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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Discipline and intimidation were huge factors in war also.
There’s a battle where Caesars legions charge forward to me the enemy and as a result they end up all out of line with each other. People ahead, people behind and all over the place. But shortly before they clashed into the enemy front line the legionaries halted the advance reformed the men and moved forward as a cohesive unit. This is immense discipline especially when your adrenaline is up and showed the individuals skills and competency of Caesar’s officers.
Again with the Roman’s, intimidation was a huge factor in war especially throughout history. Most armies would do battle cry’s and shout and scream at the enemy like we see in Gladiator at the beginning when they’re fighting the Gauls(?). Romans on the other hand were different. They stayed silent. Just a solid line of men in very strict formation stood completely still and completely silent. That, to me, is much more terrifying than people screaming and shouting as it’s like they aren’t even human but a machine or something
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