Shields have existed for as long as warfare has. The function of a shield is to protect its wielder from bodily harm, such as from blunt weapons, edged weapons, polearms, projectiles and other dangers introduced in combat. Like warfare itself, shields evolved over time. Their shape and construction varied according to cultures, geography, the fighting style of their intended wielder, and the materials available for manufacture.

One common thread weaving the diverse history of shields together is that of symbolism. Archaeological evidence suggests that decorative designs have been applied to shields since prehistoric times. The Aztec created symbolic designs on shields, as did Aboriginal Australians and Zulu peoples.

Many times, decorative designs served a practical purpose: set color schemes, marks, or unit symbols served to identify warriors on the battlefield. However, shield symbolism often went beyond mere functionality to speak to an individual warrior’s ethos or to send a message to the enemy. 

Shields and Spiritual Beliefs

Spiritual motifs are common elements of shield symbolism. These were used to invoke protection or power, broadcast strength or ability, or both. For example, the shields of ancient Greek hoplites depicted monsters to frighten enemies, or entities who could bestow power, such as mythological creatures, deities or emblems of their gods.

Ancient Roman shields were red, the color of war and military might, and often bore lightning bolts to signify Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods and symbol of Roman supremacy. Roman shields sometimes displayed wreaths of laurel leaves to signify victory as well as symbols of importance to particular legions or units. In medieval times, shields of Christian knights bore religious symbols, such as the cross or fleur de lis. Symbols used on shields took on such importance in Western Europe and Great Britain that the shield can be credited with inspiring the art of heraldry.

A Unique Art Form

The simple, ancient tool of the shield is thus a wellspring of human expression. Decoding the the images on shields, and even their shapes and colors, can reveal interesting things about the fighters of ages past—what powers commanded their loyalties, what they valued, what they believed in, and what they were trying to communicate to others, whether on ceremonial occasions or in the thick of violence on the battlefield.

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The war hammer, as crude as it seems, was a practical solution to a late-medieval arms race between offense and defense. From the 14th century, steel plate armor spread amongst the warrior classes. The angled and hardened surfaces of plate armor were highly resistant to thin-edged blows from swords and axes. The war hammer was one solution to defeat this protection.

War hammers relied on concussion rather than penetration to fell armor-clad opponents. Although there are ancient examples of war hammers across cultures, the weapon became commonplace in Europe from the second half of the 14th century.

Design

The basic war hammer design consisted of a long haft (one-handed or two-handed versions were developed) terminating in a metal hammer head. Swung with force, the hammer would deliver a crushing blow to the head, limbs or body of an armored opponent, inflicting enough blunt force trauma to stun, disable or kill.

Between the 14th and 15th centuries, war hammer design was improved for both functionality and lethality. In addition to the hammer head, the weapon acquired various designs of sharpened picks on the opposite side, these designed to penetrate armor or to act as hooks for pulling warriors off horses, or to grab reins or shield rims. Some war hammers also acquired a thin top spike for stabbing attacks; warriors soon learned to stun the opponent with the hammer, then finish him off with the pick or spike.

Developments

The Swiss refined the hammer head into a three- or four-pronged affair, which with a long spike and pick plus a 6 1/2-foot haft created the terrifying ‘Lucerne’ war hammer. Hafts were often strengthened with all-metal langets. War hammers were mainly used by cavalry, although they did find widespread service amongst infantry ranks.

In Western Europe, they continued in use into the 16th century until the introduction of firearms rendered plate armor obsolete, but in Eastern Europe they were wielded by Polish hussars through the 17th century and into the early 18th century.

Hammer

The hammer head had a cross-section of only about 2 inches square, to concentrate the impact of the blow into a small area, increasing the concussive effect.

Pick

Spiked heads could be straight, hooked, thick, thin, short or long. If the weapon was swung with full force, the pick was capable of puncturing plate armor.

Haft

The haft of a war hammer varied anywhere between 2 feet to 6 1/2 feet in length, the short variants used for close-quarters combat, the longer variants for deep swinging attacks from the back of a horse. 

Langets

Metal reinforcement strips running up the side of the haft prevented the weapon from being shattered by enemy sword blows.

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Battlefields are where history happened—for better or for worse. As Winston Churchill once observed, “Battles are the punctuation marks in history.” Battles, however, are very complex events. You can read many books and look at countless maps and still not have the gut-level understanding of what really happened and why it happened that way. Thus, the classic military adage, “See the ground.” That’s sage advice whether you are planning to fight a battle or trying to understand it long after the fact. No two battles are the same—even battles fought on the same piece of ground at different points in history. The compositions of the opposing forces, the contemporary weapons technologies, the tactics of the period, and the weather the day the battle was fought are never the same. The ground, however, changes very little, and the terrain can often be the dominating factor in the battle. Broken and compartmentalized ground usually favors the defender, wide-open terrain habitually favors the attacker, and gravity always confers an advantage on the side that holds the high ground. Very little in the brave new world of cyber operations will help a military force conduct an opposed river crossing. Kinetic energy still counts. No two historical battlefields are alike. Some have been almost completely built over, while others have changed relatively little since the swords were sheathed or the guns fell silent. Fortunately, there are many excellent battlefields that are historically significant, comprehensible, visitor friendly and (mostly) easy to reach. On the following pages are photos of Military History’s top recommended sites for any battlefield enthusiast’s bucket list.

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The view is spectacular from the ancient cliffside villages in the Southwest’s Four Corners region—chiseled canyons; orange, coral, and copper sandstone; desert flora; a sky that stretches forever.  

But this view was just a bonus for the Pueblo ancestors who constructed these dwellings not far from the point where Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico meet. No one’s sure quite why the Ancestral Pueblos decided to build these houses in cliffside alcoves instead of on the ground. Theories include: the apartment-like clusters were sheltered from the elements; stored food was safer here from animals; and the ground below was freed up for planting. Then there was security from enemies. Gene S. Stuart, a writer with an exploration party for National Geographic, summed up the obvious defensive advantage: “One toddler with a long-stemmed lily could have held me at bay.”  

The Ancestral Pueblos started settling into different pueblos (Spanish for “villages”) in the region around 900 CE, a time of increased rainfall in the desert that promoted their transformation from hunter-gatherers into farmers. Pueblos at Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Betatakin, and Keet Seel featured as many as hundreds of rooms that could house thousands.  

The people may have concentrated their homes like this for the sake of easier trade or to form tight religious communities. The largest Pueblos had dozens of kivas, circular rooms where ceremonies were held. It may have been religious leaders who were able to persuade the residents to build the multistory sandstone structures, staircases, roads, and the reservoirs and canals that managed water to make the dry environment livable.  

Eventually drought won out. By about 1300, lack of water had forced the inhabitants to flee Four Corners for more habitable locations. The ruins they left behind remain here due in large part to the Antiquities Act of 1906, which banned unauthorized digging on federal and Native American lands. Regional authorities acted quickly after that to establish cliff dwelling locations as protected places.

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This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of American History magazine.

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Judas Maccabeus (190-160 bce)

The third of five sons born to Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, priest (cohen) of Modein—the others being Eleazar, Simon, John and Jonathan—the man more widely known by his Greek name was known in Hebrew as Yehuda HaMakab, or Judah the Hammer. Judas was a cohen in his own right and would have remained so had his Seleucid overlord, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God Manifest”), not sought to promote homogeneity in his multi-ethnic kingdom by imposing Hellenic culture and religion on all his subjects in 168 bce. That included installing images of Hellenic gods in the Second Temple of Jerusalem, provoking a revolt by Mattathias, his sons and other Jewish pietists. 

During this war for control over Judea, Judas came to the fore. After winning a string of victories, he led his makeshift army into Jerusalem on the 25th day in the Hebrew month of Kislev (approximately December), 164 bce. In the course of cleansing the Temple, tradition has it that there was only enough oil to light it for a single day, but it burned through eight nights until more oil was found. 

The fighting was far from over, however. Eleazar was killed in 161 and at Elasa in 160. Judas was outgeneraled by Bacchides and died fighting. His burial ended with a quotation from King David’s lament to King Saul: “How the mighty have fallen!” Jonathan and Simon subsequently died, leaving John the last Maccabee standing by 142 bce, when Judea finally won autonomy within the Seleucid kingdom and independence in 141.

Narses (c.ad 478-568)

The exact dates of Narses’ birth and death are uncertain, as is how he came to be castrated. What is known is that he was a Romanized Armenian who served as steward, chief treasurer and grand chamber of the court to the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. 

He played a vital role in putting down the Nika riots on 532, but there is no evidence of military training leading to Justinian’s ordering him in 538 to Italy, where Count Flavius Belisarius, after having conquered the Vandals in North Africa in 533, was trying to wrest the Western Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths. Although Narses demonstrated a surprising grasp of command, he and Belisarius did not trust one another and Justinian recalled Narses. Working with minimal resources, Belisarius conduced a brilliant defense of Rome in 538, but in 541 Justinian, suspecting his loyalty, reassigned him to fight the Sassanians in Mesopotamia. Narses took Belisarius’ place in Italy and by June 551 was the supreme commander at age 73 with a string of victories. In 554 the undersized eunuch was feted to the first Triumph held in Rome in 150 years—and the last. On Nov. 14, 565, Justinian died and the new emperor, Justin II, recalled Narses to Constantinople in 567. Some accounts claim he died enroute in April 568, but others describe his death in peaceful retirement in 574 at what might have been age 96—itself an achievement in the treacherous cauldron of Byzantine politics. 

Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227)

Born to a Mongol chieftain of the Borjigin clan, Temujin was eight when his father died. Certainly he would have learned the standard Mongol mounted warrior repertoire, but his accomplishments had gone far beyond that by 1206, when a kurultai of his peers elected him their first khagan, under the name of Genghis Khan. Among the most intriguing mysteries surrounding his rise to power is how he learned, hands-on, to forge alliances, turn an unwieldy collection of steppe warriors into a vast, well-disciplined army capable of conquering continents and, while he was at it, create a political entity of unprecedented scope to administer his holdings, complete with a codified legal system—all conceived virtually from scratch.

Although the victims of his ruthless expansion of empire have been estimated as high as 17 million—one-fifth the earth’s population at the time—Genghis Khan conquered the largest contiguous land mass in history and laid the foundation for a meritocracy allowing universal religious tolerance, which in times of peace connected the western world by pan-Eurasian trade. All this was without precedent in the Mongol world, but it lasted a quarter of a millennium. Is it any wonder that, however controversial he is elsewhere, Genghis Khan is still at the top of Mongolia’s hierarchy of national heroes?

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1632)

Born in the Brabant in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium), Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly attended Jesuit school in Cologne, but at age 15 enlisted as a soldier in the Spanish army against the Dutch in the Eighty Years War. In 1600 he served in a mercenary unit with the Holy Roman Empire fighting Ottoman forces in Hungary and Transylvania. It was not uncommon for professional soldiers to learn hands-on as they rose in the ranks in the 17th century, but Tilly was exceptional in that he ascended from private to field marshal in just five years. In 1610 Duke Maximilian I gave him command of the Catholic League. 

When the Thirty Years War broke out in Bohemia in 1618, Tilly’s victory at White Mountain in 1620 knocked Bohemia out of the conflict at almost the beginning. As other Protestant countries rose against the Empire, Tilly defeated each in turn, seeming to be invincible.

Tilly’s career began to tarnish when King Gustavus II Adolphus put the Thirty Years War through a new phase with his innovatively mobile Swedish army. After a 20-day siege, on May 20, 1631 Tilly’s forces stormed Magdeburg and for the first time he lost control over his troops, who butchered 20,000 of the city’s 25,000 population. On Sept. 17, Tilly confronted Gustavus at Breitenfeld and was convincingly outmaneuvered and beaten, suffering 27,000 casualties. Tilly scored a modest victory at Bamberg on March 9, 1632, but at Rain am Lech on April 15 he was struck in the thigh by an arquebus round and died of osteomyelitis in Ingolstadt on the 30th.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

When the English Civil War broke out, its most famous—and notorious—figure was known among the merchant community and had been a member of Parliament for his home county of Huntingdon in 1628-29 and 1640-42. His only military experience had been raising a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire for the Parliamentarians, which arrived too late to participate in the opening battle at Edgehill on Oct. 23, 1642. Oliver Cromwell proved avid at learning from experience, most notably at Gainesborough on July 23, 1643, at which point he was a colonel. He was involved in redeveloping the Parliamentary forces into a “New Model Army,” which proved its worth in the pivotal battles of Marston Moor in July 1644 and Naseby on June 14, 1645. By 1652 Cromwell’s subsequent campaigns in Scotland and Ireland sealed his place among Britain’s most successful generals. If appraised by his own standard, however—“warts and all”—he is also remembered as a regicide (he was the third of 59 to sign King Charles I’s death warrant), the revolutionary who dissolved Parliament and made himself “Lord Protector,” i.e. dictator, and one of those oppressors the Irish still love to hate.

Nathanael Greene (1742-1786)

Born in Warwick, Rhode Island, Nathanael Greene was running a mill when the American Revolution broke out, but he was an avid reader with—despite being a Quaker—a fascination with military science. That and his advocating the break with Britain led to his being expelled from his congregation, although he still regarded himself as a Quaker. When the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred, Greene’s only contribution was to form a militia unit, the Kentish Guard. On June 14, 1775 Greene met Maj. Gen. George Washington, the new commander of the Continental Army, in Boston, and the two became close friends. Serving as quartermaster-general, Greene distinguished himself in combat at Brandywine Creek, Valley Forge and Monmouth Court House. On Dec. 2, 1780 Washington sent Greene to Charlotte, N.C., where he reorganized the beaten Continental forces in the southern colonies and set out to retake them from British Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis’ army. Greene choreographed an artful campaign of fighting retreats, climaxing at Guilford Court House, N.C., on March 15, 1781. Although Cornwallis ended up holding the ground and technically winning the battle, the 633 casualties he suffered compelled him to disengage and retire to Virginia. While Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown, Greene took the offensive, driving the last British in the South from Charleston, S.C. on Dec. 14, 1782. Before his death of heatstroke in Georgia on June 19, 1786, Greene summed up how he wore Cornwallis down: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803)

The son of an educated slave on French-owned Saint-Domingue, François-Dominique Toussaint got some education of his own from Jesuit contacts while serving as a livestock handler, herder, coachman and steward until 1776, when he attained freedom. A slave revolt broke out between oppressed blacks and their white and mulatto overseers in August 1791. By 1793 he was leading rebels in a self-developed guerrilla force and had adopted the surname “Louverture” (“opening”). Later that year he and his followers helped a newly-Republican France fight off Spanish and British forces and was encouraged to learn that the French National Assembly ended slavery in May 1794. Over the following years Louverture displayed a remarkable grasp of civil leadership, restoring the economy in 1795 and overrunning Spanish San Domingo in January 1801, declaring the liberation of its white, black and mulatto population. In January 1802, however, Sainte-Domingue was invaded by a French army led by Maj. Gen. Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc, brother-in-law of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, with orders to reinstate slavery on the island. Overwhelmed and losing followers, Louverture agreed to lay down his arms in May and retire to his plantation. Instead, Bonaparte ordered his arrest. He died in Fort-de-Joux in the Jura Mountains on April 7, 1803. 

Bonaparte’s treachery backfired. Leclerc died of yellow fever in November 1802. On May 18, 1803 Bonaparte made some quick cash for his European operations by approving American President Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, effectively writing off his ambitions in the New World. On Jan. 1, 1804 one of Louverture’s disciples, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, declared himself governor-general of Haiti, the world’s first black republic. 

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie (1762-1806)

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie was the issue of Alexandre Davy, Marquis de la Pailleterie, a minor French noble plantation owner in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), and one of his slaves, Marie-Céssette Dumas (whose surname Thomas-Alexandre adopted). The boy accompanied his father to France, where he could be free and get an education. In 1786, however, he enlisted in the French army’s 5th Dragoon Regiment (Queen). When the French Revolution broke out, he found numerous opportunities to show his military talents. On June 2, 1792 he was promoted to corporal, but over the next few years he was commissioned a lieutenant, then rose to lieutenant colonel and, in July 1793–the first person of African descent in history to attain the rank of brigadier general. Although not the most gifted strategist, he was exceptionally strong and reveled in leading by example. Among others, Dumas commanded the Army of the West in 1796 and the Army of Italy in 1796. On March 25, 1797, during a fighting retreat from Brixen and Botzen in the Tyrol, Dumas held the Brixen bridge against an Austrian cavalry squadron singlehanded. From 1798 to 1799 he served in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army of the Orient. 

Retiring in 1802, Dumas died of stomach cancer in 1806. Undoubtedly his lifetime of adventure inspired his son, Alexandre Dumas Sr., to write adventure novels, such as The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo. His grandson, Alexandre Dumas Jr. also became an esteemed novelist and playwright, best known for La Dame aux Camélias.

Benjamin H. Grierson (1826-1911)

One of the iconic names in American Civil War cavalry had no military training and was afraid of horses. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa. on July 8, 1826, Benjamin Henry Grierson was nearly kicked to death by a horse at age eight and distrusted the beasts ever since. Educated in Ohio, he became a music teacher and shopkeeper in Illinois when war broke out and joined the U.S. Army at Cairo on May 8, 1861, as a volunteer aide to Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss. On Oct. 24, however, Grierson was assigned to the 6th Illinois Cavalry and on March 26, 1862 his men elected him colonel.

Mastering his horse problem, Grierson led his troopers on raids and skirmishes throughout Tennessee and Mississippi. This climaxed with a diversionary raid in which Grierson led 1,700 troopers of the 6th and 7th Illinois and 2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments from La Grange, Tenn. on April 17, 1863 600 miles to Baton Rouge, La. on May 2. A step ahead of Confederate pursuers, Grierson’s raiders inflicted 100 casualties, took 500 prisoners, captured 3,000 arms and destroyed 50 to 60 railroad and telegraph lines. Of greatest strategic importance, the raid diverted a division’s worth of Confederate soldiers while Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s forces slipped south of the Mississippi fortress of Vicksburg, leading to its July 4 surrender. After the war, Grierson decided to make a career of Army service, spending most on the frontier, his commands including the 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Colored). On April 5, 1890 he was given a rare promotion to brigadier general in the Regular Army, shortly before retiring on July 8 of that year. 

Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013)

The son of a well-to-do farmer who died in a French prison, Vo Nguyen Giap attended a Catholic lycée in Hue, joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1931, gained a law degree in 1938 and worked as a history teacher while self-studying military history. In May 1940 he met Ho Chi Minh in China, where he learned tactics and strategy as practiced by Mao Zedong. By the end of World War II Giap was Minister of Defense for the communist-nationalist People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). 

Between 1946 and 1954 Giap blended guerrilla and conventional warfare, winning some campaigns and suffering some stinging defeats but learning from experience. His decisive victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 shocked the Western powers, as did his success in wearing down U.S. forces between 1965 and 1973. Giap viewed himself as more soldier than politician, which may explain his being sidelined by North Vietnamese General Secretary Le Duan, whose “big battle” strategy prevailed over Giap’s during the 1968 Tet and 1972 Easter offensives, resulting in bloody tactical defeats. In the end, the PAVN prevailed over the American-backed Saigon government in 1975. In 1978 Giap oversaw an invasion of Kampuchea that toppled Pol Pot’s radical Maoist Khmer Rouge government. When the Chinese retaliated with a punitive expedition into Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1979, the PAVN’s stout defense convinced the invaders to withdraw on March 16. 

Although Vo Nguyen Giap is widely touted as one of the military geniuses of his century, much of his self-taught strategy and tactics could only have worked in Indochina’s unique conditions in the second half of the 20th century.

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As an instrument of war, the flail was a handheld, two-piece, jointed weapon, consisting of a wooden handle of varying length (up to 5-6 feet long) and a shorter, perhaps 1–2-feet long, heavy impact rod serving as a “striking-head” which was attached to the handle by a flexible rope, leather strap or chain links, allowing it to swing freely up and down and in a full circle.

By making a sweeping, downward blow with the flail’s handle, the weapon’s wielder greatly increased the impact energy of his blow through the increased energy generated by the centripetal force of the free-swinging “striking-head,” thereby inflicting a more powerful blow on the target. Some flail wielders even increased the lethality of their flail’s striking-head by replacing the rod with a longer-chain-linked, spiked head, orb-shaped ball, creating the Kettenmorgenstern (chain morning star).

Peasant farmers just trying to survive medieval combat added spikes and metal studs, considering any lethal enhancement a battlefield “plus” if it helped them get through a battle alive.

Flail weapons are best classified as “peasant levy’ weapons” since they evolved from the flail grain thresher, an agricultural tool typically used by farmers to separate grain from their husks (dating from ancient Roman times) through heavy beating, and therefore one of the commonly-available farming tools that peasant levies who were involuntarily conscripted into military service had readily available.

Other such peasant farming/foresting tools that could be quickly converted into military use when peasants were called up included axes, billhooks, knives, adzes and heavy mallets. Certainly, at least by the 15th century—as Czech Hussite peasant infantry who fought with flails demonstrate—flails were in use and there are accounts confirming its use through the 17th century.

Variations of the flail weapon were developed in widespread world regions. In medieval Russia and East Asia, steppe warriors wielded kisten, flails with smooth metal or bone balls attached to the haft by rope or a leather strap. Similar, flail-like, hand-wielded impact weapons were developed by the Chinese (nunchakus, three-section-staff, and the knotted-rope knout) and the Koreans (pyeongong). Yet, the most famous flail-pattern weapon may never have been part of the Medieval armored knight’s weapons array.

Today, the most popular and well-known image of the flail weapon—perpetuated by modern-era novels and films—is of fully-armored Medieval knights (literally) “flailing” away in knight-to-knight combat, bashing at each other brandishing short-hafted “morning star” flails sporting long-chain-linked, spiked balls.

Yet, today’s medieval armored knight combat historians are at odds as to whether such weapons even existed. Contemporary paintings depict such weapons, and post-medieval examples do exist, but many historians doubt if these were more than conceptual imaginings. Indeed, a short-handled, long-chained “morning star” flail, in practical use, could have been more dangerous to the flail weapon’s wielder than to the weapon’s target!

Certainly, the flail was used in medieval combat, but the version depicted in 19th century and later romantic “knighthood” novels and films was likely never used in knightly combat.

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This fantastic and detailed study reveals the origins of ancient Rome’s most iconic weapon: the gladius. Based on first-class research, this is a story of historical evolution—not only of a weapon, but of tactics, armor and indeed of Roman civilization.

Although we are all familiar with the Roman Empire ruled by powerful Caesars, the authors have chosen to take us much farther back in time to what might be called the infancy of Rome’s armies.

This debut volume focuses on the ancient monarchial and consular periods of Rome, painting a clear picture of how Roman armies developed into mighty fighting forces. Among the many fascinating topics discussed are types of insignia, how weapons were worn, and archaic fighting techniques in duels as well as in pitched battles.

The authors delve into ancient sources and archaeological artifacts to bring history to life. Many clear and detailed diagrams make the material both visually interesting and richer in an educational sense.

This book is highly recommended to anyone wishing to get a firmer grasp on the history of ancient Rome or the classical world.

The Roman Gladius and the Ancient Fighting Techniques

Volume I – Monarchy and Consular Age
by Fabrizio Casprini & Marco Saliola, Frontline Books, 2023

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In his Life of Julius Caesar ancient biographer Plutarch describes Caesar’s Gallic campaigns as a beginning for the conqueror—the first and greatest step on his path to power and immortal fame. The subjugation of Gaul showed him superior to Rome’s greatest military commanders. His mettle was tested and proved in nearly 10 years of successful operations in difficult terrain, navigating shifting alliances and counter-alliances, confronting and conciliating savage enemies and perfidious allies, and producing victory repeatedly through determination, imagination, and audacity. He fought more battles and killed more enemies than any of his predecessors. Through battle and siege, he subdued nations, slaying a million men and capturing a million more, bringing vast territory under Rome’s control.

But Gaul was not an end in itself. Although the stage of Caesar’s exploits was beyond the Alps, his audience was Rome. Military service had long been requisite for Roman political office. Successful military command was a potent aid in attaining the highest positions. In the late Republic, it increasingly became the means of acquiring extra-constitutional authority as the sword became the arbiter of power. 

A Political Opportunity

Caesar was already involved in this game when he entered Gaul in 58 BCE. Two years before he had formed a political alliance with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, called the First Triumvirate, that allowed them to control the entire Roman political system. Caesar knew the arrangement could not last forever. He had to prepare for the inevitable showdown. He needed the opportunity to increase his fame and influence as well as cultivate the intense personal loyalty of his troops that would allow him to challenge Pompey. Gaul was his training ground. 

To maximize the political benefits of his exploits in Gaul, Caesar wrote his own account. Just as he used the war in Gaul to gain the power and influence necessary to bend Roman politics to his will, he used his narrative to enhance his reputation toward the same end. The Gallic War, based on his notes, diaries, dispatches, memoranda, and reports to the Senate embellished with added content and literary flourish, highlights Caesar’s abilities and achievements. While many historians suspect it was exaggerated for the author’s benefit and is propagandistic rather than strictly historical, it is our primary source for the conflict.

Caesar’s account famously begins by describing Gaul as divided into three parts inhabited by the Belgae, the Aquitani, and the Gauls. This simple mental map becomes far more complicated as the annual campaigns are narrated. The work ultimately mentions more than 100 tribes Caesar must defeat or pacify. This ethnic diversity overlays a challenging topography marked by rivers, swamps, mountains, and vast, trackless forests magnifying the difficulties of logistics and maneuver—and punctuated by nearly unassailable strongholds.

From a Roman perspective, Gaul was tribal, atavistic, chaotic, and dangerous.

Its specter of fear haunted for centuries after the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BCE. Already in control of Cisalpine Gaul, the area of Italy north of the River Po, Rome added Transalpine Gaul as a province in the second century BCE. This territory was often called Provincia Nostra or simply “the Province,” whence derives the name for the modern French region Provence. These territories and peoples were heavily influenced by Roman culture and involved in trade with Rome, imbibing the benefits of its civilization. This Romanization was reflected in the name Gallia Togata (toga-wearing Gaul). The farther one traveled, the weaker this Roman influence became. The Romans called these untamed lands Gallia Comata (long-haired Gaul), evoking the wild, freedom-loving character of their inhabitants. 

As part of the Triumvirate’s division of political spoils, Caesar was appointed proconsul of the provinces of Illyricum as well as Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul in 58 BCE. Before him stretched a vast field of opportunity, and he meant to make the most of it. The years that followed were marked by numerous successful campaigns and a constant stream of victories enhacing Caesar’s reputation.

Gaul became an endless gift to Caesar. The restless stirrings of Gallic tribes against Roman domination ensured constant conflict, yet the Gauls’ disunity and inability to put common interest over local loyalties meant that Caesar could deal with them in a largely piecemeal fashion. 

But eventually, Caesar’s successes would forge a new enemy—spurring a leader to arise among the Gauls capable of forging a unity among the tribes not realized before. This leader’s name was Vercingetorix. He would confront Caesar with his greatest challenges yet.

A New Enemy

If Gaul seemed tranquil in the beginning of 52 BCE, it was only the calm before another breaking storm. Beneath the snow-laden trees and in the recesses of shadowed hills, secret meetings were held to commiserate about the misfortunes of Gaul and call for a united effort to drive the Romans out. The moment seemed favorable. Not only had Caesar withdrawn beyond the Alps, as he habitually did in winter to be closer to events in Rome, rumor alleged that he was tangled in political turmoil that would prevent him from joining the troops he had left to garrison Gaul. Solemn oaths were sworn and swords were sharpened. 

The first stroke fell upon Cenabum, where Roman traders were massacred, and their goods looted. Like embers carried by swift winds, the news spread quickly. Vercingetorix, the newly-proclaimed king of the Averni, seized the moment to forge the necessary unity among the tribes. Calling upon all to uphold the oaths they had sworn, he combined exhortation and severity to forge an army with which to oppose Rome and over-awe the tribes who hesitated. By common consent, he was given supreme military command. 

Receiving word of these events, Caesar hurried to Transalpine Gaul only to confront an immediate difficulty. The Province was under threat, but the bulk of his forces were still in winter quarters, far to the north. If he called them south, they would be harried all the way, yet to march to them was equally dangerous. Using surprise, misdirection, and maneuver, he forced the enemy to shift position and was able to unite his entire field army under his command. 

But Vercingetorix was a wily general who understood his enemy’s challenges as well as his own. The keys to controlling territory in Gaul were the fortified towns called oppida, which could function as anchors of strength and supply or as hostages to force an opponent’s hand. He besieged Gorgobina, a chief center of the Boii who, along with the Aedui, were allied with Rome. This forced Caesar to choose between two undesirable alternatives: conveying weakness to allies and surrendering the initiative or moving before spring and risking major problems of transport and supply. Caesar chose to march. 

New Rules of War?

Caesar’s decision worked toward solving both problems at once. He quickly took three villages rich with supply and caused Vercingetorix to abandon the siege. Recovering the initiative, Caesar marched toward the hostile town of Avaricum, the most important stronghold of the Bituriges, hoping its capture would subdue the surrounding territory. But the old rules would no longer necessarily apply. 

Vercingetorix had a new kind of war in mind. Convening a council, he presented a strategic vision to the Gauls that would require patience, forbearance, and self-sacrifice in the national cause. He outlined an asymmetric strategy that would avoid direct assault, focusing instead on strangling Roman forces by preventing them from foraging and gathering supplies. Victory would be won by attrition.

The advantages in such a war fell to the Gauls, who were operating in their own territory. There were no ripe harvests in the early season to sustain large infantry forces, which meant the Romans would have to go looking. An abundance of Gallic cavalry would enable them to isolate and destroy the foraging parties. To maximize the effects of this strategy, he called for scorched earth. Villages, towns, farm buildings, food, supplies—anything they could not carry with them was to be destroyed before the enemy could take possession. The Romans would have to travel farther in search of food, increasing their vulnerability. 

Preparing For a Siege

Flames sprang up in all directions. Such a strategy was not easy to carry out because it called for the destruction of one’s own. The Bituriges begged the others to spare Avaricum, the finest city in Gaul. It was eminently defensible, they argued, as it was surrounded almost completely by a river and a swamp. The sturdy walls fostered hope that the Romans could not take it by force of arms. Vercingetorix argued against this exception, but the tide of sympathy was against him. Nonetheless, he would not commit his field army.

The townspeople would be left on their own. After all, if Avaricum fell, it would only vindicate his tactics. Caesar began preparations for a siege while Vercingetorix watched from a distance.

With his options limited because of difficult terrain, Caesar began constructing an earth ramp and two siege towers. The threatening presence of the Gallic field army lurked in the hinterlands, ambushing foraging parties. Shortage of food, cold temperatures, and steady rains added discomfort to an already arduous task. Moreover, the Gallic defenders were both energetic and inventive. They undermined the siege ramp by digging tunnels, raised the height of their walls and towers, made frequent sallies to set fire to the siege works, and cast heavy stones on the working legionaries. 

Despite these challenges, the Romans completed the ramp in 25 days.

The Gauls made one last great effort to forestall the storming of the town. They launched sorties and hurled incendiaries onto the siege towers and ramp. But Caesar had foreseen the danger. Although it was the middle of the night, Caesar’s policy of stationing two legions outside the fortified camp and remaining near the construction site himself enabled him to react quickly and decisively. The fires were put out and the enemy pushed back.

Caesar Changes His Plan

Seeing that they could not hold out, the Gauls resolved to abandon the town. They hoped to escape to the camp of Vercingetorix during the night. As they prepared to flee, the women, fearing they and the children could not escape, begged the men not to leave them to the enemy. When the women’s pleas were ignored, they began calling out and gesturing to the Romans. This put the Romans on the alert. The escape plan had to be abandoned.

The next day the blow fell. The siege towers rolled forward, and the Romans poured onto the wall. The defense collapsed in panic. The Romans, desiring revenge for the massacre at Cenabum, made no distinctions of age or sex and gave no quarter. Of 40,000 inhabitants, hardly 800 escaped. Vercingetorix showed himself equal to the moment, using the disaster to reinforce his strategy, win over the remaining Gallic nations, and increase his army.

Caesar was also making use of events. Having captured a large amount of grain and other supplies, he refreshed and restored his army for a spring campaign. But his difficulties stretched beyond the battlefield. Envoys of the Aedui arrived to urgently request his help in resolving an internal dispute over the leadership of their nation. Reluctant to postpone the campaign, the potential consequences of civil strife within so important an allied people could be devastating. Caesar altered his plans. Settling the dispute according to their national laws, he sought to restore their unity and remind them of their allegiance to him. 

Ordering a levy of 10,000 infantry and all available cavalry, he then marched in search of Vercingetorix. Caesar knew that a war of constant maneuver and attrition did not favor him. He had to destroy the Gallic field army. As a means of provoking decisive conflict, he marched into the lands of the Averni themselves, targeting Gergovia, their capital. Vercingetorix was compelled to shadow him.

For days the two armies marched and camped within sight of each other on opposite banks of the Elaver River. Gergovia was strongly situated on a very high hill, with the elevated ridge in front of the town thickly covered by the camp of the enemy. Undaunted, Caesar first built a large, fortified camp. He then seized and fortified a lower hill, stationing two legions there and joining the camps by parallel trenches. The Gauls watched the methodical industriousness of the Romans with uneasy eyes. 

Traitors In Their Midst

Vercingetorix had other weapons to wield than those visible upon the field. He made use of bribery and collusion. Leaders of the Aedui turned against their Roman allies. One of them was the commander of the infantry force Caesar had called to his aid; this man employed lies and fearmongering to convince his men to attack the Romans. Caesar managed to restore the loyalty of the troops without battle and received the deepest apologies from Aedui envoys.

However, the episode made the Roman leader increasingly uneasy about traitors in his midst and the prospect of being surrounded by a larger Gallic uprising. He began considering how to withdraw his army from Gergovia to more favorable ground—without giving the impression he was fearful.  

An opportunity presented itself when, in response to Caesar’s misdirection, the bulk of the enemy force was employed fortifying a western approach to the town, leaving their camp virtually empty. A swift, stealthy attack delivered the camp into his hands. This is apparently all he intended. The retreat was sounded. But many of Caesar’s troops did not hear the signal. Carried away by hopes of swift victory, they assaulted the town itself. An alarm caused the bulk of the Gallic forces to rush back through the town to engage the Romans at the wall.

As their numbers increased, they gained the advantage. The Romans were driven off with heavy losses. When they rallied on the plain to face their pursuers, the Gauls would not engage, nor could they be tempted to do so for the next two days. Such restraint indicated that the message of Vercingetorix was having an effect.  

Caesar’s failure to take Gergovia increased Vercingetorix’s reputation and further loosened Caesar’s hold upon his allies. The unrepentant “traitors” among the Aedui looted and burned a key supply cache at Noviodunum. Refusing to take an embarrassing and backward strategic step, Caesar did not withdraw into Transalpine Gaul. Instead, he went on the offensive, surprising the enemy with quick movement and risky river crossings to seize what he needed. Knowing he could not expect relief forces from the south, he hired Germanic horsemen from across the Rhine to supplement his forces.

A Gamble Worth Taking?

Over the next few months, Vercingetorix collected a considerable force, increasing the threat to the Province and drawing Caesar closer. His marked superiority in cavalry convinced Vercingetorix that the opportunity for a decisive attack was at hand. But his aim was still a strike against Roman logistics rather than a general engagement. Dismissing the ability of the Germanic cavalry to stop them, he convinced the other Gauls that by attacking the Romans while they were burdened by their baggage and strung out in column on the march, they could severely weaken them. Yet Vercingetorix underestimated Roman cohesion and discipline. 

Caesar adroitly managed both to secure his baggage train and to inflict heavy damage on the enemy. Reeling back, Vercingetorix withdrew into the nearby oppidum of Alesia. This move seems a departure from Vercingetorix’s previous strategy. He had now allowed himself to be pinned down and be subjected to Roman siege warfare, at which they excelled. On the other hand, sending his cavalry away on the mission of recruiting a massive relief army can be seen as the capture of a unique opportunity. If they could hold out, Caesar would be crushed between two forces. It was perhaps a gamble worth taking. But the price of failure would be high.

Settling in for the siege, Caesar built a system of fortifications of extraordinary size and complexity. His fortifications enclosed the defenders within Alesia (circumvallation) and guarded against assault from without (contravallation). An initial trench 20 feet wide was dug on the plain to discourage attacks on the working parties. Behind this obstacle two more trenches were dug and filled with water diverted from the river that flowed across the plain. Behind these ditches, a wall of earth and rubble was raised, crowned with a palisade, reinforced with parapets and battlements, and guarded by towers that served as firing platforms for catapults.

Mechanized Artillery

But the 11-mile circuit stretched his lines thin, particularly during the construction phase. Thus Caesar added a system of hidden obstacles and traps in front of the walls and trenches so that the fortifications could be defended by smaller numbers. Triple rows of sharpened wooden stakes covered pits. Barbed iron spikes would not only cause casualties but slow any assault so that the Romans could concentrate force against it. Caesar had an identical line of fortifications built facing the other direction to guard against the relieving army.

After an initial unsuccessful attack when the relief army arrived, the Gauls spent the next day preparing to assault the Roman fortifications. They constructed wicker screens to cover the trenches, grappling hooks to pull down the parapets, and ladders to scale the palisade. In the middle of the night, they raised a mighty shout to signal those besieged in the town and launched their attack.

Hearing the clamor, Vercingetorix led his forces out to attack the Roman interior lines. His hopes must have been high, but the shouts of his rescuers quickly turned to screams of pain. As they rushed forward in the darkness, iron spikes pierced their feet. Sharpened stakes impaled them as they fell into the hidden pits.

While the Gauls launched an initial barrage of missiles to drive the Romans off the parapets, they came under the murderous fire of Roman mechanical artillery firing stone shot and heavy bolts. Even without precise aim in the darkness, these did great damage to the massed ranks of the attackers. By the time Vercingetorix’s forces had negotiated the first trench, the attack had failed. 

Repelled twice with heavy losses, the Gauls considered what to do. Because of the difficult terrain, Caesar’s fortifications were not completely uniform. The Gauls saw an opportunity in a gap to the north of the town created by a hill too large and steep to be encompassed by siege lines. The gap was guarded by a Roman camp holding two legions, but it was on unfavorable ground and constituted a weak point. The Gauls secretly dispatched a force of 60,000 men. A stealthy night march put them behind the hill before dawn, where they waited until the appointed hour. Gallic forces on the plain gathered to divert Roman attention. The assault was launched around mid-day. 

The Crucial Moment

From his vantage point in Alesia, Vercingetorix saw these movements and prepared to launch his own supportive assault from within the lines. But his was not the only eye surveying the field. Caesar had set his own camp on the high ground south of the town for a clear view of the scene. The Romans were now under assault in multiple locations and from two directions.

This was the crucial moment. The struggle in the north was particularly bitter. Exhausted legionaries were in danger of being overrun by relentless and determined Gauls. Caesar dispatched six cohorts to plug the gap while riding out to encourage the troops holding the line on the plain, his purple cloak announcing his presence to friend and foe alike. His personal intervention turned the tide. The line held. But the battle could still be lost. Calling upon four cohorts and available cavalry, Caesar rushed toward the crisis point.

Seeing their commander’s approach, the Romans resisted with renewed energy. Desperate to break through before Caesar’s arrival, the Gauls attacked wildly. But Caesar had divided his cavalry. One half rode with him; the other half he had sent to circle around and attack the enemy from behind. When the Gauls became aware of this second force, they broke and turned to flee. Most were run down and slaughtered. Vercingetorix’s plan was a near stroke–but the Gauls had lost. Those inside withdrew back into Alesia. Those outside fled from their camps and dispersed to their various nations.

Caesar’s victory was decisive. The 74 enemy military standards brought to him testified to the magnitude of his success. Several key enemy leaders were killed or captured. Vercingetorix surrendered himself to the conqueror in order to preserve what remained of his people—held captive in Rome for five years, he was ritually garroted in 46 BCE during Caesar’s much-delayed “triumph” ceremony in the Roman capital. Alesia marked the end of general, organized resistance to Rome. Though Gaul was not yet completely subdued, it was effectively conquered.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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In December 1232 a.d., a single arrow changed the course of history. Loosed by a Buddhist monk, the missile struck down the leader of the second Mongol invasion of Korea. His death precipitated a lifting of the siege of Cheoin and subsequent Mongol withdrawal from Goryeo. Yet they wouldn’t be gone for long. The extended nightmare that characterized Mongol attempts to subdue the Korean kingdom was destined to continue for a generation.

The geopolitical environment of Northeast Asia in the early 13th century would be recognizable to us today. Multiple, militarized states in a relatively compact area shared diplomatic, military, and trade relations. However, the identity of the regional powerhouses at the time is different from our modern construct.  

China was divided. In 1127 a confederation of Jurchen tribes had seized control of northern China, later known as Manchuria. To their south, the Jurchen faced what remained of the Chinese Song Dynasty, known today as the Southern Song. The Jurchen proclaimed the establishment of a “Great Jin” Dynasty. Fighting with the Chinese continued until a line of unassailable fortified Song cities along the Huai River forced a stalemate. This resulted in a cessation of Jin-Song hostilities in 1138 and the formalization of a new border. 

Genghis Khan On the Rise

The war between the Jurchen and the Chinese couldn’t have come at a worse time. In 1206, far to their north, an aggressive and ambitious Mongol chieftain was declared Khagan, Emperor of the Mongols. Genghis Khan—whose name meant “Universal Ruler”—wasted no time in turning the energy of the newly-unified Mongol and allied steppe tribes toward external foes. 

Genghis Khan launched his invasion of the Jin Empire in 1211 and, by 1215, he’d taken the capital at Zhongdu (modern Beijing). Distracted by events further to the west, Genghis Khan left a force to keep the pressure on the Jin while he himself marched off to destroy the Qara Khitai (in central Asia north of the Indian subcontinent) in 1217. He then smashed the prosperous Khwarezmid Empire (a Muslim empire that included present-day Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia) in 1221.

Genghis Khan died in August 1227, leaving a massive empire in the hands of his very capable third son, Ogedai, who was formally recognized as khan in 1229. When Ogedai led an army back to Jin lands the following year, his veteran troops made short work of the remaining resistance. Aizong, the last Jin emperor, hanged himself to avoid capture, ending that dynasty in 1234. Having toppled the Jin Empire, the conquerors would soon turn their attention to the Song. 

Throughout this tumultuous period the Korean kingdom of Goryeo bided its time. Goryeo had been founded through military conquest in 918. A hereditary military aristocracy held significant, if declining, influence at court. Martial clout reached its peak in 1170 when the military usurped the king’s authority. The aristocracy established a dictatorship that would last a hundred years, ruling in the king’s name but holding near-absolute power.

Swords and Scholars

In keeping with the nature of its founding, Goryeo maintained the greatest military capability of any Korean polity until the 20th Century. Goryeo troops were, at the beginning of the 13th Century, highly trained, well-equipped, battle-hardened, and well-led by the military aristocracy.

The sword arm of Goryeo was augmented by a rising class of Confucian scholars who provided sage advice to the royal family and a well-educated pool of wily diplomats. This scholarly class found itself increasingly at odds with the established military aristocracy and dictatorship, though powerless to resist the dictator’s private army. The intellectuals waited patiently for an opportunity to challenge what they saw as an illegitimate usurpation of the throne.

Fissures aside, the Goryeo court wielded its key elements—the quill and the sword—with admirable dexterity. The kingdom exhibited phenomenal ability to rapidly concentrate and project coercive power. This approach facilitated a multi-pronged expedition against the Jurchen in 1107, which seized massive tracts of land from the semi-nomadic tribes. This campaign set the conditions for a pledge by the Jurchen Wanyan tribe—the same tribe that would establish the Jin Dynasty eight years later—not to encroach upon Goryeo territory.

The annals show Goryeo’s leaders recognized the Mongol storm on the horizon. A number of factors made it seem like a distant problem at first. Korean kingdoms had long fended off mounted Jurchen incursions along the border, launching their own attacks north when timing and local advantage were favorable. To the Goryeo the Mongols were nothing more than another group of barbarians on horseback.

Yet it was the handling of the Khitan Liao incursions of the 11th Century wherein the Goryeo playbook for dealing with the Mongols would be written. Throughout the course of three invasions in 993, 1010, and 1018, Goryeo’s armies fought viciously until conditions rendered further resistance undesirable.  The king would then sue for peace—ensuring any terms included the withdrawal of the invading force—buying time to reorganize for the next campaign before resuming the conflict. 

The best example of this Goryeo sword-and-quill tactic, an admirable early synthesis of military and diplomatic efforts, led to the Battle of Guiju during the third Khitan invasion in 1019, and the annihilation of a 100,000-strong Khitan army in the mountains of modern North Korea. Goryeo would employ this same strategy, with notable success, against the Mongols.

Korea, an Unlikely Contender

Given what we know of the Mongol conquests, it might appear unbelievable that the tiny Kingdom of Goryeo would even consider resisting. The khan’s armies subdued China, Khwarezm, and Persia before invading Russia and Eastern Europe. Goryeo, however, was fiercely protective of its independence and had successfully defended itself against innumerable invasions, generally punching well above its weight class.

Goryeo’s leaders long understood their greatest advantage lay in the peninsula’s geography. Broad rivers guarded the northern border. Fortified mountain ranges separated by disease-infested valleys loomed over the route to the capital at Kaeseong. That rugged terrain had swallowed up invading armies throughout Korea’s long history. There was no reason for King Gojong to think it wouldn’t continue to do so.

Regardless of the strength of the kingdom’s defenses—both natural and man-made—the court closely monitored burgeoning Mongol power. Goryeo also extended efforts to maintain an amicable relationship with the Mongols—Koreans and Mongols even joined forces in 1219 to destroy a pillaging army of Khitans which had crossed Goryeo’s northern border.

In 1224 the inevitable occurred. A Mongol envoy arrived at the Goryeo court in Kaeseong and demanded tribute. Goryeo’s military dictator at the time, Choe Woo, refused. The emissary departed. While enroute home, the envoy was killed by bandits. The Mongols labeled the unfortunate event treacherous, and it became a pretext for invasion. It was Goryeo’s turn to face the all-conquering armies of the Great Khan.

The Korean Peninsula is only about 760 kilometers (450 miles) from the Yalu River to Busan (formerly known as Pusan). Given that the Mongols were at that time fighting successfully as far away as the Persian Gulf and Russia, one might expect the subjugation of such a small nation to be simple. That turned out not to be the case. 

The First Invasion

The first invasion took place in August 1231 under the command of the Mongol general Saritai. This force crossed the Yalu and quickly moved south, overrunning the border town of Uiju. The Mongols then took the city of Anju but failed to breach the walls of Kuju, despite numerous attempts. Already tiring of siege warfare, Saritai bypassed the strongpoint, marching hard to the south and seizing the capital of Kaeseong. Goryeo sued for peace and accepted the installment of 72 Mongol administrative officials. Saritai, no doubt reveling in the accomplishment of his mission, turned the army north and in short order departed the kingdom.

In 1232, Choe Woo fortified Ganghwa Island, west of modern-day Seoul, stocked it with ample provisions, and ordered the construction of all the facilities required by a fully functioning royal court. The dictator then evacuated the entire Goryeo government to Ganghwa, eliciting instant suspicion among the Mongol administrators. With that move—taking advantage of Mongol maritime weakness—Choe set the conditions for a stubborn resistance.

Choe instructed the people to take refuge in the many fortresses scattered throughout the countryside. Once the population was safe, he had the Mongol administrators killed. When word reached Saritai, he turned his army southward again and began the second invasion of Goryeo in June 1232.

Saritai failed in a half-hearted attempt to reach Ganghwa Island—less than a mile off-shore—and commenced the siege of Cheoin near modern Yongin. It was there that the monk Kim Yun-hu, chosen by the locals to lead their defense, struck down Saritai with an arrow in December. His death caused the Mongol army to withdraw from Goryeo, ending the second invasion.

In July 1235, the Mongols returned. Frustrated by Goryeo’s willingness to retreat within city walls and high mountain fortresses, the invaders settled upon an age-old strategy: scorched earth. If the inhabitants wouldn’t defend their lands, they’d lose them. The new plan involved massive, roving bands of Mongol cavalry, burning and pillaging their way well south of the Han River.

On the rare occasion when the Mongols took a fortified site, they massacred the inhabitants. Yet civilian resistance remained strong behind stout fortifications. The Mongols suffered several setbacks as Korean forces trapped and annihilated isolated groups of marauders.

The Mongols Retreat

After years of wanton destruction punctuated by sporadic military engagement, Choe sued for peace in 1238. The Mongol demands included a requirement for the Goryeo court to return to Kaeseong and for a prince to be sent to the khan to live as hostage. Instead, Choe fooled the Mongols by sending an unrelated member of the royal family—an act which, discovered years later, enraged the invaders.

By 1247, the Mongols realized that the endless excuses Goryeo offered as to why the government had yet to return to Kaeseong were just that: excuses. Choe was not about to place the court back within striking range of Mongol forces. This led to a fourth invasion that July, carried out in much the same way as the previous one. 

The people fled to local fortifications and once again took up arms while the Mongols burned anything and everything they found, killing or enslaving those hapless enough to be caught outside the walls. This time, neither cities nor fortresses were successfully taken, and the campaign ended in 1249 after Mongol emperor Guyuk Khan, Ogedei’s eldest son, had passed away in April 1248, causing the army to return home.

With Mongke Khan’s ascension to leadership, the Mongols renewed their demands upon Goryeo in 1251. Receiving the by now familiar excuses, the Mongols invaded a fifth time in July 1253, ravaging the empty countryside. This time, however, Goryeo had lost its most intractable advocate for resisting the invaders. Choe Woo had abruptly died of an unspecified disease in December 1249, handing dictatorial powers to his son, Choe Hang.

Compared to his father, Choe Hang held much less control over the royal family, as the annals make clear King Gojong himself met with Mongol envoys to arrange a cease-fire in early 1254. The king agreed—once again—to move his court back to the mainland.

By summer that same year, the Mongols learned that not only were multiple high-ranking officials still resident on Gangwha, but that the king’s stepson hostage wasn’t even from the royal line. There were also rampant rumors that Goryeo officers who’d cooperated in any way with the Mongols had been executed. For the Mongols this was the last straw. They set out in July 1254 to punish Goryeo.

Famine

After so many years of constant warfare and pervasive destruction, famine gripped the kingdom. The people were reaching their breaking point. Civilians surrendered to the invaders in ever increasing numbers. This latest incursion introduced the most widespread havoc to date and resulted in more than 200,000 people taken as slaves. The Mongol army marched their captives north, ending the sixth invasion that December with no political resolution at all.

Growing frustrated with the situation, the Mongols again switched tactics. By this time they’d abducted a large number of Goryeo subjects and, in the same manner employed elsewhere, set out to find those with useful skill sets. Thus, in 1255 the Mongols launched seaborne raids along the coast in ships built by captured Korean craftsmen.

Intent upon taking Gangwha from the sea, intervention at the Mongol court by a Goryeo diplomat, Kim Su-gang, convinced Mongke Khan to cease the effort and recall his army. This ended the seventh invasion in June 1256 but, again, without any permanent resolution.

A much debated eighth invasion in 1257, played out almost the same way, with an impending assault on Gangwha interrupted by diplomacy and the khan’s recall of Mongol forces. However, Choe Hang died in May 1257, passing the mantle of dictatorship to his son, Choe Ui. The 25-year-old dictator held even less power than his father over the Goryeo monarch. Most decision-making appears to have been pried from his inexperienced hands.

In response to renewed hostilities in 1258, the king’s civil advisers—slowly gaining the upper hand over the military aristocracy—recommended sending the crown prince to the Mongols as a hostage, per the invading commander’s request. Unsatisfied with waiting for King Gojong to make his decision, the Mongols took Sinui and Changnin islands off the southwestern coast, their first amphibious successes. Still, a strong Goryeo fleet prevented the Mongols from making a proper run at Gangwha. Mongol coastal operations ceased with word that Mongke Khan had once more recalled the army. Goryeo diplomacy had once again purchased more time. The king’s Confucian advisers were intent to make the most of it.

A coup against the Choe family the next year resulted in the death of Choe Ui just two years into his dictatorship. This left Goryeo’s royal family with more authority than it had held in many years. Heeding the scholars’ advice, the king struck a peace treaty with the Mongols.

But time was not on Gojong’s side. He passed away in 1259, succeeded by his son Weonjong. Despite treaty obligations, it would be 11 years before the redoubtable fortifications protecting Gangwha Island would be torn down and the court returned to Kaeseong. Following the coup, the private army that had kept the Choe family in power for nearly 60 years fled the capital. Its leaders attempted to create their own state along the southern coast, unwilling to the very end to submit to Mongol rule. This elite force—fueled by an unquenchable need to resist Mongol domination—managed to hold out against repeated attacks for another 14 years. Their last stand took place on Jeju Island in 1273, where they were finally crushed—ironically, by a combined Goryeo-Mongol force.

Political Independence

Goryeo maintained its political independence, a true rarity among those peoples who dared to defy the will of the Great Khan. The terms of the treaty were relatively lenient—reflecting that the Mongols had been worn down after dispatching so many armies down the troublesome peninsula. However, Goryeo was required to pay an annual tribute and the king was forced to marry a Mongol princess, tying the royal families together. In this way, Goryeo received the status of a Mongol ally. The kingdom’s henceforth Confucian-trained rulers would take their alliance obligations seriously.

The first and most important reason for the difficulty the Mongols experienced in Korea was the geography of the peninsula. That preceding Korean dynasties and kingdoms had fortified every advantageous height or narrow defile from the Yalu River to the southern coast only magnified those natural defenses.

Topography didn’t turn out to be quite the obstacle to the Mongols that it had been for so many invading armies throughout history. This is most likely due to the speed with which Mongol forces pressed their advance. An army passing through at the speed of horses spends far less time in malaria-infested lowlands than one moving at the speed of infantry, thereby reducing its vulnerability. Whatever the cause, the annals fail to mention Mongol losses from disease and related attrition inflicted upon other historical invaders.

On the other hand, Goryeo fortresses, often constructed high above the surrounding lands and incorporating natural defenses, proved difficult for the Mongols to access, much less assault. Even with professional siege engineers brought from distant lands, siege equipment had to be hauled or pushed up steep slopes, under withering bow fire, just to reach the fortress walls. This was never easy. Many Mongol warriors lost their lives in fruitless sieges like the one at Sangju where 50 percent of the besiegers were reportedly slain before the siege was lifted.

The evacuation of the court to Gangwha proved genius. It removed a vulnerable pressure point as effectively as if the government had fled to the Moon. The Mongol inability to assault that small island, so tantalizingly close to the mainland, highlights a very real gap in an otherwise profoundly dominant military organization.

The Mongol difficulty in storming the mountain fortresses, or even reaching Goryeo’s offshore strongholds, helps explain why from the third invasion (1235) onward the steppe armies generally refrained from siege activities, concentrating instead on starving out an entire nation. The invaders would eventually try their hands at amphibious warfare, but that capability would never be something the Mongols would bring to maturity, relying instead upon the navies of subjects and allies.

The Goryeo armed forces at the beginning of the Mongol invasions consisted of a large, centrally controlled army augmented by private armies made up of highly skilled professional soldiers under the command of the military aristocracy. These conventional forces, however, could not stand up to the Mongols in a set piece battle. No shame there, of course, as they found themselves in good company with armies as far away as China, Persia, and Poland.

Goryeo’s unique solution to the problem of losing field battles against the Mongols was to quit fighting those engagements. Both the central army and the private ones broke down into smaller, more maneuverable, “patrols” scattered across the kingdom. This distributed approach sought to stiffen local civilian resistance and, wherever possible, ambush separated or unwary Mongol bands. The approach proved successful for Goryeo. It helps explain why the most victorious military organization to that point in history found it so hard to decisively crush the tiny Korean state.

With the destruction of the military aristocracy, the inhabitants of Korean settlements came to understand they had to defend themselves—though their king would assist when and where he could. This development underpins the rapid rise and incredible effectiveness of Joseon Era guerrilla armies, which sprang into action following the Japanese invasion of 1592. Simply put, the populace was by then well-armed and conditioned to join the fight, a mindset borne out of necessity during the protracted Mongol assault on their homeland.

Diplomacy and War

Finally, Goryeo’s well-coordinated use of alternating diplomacy and warfare served it well. It provided breathing space when necessary and extended the resistance of an army and people that should have—from the Mongol perspective—quit fighting long before. This appears to have been an approach the invaders either didn’t truly understand or to which they couldn’t adapt. In the end, however, the Mongol solution proved every bit as Machiavellian as the diplomatic-military sword wielded by Goryeo. If the kingdom refused to come out and defend its fields, the Mongols determined there would be no fields, and thus, no food. Over time, this brutal, protracted assault on the citizenry was a war-winning strategy. In the end, Goryeo survived the Mongol tempest. Peace returned to the peninsula and the Pax Mongolia allowed reconstruction of the damage done. 

As well, when the last anti-Mongol forces were snuffed out in 1273, the scholarly class of bureaucrats found they had once and for all established dominion over the military aristocracy. From this point on, for better or worse, Korean kingdoms would be dominated by Confucian scholars.

Goryeo took to its new role in the order of Northeast Asia with gusto, obeying Kublai Khan’s command to facilitate the Mongol invasion of Japan. This led to a pair of attempts in 1274 and 1281, both of which failed in part due to the arrival of typhoons which scattered the first fleet and wrecked much of the second. By 1389, with pirates preying on the kingdom’s coastal communities, Goryeo executed a successful amphibious raid on Tsushima Island, burning several hundred pirate vessels and freeing more than 100 Koreans held captive there.These expeditions were, however, the last gasp of Goryeo’s military power.

The strength of the Korean military aristocracy was broken on the battlefield by the Mongols and at court by Confucian scholars. Those tough-as-nails military families—representing the traditional martial vitality of the Korean people—would be missed in future conflicts. The succeeding Kingdom of Joseon would pay dearly for their political emasculation.

Most importantly, the Kingdom of Goryeo—and the Korean people—survived a 40-year war of resistance against the fearsome Mongols. This was a result that several, much larger and stronger empires had failed to achieve and remains a point of national pride for Koreans today.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The pages of the great Roman historians—Livy, Tacitus, Sallust—are replete with stories of the triumphs and foibles of the commanders of the legions. But seldom are common soldiers mentioned by name. Spurius Ligustinus is an exception. A legionary of the Roman Republic, Ligustinus served in five major wars and several smaller campaigns during his 32-year military career (200–168 bc). Over the years he received an extraordinary six Civic Crowns—the Roman equivalent of a Medal of Honor—conferred for having saved the lives of fellow citizens in battle. He also received 34 armillae and torques, gold or silver armbands and neck rings awarded to recognize other acts of valor in battle.

Five times during his career Ligustinus held the rank of primus pilus, or first centurion, of a legion. Centurions were the junior and mid-ranking officers of the Roman armies. Unlike senior legates and tribunes, who mostly came from higher social orders, centurions generally came from the plebeian general populace and rose through the ranks. The centurion commanded a sub-unit called a century, which by Ligustinus’ day had been reduced from 100 to around 80 men.

As they led their troops by example from the front, centurions experienced high casualty rates. Transverse horse-hair crests atop their helmets made them easy to identify in battle. The primus pilus commanded the first century of a legion’s rightmost cohort. He was the ninth senior ranking officer in a legion, directly behind the commanding legate, the six military tribunes and the camp prefect. The primus pilus was the only centurion who sat in the legion’s war councils.

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Ligustinus was born into a poor family of Sabine origin. Enlisting in the Roman army in 200 bc, he served in the Second Macedonian War (200–197 bc). By his third year of service he’d been promoted to the centurion ranks. He next fought against the Lusitanians (194 bc) in Hispania (the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula), where he first attained the rank of primus pilus. He subsequently served in the Aetolian War (191–189 bc), in Greece, and the First Celtiberian War (181–179 bc), in Hispania.

By the outset of the Third Macedonian War (171–168 bc) Ligustinus was over age 50, living on a half acre of land and had eight children. When the Senate authorized the raising of two additional legions to send to Macedonia, Ligustinus volunteered once again, as did more veteran centurions than there were available slots. Twenty-three former first centurions, including Ligustinus, were assigned to the ranks. They protested the demotion and appealed to the tribunes of the plebs. During the subsequent public hearing Ligustinus requested and was granted permission to address the assembly.

“As long as anyone who is enrolling armies considers me fit for service,” said Ligustinus, according to Livy, “I will never beg off. Of what rank the military tribunes think me worthy is for them to decide; I shall see to it that no one in the army surpasses me in bravery.” He then told his fellow protesting first centurions to “think every post honorable in which you will be defending the state.”

When Ligustinus finished speaking, Consul Publius Licinius Crassus brought him before the Senate, whose members gave the centurion a vote of thanks for his past service. The military tribunes then appointed Ligustinus primus pilus of the 1st Legion, his fifth assignment in that rank. Withdrawing their protests, the other former first centurions accepted assignments in the ranks—though many, no doubt, moved up quickly.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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Medieval chroniclers were often marvelously casual with numbers when they wrote about battles and armies, and the problem of numerical accuracy is a perpetual challenge in the study of medieval warfare. Sometimes these inaccuracies were deliberate cases of propaganda or exaggeration, but more often writers of the day simply did not know how many men an army fielded in a particular battle and either went with their best guess, or just accepted the going figure. One medieval source, however, is remarkable for the detailed accuracy of its records—the Soldier Rolls of the English Exchequer. 

In their modern digitized version, the Rolls contain 94,962 individual service records—list after list of names, dates and other information covering a period of eighty-four years from 1369 to 1453. At first glance they might seem little more than old accounting documents and interminable muster lists. On deeper scrutiny, however, the dry, repetitious figures on those pages contain a wealth of information about the structure of the medieval English army and an insight into the details of military service at the height of the Hundred Years War.

The Soldier Rolls list soldiers by their first name, last name, titled status (if any), the military rank under which they enlisted (because a man’s rank determined his pay), the captain whose muster they filled, the commander of the expedition or garrison in which they served, the years of their service, and the type of military activity (such as an expedition in France, a garrison at Southampton, or campaigns in Ireland or Scotland). Unfortunately, the timespan covered by the Rolls omits the pivotal battles of Crecy and Poitiers, which were fought in 1346 and 1356, respectively. But the Rolls reveal fascinating details about the most famous campaign in all of the Hundred Years War—Henry V’s expedition to France in 1415 and the battle of Agincourt.  

Agincourt was such a one-sided engagement that it has assumed an almost mythic status in British history, enshrined in the familiar image of lean, shabby English yeomen, road weary and worn, standing stalwartly in their ranks while the gleaming, armored mass of French chivalry opposed them across the muddy field, cutting off their route to the sea and safety. Popular versions of this story always emphasize the numerical disparity of the armies: on one side the French, numerous and overconfident; on the other the English, outnumbered and resolute. Part of the story’s enduring appeal (to Englishmen, at any rate), is the stirring imagery in Shakespeare’s line, “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” There is no question that the English were outnumbered that rainy October morning, but the question is, outnumbered by how many?

It is not possible to say exactly how many men Henry was able put onto the field that day, but by working backward from information recorded in the Soldier Rolls and cross-referencing that against other contemporary sources, and considering it in light of important recent scholarship by historians such as Ann Curry and Juliet Barker, it is possible to arrive at a reliable number. 

The muster rolls for the 1415 expedition list 11,285 men in Henry’s army when he sailed for France that summer. Henry laid siege to Harfleur in the middle of August and things went wrong almost immediately. A month later the city was still holding out, and the English army had begun to suffer the effects of too much time in a static position. “Exactly when the first cases of dysentery appeared in the English army…is not recorded,” one historian says, “but within a few weeks dysentery was ravaging Henry’s army. Because of “the sweltering heat of high summer, partly because many of them [the English] had to sleep on marshy ground and partly through drinking bad wine and cider and contaminated water, dysentery and probably malaria broke out.”

When Harfleur finally surrendered at the end of September, Henry’s army was no longer what it had been when it sailed from England. Juliet Barker estimates that “it is likely that Henry lost between 10 and 20 per cent of his army, which translates as something in the region of 1200–2400 men. Whatever the actual numbers, the chroniclers on both sides of the conflict were all united in one belief: more men died from disease at Harfleur than from the fighting during the campaign. These losses from combat and disease were further exacerbated by the number of men who were still alive but too badly wounded or too ill to march and fight. Many of those were sent back to England. On top of this, Henry also had to detach a portion of his army to garrison the town he had just spent more than a month fighting for. 

By these calculations, Henry had a force of about 7,000 men when he finally marched out on his chevauchée, which by that point was more of a symbolic gesture than a tactical maneuver. Straggling and desertion were problems for medieval commanders in most military campaigns, but Henry probably did not have to worry about those issues to the same degree he might have in other situations. The English were deep in the enemy’s territory, that enemy was on the move trying to intercept them, and once Henry committed his army to the chevauchée his only hope of extraction lay in reaching the channel port at Calais. Even soldiers who might normally have been tempted to fall out of the column in search of a little personal plunder were probably not as eager to do so in those circumstances. While the English army probably lost a few men on the march, those losses were not enough to drastically alter its numbers when Henry finally decided to stand and fight on Oct. 25. With all this considered, it is reasonable to say that the English probably still mustered about 7,000 men at Agincourt, allowing for a very slight variance higher or lower.  

The Soldier Rolls also have something to say about the other great popular image of the battle of Agincourt—that it was primarily a contest between English yeoman archers on the one side, and mounted French knights on the other. As numerous historians have pointed out, most of the heavy combat at Agincourt was actually on foot as dismounted ranks of English and French men-at-arms came to grips with each other, fighting and dying in the mud. The extent to which the English longbowmen were essential to Henry’s application of combined arms doctrine is demonstrated by the fact that the Rolls show a 3:1 ratio of archers to men-at-arms in his army. In part this was a financial matter. Men-at-arms cost much more than bowmen in both pay and equipment; archers were essential combat multipliers in the English way of war. The longbowmen might not have won the day single-handedly at Agincourt, but it is fair to say that Henry would have lost the battle without them.

The reason why the Soldier Rolls are so exacting in their tally of every soldier who marched with Henry’s army was because the clerks of the Exchequer were concerned with the expenditure of government funds. They had to account for every soldier receiving pay in that campaign, and they were meticulous in their bookkeeping. The medieval English government had at least one thing in common with modern governments: it needed money to function, and lots of it.  

The Soldier Rolls begin in 1369 during the reign of Edward III, a king whose financial problems were legendary. Edward borrowed, extorted, impressed, and did everything short of alchemy to raise money, but in spite of his exhaustive efforts, the constant need for more revenue vexed him throughout his reign. As one historian says, the king “raised vast sums from Lombard bankers—the Bardi, the Frescobaldi and the Peruzzi—from merchants in the Netherlands, from English wool merchants, pledging either English wool or the duties on Guyennois wine as security. Almost everyone who lent him money went bankrupt.” This overarching need for more money also created the need for better accounting and management of what monies the Crown did acquire, especially the cash raised to support the king’s perpetual wars, and the Soldier Rolls were part of that administrative process.

Reading the Rolls in the context of broader history reveals a trove of fascinating information amid the dry repetition of names and dates. The Rolls list military service in the Welsh Marches; the Scottish Marches; the Southampton Garrison; Expeditions to France in 1373–74, 1375, 1415, 1443, and 1449; Naval Expeditions in 1372, 1373, and 1378; the Standing Force in Ireland; the Portsmouth Garrison; Keeping of the Sea; Escort duties; the Standing Force in Gascony; the Berwick Garrison; the Expedition to Scotland in 1400, the Standing Force of the King’s Bodyguard in 1398, the Standing Force in Aquitaine; Reinforcements to the Calais Garrison; and the Standing Force in France in 1421.

The Commanders named in the Rolls are familiar to any student of medieval English history: Edward III; Edward Prince of Wales (famous as the Black Prince); Richard II; Henry V; Henry Percy; John of Gaunt; and others. Captains of the sub-retinues, into which men were mustered to fill local levies, include Lord Edward Dispenser, Sir Hugh le Dispenser, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir John Fastolf. Some of these names are famous in their own right and some are immortalized in literature, as is the case of Fastolf, a professional soldier and adventurer who was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff (a character whose literary depiction, it should be noted, was a marked departure from the real Sir John’s famed bravery and martial skill). The historical John Fastolf makes his first appearance in the Soldier Rolls when he is listed as a man-at-arms with the status of Esquire in the sub-retinue of the Earl of Suffolk for Henry V’s 1415 expedition to France.

The Soldier Rolls also provide a glimpse of the structure of English society in that era.  Titles of social status are encountered frequently in the Rolls, from princes of the blood all the way down to men who were of low birth but who possessed important skills. Reading through the Rolls, one encounters dukes, earls, barons, baronets (a title of some significance in the discussion of the Crown’s efforts to raise money during this period), knights banneret, knights, esquires, gentlemen, yeomen (also listed under the Latin term valettus), masters, and clerks.

Military rank, then as now, was not only important for reasons of authority and privilege, but also because a man’s military rank determined his pay during the period of his service with the army. Since the exchequer was trying to account for every penny it was spending, its clerks meticulously recorded the working hierarchy of the medieval army. The Rolls show men listed, in descending order of pay, as men-at-arms, archers, armed Archers, archers of foot, hobelars, penoners, and crossbowmen.  

The surnames on the Rolls run the full gamut of medieval ethnography. There are residual Saxon names such as Kynggeswode and Ughtred, along with French names like Barbour, Trivet, and Bourchier. Welsh names are quite common, including ap Llywelyn, ap Madoc ap David, and one fellow who enlisted under the impressive name of Llewellyn ap Egwasorboullgh. There are partially anglicized Norman names like Fitz Henry, Fitz Hugh, and Fitz John. And there are many names that we today think of as prototypically “English,” such as Lincoln, Hill, Baker, Ford, Smith, Walker, and Greenacres. The muster rolls show that at this point in English history hereditary surnames were already well-established, but some vestiges of earlier medieval naming conventions were still in use, such as “of the.” Two men named Robert of the Hill and John of the Hill were listed as archers in the 1372 Naval Expedition.

The family connections revealed in the Soldier Rolls are also interesting for what they tell us of medieval social history. John Levenes, Senior, and John Levenes, Junior, are listed as serving together as men-at-arms as part of the Standing force in Ireland, 1371–72. The post-nominal identifiers “Senior” and “Junior” are rare in the Exchequer lists, but not entirely unheard of; the 4498 records listed for the years 1371–73 include six identifiable father-son pairs serving together, and half a dozen other men designated as Seniors or Juniors listed singly.  

Using the Exchequer records, it is sometimes possible to track a single individual through the various stages of a military career that spanned decades during which he might have served in as many as a dozen campaigns. Stephen le Scrope, who is first listed in 1372 as a man-at-arms with the status of knight in the sub-retinue of his father Sir Henry le Scrope, reappears 28 years later during the 1400 expedition to Scotland as the captain of his own sub-retinue. In the intervening years he had inherited his father’s title, with his son Stephen le Scrope the younger now enlisted under his command.

It is also possible to observe the rise of a family’s fortunes, from that of wealthy but untitled commoners, to titled members of the aristocracy. Because of Edward III’s insatiable need for money, one family in particular climbed the ladder of social rank. “The provision of money [to the crown],” one historian says, “also advanced the Hull merchant, William de la Pole, whose family rose from commoner to duke in four generations…” William de la Pole was knighted by Edward III, his son Michael de la Pole served as Chancellor of England and was created Earl of Suffolk by Richard II in 1385; the Second and Third Earls of Suffolk were his son and grandson, respectively, both also named Michael. The Soldier Rolls show Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, listed as captain of a sub-retinue in Henry V’s 1415 expedition to France.  His two sons, Michael and William, are listed in the same muster. William later became the first Duke of Suffolk and Lord Chamberlain to Henry VI.  

The de la Pole family might have improved its station by its association with the Crown, but the 1415 campaign came at a great personal cost for them. When the attempted capture of Harfleur bogged down in a siege, frustrating Henry’s hopes for a quick, decisive reduction, disease ravaged his army and Michael de la Pole, the second Earl of Suffolk, was one of the many who died of dysentery. After Harfleur finally surrendered on September 22, Henry led his rump army out on the brief chevauchée that took them to the muddy field of Agincourt. In the ranks that morning was the new Earl of Suffolk, third of that title. When the English tallied their casualties after the battle, only two peers of the realm were reported killed, one of whom was “Michael de la Pole, the young Earl of Suffolk, whose father had died of dysentery at Harfleur a few weeks earlier.” Two years later, the muster list for the 1417 expedition to France includes the name of William de la Pole, now the fourth Earl of Suffolk after his brother’s death at Agincourt. 

The Rolls also indicate what an international affair the Hundred Years War truly was. In addition to the menagerie of ethnically specific names from across the breadth of England, the Soldier Rolls also list men who were clearly not English. Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd, a Welshman, is listed both as a captain of sub-retinue and a commander in his own right in the muster list for the standing force at Milford Haven in 1377. A man named Sir Aymer de Saint Amand (who was most likely from Brittany) is carried on the rolls as a captain in the 1369 Southampton Garrison. Sir Fernan Rodriquez is recorded as a captain in the 1379 muster for Keeping of the Sea. Ferant Alfonso is tallied as a captain on the naval expedition of 1377–78.  These men were Welsh, Breton, Spanish, and Italian (or Genoese), respectively, because the Hundred Years War was never a strictly English-French conflict drawn along rigid national lines. Professional soldiers of all nations plied their trade on both sides of the war.

Possible connections to other aspects of English history are also buried in the Soldier Rolls. For instance, the Soldier Rolls list Richard Donne and John Donne as men-at-arms with the status of esquires in the 1398 muster of the Standing force of the King’s Bodyguard. There is absolutely no way to know, on the basis of this single source, whether these men were in any way related to the great metaphysical poet John Donne, who wrote his famous poetry two centuries later, but the possibility raises a tantalizing research question. And the muster list for the 1415 expedition to France lists a Sir Thomas Chaucer as captain of a sub-retinue in the service of Henry V. Sir Thomas was the son of the famous poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer, who himself had been a soldier in the retinue of Edward III during an earlier campaign in France.

Taken as a historical record, the Soldier Rolls of the Exchequer corroborate and illuminate some of the contemporary chroniclers’ accounts of events and also provide evidence for refutation, in other cases. The lists show that there was far more to the Hundred Years War than just battles – there was also administration, clerical work, garrison duty that was probably as boring for soldiers then as it has always been in every era, and long tours of military service in lonely places. 

Through it all the army’s paymasters had to account for every penny of soldiers’ pay and all the associated costs of recruiting, mustering, and provisioning an army in the field. The Exchequer Rolls provide fascinating insights into the working world of the medieval English army, and are a vivid example of how a compilation of straightforward, simple facts can illuminate history in ways that transcend the mere recording of information.

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The earliest depictions of war served one purpose: to emphasize the invincible might of the leaders who commissioned them. A stroke of accuracy might be useful toward establishing credibility, but only so long as it served the warlord’s purposes. Pharaoh Ramses II, for example, employed what amounted to a private propaganda bureau to back up his claims to godhood. Witness Egyptian depictions of his 1274 bc victory at Kadesh. His Hittite opponents commemorated it as their victory, though in reality it ended in an inconclusive standoff. Over the subsequent millennia war artists have wrestled with the matter of balancing accuracy and the lionization of their subject, who was very often the supporting patron.

However effective a depiction of battle may be in its own time, posterity often brings out the nitpickers. Often even the most well-meaning attempts at accuracy miss something. Just as often errors, accidental or deliberate, can be glaring. In any case, the advocates of historicity have their own leg to stand on in their conviction that a true act of valor can and should stand on its own merits.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Military History magazine.

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In October 663 CE, at the decisive Battle of Baekgang, a historical era ended in bloody fashion. At the mouth of the Keum River, a combined Korean-Chinese force soundly defeated a Korean-Japanese one in a momentous event that had profound effects upon the region for the next millennium.

The unlikely conclusion to over 400 years of Korea’s division into three separate, perennially warring kingdoms, was now visible on the horizon. 

The Clash of Three Kingdoms

The story of Korea’s Three Kingdoms—Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—cannot be told without placing it in context within the wider East Asian historical continuum. The first centralized government beyond the city-state level on the Korean Peninsula was Gojoseon, or “Old Joseon.” This near-legendary early Korean civilization established by the 4th Century BCE reportedly stretched from the Liao River in the north to modern Pyongyang in the south. It was both neighbor and potential rival to both the Chinese Ch’in and subsequent Han dynasties, fast consolidating power to the west.

In 194 bce, Wiman Joseon emerged as a kingdom stretching north from modern Seoul to the Yalu River, with its capital at Wanggeom near Pyongyang. Established at a time of aggressive expansion by Han China, Wiman Joseon received material support from the Han to secure China’s northeastern border against the Manchurian Yemaeks. Chinese funds were used to help the nascent Korean kingdom expand control east and south into the peninsula.

Growing in power, the kingdom’s ruler, King Ungo, provoked the Han through cross-border raids along the Yalu. This resulted in the first documented Chinese invasion of Korea in 109 BCE, a two-pronged combined operation over land and sea that set a pattern for future Chinese incursions onto the peninsula. The 50,000-strong Han force was checked at the walls of Wanggeom city, resulting in a year-long siege. Failing to take the city by force, the Han resorted to treachery.

Amid the siege, Ungo was assassinated and his government collapsed.

This left a power vacuum the Han were all-too-happy to fill. Wiman Joseon’s territory was divided into four commanderies, which would be ruled by Han China for the next 400 years. The rest of the peninsula continued to be inhabited by multiple tribal confederations including the Jin, the Dongye, and the Okjeo, to name but a few. Yet, as the Han Dynasty waned under unrelenting external and internal pressures, its ability to protect those Korean territories decreased. Korea’s next warring kingdom would hasten its demise. 

Mountain Fighters

Founded as early as 37 BCE, the Kingdom of Goguryeo developed out of the Buyeo city state in central Manchuria. Goguryeo carved out a position in the northeastern corner of modern Korea, stretching far into Manchuria, through military conquest and deft political maneuvering.

Establishing an initial power base through the conquest of Okjeo at the end of the second century CE, Goguryeo turned its military attention to the Han commanderies. The rising kingdom hammered relentlessly at those foreign holdings, forcing one reorganization and consolidation after another until, by 313, the Han were ejected from the peninsula. 

Fielding a mighty army famed for its cavalry and uncanny ability to endure the harsh mountainous environment of North Korea, Goguryeo pushed the Chinese back beyond the Liao River. The Korean kingdom subsequently seized and successfully defended expansive tracts of land stretching from modern Jiamusi west to the Shuangtaizi River and south beyond the modern city of Seoul.

With such a large territory it’s not surprising that Goguryeo would remain in an almost constant state of warfare throughout its existence. The Manchurian tribes grew stronger and more aggressive as one traveled west along the northern frontier including the Xianbei, Hsiung-nu, and the Khitans. That said, Goguryeo generally learned to handle the nomadic raiders well.

It was the ever-present threat of invasion by hostile Chinese dynasties that posed the greater danger. Wei China invaded the fledgling Goguryeo in 242, nearly toppling the budding Korean state and for a time greatly inhibiting the development of that kingdom. Yet Goguryeo’s defeat of the Wei in Yemaek territory in 259—accomplished with a force of elite cavalry—did much to rebuild the state’s reputation as a regional powerhouse. The Chinese Sui Dynasty would invade Goguryeo no fewer than four times—in 589, 612, 613, and 614, all of which failed. The 612 attempt resulted in the loss of some 300,000 Sui troops in the rugged, mountainous terrain of northern Korea. The extensive expenditure in men and material required to launch these unsuccessful campaigns have been cited as a significant cause of the Sui Dynasty’s collapse in 618. 

The Tang Dynasty invaded Goguryeo in 645, using the classic land-sea approach, resulting in the seizure of 10 border fortresses. Yet the Tang ultimately failed to breach the walls of Ansi—despite an epic, three-month siege—and were forced to retreat back beyond the Liao River, sustaining heavy losses. Ultimately, though this invasion was unsuccessful, the Tang were fated to play a significant role in Goguryeo’s downfall.

The Richest Kingdom’s endless Conflict

As early as 18 BCE, the Kingdom of Baekje established itself by seizing control of the once powerful Mahan Confederacy in the southwestern corner of the peninsula. Baekje’s strength derived from the rich agricultural lands of the Han River valley and the southwestern region of the peninsula. With its first capitals at Wiryeseong and then Hanseong, both located in or near modern-day Seoul, Baekje may have initially been the most populous of Korea’s three kingdoms. With Goguryeo forever distracted by disputes along its extended Manchurian border, Baekje made significant inroads from the south, securing territory as far north as Pyongyang, which it seized in 377.

The kingdoms of Baekje and Goguryeo fought almost nonstop beginning in 369. During this period Baekje remained in an alliance with Silla that lasted until its dramatic repudiation by the latter in 550. Losing its capital to Goguryeo in 475, Baekje moved its seat of power south of the Han River to Ungjin.

It would move again in 538 to the more defensible Sabi (modern Buyeo) which remained the capital until falling in 663. From its central position along the southwestern coast of the peninsula, Baekje maintained significant relations with external powers and a profitable trade relationship with Jin and Former Song Dynasties China. Relations with the Sui never seemed quite as close. The kingdom’s relationship with the Tang would be truly catastrophic. 

Baekje also sought and ultimately established a trade and military relationship with Yamato Japan in 397. This began the practice of sending royal princes to live abroad in the Japanese court. While initially content to trade with the Gaya city-states, eventually Baekje would conspire with Silla to dismantle the confederation and take by force the iron resources for which it was previously required to trade.

There seems to be little in the historical record to indicate how the armies of Baekje managed to do so well for such a long period. Trade relations with Gaya, China, and Japan contributed to a thriving economy, yet there seems to have been little development of Baekje’s military to fully explain its early rise. Yet, over time, as Baekje’s economic ties were removed, its military experienced a corresponding reduction in efficacy. Successive campaigns involved fewer and less effective troops while the upstart kingdom of Silla trended in the opposite direction. 

The Most Dangerous Kingdom?

Ultimately the most dangerous of the three kingdoms lay ensconced beyond the Taebaek Mountains that run north to south below the Han River. There, the smaller, less powerful kingdom of Silla waited patiently, building strength, while the other two Korean kingdoms battered each other incessantly. Silla’s steady absorption and eventual dissolution of the Gaya Confederacy in 562 brought significant increases in both wealth and manpower, and the southeastern kingdom quietly bided its time.

Known primarily for its gold-working techniques, Silla created a unique military structure. Beginning in the 5th century ce, the court at Seorabeol (modern Gyeongju) selected promising aristocratic youth and trained them as cohorts in a professional military academy. Rather than scattering these men in leadership positions across the army, they formed elite units serving at the discretion of the king. Over time this resulted in a large corps of highly motivated, professional troops who became even more effective as they trained and ultimately fought together. 

These elite Hwarang, literally “Flower Knights”, gave Silla a significant advantage in the final rounds of Korea’s wars of unification. When not fighting Goguryeo or Baekje, Silla routinely fended off raids by Malgal and Ye peoples to the north, Gaya rebels to the west, and Japanese raiders along the coast.

Silla took a pan-Korean approach in dealing with its neighbors. Independent rulers of Gaya city-states decided that life under Silla looked more promising, handing over their lands, troops, and in one case, the royal treasury, to the King of Silla. In return, Silla placed these former leaders back in charge of the regions they’d brought over. This policy seemed to pay off over time not only in Gaya, but with the various anti-Tang resistance movements that sprang up after 668.

Betrayal of An Ally

Silla’s betrayal of its longtime ally Baekje in 550, after which it seized the bountiful Han River valley, came as a shock to the latter, initiating a century of vicious warfare along the line of Taebaek mountain fortresses. Baekje’s late-breaking alliance with Goguryeo, and close association with Yamato Japan, however, left Silla in an awkward strategic situation, with enemies on all sides. 

With desperation, the isolated kingdom of Silla reached out to the newly-established Chinese Tang Dynasty in 643. The alliance they brokered, and what it achieved, would forever change the map of East Asia and set many historical dominoes falling.

The Tang-Silla invasion of Baekje in 660 left the latter in shock. Facing initially separated allied forces—130,000 Chinese troops on the west coast and 50,000 from Silla east of the Taebaek Mountains—Baekje took decisive action. Seeking to defeat the two enemy armies piecemeal before they could converge on the capital, Baekje dispatched 5,000 picked men under Gen. Kyebaek into the mountains to the east. Baekje and Silla fought five successive engagements in the narrow mountain passes. Baekje won the first four, but the odds caught up with it in the fifth. The force was destroyed in a disastrous turn of events which deprived the capital of its finest troops when they were needed most.

The Tang and Silla Armies converged on Sabi and took the fortified city despite a stubborn defense. Nonetheless, Baekje’s King Uija, Crown Prince Hyo, and their family were captured and transported to China as trophies for Tang Emperor Gaozong. In Baekje, the Tang settled down to administer the former kingdom while preparing, along with Silla, for the second phase of the ambitious operation, launching what turned out to be a failed invasion of Goguryeo the following year. 

Yet Baekje had one final roll of the dice. Having called to its Yamato allies as soon as the Tang-Silla attack manifested, Prince Puyo P’ung—residing with the Yamato court at Nara—returned to the peninsula to defend his family’s birthright at the head of 5,000 Japanese troops. These men linked up with loyalist forces led by the colorful Gen. Poksin and the monk Toch’im, already fighting an effective campaign against the Tang occupiers. Concerned with the rebels’ success, Silla dispatched troops to assist its partner in putting down the rebellion. Feeling the pinch, and having lost both Poksin and Toch’im to internal squabbling, the loyalist armies decided to consolidate at Churyu Fortress north of the Baek River.

Two Against One

Thus, in 663, the final battle for Baekje independence took place. At the Battle of Baekgang, 27,000 Japanese troops entered the mouth of the Baek River on ships, intent to link up with besieged loyalist troops inside Churyu. The Tang navy, however, established a blocking position that the Japanese failed, over the course of four attempts, to penetrate, despite taking heavy losses. 

The fall of Churyu Fortress soon after the naval disaster sounded the death knell for Baekje’s royal family, and that kingdom ceased to exist as a separate polity on the peninsula.

Following its victory at the Baek River, Tang and Silla prepared once again to invade, and hopefully subdue, Goguryeo. Yet, this was not the same Goguryeo that had successfully resisted so many previous invasions. Internal dissent and succession disputes had fractured its once-legendary resistance. In 667, the Tang-Silla alliance launched a massive campaign which included a Tang army from across the Liao River as well as a combined Tang-Silla force from the south. Pyongyang fell in 668, bringing an end to the 700-year-old state as well as the Korean Three Kingdoms era.

The two allies settled down to administer their newly acquired lands, but the Tang seemed unaware that Silla intended a third operational phase. What began as local resistance to Tang occupation led to alliance between Silla armies and the many rebel groups fighting across Goguryeo. This, in turn, led to open warfare between Silla and the Tang resulting in the ejection of all Chinese forces from the peninsula—and the first true unification of the Korean Peninsula—in 677.

The Lasting Impact of the Wars

The wars of Korea’s Three Kingdoms Period left a significant imprint on all participants. For Japan, that fledgling nation’s only alliance to date with a continental power led to military disaster. It also left the imperial court in Nara fearing invasion by Tang, Silla, or both. This sparked a castle-building program across the archipelago which capitalized on the number of Baekje refugees with a knowledge of masonry who escaped to Japan during the army’s retreat. Intended to fortify Kyushu and key strongpoints between there and the capital, these were Japan’s first stone-walled fortifications, forerunners of the magnificent medieval castles that would play such a large part in that nation’s future internal conflicts. 

More importantly, the experience taught Japan to see the continent as a threat—a generalized fear that would manifest itself in the late 16th Century and again during the Meiji Period with invasions of Korea, Manchuria, and even China itself. This fearful perception of the Asian continent underwrites popular views still today.

The Tang were clearly shocked by Silla’s betrayal after so much Chinese treasure and so many lives had been lost in the fight against Baekje and Goguryeo. Diplomatic relations were only reestablished with Silla in 734 when the Tang court begrudgingly recognized the value in having at least one stable frontier. 

The Tang would have their hands full elsewhere but would survive until its ultimate demise in 907 after a century-long struggle with internal dissension. The animosity between China and Korea persisted, however, complicating both peoples’ attempts to resist Mongol encroachment beginning in 1205. It’s worth noting that after 676, Chinese armies would only venture onto the Korean Peninsula when requested by the Koreans themselves—in 1592 at the request of the King of Joseon, and then in 1950 at the request of Kim Il-sung of North Korea.

The impact on Korea itself is both easy and difficult to assess. Silla had finally unified the entire peninsula, but old divisions died hard. When Unified Silla, as it is termed today, finally fell from power in 935, the peninsula again split into three kingdoms, each named for its previous regional polity. It took generals and armies from former Goguryeo lands to once again stitch Korea back together again permanently as the Kingdom of Goryeo.

A case can be made that the wounds which festered for half a millennium survive in the deep political divisions of Korea today. People from Jeolla Province in the southwest have a deep distrust of those from Gyeongsang Province in the southeast. And neither of them trust North Korea. Meanwhile relations with both China and Japan remain complicated at best. Thus, King Gwanggaeto of 4th Century Goguryeo might easily recognize the geopolitics of the peninsula some 1,800 years after his demise. The ripples from Korea’s early and turbulent history have truly been long-lasting.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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On the same day Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 bce, the famous temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed by fire. The soothsayers wailed that somewhere in the world a torch had been lit that would consume all Asia. The portent proved true. Alexander swept into Asia like a devouring blaze whose intensity none could endure. As he surveyed the fortress city of Tyre, a high island of rock severed from the mainland by a deep, windswept channel, perhaps even he wondered if here the flame would be quenched.

In the early spring of 334 BCE, Alexander marched to the Hellespont, the narrow strip of water dividing Europe from Asia. The strait was not only the most practical crossing place, it also held symbolic significance as the very passage taken by the Persian king Xerxes when he invaded Greece nearly 150 years before. The subsequent battles at Thermopylae (480 BCE), Salamis (480 BCE), and Plataea (479 BCE) were enshrined in Greek memory as imperishable monuments to the defense of freedom against despotism. Alexander sought such associations to support the claim that his conquest was a panhellenic crusade to avenge wrongs done to the Greeks by the Persians rather than a quest for personal gain or glory. 

Yet Alexander’s status as an advocate of Greek freedom was problematic. He had commanded the left wing of the Macedonian army at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 bce) that destroyed the independence of the Greek city states. His father, Philip II, had united all the Greeks except the Spartans into a single federation called the League of Corinth. with himself as Hegemon. To place the final seal upon this unity, he put before the Federal Council his greatest project—a war against Persia. When Philip died, the Greeks rebelled against Macedonian rule. But the gifted father had a gifted son. Alexander quickly put down the rebellion and took for his own the powers of Hegemon and Captain-General of the League war against Persia. But even as he moved forward in their name, he had always to guard against an uprising of the rebellious Greeks.

Defying the Persian Empire

After Alexander won his first major victory against the Persians at the Granicus River (334 bce), he set about bringing Asia Minor under his control. The center piece of that project was liberating the Greeks who lived there, which strengthened his propaganda as well as serving a strategic purpose. Alexander could not safely proceed farther without leaving a stable political structure in his wake. He intended no mere hit-and run raid, but a steady, ordered conquest that replaced the rule of the Great King with his own.

He knew that the Persians ruled the Greek-inhabited cities through oligarchies hated by their subjects. By offering these cities freedom and self-determination, he was progressively undermining Persian control and securing a friendly country that would not have to be held in subjection with large garrisons. 

The coastal cities were important. If those were won, the Persian navy would be deprived of its bases in the eastern Mediterranean, undermining its ability to interdict Alexander’s communications and supply—and allowing him to push farther inland. Knowing that victory over the Persians at sea was unlikely, Alexander disbanded most of his navy, committing himself to a land-based strategy.

After having secured Asia Minor, Alexander was again victorious at the battle at Issus (333 bce) in Hollow Syria. This time the Great King Darius III was himself present but fled the field as his army disintegrated under Alexander’s furious assault. Rather than pursue him toward the heart of the empire, Alexander continued his coastal strategy by marching south to Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were expert sailors, and their many coastal cities contributed a great number of ships to the Persian navy. Unwilling servants of the Persians, the cities of Marathos, Arados, Tripolis, Byblos, and Sidon surrendered to Alexander.

But the city of Tyre still lay in his path. Though it stood practically alone, it was strong and stubborn. 

To Sack An Island City

As he approached Tyre, Alexander was met by envoys sent by the populace to declare they would do as he ordered. Pleased, Alexander told them to return and tell the Tyrians  he wished to enter their city and sacrifice in the ancient temple of Heracles, as the Greeks named the Phoenician god Melkart. Alexander’s arrival in February of 332 bce corresponded with a great festival in honor of the god. 

The prospect of Alexander’s participation and likely domination of the festival was viewed by the Tyrians as a direct challenge to their sovereignty and independence which they were unwilling to accept. They refused, returning word to Alexander that he was welcome to make his sacrifice at a sanctuary outside of the city, but that they would receive neither Persian nor Macedonian within their walls. In this war for an empire, the conqueror would not accept such a declaration of neutrality. He prepared to take the city by siege. 

Alexander’s decision to besiege Tyre flowed from several strategic considerations. First, it would be damaging to his reputation as an invincible conqueror to leave behind any city that had successfully resisted him. Such a spark could easily ignite rebellions in the vast territory he had already conquered in Asia, binding him to the task of maintaining rather than extending his rule and encouraging resistance in those yet to face him. Such a failure would also embolden rebels in Greece, most notably the Spartans, but also Athens and every other city held in the League by fear rather than devotion.

Second, Tyre’s continued independence would undermine his coastal strategy to gain command of the sea. Left intact, Tyre would serve as a base and a rallying point for Persian naval forces. But with Tyre taken, he would advance his control of the coast and open the path to Egypt. He would no longer be shackled to the Mediterranean, allowing him to march inland where he might strike at the heart of the Persian Empire.

A Gamble?

Third, the fall of Tyre would complete the conquest of Phoenicia, the source of the largest and strongest contingent of the Persian navy. Those forces, he reasoned, would join with him because the Phoenician oarsmen and marines would not continue to serve the Persians while their cities were under his control. 

This point indicates a reconsideration of Alexander’s neglect of naval forces. His earlier decision to disband the navy was risky and very nearly disastrous. In the year following, the Persian navy threatened to carry the war back into Europe. The Persians seized the island of Chios and all of Lesbos apart from the city of Mytilene, which they blockaded. There were even rumors of plans for an invasion of central Greece.

The risks inherent in Alexander’s decision to abandon his fleet had now become realities. With Persian successes in the northern Aegean, Alexander’s bridgehead at the Hellespont was endangered. In response, he commissioned a new fleet, but the Persians wrought havoc before it could be mobilized. Mytilene was captured along with Tenedos at the mouth of the Dardanelles, a mere thirty miles from the crossing point at Abydos.

Alexander was saved from possible disaster by his enemy. At that moment Darius decided to recall the bulk of his mercenary forces to Asia, depriving his fleet of manpower in preparation for a single, massive, pitched battle on land. In so doing, he abandoned the attack where Alexander was weakest to meet him where he was strongest. The outcomes of the battles of Issus (333 BCE) and Gaugamela (331 BCE) would reveal Darius’ fatal mistake. 

Challenging Poseidon, God of the Sea

Alexander rarely relied upon strategic considerations alone when justifying an action or military operation. It is a prominent feature of his campaigns that he frequently sought favorable omens from the gods and desired to follow in the path of heroes. His first act when he entered Asia Minor was to travel to Troy where he sacrificed to Athena and evoked the champions of old by laying a wreath upon the tomb of Achilles.

Nor were foreign gods necessarily to be spurned. The Greeks often viewed the gods of the near east as local manifestations of their own gods, and they were willing to pay them devotion—hence, Alexander’s desire to sacrifice to the Tyrian Heracles. This easygoing polytheism played a prominent role in Alexander’s absorption of conquered peoples into a vast, multi-ethnic empire. His intention to take Tyre was fortified when he had, or claimed to have had, a dream in which Heracles led him by the hand into the city. 

Set on an island protected by deep water patrolled by a strong fleet, its sheer, high walls defended by a skilled and resolute citizenry, Tyre’s capture would be no easy task. Daunted by neither man nor nature, Alexander’s plan was to bridge the gap between the city and the mainland by building a causeway. His siege engineers packed rocks between piles driven into the mud, which served as cement, and covered this foundation with beams of timber gathered from the forests of Lebanon. He secured an abundance of stone by demolishing Old Tyre on the mainland, and the project initially proceeded rapidly under Alexander’s personal direction. 

At first the Tyrians ridiculed this ambitious project, jeering at the soldiers carrying loads on their backs like beasts, and mocking Alexander’s arrogance for daring to challenge Poseidon, god of the sea. But, increasingly disturbed by the swift progress of the work, they began to construct extra mechanical artillery and strengthen their defenses.

The Two Towers

When the causeway left the shallows behind and began to approach the city itself, the workers came within range of missiles and arrows from the wall as well as being harassed by triremes sent out to hinder them. Dressed for work rather than combat, they suffered badly under these attacks.

To counteract these dangers, Alexander ordered two towers built on the edge of the causeway. Screened with skins and hides to defend against flaming darts, mounted with siege engines (such as catapults), and manned by archers, the towers proved a successful countermeasure.

Thwarted by the towers, the Tyrians changed their tactics. They loaded a cavalry transport ship with the greatest amount of burnable material it would hold mixed with pitch, tar, and sulfur to encourage combustion. Cauldrons of naphtha were hung from the yardarm where these accelerants would fall on the burning material below. The stern was weighted with ballast to raise the bow so that it would carry up onto the causeway. Waiting for a favorable wind, they then towed the fire ship forward with triremes, increasing their speed as they approached so that, when released, its momentum would carry it forward.

At the last moment, those aboard set the pile alight and jumped over the side. Lodging firmly on the causeway near the towers, the ship became a furious conflagration when the yardarm burned through, dumping the naphtha onto the hungry flames. The siege towers became pillars of fire. Seizing the moment, many small ships from the city landed on the causeway, tearing down the protective palisade and destroying the siege engines the fire had not consumed. There is no record of Alexander’s reaction to this thwarting of many long months of effort. We only know that he began again with an improved plan.

While the new causeway, now wider and guarded by more towers, was being constructed, Alexander’s prediction began to come true. Geostratos, the king of Arados, along with Enylos of Byblos, learning that their cities were in Alexander’s hands, sailed to join him. Their example was soon followed by ships from Rhodes, Cilicia, Cyprus and Sidon. News of Darius’ defeat at Issus and Alexander’s control of Phoenicia was causing the disintegration of the Persian fleet.

Engines and Flaming Arrows

When all of these kings and captains had sailed to him, Alexander pardoned them for past offences on the grounds that they had served with the Persians under duress rather than by choice. He now had a fleet of 220 warships at his disposal, a force greater than the Tyrian navy. He was also reinforced with nearly four thousand Greek mercenaries from the Peloponnese.

Having gathered the fleet at Sidon, Alexander sailed to Tyre, hoping the Tyrians would engage him in a sea battle. But, alarmed by the unexpectedly large number of ships, they adopted a defensive posture, blocking the entrance to their harbors with triremes. Disappointed, Alexander anchored his fleet along the shore near the causeway. The next day he ordered the Cyprians to blockade the Sidonian harbor in the north of the island and the Phoenicians to guard the southern Egyptian harbor on the other side of the causeway. Now the attack on Tyre transformed into the unusual spectacle of a water-borne siege.

Alexander put engineers from Cyprus and all over Phoenicia to work building engines of war mounted on ships. With rams and catapults, Alexander tested various sections of the wall, probing for a weak spot, while the Tyrians attempted to halt their efforts by launching flaming arrows, sending out divers to cut anchor cords, and littering the water with obstacles. 

When the Macedonians countered these measures by securing their anchors with chains rather than cords, roofing and fireproofing the ram ships, and clearing the obstacles from several approaches to the walls, the Tyrians had little choice but to attempt an attack by sea. For several days, they concealed their preparations behind a screen of unfurled sails stretching across the mouth of the Sidonian harbor. They assembled their most powerful ships and manned them with their best crews and finest marines.

A Surprise Counterattack

The timing of their attack was planned carefully to maximize the chances of success. The Tyrians had observed that many of the crews of the blockading Cyprian ships withdrew to the mainland around noon for their midday meal. At this same time, Alexander, who was usually with the Phoenician fleet, withdrew to his tent to eat and rest.

Seizing the opportunity, the Tyrians launched their surprise sortie. Initially, the attack was very successful. Many of the ships were empty or nearly so. They sank several and drove others on to the beach to smash them apart. Unfortunately for the Tyrians, Alexander changed his habits that day and rejoined the Phoenician fleet earlier than usual. When news of the attack reached him, he was in position to react immediately. Ordering part of the fleet to guard the southern harbor against a similar breakout, he sailed around the island with five triremes and several other warships to support the Cyprian fleet.

Observing this action from the walls, the Tyrians within the city tried frantically to signal their fleet to withdraw. In the tumult of combat, their warnings were unheeded by the Tyrian crews until Alexander was nearly upon them. Several Tyrian ships were destroyed and others captured as they attempted to reach the safety of the harbor. The only  consolation they could grasp was that most crews were able to swim to safety. Siege engines continued to batter the fortifications. Eventually a section of the southern wall crumbled.

The final assault of Tyre began. Transport ships fitted with gangways sailed toward the breach while triremes were stationed at the harbors to prevent another breakout. When the gangways dropped, the Macedonians poured forth onto the wall, Alexander himself among the foremost.

Alexander in the Thick of Combat

Alexander’s active role in combat was a consistent element in his campaigns. He exercised heroic command. Not only was he present on the battlefield, he fought in the front lines at great personal hazard. Again and again, Alexander led the charge of the Companion Cavalry and was among the first to scale the walls of a besieged fortress. 

The list of his wounds tells the tale of his command style. At the Granicus, Alexander’s helmet was cleft through to the scalp; at the Battle of Issus, he suffered a sword wound in the thigh; at Gaza he was hit by a missile from a catapult that passed through his shield and breastplate and struck his shoulder; at Maracanda in Sogdiana, an arrow pierced his leg fracturing the fibula; later in that same year, while besieging a fortified town on the Iaxartes River, he was struck by a stone on the head and neck; in western India he received wounds in the shoulder and ankle; and an arrow punctured his lung while he was attacking a city of the Malli in India. It was with justification that he would chide the mutineers at Opis that there was no part of his body but his back that did not bear a scar. 

After a fierce battle on the wall, the Macedonians descended into the city itself. At the same time, Alexander’s naval forces broke through the blockades in both harbors, destroying the enemy ships and landing troops on shore. A great slaughter followed. Pockets of resistance within the city were wiped out with ferocity. The Macedonians were in a rage and, after the frustration and casualties of a seven-month siege, in no mood to show mercy. The blood of 8,000 Tyrians stained their island city red.

When the butchery had ceased, Alexander walked through the blood and the smoke to the temple, where he made his long-delayed sacrifice. Alexander reinforced the lesson of the futility of resistance through further penalties.

Granting amnesty to all who had fled to the shrine of Heracles, including the king of Tyre and ambassadors from Carthage, he sold 30,000 others, mainly women and children, into slavery. According to some ancient historians, Alexander also ordered the crucifixion of some 2,000 remaining military-aged males along the shore.

The message conveyed by this grisly ornamentation could hardly be missed. Tyre became a stronghold of the growing Alexandrian empire.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The operation had not gone as planned. A strike force of some 300 Thebans had gained entrance to the walled city of Plataea under cover of darkness. The gates lay open, no guards had challenged them, and they soon occupied a strong position in the agora. They held the advantage of complete surprise. But soon they were desperately trying to find their way out again, for the Plataeans had blocked the narrow lanes with wagons and barricaded the gates. Hampered by rain and darkness and lost in a maze of unfamiliar streets, the Thebans came under attack from all sides and were pelted from above with stones and roof tiles. They fled as they could, with pursuers at their heels. Those who reached the outer wall hurled themselves over to break or die on the ground below. Others fought desperately in corners and alleyways. By the time dawn broke, all who remained inside had been slain or taken captive.

Decades before the 431 bc attack on Plataea a once united Greece had divided into hostile camps, and war had broken out. Ironically, Plataea had been the site of a decisive victory of allied Panhellenic forces over invading Persians in 479 bc. But in the half century since much had changed. The cobbled unity occasioned by the Greco-Persian War had eroded as the growing hegemony of Athens, founder and dominant member of the Delian League of city-states, created unease and mistrust among members of the Peloponnesian League, dominated by Sparta. During the resulting 460–45 bc war the rivals circled each other like boxers, engaging in proxy fights through allies as they measured one another’s strength. Signed in 446–45 bc, the Thirty Years’ Peace eased tensions for a time, but the root causes of conflict remained, and the treaty lasted less than half as long as its name had promised.

While Sparta’s citizens’ assembly formally broke the peace in 432 bc, the first assault of the Peloponnesian War didn’t come until the following spring—launched not by Sparta but by Thebes. The Thebans shared a long border with the Athenians, who had defeated and dominated them in the past. With war again brewing, Theban commanders turned their gaze on Plataea, a longtime Athenian ally holding a strategic position that flanked the approaches from Thebes to Athens and the Peloponnesus. Thebes could not resist an opportunity to absorb Plataea into its own Boeotian Confederacy while Athens was distracted by wrangling with the Peloponnesians.

Thebes’ ability to sneak a small advance guard into Plataea reveals much about the nature of the civil war. Greece was not only split between the leagues allied with Sparta or Athens, but also fragmented into oligarchic and democratic regimes within each city-state. The Thebans had no need to storm Plataea’s formidable walls. Confederates within, who had hoped through alliance with Thebes to eliminate their political rivals and gain ascendancy, had left open the city gates.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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These Plataean turncoats had urged the slaughter of their democratic opponents in their beds, but the Thebans refused. The coin of surprise can be spent in different ways. The Thebans instead chose to wake the citizens and cow them into voluntary submission. Initially, neither side resorted to violence. But during negotiations the Plataeans discovered just how few Thebans were present in their city and resolved to overpower them. Unobserved, they dug through the interior mud brick walls of their houses to join forces and coordinate. When all was prepared, they attacked while darkness still gave them an advantage. Defeated and demoralized, the Thebans who survived surrendered unconditionally.

The march of the Theban army that was to have cemented the occupation of Plataea had been delayed by the rain-swollen Asopus, thus it had arrived too late, and the gambit had failed. Determined to salvage what they could from the operation, the Thebans resolved to take hostages from the surrounding countryside and exchange them for their captive countrymen. Anticipating such a move, the Plataeans dispatched a herald to the Thebans, reproaching them for the sneak attack and warning that any harm to citizens outside their walls would be repaid in the blood of the captives they held. Though the Thebans withdrew, the Plataeans, their indignation fueled by long-standing antipathy, executed the 180 prisoners anyway.

Meanwhile, Sparta and its allies were mobilizing for an invasion of Attica. Though Plataea was not at the center of the action, the Athenians evacuated its noncombatants and established a small garrison in the city to prepare for further attacks. But Plataea remained an isolated outpost in the larger conflict. Not until 429 bc, the third year of the war, did the Spartans march to the aid of their Theban allies. Frustrated by Athens’ insuperable walls and the Periclean strategy of refusing open field combat, Spartan King Archidamus II eyed its more vulnerable Boeotian ally.

Despite Plataea’s strong walls and the shortcomings of Spartan siege craft, Archidamus had reason for confidence. He commanded an army of 30,000 combatants plus auxiliaries, a force greater than the population almost any city-state in Boeotia. He counted on making an impression of the consequences should negotiations with the Plataeans break down.

But he also had reason for chagrin. In both diplomatic and ethical terms, the entire situation was delicate. The Thebans had attacked Plataea in peacetime, an overt breach of the treaty. Any hostilities against Plataea would also belie Sparta’s oft-proclaimed resolve to defend Greek freedom against Athens’ imperial ambitions. Plataea itself stood as a symbol of Greek unity in defense of freedom. Adding to the awkwardness, Thebes had been on the wrong side in the late war with Persia, having betrayed its countrymen by allying with Xerxes I.

For their contribution toward the Greek victory in 479 bc the Plataeans had been granted the huge sum of 80 talents to build a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare. In addition, Plataea was to be the annual meeting place of a joint Greek assessment of ships and men for the war against the barbarian, and every four years the city would host the Eleutheria, a festival to celebrate the triumph. Plataea was also given the privilege of offering sacrifices to the gods for the whole of Greece and continuing the rites of sepulture for those slain and buried on its soil. The city and its territory were proclaimed sacred and inviolate. As these measures had been sworn to by Spartan King Pausanius, Archidamus was bound by ancestral oath—a fact of which the Plataeans did not fail to remind him.

But Archidamus conceived a path around these difficulties. First, he required of the Plataeans only neutrality in the war, with reciprocal guarantees of their independence and property. Second, he turned the obligations of the oath back on them. The promises to Plataea had been made in the context of the struggle for Greek freedom. The struggle remained, he argued, but the present threat was Athens. Thebes was on the right side of that struggle. Were the Plataeans to remain allied with Athens, they would be aiding the oppressor.

After consideration, the Plataeans decided they could not agree to the proposal without informing the Athenians. They asked for a temporary truce, which Archidamus granted. When the envoys returned with a pledge of support from Athens, the Plataeans rejected the Spartan proposal. Proclaiming the Plataeans oath breakers, and being thus vindicated before gods and men, Archidamus hemmed in the city with a palisade of fruit trees cut from the surrounding countryside. The Plataeans were isolated and alone. They had been promised shelter beneath the Athenian shield, but their enemies were close and their friends far away.

It was only a matter of time before the trapped garrison of 480 combatants and 100 some workwomen faced starvation. But Archidamus had time pressures as well. For one, his large army would rapidly consume its own provisions, increasing the commitments of foraging and supply. For another, much of his army comprised farmers who would need to return home for the summer harvest. Finally, given Sparta’s existing reputation for incompetence in taking fortified positions, a prolonged siege could weaken its influence over city-states in the Peloponnese.

Rather than build permanent walls of encirclement, the Peloponnesians began raising a siege ramp to overtop the walls of Plataea. For 70 days they carried and stacked timber, stones and earth. But the Plataeans matched them in energy and ingenuity. First, with timber and brick salvaged from their own homes, they raised the wall against which the siege ramp lay. Next, after mining beneath the ramp, they carried earth inside the city, eroding any progress made by the besiegers. When the Spartans brought up timber battering rams, the Plataeans employed iron chains and heavy suspended beams to lift, drop and shatter the rams. As a final stopgap they constructed a semicircular inner defensive wall that would present the attackers with the same labor all over again.

Thus thwarted, the Spartans turned to fire. After piling pitch- and sulfur-soaked brush against the makeshift wooden barrier atop the wall and hurling more brush over the ramparts, the besiegers set it ablaze. A raging conflagration arose, but instead of the winds Archidamus hoped would spread the inferno throughout the city, a heavy rain began to fall, extinguishing the flames. The grinding of the Spartan king’s teeth must have contested with the taunts and jeers that no doubt rang from the battlements.

Months of effort had yielded no results. Archidamus could neither take nor afford to abandon the city. Accepting the reality of an extended siege, he dismissed much of his force. Those who remained began raising permanent and elaborate walls of circumvallation. If the city would not fall to the swift stroke, it could still be strangled to death.

The walls of circumvallation reflected a great commitment on the part of the besiegers. No such project had been attempted in Greek siege craft. Two parallel walls 16 feet apart—one to keep the Plataeans in, the other to keep any Athenian relief force out—were roofed over, guarded by towers and battlements, and flanked by trenches. Interior quarters for the garrison provided shelter from the elements during what could be a long wait. Indeed, 18 months later the besiegers remained in place, but the walls had done their work. Provisions within the city were failing, and Athens, immersed in troubles of its own, had sent no further aid. In the winter of 428 bc, nearly four years after the initial Theban assault, 220 of the remaining defenders resolved to escape.

Counting bricks by way of measurement, the Plataeans built ladders to match the height of the inner enemy wall. Lightly equipped for speed and stealth, and concealed by the inky black of a stormy night with no moon, they reached the wall without being discovered. The first scaling party, armed with daggers, ascended the ladders. No alarm was raised. A second group, armed with spears and shields, followed. Still, all was quiet. Many had gathered atop the wall when one of the Plataeans, grasping for the battlements, knocked loose a roof tile. The clatter roused the garrison, and the alarm was given.

But the Plataeans had planned well for the possibility of discovery. Their senses impaired by the storm and darkness, the Peloponnesians had trouble discerning where the danger lay. To maximize their confusion and divert their attention, the Plataeans who remained within the city launched a sortie against the enemy wall. When the besiegers lit fires in the direction of Thebes to signal for help, the Plataeans also kindled fires atop the city walls, rendering the enemy signals unintelligible. Meanwhile, the scaling parties had seized adjacent towers, slain the defenders and lowered their ladders from the outside of the double wall. Well-aimed arrows kept the besiegers’ heads down while they descended. The archers in the towers were the last to escape. As the Plataeans struggled over the outer ditch filled with icy water, they were met by a unit of 300 torch-bearing Peloponnesians set aside for just such emergencies. The latter made perfect targets for the night-shrouded, bow-wielding Plataeans.

Having slipped the enemy noose, the Plataeans started down the road to Thebes, reasoning correctly that would be the last direction the Peloponnesians would look. After a time they turned into the hills and eventually made their way to Athens. Though all but a handful of them got away, their comrades in the city had no way of knowing. The next morning, however, negotiations for a truce to recover the dead revealed the heartening truth.

By the following summer it was clear the Plataeans could hold out no longer, but the Spartan commander did not wish to take the city by storm. This had less to do with mercy than a calculation of interest. His instructions from Sparta were to win over the Plataeans voluntarily if possible. In the event a future peace treaty with Athens should stipulate those cities taken by force be returned, Plataea could be withheld from the list. In pursuit of these orders, he sent a herald to ask the besieged to surrender to the Spartans and accept them as their judges, on the understanding any punishment would follow the form of law. Starving and weak, the Plataeans were in no position to refuse.

The justice of subsequent events is questionable. Some days later five judges from Sparta arrived and put to the survivors a remarkable question: What had they done to help the Spartans and their allies in the current war? Aside from the practical consideration there is nothing they could have done while trapped within their city for four years, the Plataeans reasonably thought the question failed to take in the nuances of the situation and asked leave to speak.

Thucydides’ account provides a poignant, if apocryphal, speech from the Plataeans that evokes the hopes and fears of any people facing such a predicament. A retelling of Plataea’s role in defense of Greek freedom against the Persians and its inviolate status are meant to appeal to the protections of both gratitude and justice. Perhaps aware such appeals would not be wholly convincing amid the passions and calculations of war, the Plataeans connected them to the question of reputation. Here they hit closer to the mark, warning the Spartans that the infamy of Plataea’s ruin would haunt them, undermine relations with allies and hamper their war effort.

Realizing the Spartans were acting in part to please their Theban allies, the Plataeans offered them a rhetorical escape hatch, emphasizing the wickedness of the traitorous and fickle Thebans as the real agents of their destruction. They were to blame. Sparta could earn glory, gratitude and advantage by repudiating their ally’s dishonorable behavior.

The appeals fell on deaf ears, for the Spartans had their own calculations of reputation and advantage. They had poured too much time and effort into taking the city to relent. Bringing the Plataean defenders before them one by one, the judges again asked each whether he had done Sparta or its allies any service in the war. Each said he had not, and they were slain to a man. The workwomen were sold into slavery. The city was given to the Thebans, who ultimately razed it. Such was the long, sad, slow death of Plataea.

Justin D. Lyons is an associate professor of history and government at Ohio’s Cedarville University. For further reading he recommends History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides; A War Like No Other, by Victor Davis Hanson; and The Peloponnesian War, by Donald Kagan.

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“Varus! Give me back my legions!” shouted the enraged Roman Emperor Augustus according to ancient Roman historian Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars.

Augustus was raging against his losing commander in one of Rome’s greatest military defeats—the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, c. September 9 CE. Publius Quinctilius Varus, governor of Rome’s Germania province (modern-day northwestern Germany) since 6 CE, known for favoring mass crucifixion as his preferred “crowd control” method, was tricked into leading three Roman legions (XVII, XVIII and XIX) plus six cohorts of Germanic tribesmen auxiliary troops and three cavalry squadrons—about 20,000 soldiers—into a fatal, days-long “ambush” by tens of thousands of Germanic warriors.

Formed primarily of four of the era’s 50 Germanic tribes (Cherusci, Bructeri, Marsi and Chatti), the trap was cleverly planned and orchestrated by a turncoat, Arminius (c. 17 BCE – 21 CE), a Cherusci tribesman prince and adopted Roman citizen. Varus’ legionaries, traveling in a thin column stretching from nine to 12 miles long, were encumbered by thousands of civilian camp followers who sloshed alongside them through the mud of the rain-soaked, dense forest bordered by swamps (near today’s Osnabrück, between the Ems and the Lippe Rivers). 

The ambush struck Varus’ column when it was most vulnerable. The weather, terrain and the tribesmen’s fortified ambush positions robbed the three Roman legions of their usual keys to battlefield success: mobility, flexibility, and tactical cohesion. The Germanic warriors’ swords, long lances, axes and javelins annihilated Varus’ entire command within three days.

While a few Romans fled or escaped capture, all 20,000 were killed, ritually executed after capture, or enslaved. Senior Roman officers captured alive were singled out for gruesome tortures before execution. Many Roman commanders—notably Varus himself—chose suicide. The strategic result of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was that it permanently ended Rome’s northeastward expansion at the Rhine-Danube River barrier, altering Europe’s future development. British historian and military theorist J.F.C. Fuller wrote that, had the battle not occurred and failed to stop Rome’s expansion [eastward to the Elbe River, possibly beyond]: “The whole course of our history would have been different…There would have been no Franco-German problem…no Charlemagne, no Napoleon, no Kaiser William II, and no Hitler.” After losing Varus and his legions, Roman leaders had no intention of expending further efforts in blood and treasure trying to expand northern European dominions east of the Rhine.

But the Romans would have their revenge.

This excerpt from The Annals of Tacitus, written by famed Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus and translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb in 1906, recounts what happened when Germanicus Julius Caesar (Emperor Tiberius’ adopted son) marched into Germany to avenge the honor of the empire.

The Roman soldiers make a gruesome discovery—the remains of Varus and his legions. At a time when forensics were nonexistent, we witness the Romans trying to piece together their own past by using eyewitnesses and examining the terrain. Because they lacked the technology we now benefit from, the Romans were unable to identify skeletal remains. In a particularly moving passage, Tacitus describes how this lack of closure added to their sense of agony—and also fueled their desire for retribution. 

Ironically, while seeking revenge, veteran Roman commander Aulus Caecina Severus nearly falls prey to the same fate as Varus. In a truly chilling passage, the Germans stalk Caecina through the woods near the Rhine as he suffers from gruesome nightmares of the slain Varus trying to pull him into a swamp, and his men began to lose their nerve.

Arminius—the executioner of Varus and his legions—is circling them and seems to take sadistic pleasure in waiting for the dark forest to take its psychological toll on the Romans before moving in for the kill. But Caecina—a veteran of 40 campaigns—isn’t going down so easily, and the Romans’ desperation to make it home alive proves stronger than their fear. 

Read Tacitus’ account of what happened below.

Finding Varus’ Legions

Lucius Stertinius [Germanicus’ legate, a high-ranking Roman general] was dispatched by Germanicus with a flying column [in 15 CE] and routed the Bructeri [rebellious Germanic tribe in northwestern Roman Germania] as they were burning their possessions, found the eagle [standard] of the XIX legion which had been lost [along with XVII and XVIII Legions] with Varus.

The troops were then marched to the furthest frontier of the Bructeri, and all the country between the rivers Amisia [Ems River, emptying into the North Sea] and Luppia [Lippe River, a Rhine tributary] was ravaged, not far from the forest of Teutoburgium [Germany’s Teutoburg Forest], where the remains of Varus and his legions were said to lie unburied.

Germanicus upon this was seized with an eager longing to pay the last honor to those soldiers and their general, while the whole army present was moved to compassion by the thought of their kinsfolk and friends, and, indeed of the calamities of wars and the lot of mankind.

Having sent on Caecina [Aulus Caecina Severus, another of Germanicus’ legates] in advance to reconnoiter the obscure forest passes, and to raise bridges and causeways over the watery swamps and treacherous plains, they visited the mournful scenes, with their horrible sights and associations.

Varus’ first camp with its wide circumference and the measurement of its central space clearly indicated the handiwork of three legions. Further on, the partially fallen rampart and the shallow fosse [encircling moat] suggested the inference that it was a shattered remnant of the army which had there taken up a position.

In Grief and anger

In the center of the field were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to the trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they had immolated tribunes [military rank below legate and above centurion] and first-rank centurions [commanders of 80 and up to several hundred legionaries].

Some survivors of the disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity described how this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death [i.e., committed suicide]. They pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the number of gibbets [execution gallows] for the captives, the pits for the living, and how in his exultation he insulted the standards and the eagles.

And so the Roman army now on the spot, six years after the [9 CE] disaster, in grief and anger, began to bury the bones of three legions, not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the relics of a relative or a stranger, but looking on all as kinsfolk and of their own blood, while their wrath rose higher than ever against the foe.

In raising the barrow [burial mound] Caesar [i.e., Germanicus Julius Caesar] laid the first sod, rendering thus a most welcome honor to the dead, and sharing also in the sorrow of those present…

The barbarians Return

Soon afterwards Germanicus led back his army to the Amisia, taking his legions by the fleet [ship transport on the Ems River], as he had brought them up. Part of the cavalry was ordered to make for the Rhine along the seacoast. Caecina, who commanded a division of his own, was advised…to pass Long Bridges [where extended causeways and bridges over otherwise impassable terrain existed] with all possible speed. This was a narrow road amid vast swamps…Around were woods on a gradual slope, which Arminius now completely occupied, as soon by a short route and a quick march he had outstripped [Roman] troops heavily laden with baggage and arms…

The barbarians attempted to break through the outposts and to throw themselves on the engineering parties, which they harassed, pacing around them and continually charging them. There was a confused din from the men at work and the combatants.

Everything alike was unfavorable to the Romans, the place with its deep swamps, insecure to the foot and slippery as one advanced, limbs burdened with coats of mail, and the impossibility of aiming their javelins amid the water. The Cherusci [another rebellious tribe], on the other hand, were familiar with fighting in fens [wetlands]; they had huge frames, and lances long enough to inflict wounds even at a distance.

Savage shouts and flickering fires

Night at last released the legions, which were now wavering, from a disastrous engagement. The Germans whom success rendered unwearied, without even then taking any rest, turned all the streams which rose from the slopes of the surrounding hills into the lands beneath [low-lying areas]. The ground being thus flooded and the completed portion of our works submerged, the soldiers’ labor was doubled…

This was Caecina’s 40th campaign as a subordinate or a commander, and with such experience of success and peril, he was perfectly fearless. As he thought over future possibilities, he could devise no plan but to keep the enemy within the woods, till the wounded and the more encumbered troops were in advance…

It was a restless night for different reasons, the barbarians in their festivity filling the valleys under the hills and echoing glens with merry song or savage shouts, while in the Roman camp were flickering fires, broken exclamations, and the men lay scattered along the entrenchments or wandered from tent to tent, wakeful rather than watchful. 

A ghostly Nightmare

A ghastly dream appalled the general [Caecina]. He seemed to see Quinctilius Varus, covered with blood, rising out of the swamps, and to hear him, as it were, calling to him, but he did not, as he imagined, obey the call; he even repelled his hand, as he [Varus’ apparition] stretched it out to him. 

At daybreak the legions, posted on the wings, from panic or perversity, deserted their position and hastily occupied a plain behind the morass. Yet Arminius, though free to attack, did not at the moment rush out on them. But when the baggage was clogged in the mud and in the fosses, the soldiers around it in disorder, the array of standards in confusion, everyone in selfish haste and all ears deaf to the word of command, he ordered the Germans to charge, exclaiming again and again, “Behold a Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus’ fate.”

As he spoke, he cut through the column with some picked men, inflicting wounds chiefly on the horses. Staggering in their blood on the slippery marsh, they shook off their riders…trampling on the fallen. The struggle was hottest around the eagles, which could neither be carried in the face of the storm of missiles, nor planted in the miry soil.

Caecina, while he was keeping up the battle, fell from his horse, which was pierced under him, and was being hemmed in, when the first legion threw itself in the way. The greed of the foe helped him, for they left the slaughter to secure the spoil, and the legions, towards evening, struggled onto open and firm ground. 

A General’s Plea to stop deserters

Nor did this end their miseries. Entrenchments had to be thrown up, materials sought for earthworks, while the army had lost to a great extent their implements for digging earth and cutting turf. There were no tents for the rank and file, no comforts for the wounded. As they shared their food, soiled by mire or blood, they bewailed the darkness with its awful omen, and the one day which yet remained to so many thousand men.

It chanced that a horse, which had broken its halter and wandered wildly in fright at the uproar, overthrew some men against whom it dashed. Thence arose such a panic from the belief that the Germans had burst into the camp that all rushed to the gates…

Caecina, having ascertained that the alarm was groundless, yet being unable to stop or stay the soldiers by authority or entreaties or even by force, threw himself to the earth in the gateway, and at last an appeal to their pity, as they would have to pass over the body of their commander, closed the way. At the same moment the tribunes and centurions convinced them that it was a false alarm. 

Having then assembled them at his headquarters, and ordered them to hear his words in silence, he [Caecina] reminded them of the urgency of the crisis. Their safety, he said, lay in their arms, which they must however use with discretion, and they must remain within the entrenchments till the enemy approached closer, in the hope of storming them; then there must be a general sortie; by that sortie the Rhine might be reached.

Whereas if they fled, more forests, deeper swamps, and a savage foe awaited them, but if they were victorious, glory and renown would be theirs. He dwelt on all that was dear to them at home, all that testified to their honor in the camp, without any allusion to disaster…

Fury And the Light of Day

There was as much restlessness in the German host with its hopes, its eager longings, and the conflicting opinions of its chiefs. Arminius advised that they should allow the Romans to quit their position and, when they had quitted it, again surprise them in swampy and intricate ground. Inguiomerus [a Cherusci leader and Arminius’ uncle], with fiercer counsels, heartily welcome to the barbarians, was for beleaguering the entrenchments in armed array, as to storm them would, he said, be easy, and there would be more prisoners and the booty unspoilt.

So at daybreak they trampled in the fosses, flung hurdles [logs or branches to help cross the moats] into them, seized the upper part of the breastwork, where the troops were thinly distributed and seemingly paralyzed by fear. When they were fairly within the fortifications, the signal was given to the [Roman] cohorts [units composed of multiple 80-man centuries], and the horns and trumpets sounded. Instantly with a shout and sudden rush, our men threw themselves on the German rear, with taunts, that here were no woods or swamps, but that they were on equal ground, with equal chances. 

The sound of trumpets, the gleam of arms, which were so unexpected, burst with all the greater effect on the enemy, thinking only, as they were, of the easy destruction of a few half-armed men, and they were struck down, as unprepared for a reverse as they had been elated with success.

Arminius and Inguiomerus fled from the battle, the first unhurt [Arminius was assassinated six years later by rival tribal leaders], the other severely wounded. Their followers were slaughtered as long as our fury and the light of day lasted. It was not till night that the legions returned, and though more wounds and the same want of provisions distressed them, yet they found strength, healing, sustenance, everything indeed, in their victory.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The history of bullets predates firearms by thousands of years. Bullets of many materials, even including lead, were used throughout the ancient and classical worlds by highly trained, deadly soldiers. Although the term conjures up images of suburban pranksters today, back then the “sling” was among the most feared weapons.

A sling would generally be as simple as two lengths of cord attached to a leather ammunition pouch. Slingers held both cords and spun the sling in a circle, generating centrifugal force, before letting one cord go with precise timing, sending the sling bullet flying.

Different lengths of cord or release times could produce different speeds and ranges, and early slings are recorded as firing faster and farther than bows of the time. The current Guinness World Record for firing a sling bullet sits at 477 meters (about 1,565 feet), a distance reported as common by classical writers. The famed Welsh longbow, on the other hand, rarely exceeded 400 meters.

The earliest written description of the use of a sling as a weapon is the famous fight between David and Goliath in the Book of Judges. Goliath, described as a giant armored warrior, was challenged by David, a young Israelite shepherd. The sling was a common weapon used by shepherds to scare off predators, owing to its simple construction. The young David fired a single stone that struck Goliath’s forehead, killing him instantly.

Though David’s underdog victory is treated as unlikely by modern audiences, maybe we give the slinger too little credit. According to the fourth century BCE Roman writer Vegetius, “Soldiers, despite their defensive armor, are often more aggravated by the round stones from the sling than by all the arrows of the enemy. Stones kill without mangling the body, and the contusion is mortal without loss of blood.”

The value of slingers is evident in the craftsmanship of lead bullets like this one, produced in Athens some time after 400 BCE. One side bears the image of a winged thunderbolt, while the other features the Greek word “Dexai,” or “Catch!” Taunting messages like this were not uncommon on ammunition—a tradition soldiers across the world have kept alive ever since.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Everyone, it seems, is familiar with highways constructed by the ancient Romans. Those elegant, stone-paved roads pop up as supporting actors in every novel, film, or television show set in Roman times. Yet few people seem aware that this vast Roman transportation network was preceded by another system of imperial highways that was much older yet just as incredible—the Royal Road of Achaemenid Persia (ancient Iran). 

It is no exaggeration to call the Achaemenid Empire (550 BCE–330 BCE) the world’s first superpower. Persia conquered lands and conducted military operations on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. Not even the mighty Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia which preceded it could make such a claim.

The Persians were at first considered minor players in the region. Nobody suspected that Persia would rise to greatness as it accompanied Median allies to bring down the Assyrian Empire. Yet in 550 BCE, Persian king Cyrus II—later dubbed “Cyrus the Great”—overturned his Median masters and established the first Persian Empire.  The Persians became rulers of the civilized and densely populated Mesopotamian core. Over the next 64 years, Achaemenid Persia would push the boundaries of its expanding empire west into the Balkans, as far as modern Bulgaria, south as far as Libya in North Africa, and east into the jungles of the Indian subcontinent.

The Need For Speed

Persia inherited the problems of ruling a vast empire. Difficulties resulted from the vast distances between the Persian capitals and outlying satrapies. This problem proved a tough nut for the Persians to crack. Ironically, the Persians’ rapid rate of expansion throughout its early years would only exacerbate the issue.

Persia’s third ruler, Darius I (522–486 BCE) realized the potential benefit to be gained by connecting the empire’s various and distant parts. Along the way to earning the moniker “Darius the Great,” he initiated a program of road construction, maintenance, and administration that would last well beyond not only his lifespan, but that of his empire’s as well.

The terrain encompassed by the Persian Empire varied widely from the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Iran to the plains, deserts, and even swampy marshes of Central Mesopotamia. It included the lofty peaks of the Hindu Kush and the vast deserts of Egypt. Innumerable rivers required bridging or permanent ferries to cross. Much physical labor was required to make steep slopes and soggy marshes traversable.

Under Darius I, engineers connected the principal cities at the heart of his empire, including the royal palaces at Susa, Babylon, Ecbatana, Pasargadae, and Persepolis. The Persian court rotated annually between these locations, which also led to an interconnected network of garrisons and storehouses required to facilitate the security and transport of the mobile royal court.

The intricate highway-based infrastructure expanded. Ancient Greek historian Herodotus described rest stations and inns located every 30 kilometers, essentially a day’s travel. These facilities provided fresh horses for royal messengers, food for travelling officials and merchants, and secure resting places for sanctioned trade caravans. The Persians regulated access to and use of the Royal Road through a system of licensing and taxation with the issuance of viyataka, a type of official pass. 

First Mobile News Network?

Many royal posting stations were adapted to pass simple messages through the use of signal beacons, relaying from one station to the next and covering vast distances in an incredibly short period of time. These simple messages provided warning to the Great King of an impending situation or developing problem, to be followed up by a more detailed message carried by swift horse and imperial rider. 

The Persian road system allowed news to be delivered from anywhere in the empire to the royal court within a day or two of its occurrence—a remarkable achievement in ancient times. This provided the Persians a significant military advantage in terms of being able to speedily react to intelligence. Imperial stations along the Royal Road ensured the king’s commands were delivered in the shortest possible time. 

Today, the total length of the Royal Road network is estimated at 8,000 miles. This includes the identification of Persian highways stretching from Kyrgyzstan and India in the east, to Türkiye and Egypt in the west. The network crisscrossed the vital Mesopotamian heartland, connecting cities, regions, and cultures.

Very few Persian highways were paved. Yet even Persia’s unpaved highways, with a standard width of roughly six meters, were considered flat and durable enough for traffic by wheeled vehicles that otherwise struggled to cross predominantly sandy or rocky terrain. These highways were more than sufficient to handle chariot, wagon, cavalry, and foot traffic. 

Armies on the Go

Persian roads greatly facilitated the movement of large armies. Alexander the Great made extensive use of the Persian road network even while he was tearing that ancient empire to shreds. A failed 330 BCE attempt by a Persian general to stop Alexander’s army from proceeding down the Royal Road through a natural chokepoint became known as the Battle of the Persian Gates. The value of the Persian highways appears to have been abundantly clear to Alexander. He took advantage of the interior lines they provided him throughout his eastern campaigns.

Persian roadways evinced mythological origin stories from Greeks who encountered them. One attributed the construction of the Royal Road to the Syrian warrior goddess Smiramis, who the Greeks believed to have founded ancient Babylon. Another Greek legend gave the credit to Memnon, a mythical king of Ethiopia and conqueror of all the territory between Susa and Troy.

When the Romans arrived on scene in the 2nd century BCE, the decaying Persian road network no doubt contributed to the speed with which Pompey the Great subdued the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Many, if not most, of the Roman roads eventually constructed across Asia Minor, Judah, and Mesopotamia were laid atop the old Persian thoroughfares. A portion of one such stretch has been positively identified near Gordium in modern Türkiye, displaying multiple strata of road construction stacked atop one another. 

Still in use Today

Considering the massive scope of the Achaemenid Persian road system, one might be surprised to find so little evidence of it today. In 2019, archaeologists discovered the long-buried ruins of a Persian postal station in the village of Toklucak, Türkiye.  Ongoing excavations along the Syr Darya River in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan offer enticing insights into the Royal Road that once connected Mesopotamia with the ancient lands of Bactria and Ferghana. Bridge footings, deliberate cuts into steep slopes, and foundations of once bustling inns and postal stations are slowly emerging.

The principal reason why so few remnants of Persia’s road system have been found is the fact that people still essentially use it—the modern road system to a large degree still utilizes the routes first surveyed and graded by Achaemenid Persians some 2,500 years ago.

Royal Roads passing through historically restrictive terrain as the Cilician Gates are now asphalted motorways through which thousands of vehicles and even more people traverse each day. Those commuters remain blissfully unaware that the foundation for their comfortable journey was first laid down in the 6th century BCE.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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When a Christian encounters the name “Judas,” he or she instinctively thinks of Judas Iskariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ to his persecutors in the new Testament. When a Jew encounters the name, he or she is just as likely to think of the hero behind the holiday of Hanukkah, Judas Maccabeus.

Judah the Hammer

As with Jesus, the heroic Judas’ most familiarly known moniker is based on Greek, the language of his Hellenistic adversaries. The third of five sons born to Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, priest (cohen) of Modein—the others being Eleazar, Simon, John and Jonathan—his Hebrew name was Yehuda HaMakab, or Judah the Hammer.

Judah was originally a cohen in his own right and the circumstances that thrust him into the military limelight were tragically avoidable. After the death of King Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon in 323 BCE, his vast empire was partitioned into three regions, Macedonia under his direct successors, Egypt under the dynasty of his General Ptolemy and the Seleucid kingdom, based in what is now Syria, administering western Asia, including Judea.

For almost two centuries the Seleucids, like the Persians whose power they had displaced, were content to let the many cultures under their aegis practice their customs and religions without interference, just as long as they swore fealty to the Seleucid king. During that time, however, the art, science and philosophy of Hellenic civilization that Alexander’s heirs brought with them was embraced to differing degrees by subjects either genuinely attracted by them or hoping that doing so would be to their political or social advantage.

That included a good many Jews, who began to mix aspects of their traditional religion with that of their polytheistic rulers. Stricter advocates of the Ten Commandments, including Mattathias, found such theological compromises intolerable and made no secret of it.

Training An Army

Still, the Seleucids—including Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God Manifest”) when he ascended to the throne on September 9, 175 BCE—continued a policy of laissez-faire, until a series of intrigues, bribery and corruption among the Judean governors and an unsuccessful coup attempt against him led Antiochus to impose Hellenism on all his subjects in 168 BCE, as a measure toward achieving cultural unity.

In regard to Judea, that included forcing the Jews to abandon their dietary laws, work on the Sabbath, and cease circumcising their sons. He also ordered the syncretic Jews to install graven images of Hellenic gods and goddesses in the Second Temple of Jerusalem and had a citadel for a garrison to enforce the new policy.

If Antiochus thought his assimilationist acts would eventually lead to greater homogeneity and thereby more loyalty among his subjects, he would soon learn how wrong he was. In 167 BCE, when a Jewish Hellenist arrived to replace Mattathias as priest of Modein, Mattathias killed him and the Greek soldier accompanying him, destroyed the Greek altar they had brought and then took to the nearby hills with his sons. There they began enlisting and training fellow pietists to form an army to oppose the Seleucid forces.

When they were in towns engaged in their clandestine efforts to gather forces in town, they devised a cover for their subversive activities by playing a game with a spinning top whenever a Greek or known Jewish Hellenist passed by. That top, or dreidel, has been a part of the Hanukkah tradition ever since.

As rebel forces grew, they began what the Seleucids undoubtedly would have labeled a terrorist campaign, striking out from town to town destroying Hellenistic altars, forcing Jewish boys to be circumcised and killing Hellenized Jews.

As Seleucid forces were dispatched to hunt down the rebels and resecure their control over Judea, Judas seems to have come to the fore as a military leader, organizing his followers into a small but growing and disciplined army. Sometime between the springs of 166 and 165 BCE Mattathius died, but his sons carried on for him with a series of dramatic events that raised the Hasmonean revolt to a higher level.

Hit And Run Tactics

At the Battle of the Ascent of Lebanon Judas led a night attack that scattered a column of Samaritan warriors marching to join a Syrian army and personally defeated and killed their commander, Apollonius. Soon afterward, at Beth Horon, Judas and his fighters ambushed the Syrian force in a pass, sending it and its commander, Seron, fleeing.

Then, in September 165, while another, larger Seleucid army commanded by Gorgias was scouring the region for the rebels, Judas and a large detachment slipped into the main camp at Emmaus, overwhelmed its defenders and helped themselves to enough much needed arms, armor and supplies to equip a viable army. By now Judas was being called Makebet (the Hammer), a sobriquet that was later applied to his brothers and ultimately to all of his military followers.

At this point the Hellenized Jews and Judas’ pietists made an attempt to restore peaceful coexistence, but negotiations broke down and Antiochus sent more troops, led by his regent, Lysias into Judea. At the same time, he led an expedition against another, greater threat to his kingdom, the Parthians.

As Lysias moved on Jerusalem he was intercepted by Judas’ still-smaller army at Beth Zur, north of Hebron. What little is known from the biblical accounts suggest that Judas reverted to hit and run tactics, striking at Seleucid units and disengaging before reinforcements could reach them.

The Hammer’s well-practiced skills at guerrilla fighting wore down his opponents while denying Lysias the chance at a decisive blow.

For their own part, the Jews chalked up the Battle of Beth Zur as the decisive victory that directly preceded their retaking of Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple, but it was only one of two coinciding factors behind the Maccabean triumph. The other was the arrival in the Seleucid camp that November news that Antiochus had died of disease while campaigning in Armenia, leaving a nine-year-old son, Antiochus V Eupator, as his successor. As regent to the kingdom, Lysias needed to disengage and march his troops back to the royal capital of Antioch to secure the succession. The Hasmonean revolt could—and would—have to wait.

The Hanukkah Miracle

So it was that on the 25th day in the Hebrew month of Kislev (approximately December) of 164 BCE, Judas Maccabeus led his makeshift army into Jerusalem, leaving the Seleucid-built fortified citadel known as the Akra and its garrison of Greeks and Hellenized Jews unmolested but isolated within the city. He focused instead on cleansing the Temple, removing the Hellenistic idols and relighting the candles.

It is here that the sole divine miracle of Hanukkah (“dedication”) appears in the story. With only enough oil to light the Temple for a single day, the Maccabees made do with what they had, but the flames burned through eight nights until more oil was found to keep it lit.

As important as the Temple’s rededication was, Judas’ labors were by no means ended. He faced the responsibilities of administering the lands under his control while anticipating an inevitable backlash from the Seleucids, starting with a long—and unsuccessful—siege of the Akra. Indeed, once Antiochus V was firmly on the throne, Lysias returned to Judea with an army estimated at numbering 50,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 30 war elephants.

Political Troubles

After briefly besieging and taking Beth Zur, he met Judas in open battle at Beth Zechariah. The Jews had no more than 20,000 fighters at hand, but the fourth of Mattiathus’ sons, Eleazar Avaran, thought he recognized Lysias’ war elephant and, hoping he could win the battle by killing the enemy commander as brother Judas had done at the Ascent of Lebanon, he charged into the enemy line and mortally speared the elephant—only to perish when the beast toppled on him. Beth Zechariah ended in victory for Lysias and a personal tragedy for Judas, though he was able to recover from the defeat with most of his army intact.

Lysias next laid siege to Jerusalem, but 163 had been a fallow year and food was a limited commodity for both sides. In addition, political troubles were again brewing in Antioch. Therefore Lysias and Judas negotiated a deal: Lysias signed an agreement to lift Antiochus IV’s anti-Jewish laws, restoring freedom of worship to Judean Hellenist and pietist alike. The corrupt High Priest Menalaus was executed and a more acceptable successor sought out. The Jews in turn lifted their siege of the Akra but retained their arms as Lysias returned to Antioch.

What followed showed that Judea’s woes were not over. Soon after Lysias’ homecoming, the 11-year-old Antiochus V was overthrown and put to death, along with his regent, by his cousin, Demitrius I Soter. Among his first acts in a kingdom surrounded by enemies was to send another army, led by Bacchides, Governor of the Western Regions, to reinstate political control over Judea and install a new high priest, Alcimus, who appealed at least to the moderate pro-Seleucid Jews. Bacchides was then recalled and another commander, Nicanor, took charge as military governor of Judea.

Nicanor and Judas agreed to a truce, with Nicanor even offering Judas a deputy’s position in the government but it did not last long. Mobilizing their forces, the two leaders skirmished at Caphar-salama, a Jewish victory that killed 500 Seleucid troops and compelled Nicanor to withdraw behind the walls of Jerusalem.

While he was there, rumors broke out of Nicanor blaspheming in the Temple and threatened to burn it if Alcimus did not help him to find and arrest Judas. This only raised local rancor and enlistments in the Maccabees’ ranks.

Forging An Independent Kingdom

In late winter (probably March) of 161 BCE Nicanor took to the field again and engaged Judas at Adasa, near Beth-Horon. Once again the loss of a commander decided the battle, in this case the death of Nicanor early in the fighting, after which the Seleucid soldier broke and fled.

News of the disaster at Adasa was accompanied by reports that Judas, a skilled diplomat as well as warrior, had been feeling out the possibilities of alliance with a new power that had been appearing in the Middle East: the Roman Republic. In 160 BCE, while Demetrius led an army east against a rebellious satrap, Timarchus, tyrant of Miletus, he ordered Bacchides back to reassert Seleucid rule over Judea with 20,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.

As he marched toward Jerusalem, Bacchides rounded up and massacred pietist Jews in Galilee, probably to set an example for the rebels and as a means of committing Judas to defend his land and people by meeting him in open battle. If that was his stratagem, it worked. As he approached Jerusalem in Nisan (April) of 160 BCE, Bacchides found himself confronted on the flat but uneven terrain of a plateau between Elassa and Berea, near present-day Ramallah, by a comparable force of Maccabees.

Bacchides deployed his forces in classic Seleucid style, with a phalanx of spearmen flanked on both sides by cavalry and a skirmish line of archers and slingers up front. The governor-general himself commanded from the right-flank cavalry, a custom with which Judas was well aware.

The biblical accounts describe the Battle of Elasa as being fought from “morning until evening,” suggesting that both the commanders and their soldiers were evenly matched. At the later stage of the fighting, however, Judas sent all of his cavalry against the horse on the Seleucid right, in man attempt to settle the issue once more by slaying his counterpart.

Bacchides, however, seems to have anticipated such a move and was prepared to exploit it. As Judas’ smaller cavalry unit attacked, the Seleucids gave way in what seemed to be disorder. As the Jews plunged deeper into the Seleucid right, however, Bacchides’ horsemen wheeled about, regrouped and countercharged.

At that critical moment Judas’ cavalrymen found the cavalry from the Seleucid left cutting off their escape route, having galloped behind the infantry line to complete the trap. Although flanked and disintegrating, a great number of Maccabean warriors went down fighting—including their commander. Unlike Eleazar’s, Judas’ remains were somehow recovered and given a proper burial ending with a quotation from King David’s lament to King Saul: “How the mighty have fallen!”

Regrouping from this defeat, Jonathan withdrew across the Jordan River while Bacchides tried to consolidate Seleucid rule. The latter ventured after Jonathan, but their next clash, fought on a Sabbath day, cost him about a thousand casualties. He then set about fortifying the Akra, Jericho, Emmaus, Beth-horon, Beth-el, Thamnata, Parathon, Tephon, Beth-zur and Gazara, but the countryside around those cities and towns remained unsafe for any Greeks or Hellenists and when the general returned to Antioch he found himself being summoned a third time, this time by the Jewish Hellenists. After several further defeats at Simon’s hands Bacchides contacted Jonathan and the two worked out a renewed treaty, with pledges of enforcement, then withdrew for home for the last time.

The story was not quite over and both Jonathan and Simon would be killed in the process, leaving John the last Hasmonean brother standing, but between 160 and 142 BCE Judea was an autonomous element of the Seleucid kingdom and in 141 it became an independent kingdom that in 139 BCE forged an alliance with the Roman Republic…but the consequences of that fateful decision constitute another story.

Remembering a Great military leader

The last great military leader of native-born Jews until the resurrection of the state of Israel in 1947, Judas Maccabeus is credited with preserving traditional Jewish monotheism against both the seductive power of assimilation and the might of an empire…especially when Hanukah rolls around.

Historically, he has found comparison with rebels taking on the odds worldwide throughout the centuries that followed, from Christian Armenian Vardan Marmikonian to Scotland’s William Wallace and Wales’ Owain Glyndwr, to American general George Washington and Haitian revolutionary Toussaint l’Ouverture.

Centuries’ worth of literary, musical and visual artwork has been hammered out in memory of Judas and his brothers. That said, one of the greater metaphoric stretches when it came to drawing historical parallels was Thomas Morell’s libretto to George Frederick Handel’s oratorio, Judas Maccabeus, when it was first publicly performed on April 1, 1747. There, it is the Jacobite Scots Highlanders under Charles Edward Stuart, aka “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” who are cast as the villainous Seleucids and the metaphoric “Conqu’ring Hero” is William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, whose victory at Culloden on April 16,1746 is praised for “saving” Hanoverian Britain…but whose draconian follow-up indelibly stamped him in Scottish memory as “the Butcher.”

Trust William Shakespeare, however, to catch the irony that others either failed to notice or chose to ignore. In Love’s Labour Lost, Judas is listed among the “Nine Worthies,” but still gets heckled just for having the same first name of that other Judas.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is universally acclaimed as the English language’s most famous writer and greatest dramatist, authoring 39 plays and 157 poems (overwhelmingly sonnets). England’s acknowledged national poet, even his plays are judged poetry—written in iambic pentameter, principally blank verse, sprinkled with block prose passages.

An astute observer of the human condition, Shakespeare’s peerless genius brilliantly plumbs its depth and breadth. In his historical play (written circa 1599), King Henry V’s, first line, Shakespeare’s “chorus” invokes “a Muse of fire” for burning inspiration capturing the play’s drama.

He most famously succeeds in his renowned “St. Crispin’s Day speech,” magnificently imagining how Henry must have inspired his greatly outnumbered “band of brothers” (6,000 Englishmen—mainly longbowmen backed by dismounted, armored men-at-arms—facing 15,000-20,000 French mounted knights), cut-off and surrounded deep inside France, to ignore the overwhelming odds and seize victory from certain defeat. 

A Battle Speech “Masterpiece”

Shakespeare’s “Henry’s” pre-battle speech is a masterpiece of leadership and psychological manipulation, playing upon all the emotions and motivations of why men fight, despite facing certain death.

“Henry” first dismisses pleas for more men by asserting, “The fewer the men the greater share of honor.” Next, he appeals to his soldiers’ vanity, assuring them their battlefield heroics will be eternally remembered and they “Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d.”

Finally, he pledges to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with them, sharing their fate, since “he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.”

Shakespeare may never have led men in desperate battle, but he knew instinctively how to do it!

In the historical Agincourt battle, October 25, 1415, the stunning against-the-odds English victory (6,000 French dead—10 times Henry’s losses—plus 2,000 French knights captured for ransom) was wrought by the deadly efficiency of Henry’s longbowmen (protected from French cavalry by sharpened stakes) and a timely downpour creating a muddy quagmire “killing ground” on the English battle line’s front. 

“Band of Brothers”

King Henry V Act IV, Scene III—The English Camp

Henry responds to his cousin, Earl Westmoreland’s wish for more soldiers.

If we are mark’d to die, we are enough

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men the greater share of honor,

God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

O do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host

That he which hath no stomach for this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

We would not die in that man’s company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,

And say, To-morrow is Saint Crispian:

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say, These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered, —

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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