warfare
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Sigel, with 10,000 Union troops, had started south in coordination with Grant’s drive to destroy the railroad and canal complex at Lynchburg. Advancing from Cedar Creek...
Osprey Publishing - Military History Books
Roman infantry tactics, strategy and battle formations
Roman infantry tactics refers to the theoretical and historical deployment, formation and maneuvers of the Roman infantry from the start of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The article first presents a short overview of Roman training. Roman performance against different types of enemies is then analyzed. Finally a summation of what made the Roman tactics and strategy militarily effective through their long history is given below, as is a discussion of how and why this effectiveness eventually disappeared. The focus below is primarily on Roman tactics - the "how" of their approach to battle, and how it stacked up against a variety of opponents over time. It does not attempt detailed coverage of things like army structure or equipment.
Roman Legion
A Roman legion (from Latin legio "military levy, conscription ," from legere — "to choose") normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but were typically composed of up to 5,000 soldiers, originally divided into maniples and later into " cohorts ". Maniples/Cohorts were divided into " centuries ". In reference to the early Kingdom of Rome (as opposed to the republic or empire) "the legion" means the entire Roman army . For most of the Roman Imperial period, the legions were a part of the Imperial army and formed its elite heavy infantry, recruited exclusively from Roman citizens (provincials who aspired to the citizenship gained it when honorably discharged from the auxiliaries ).
sword
A sword is a bladed weapon ( edged weapon ) used primarily for cutting or thrusting . The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration. In the most narrow sense, a sword consists of a straight blade with two edges and a hilt But in some cases the term may also refer to weapons with a single edge ( backsword ). The word sword comes from the Old English sweord , cognate to Old High German swert , Old Norse sverð , from a Proto-Indo-European root *swer- "to wound, to cut". [ 1 ] Non-European weapons called "sword" include single-edged weapons such as the Middle Eastern saif , the Chinese dao and the related Japanese katana . The Chinese jian is an example of a non-European double-edged sword, like the European models derived from the double-edged Iron Age sword . Historically, the sword developed in the Bronze Age , evolving from the dagger ; the earliest specimens date to ca. 1600 BC.