Much to my dismay, I have to postpone the current arguement for sake of moving our schedule along. I'll bring it up later. I promise. Really.
Military: if you have it, you live. If you don't, well, you're just England. (By my count, from the fall of Rome to the High Middle Ages, the British Isles were successfully invaded 5 times.) But what was the best? One might say the French Grand Armee. Modern, disciplined, and successful. And boring. They marched at the enemy in a straight line, hoped they weren't shot by then, shot the other guys, then got shot.
In my opinion, the crown here goes to the phalanxes of Greece. (Yes, I am choosing Spartans. Cliche, but I digress...) They were almost undefeated by any army of the time. Again, history makes a great comparison tool.
It was almost beautiful in it's simplicity. It relied on your superior training, you're shield (and spear, I s'pose) and the guy to your right. You would charge the opponent, then crush him with your shield or knock him over and let the rear echelon take him out. It worked because of the other armies composition. Hardened veterans will always persevere over a fidgety bunch of militia. Think 300. The bronze-clad Spartans were to-a-man better trained than the other guys. Once you get past the infantry-centrism and add a powerful branch of shock cavalry, and some skirmishers, you have a world-class army. I personally like this style because of its fairness, in a way of speaking. It meant that because you were better, you won. That was how the Spartans did it. that's how Alexander did it. That's how Seleucus did it. You want to tell these guys their system's flawed?
"Military: if you have it, you live. If you don't, well, you're just England." - lolling it, nice!
ReplyDeleteIs it cheating to look a little into the future? Cause if I can, I have to choose the American Army and their über cool FCS, or Future Combat System. This is basically a network of robots and kickass special forces all linked to some of the most accurate GPS guided missiles in the world. I'll will post more soon...
I would like to point out the battle of Pydna, which proved the dominance of the Roman Legion and it's flexibility where they defeated a Macedonian force of 44,000 (no cavalry for either side) from the front and killed 25,000 of them.
ReplyDeleteAlbeit the phalanx was in foothills which undoubtedly disrupted their formation
I love the phalanx too, its just fun to play Devil's Advocate
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ReplyDeleteFCS is now no longer in operation. It was cancelled this April.
ReplyDeleteNo more spartans are alive today, that program was cancelled 2000 YEARS ago. Plus the FCS program has only been scaled back, not fully cancelled.
ReplyDeletewell, if that's the standpoint you're going to take, Nuclear weapons have rendered everything else obsolete.
ReplyDeleteThe End
no, as long as both warring countries have nukes, neither will use them. Take the cold war for instance, both Russia and the US could have plastered the other into radioactive glass, but instead they played a careful game of cat and mouse, "spy vs. spy" for awhile. While no official combat took place, plenty of underground stuff did. The "war" spawned a huge range of technological advances including the space race... This proves that sometimes war is advantageous because it promotes innovation.
ReplyDeleteyeah. nukes take the fun out of everything. sticks and stones anyone?
ReplyDeletei think you can thank our good buddy barrack for those cuts, red king.
ReplyDeleteha!
ReplyDeletestick and stones? not that crude, but how about bow, arrow and horse? Mongol light cavalry came to mind...
ReplyDelete