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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Most of the time the smaller army didn’t “compensate” and simply lost, we only talk about famous upsets.
Also remember that there was no GPS or video game style birdseye view / perfect information.
Armies didn’t know exactly where the other army was, nor its size.
There’s plenty of battles where one side attacked because they thought they had superior numbers , only to realise their opponents was only the rear guard / vanguard and the rest of the opposing army was closing in.
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