Chapter 196: "·Square Phalanx"

Hobbies are generated by knowledge, the more accurate the knowledge, the stronger the hobby.
-Leonardo da Vinci (typical artist of the Renaissance)
The Macedonian phalanx must closely cooperate with the cavalry. It is not easy to win by relying solely on the phalanx. The Macedonians will arrange the phalanx in a diagonal array during the battle, that is, a right-angled triangle or a right-angled trapezoid, with an oblique facing outward, so that it will be based on specific needs Surround the enemy from one side.
Normal enemies will not be killed and scattered in front of the Macedonian phalanx unless they encounter a charge from the Macedonian phalanx; this is rarely reflected in the war. The Macedonian phalanx can be united as a whole, pushed forward, and then like one The wall rushed past.
Other non-phalanx enemies are as neat as mowers. Most of them will be trapped by them and do their utmost to avoid the numerous spearheads. This is exactly what General Macedonia wants. The enemy is placed on a large chopping board. That knife is the Macedonian cavalry.
The Macedonian cavalry in the war are very strong, and overall better than their first enemy, which gives them the ability to fight against and defeat (drag) the enemy’s cavalry, and then turn their heads around and hit hard from behind, like chopping a cutting board with a knife The meat on the same.
This requires coordination of infantry and riding, neither late nor early; another important thing in the war is the Macedonian guerrilla infantry. They are mainly light infantry who use round shields and short swords to hold light armour. They are good at melee and their main task is to defend the defense. After the side or follow the cavalry attack.
A very important and critical issue is involved here, that is, the Macedonian phalanx coordination. It has never been a Macedonian phalanx consisting of a single pikeman, but is actually composed of standing infantry, light infantry, cavalry, and auxiliary troops. Multi-armed phalanx.
Among them, there are a large number of standing soldiers. They carry Macedonian spears (four meters long, two-handed operation, more than 5.5 meters later; the end of the spear has a counterweight for balance, and also serves as a spare weapon when the spear is broken.), diameter Sixty centimeters round shield.
The shield in the hands of the soldiers in the phalanx protects the left side of the self while covering the right side of the body of the adjacent comrades. Once the front row of soldiers falls, the soldiers who were originally in the second row will quickly fill in what he left behind gap.
The soldiers in the first row are generally half-squatted, aiming the spears forward, and the soldiers in the second row put the spears on the shoulders of the soldiers in the first row, which can increase the lethality of the frontal cavalry; and the whole The essence of phalanx tactics is that all soldiers work together and go hand in hand, and those who escape from the array will be punished most severely.
In light infantry, their spears will be shorter in length, the diameter of the shield will be larger (can cover the body of the kneeling soldier), the armor is slightly lighter, but their mobility is better.
Cavalry, a heavy cavalry composed of young nobles, armed with a Macedonian spear; when waiting for combat, the spear is often placed on the shoulder with the spear head slightly downward; when charging, the spear pierces downward, the first one After the enemy, the spears are often left in the body of the enemy and no longer pulled out. Then, the sword is used to continue the battle. After the battle is over, the spears are retrieved.
Auxiliary soldiers, the armor is very light or even armor-free, with javelins, bows and catapults as the main weapons; their task is to assist the Phalanx infantry to give long-range strikes to the enemy's attacking troops, and to cover the Phalanx retreat when necessary. .
To sum up the advantages of the Macedonian phalanx, it is nothing more than its own high mobility, which can rush towards the enemy with a complete line, and give the enemy who has not recovered from the cavalry attack a harder blow.
The heavily armored soldiers who can’t get rid of the pursuit of the Macedonian phalanx cannot move on the battlefield faster than the formation of the Macedonians. The enemy light infantry who can beat the Macedonian phalanx in speed and cannot defeat the Macedonian phalanx. This created the prestige of the phalanx.
However, the Macedonian Phalanx also has a fatal weakness, that is, as long as it tries not to let it have a unified battlefield, and only attacks its wings or back, but not its front, it can kill it.
Once the opponent breaks through the flanks, the spearmen in the spear array are difficult to resist the attack of the enemy soldiers; and the square array has very weak ability to deal with the dense arrow array. The lancers of the array are almost at their disposal.
For example, in Earth’s European 371 BC, the strategist Ibami Nunda of Thebes used a group of troops with a depth of 16 layers in Lyuktra, and entered from the right side of the square, and the result was broken. A more powerful Spartan heavy infantry phalanx.
First of all, this kind of square formation is not an all-round formation. If you think about all-round formation and all-round defense, what should you think about? Everyone stood around a center and faced all directions... But what can you do besides standing still?
On the battlefield, the direction must be constantly adjusted according to the form. When attacking, you can only face one direction. The omnidirectional spear phalanx was developed in the West to the Swedish spearmen in the late Middle Ages, but the war at that time was different from this time, and The Swedes consciously retreated when they were hit by crossbows, because all-round defense could only stand still.
A more prominent flaw is that it takes a long time to arrange in all directions; then the question arises, who will arrange the troops in such a way at the beginning of the battle? Who would have so much time to line up for troops?
Look at how the Romans defeated this phalanx in the Second Macedonian War. The tactical organization of the Roman legion can operate for the smallest unit by itself; note that their arrangement is not close. When the Romans meet the nearest When threatening, such as flanks, they can easily and simply face the front in any direction, just turn around.
Although Alexander’s Macedonian compact square has its unique flexibility and can be transformed into a variety of formations to adapt to various terrains and enemy formations, in fact, it is a little troublesome to achieve this in the dense square. They The spear is very troublesome to use, not to mention turning around quickly? Compared to the Romans, this type of team, which was very flexible during the Alexander era, was much slower.
It is true that the dense phalanx of Macedonia defeated the left wing of the Romans at the beginning of the battle, but trouble soon came, the terrain on the battlefield was undulating, and the dense phalanx of Macedonia was difficult to pursue the left wing of the Romans Stay in line.
When the right wing of the Romans repelled the left wing of the Macedonians, the right wing of the Macedonian phalanx won the victory, but the Romans circumvented the front of the phalanx, and their advantage of using the dagger shield immediately Reflected.
The dense phalanx on the move cannot be kept very neatly. When there is a gap in the phalanx, the Romans entered the phalanx from the flanks; how can a soldier with a spear of 6.5 meters long use a short A Roman opponent with a sword and a large shield?
At this time, it was exactly one inch short and one inch long. The Macedonians crowded together couldn't even wield their spears. Besides the first row, the Macedonian soldiers in the back row did not have heavy armor and shields. .
This is why the last time Bai Feng deployed a platoon to meet the enemy of the Eastern Alliance, three thousand soldiers with Germanic mad soldiers as the core were deployed on the empty right wing of the Cheetah Corps’ pikemen square formation in order to avoid this situation. Appearance.
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