society that saw frugality as the handmaiden of democracy, may have been viewed as a symbol of aristocratic indulgence by the burghers of Hellenic Greece. This connection with feudal aristocracy and the horse would be central to western European history, and it is notable that the cavalry that eventually emerged from Greece came from Macedonia and Thessaly (“the truculent baronage of Thessaly,” as one historian refers to them),34 which were not only feudal-type autocracies but, due to their geography, probably much more influenced by the horse cultures of the Asiatic steppes.
What is taking shape, however, during the first millennium BCE is a split in the tactical attitude of two worlds, echoes heard still in modern warfare. One world, its epicenter Greece, attached itself to a battle ethic that was tactically centralized, focused, highly corporate, coherent, disciplined, and, above all, rational. The hoplite order is compact; it drives on with fixed and unwavering intent. It is bureaucratic, even machinelike. These characteristics became the imprimatur of warfare in western Europe and, later, Europeanized North America. The battle ethic of its enemies, however, represented an entirely different tradition based on mobility, on loose and overflowing formations rather than tight critical mass. Asiatic in essence, it is opportunistic and keen to exploit the odds of least risk and highest return. Greek-type warfare, however, seeks to change the odds, even at some risk. In one world the clever marauder and ambusher is a model of effectiveness; in the other world those tactics are considered despicable—and only direct confrontation is ultimately effective and has moral virtue. It is heroic.
Some military historians, such as J. F. C. Fuller, have claimed that the Western tradition illustrates a racial superiority (Fuller was a member of the British Fascist Party): “When we look back upon Western warfare as it was before the introduction of firearms, of
the differences we see, the one which most boldly stands out is the precedence of valor over cunning. It is out of valor that European history rises: the spear and the sword, and not, as in Asia, the bow and arrow, are its symbols. The bravest and not the most crafty are the leaders of men, and it is their example rather than their skill which dominates the battle.”35 It is easy to mock Fuller’s vision of Teutonic warriors as brave as lions but as thick as planks, versus those skulking but “damned clever” Orientals.
In ancient Greek war-making there is also a contradiction seeking reconciliation. On the one hand is a heroic tradition of individual combat; and on the other, the need to subsume individuality in a corporate endeavor: the duelist and the hoplite—those who fight and die with names, and those who sacrifice themselves dutifully and anonymously. This tension is a constant in the history of warfare, seen in the knight or the samurai or the Plains Indian war chief, who must proclaim himself both through heraldic symbolism and lengthy declamations before battle in order to announce his lineage, his separateness from the mass. He proclaims his name and demands recognition. If he is killed, he at least will have died with the dignity due his station. The rest end up in a communal grave, their names lost forever, and their unreplicable selfness dissolved by the quicklime of the centuries.
In The Iliad, the Athenian general Nestor dresses down his troops: “Let no man in the pride of his horsemanship and his manhood dare to fight alone with the Trojans in front of the rest of us, neither let him give ground, since that way you will be weaker. When the man from his own car [chariot] encounters the enemy chariots let him stab with his spear, since this is the stronger fighting. So the men before your time sacked tower and city.”36 Nestor is trying to impose a rational, controlled war making on a much older tradition that valued heroic dueling. He wanted solid results rather than beautiful gestures; the team over the individual. Nevertheless, The Iliad is a great paean to the heroic warrior, the man with the name—he who steps out from the multitude. The Homeric hero is eager not only to engage his peer mano a mano but also to confront and defy a potentially overwhelming mass of the enemy: two scenarios that have always been the benchmarks of the heroic in combat. For example, one of the highest acts of valor among the Kiowa and other North American Plains Indian tribes was to charge the enemy single-handedly while the rest of one’s war band was retreating. It was on a par with engaging the leading enemy warrior before general action had started, the hero isolated and unsupported, making an emphatic statement of individuality. As both of these actions carried the highest risk of being killed, they also attracted the highest kudos.37
But why? Getting yourself killed, as Nestor points out, is not necessarily best for the general cause. The explanation may well be that self-sacrificial actions are so highly valued precisely because they can forward the general cause. First, they may hit a spectacular tactical bull’s-eye, such as killing the enemy leader or allowing your comrades to get away. Second, the heroic mythology of the group is reinforced. With repetitions of individual acts of heroism over time, a legendary narrative is created that strengthens general military morale and makes the group a more motivated fighting force. Thus, heroism and self-sacrifice serve a quite utilitarian function and the behavior is reinforced through rewards—sometimes money, sometimes trophies and, later in history, medals—but, most important, through remembrance; and through remembrance the hero is liberated from the engulfing darkness of anonymity. Hector, in full realization of his impending and inevitable death at the hand of Achilles, calls for just such a rescue from oblivion:
And now death, grim death is looming up beside me,
no longer far away. No way to escape it now. This,
this was their pleasure after all, sealed long ago—
Zeus and the son of Zeus, the distant deadly Archer—
though often before now they rushed to my defense.
So now I meet my doom. Well let me die—
but not without struggle, not without glory, no,
in some great clash of arms that even men to come
will hear of down the years!38
In The Iliad, the warrior of the Trojan War is driven by the expectations of the wider group to conform to a heroic model of individual combat, and it cannot be a one-off performance; he must display aretai—a combination of strength, speed, courage, and quick-wittedness—repeatedly. In the duel he reinforces his claim to time, or worthiness, but as Homer reminds us, it was “ruthless work”:
Peneleos closed with Lycon—
they’d missed each other with spears, two wasted casts,
so now both clashed with swords. Lycon, flailing,
chopped the horn of Peneleos’ horsehair-crested helmet
but round the socket the sword-blade smashed to bits—
just as Peneleos hacked his neck below the ear
and the blade sank clean through, nothing held
but a flap of skin, the head swung loose to the side
as Lycon slumped down to the ground … There—
at a dead run Meriones ran down Acamas, Acamas
mounting behind his team, and gouged his right shoulder—
he pitched from the car and the mist whirled down his eyes.
Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,
the merciless brazen spearpoint raking through,
up under the brain to split his glistening skull—
teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids
with a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,
mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood
and death’s dark cloud closed down around his corpse.39
There is even a rejoicing in the sheer viciousness of the duel, as when Patroclus dispatches the hapless Thestor:
And next he went for Thestor the son of Enops
cowering, crouched in his fine polished chariot,
crazed with fear, and the reins flew from his grip—
Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone,
ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard
he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot-rail,
hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched
on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,
some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook.
So with the spear Patroclus gaffed him off his car,
his mouth gaping around the glittering point
and flipped him down facefirst,
dead as he fell, his life breath blown away.40
The manner of Thestor’s death, or rather the manner in which it is depicted, is ignominious. He is reduced to a fish, as befits a coward. But even the bravest and most noble, like Hector, may be debased in death. Achilles, his killer, “bent on outrage, on shaming noble Hector” for having killed Achilles’ soul-brother, Patroclus:
Piercing the tendons, ankle to heel behind both feet,
he knotted straps of rawhide through them both,
lashed them to his chariot, left the head to drag
and mounting the car, hoisting the famous arms aboard,
he whipped his team to a run and breakneck on they flew,
holding nothing back. And a thick cloud of dust rose up
from the man they dragged, his dark hair swirling round
that head so handsome once.41
The combat of The Iliad, focused on heroic champions, would certainly have been very different in reality. Death would have come in what Homer describes as “the buck-and-rush” of battle, or as the historian J. E. Lendon depicts it:
Amidst the showers of spears and arrows and stones, amidst the running to and fro and confusion and stabbing by surprise, men of high standing would go down, killed anonymously by stray missiles and the spears of low wretches; trampled by horses, or crushed ingloriously by stray chariots. In the confusion the high deeds of the brave would go unnoticed, along with the cringing of the cowardly. The wou
ld-be heroes would emerge from battle with the same demoralizing certainty as survivors of a trench bombardment that this kind of combat was chiefly a matter of luck, not a test of excellence; that the strong and weak, the brave and craven can live or die quite at random; that bravery is not necessarily rewarded with glory or cowardice punished with shame. In the real world, Homeric combat would turn the bright colors of epic to gray.42
Euripides, looking back on the Homeric tradition, was also a little skeptical about the apparent clarity of heroic dueling. How did the gladiators find one another? “One thing I will not ask or I’d be laughed at: whom each of these men stood facing in the battle … When a man stands face to face with the enemy, he is barely able to see what he needs to see.”43
The Last Full Measure Page 3