I have been watching a lot of ancient history shows on youtube about army tactics, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why a smaller army would every beat a larger army. To me, the larger army would square up against the opponents, and then simply flank the enemy, which would usually result in routing. How would an ancient era deal with the problem of getting flanked? Did it simply just all come down to terrain?
Edit: Thank you so much for your answers! I love learning about this kind of stuff, so this has been a lot of fun. Maybe I’m still confused about how an army would engage and disengage an army to remain mobile to avoid flanks, could anyone provide some insights into this?
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Panic and routing was pretty important part of tactics. Dividing army into parts, and flanking them could break morale on wings of enemy formation. Even before battle, nightly raids to enemy camp were common. Maybe they even managed to grab an important PoW to annoy the enemy or force them to peace talks.
Also, a lot was about psychology – as “armies” were often just bunch of mercenaries or mobilized peasants, they were more interested in loot than dying for one or another liege lord. While a ruthless army commander was typically well-known and just leading one of the sides would have strongly demoralized opposing side. And of course, rumors (like, “there’s large force of help coming to the smaller army, they’ll be here soon” or “we sent smaller army to burn your homes back in the village”) or undermining war goal (your noble is a coward and did this and this and there’s no need to die for him) and so forth likely worked as well as they do today. Especially since such misinformation was very difficult to check.
Medieval and ancient armies were generally small, couple hundred footmen on both sides and a smaller group of cavalry. So even scaring or dissuating 10 men would mean 5-10% decrease in enemy morale. Huge armies needed insane amount of logistics, so you’d need caravans with water and food and that makes army slow, very visible and vulnerable. Smaller ones could feed themselves from looting, but that of course isn’t good for morale and nobody wants to risk their life any further if their pockets are already full of stolen goods. If you sent 100 men to raid for food, maybe only 80 of them made it back, while rest deserted to bring their stuff home.
Also, there were common tricks, such as acting as you’re fleeing while ambush waited down the road, grabbing important prisoners of war to enforce ceasefire and so forth. People did whatever they could.
And, if there was no way to win, one could just tire enemy out by avoiding direct conflict. After couple days without sleep and lackluster food, odds get much more even. And nobody’s sleeping sound at night when enemy army is nearby.
Problem with documentaries is that they focus on large-scale, famous wars. While actual typical “army” back then would have resembled more of a modern street gang. Both in size, hierarchy and mentality.
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