Obviously you can’t just have hundreds to thousands of people from both sides swinging at each other aimlessly, the massacre would be ridiculous and plus that just seems dumb. Movies always show it as massive groups running across a field and falling on each other’s swords. The front line is guaranteed to die and the back can’t do anything, and I’m sure trampling your own men would be an issue. How did armies actually engage each other?
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Obviously different armies at different times with different weapons and under different circumstances would work differently, but in most cases, what *roughly* seems to have happened is that two armies would maneuver quite a bit – marching and essentially trying to each position themselves in an advantageous place – before battle. DURING battle, people would form up into formations – the most stereotypical being the most heavily armed and armored infantry in the middle somewhere, with cavalry and/or more lightly armored and fast moving infantry to their right and left, with some behind. The infantry, throughout much of history, would probably have shields and spears in SOME configuration. Lightly armored infantry and or cavalry with javelins or bows or slings would fire missiles off before the two groups actually closed, mostly trying to break up formations or distract people (throughout most of history, ranged weapons did not *usually* cause a huge amount of casualties amongst formed up infantry – shields are pretty handy). Once the groups of infantry met, they would not actually be shoving at each other with shields most of the time, but essentially at spear-distance apart, trying to poke THEIR weapons through to actually get somebody on the other side without allowing the same to happen to them (PROBABLY – we don’t know EXACTLY how those hand to hand fights went, and there are varying opinions among historians, but given that a spear is a long weapon, two shield walls pushing against each other at knife range seems like something that wouldn’t happen all the time – if you’re going to do that all the time, why do you have a *spear*?). Because combat is EXHAUSTING, new people from further back in the formation might filter forward to the front line to take over the places of people who had tired, and there may even essentially have been breaks in the fighting if enough people on both sides were exhausted. Cavalry and ranged troops would be, during this, trying to find their way around to the side of the enemy army to attack formations in places where they weren’t formed up into a shield or spear wall, or to attack the enemy army’s camp & baggage & supporting people (most armies would have a large number of civilians traveling with them offering various services to the soldiers – prostitution, smithing, goods & services, etc). Alternatively, some ranged troops might be firing over the heads of the melee infantry if their weapons could fire in an arc (not every ranged weapon could easily do this – crossbows mostly fired straight, so many historical crossbow soldiers were more heavily armored and fought more “in the front line” than a standard archer might, because they couldn’t really fire over the heads of their own army).
Eventually, the two armies might separate, or one group might “break” – ceasing to fight as one in formation and fleeing, whether due to fear, exhaustion, a sudden shock or surprise (maybe the cavalry hitting them on their flank unexpectedly),or casualties. Most people that died in the battle would die here, not fighting in the front line in formation – but being killed while fleeing or when their formation had broken up so much that they were fighting as individuals. Casualties of more than, say, 10% or so of an army were unusual and significant. An army that lost even a quarter or more of its fighting strength, dead and wounded, was basically “destroyed” as a military force even though many people were left, due in part to the sheer psychological shock and horror.
The difference between a very disciplined army and a less disciplined one might be that the more disciplined one would probably march longer distances, hold in formation longer before breaking, and do a better job of rotating fresh troops into the front line and tired troops back, et cetera. But there were not many people who DIDN’T fight in formation; the Celts are stereotyped as being Fierce Individualistic Barbarians by the Romans, but Caesar writes about Celtic armies forming up into phalanxes, building siegeworks, and fighting hand to hand with Roman armies for long periods of time – which, given the exhausting nature of melee combat, they probably couldn’t have done without some formation and rotation of troops, even if the Romans seem to have been especially good at that troop rotation during combat compared to most armies of the time.
There are always some exceptions, of course. Many famous battles have some odd circumstances that don’t perfectly fit this pattern. However, this is sort of an “average” picture of a pre-firearm battle.
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