Our friend Darius III here below from Alexander (2004) silently waves his hand to mean ‘ archers shoot!’ and also ‘ chariots, charge!’ and then also ‘ everyone else, charge!’ Keeping in mind what we saw about the observation abilities of a general on horseback, you can well imagine how able Darius’ soldiers will have been to see his hand gestures while they were on foot from a mile or so away. Well, sometimes they’re rather more than a few minutes away. 1Īs we’ll see, in a real battle when seconds count, new orders are only a few minutes away. This was a major problem! Creative Assembly had to rush to fix it. Indeed, when the latest Total War game, the fantasy-themed Total War: Warhammer III, released there was a bug where some units (mostly missile infantry) would take one or two extra secondsto respond to orders. The unit responds almost instantly and understands your orders exactly. Of course in a game like Total War this is all very easy you click on your unit and then you click where you want it to go. And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on twitter for updates as to new posts as well as my occasional ancient history, foreign policy or military history musings. So let’s talk about why even the very best generals had only very limited control of an army in motion.Īnd as always, if you like what you are reading here, please share it if you really like it, you can support me on Patreon. But such plans are not only possible in strategy video games, they are often optimal (and are a staple of the ‘ chessmaster‘ fiction trope). Often they are plans with so many moving parts that one wonders if they could be accomplished with modern communications equipment.
I suspect every military historian who has ever discussed a pre-modern battle with a lay audience has gotten some version of “well why didn’t they do X” where ‘X’ was a battle-plan far too intricate, too finicky and complex and most importantly required too much agility in command – that is, too much ability to change the plan ‘on the fly’ – to ever be implemented. While popular culture often focuses more on command, in pre-modern armies, leadership was, as we’ll see, often the dominant factor (though command is by no means absent!).Īt the same time it is focused on command, the popular vision of it dispenses with many of its inherent limitations. But as important – often more important – was the general’s leadership role: inspiring his troops, performing the role of general to their satisfaction and giving them a sense of confidence in the possibility of victory. As we’ll see, the role of the general during the battle can be divided effectively in two parts, which we might term ‘command’ and ‘leadership.’ ‘Command’ is the thing that most video games simulate: the specific tactical choices the general makes concerning the disposition of his army, its movement and so on. This week, we’re going to turn to look at what the general can do with that information, focusing on his actions during the battle itself. What we found was that, in contrast to the broadly omniscient generals of film and video games, actual generals had to work in an information environment which was both unsure (that is, information was frequently false) and substantially incomplete. Last week, we looked at the information a general might have before and during a battle. This is the second of a four-part ( I) look at the role of the general in a pre-modern army, particularly in the context of a pitched battle.