There was a battle where 1,000 French cavalry killed thousands of Europeans including the king of Aragon while fighting 20,000 enemies. Also Otumba is much less impressive when you consider the 8,000 native allies making the battle more outnumbered by 2:1 and not 25:1.
Roman military (assuming we are talking about pre-West/East split) was special because their professionalism, logistics, and administration were simply unmatched in their time, but these things really aren't going to give them a leg up on an opponent with cannons and firearms and steel armor. Romans weren't immune to fear and once the cannons open up and volley fire starts they are incredibly likely to rout considering they would have never seen or even heard of such weapons before.
Romans had a bad track record against massed ranged infantry and heavy cavalry, and the spanish would be like that on steroids compared to what they encountered from parthians or sassanids.
Another anon can correct me if I'n wrong but iirc Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed, Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
>Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed >Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
Rome was around for a long time, they knew what heavy cavalry was and they both used and fought against people who used heavy cavalry
And they consistently struggled with having worse cav than their enemies, unless they used skilled auxiliaries. Not to mention that the Romans never adopted stirrups, with the Byzantines only adopting them well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Not to mention that the Romans never adopted stirrups, with the Byzantines only adopting them well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. >Byzantines
so the Roman Empire adopted stirrups after the fall of the western half of the empire.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yes, they adopted it in a time when they had already reshaped their army structure to be very cavalry-centric, with large amounts of heavy cav, light cav, horse archers and generally worse quality infantry than previous centuries.
So considering OP specified a Roman Centuria, he's talking about before their adoption when Rome was more infantry-centric.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>So considering OP specified a Roman Centuria
as already stated in
https://i.imgur.com/E3oE285.jpg
>Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed >Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
Rome was around for a long time, they knew what heavy cavalry was and they both used and fought against people who used heavy cavalry
Rome had experience fighting against heavy cav, that Rome also had heavy cav was just included as historical trivia not the crux of the discussion
Another anon can correct me if I'n wrong but iirc Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed, Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
It’s also worth noting that Roman cavalry didn’t have stirrups, which actually make a huge difference in how effectively a cavalryman can use a lance from horseback
the same way no one figured out to put many small pieces of paper together into a codex form book before they figured out how to make one super long piece and rolling it between two sticks
it's easy to think something is obvious when you've been exposed to it your entire life, originality is difficult
Anon humans in their current form have existed for some 300-400k years and we didn't have the idea to just plant seeds until about 20,000 years ago, and no one had the idea of making a "wheel" for thousands of years after that.
You live in a world where technology can spread, and spread quickly, and where even relatively poor people can get their idea built/invented, and where that invention can easily be preserved for future use/expansion. It is entirely possible someone in rome had something similar to a stirrup... and it was simply forgotten, lost, or even actively suppressed because the Roman Empire was actually shockingly despotic when it came to any invention that would disrupt the economic security of existing markets/products. They were very fickle at times when it came to developments
Now imagine all the people who HAD ideas but were dirt poor peasants or even slaves so never had their ideas seriously listened to, or never learned how to write their idea so it just died with them. Or they couldn't get the infrastructure to construct their idea.
>the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
imagine dying like this
that's actually more or less how a lot of knight fighting went in the middle ages once you got to close range >knock off horse >Are they pinned under horse? If so, stab them through the joints/visor/mail >oh they're up? use polearms to knock them down >get your peasant levy buddies to repeat the stabbing >repeat as necessary
Here's the scenario >roman centuria deviated from it's path and ended up on the Caribbeans/South America >establish themselves on the region and make a roman tribe >it's now the 16th and the spanish/portuguese found millions of latin (real) americans
The romans may well be in a worse position that way. At least the euro romans had beasts of burden. Latin America notably had... alpacas and llamas. They had no oxen, no horses, no donkeys, nothing like that. So now you'd be dealing with Romans who had even LESS access to labor than the conquistadors, who'd have the benefit of specially bred mastiffs, horses far stronger than the Roman ones (assuming they even had them, and the horses didn't just replaced by llamas) due to superior breeding, etc.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>the Roman Empire was actually shockingly despotic when it came to any invention that would disrupt the economic security of existing markets/products.
Roman cavalry was always the highest classes. If they had stumbled into advancements like the castled saddle and stirrup it would have directly cemented the cavalry on the battlefield and in society. They faced other heavy, fully armored cavalry but those cultures didn't have the castled saddle-stirrup either so even when devoted to the heavy charge it didn't fare well against heavy infantry.
Here's the scenario >roman centuria deviated from it's path and ended up on the Caribbeans/South America >establish themselves on the region and make a roman tribe >it's now the 16th and the spanish/portuguese found millions of latin (real) americans
Perhaps they have a few more resistances to old world disease, but far from complete and they still suffer greatly.
The civilisations the spanish encountered were already organized and warlike and they still fell, and it's not likely their technology would be much improved from what the mesoamericans had as a ~80 legionaries wouldn't exactly have a comprehensive knowledge of roman metalworking, shipbuilding or engineering, the latter of which the mesoamericans were already really good at.
So maybe the latin mesoamericans don't get destroyed by cortez and a few hundred guys who were making it up as they went like the aztecs, but fall they will as the europeans get more capability to support larger expeditions.
Conquistador is such a vague term that it could mean anything. They might not even have any cannon or plate armor with them depending on the group in question. Spanish tercio vs ~2 roman centuria (about the same manpower?) would be more interesting. Sure, arquebuses will frick Romans up in close range, but suppose that the first volley is fired from too far and the Romans realize that they must charge in before they can reload?
The Romans would start getting killed by cannonfire while the enemy appears to be dots on the horizon, would get confused, then scared, then they would run. At which point they get charged down by caballeros and slaughtered to a man.
Even if they managed to close the distance (they won't), it's not like they have a chance against the pikemen.
In modern times we think of the celts as technically backward and barbarous, this is untrue, the celts were in many ways more advanced than the romans, however celtic society was insular and despised change.
When the celts began to realize the romans ment to exterminate them they unleashed the big guns, to my knowledge there is no word for what "THEY" were but we know what the romans called the gladiators based on them, Crupellarius.
The Crupellarius were bigger, stronger, and faster than the average legionnaire, and likely the best fighters Gaul could muster, with armor so advanced they required no shield,
the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
this gaulish fullplate became the basis for segmentata.
>the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
imagine dying like this
>the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
that's the Revolt of Sacrovir in 21ad, there's no indication that the Gauls invented the crupellarii armor just that there were Gauls being trained as crupellarii by 21ad >this gaulish fullplate became the basis for segmentata.
the Romans already had segmentata by at least 9ad if not earlier, and it's much more likely that they were introduced to it by the Parthians than the Gauls
The conquistadors did very well in combat but the primary reason the aztecs lost is because they made enemies with literally every single tribe they encountered all of whom were happy to throw in with the spanish.
The Spanish only wanted to frick their daughters, not eat them.
Conquistadors were pretty OP for their time and place.
Natives only had obsidian & couldn't really crack armor.
I think the polearm would beat the frick out of the legion.
Here's a dude demonstrating spanish armor & weaponry .
I'm going to just assume you mean Cortes' conquistadors. It would be an interesting match up considering that the vast majority of Cortes' soldiers were rodoleros, a type of soldier that originated in the Italians trying to bring back the sword and shield fighting style of the Roman legions. Considering Cortes had 1300 men and is fighting a single Roman centuria he's definitely going to win this by force of numbers but the rodoleros didn't carry any ranged options the way Roman legionaries carried pila and the rodoleros has a fairly small shield and longer side sword compared to the much larger roman scutum and shorter gladius. But if we bump the numbers to three cohorts of 480 I'd say the Romans have a good shot of winning.
Close, but the lack of pikes does not mean a lack of missile troops. Cortez fielded a lot of crossbowmen (literal bargain bin milsurp of the day) but still had a decent number of arquebus and cannons ghetto rigged to field use. The rank and file would be less armored than a legionary, likely only having a shield and helmet with brigandines and the rare breastplate or half armor for a minority of troops, but between guns and crossbows and cannon and a very small number of lancers-pistolers it'd be a far more mixed force. gunpowder and missile weapons would likely inflict severe causalities at the opening of an even numbers engagement, but any protracted melee could go the legionnaires way.
TLDR: 15 cannons and a dozen stirrup cavalry for his initial 600 man force would make a battle against a cohort of 480 probably very one sided.
>Close, but the lack of pikes does not mean a lack of missile troops
in 1520 Cortes had 1300 men total, at least 1000 of which were rodoleros, by 1521 he had only 700 rodoleros and only 118 crossbowmen and arquebusiers
no
If it wasn't for bioweapons they would have lost to the aztecs
1/10 for making me respond
ayayay amigo, a semiliterate mexican!
there was a battle where 150 heavy cavslry knights cut down some 1000s indio warriors out if a 10.000 indo army.
no bioweapons involved Black person
just cold steel and horses vs. blood cult superstition
anybody know the name of that battle?
The battle of my dick in your moms ass.
at least it was a battle
and not a black friday sellout like in your mums case
>mexishart detected
Battle of Otumba? The spanish had native allies and used the superior speed from the cavalry to kill aztec leaders in surgical strikes
There was a battle where 1,000 French cavalry killed thousands of Europeans including the king of Aragon while fighting 20,000 enemies. Also Otumba is much less impressive when you consider the 8,000 native allies making the battle more outnumbered by 2:1 and not 25:1.
>muskets
>cannons
>vastly superior armor
Yeah I'm going with the conquistadors
Yeah for sure bro
Roman military (assuming we are talking about pre-West/East split) was special because their professionalism, logistics, and administration were simply unmatched in their time, but these things really aren't going to give them a leg up on an opponent with cannons and firearms and steel armor. Romans weren't immune to fear and once the cannons open up and volley fire starts they are incredibly likely to rout considering they would have never seen or even heard of such weapons before.
how long could the spanish conquistadors maintain their pressure with their guns before they were out of gunpowder?
Romans had a bad track record against massed ranged infantry and heavy cavalry, and the spanish would be like that on steroids compared to what they encountered from parthians or sassanids.
This. Medieval cavalry would destroy anything from an ancient army tbh.
And crossbows. And longbows. Don’t know how they’d cope with those. And medieval armies having higher quality steel weapons.
How come? Rome had horses too. What did they figure out by medieval times what the romans didn’t already know?
Another anon can correct me if I'n wrong but iirc Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed, Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
>Romans didnt use cavalry the same way. Medieval cavalry were well armored and often massed
>Roman cavalry were used as skirmishers for the most part
Rome was around for a long time, they knew what heavy cavalry was and they both used and fought against people who used heavy cavalry
Why are they all smiling? Also, frick I love playing as the Seleucid in Rome Total War 2
they're very happy their friend the cavalryman with the face mask bought a cool new tunic
>blonde guy in gokden armour
This feels like a gimmick
And they consistently struggled with having worse cav than their enemies, unless they used skilled auxiliaries. Not to mention that the Romans never adopted stirrups, with the Byzantines only adopting them well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
>Not to mention that the Romans never adopted stirrups, with the Byzantines only adopting them well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
>Byzantines
so the Roman Empire adopted stirrups after the fall of the western half of the empire.
Yes, they adopted it in a time when they had already reshaped their army structure to be very cavalry-centric, with large amounts of heavy cav, light cav, horse archers and generally worse quality infantry than previous centuries.
So considering OP specified a Roman Centuria, he's talking about before their adoption when Rome was more infantry-centric.
>So considering OP specified a Roman Centuria
as already stated in
Rome had experience fighting against heavy cav, that Rome also had heavy cav was just included as historical trivia not the crux of the discussion
It’s also worth noting that Roman cavalry didn’t have stirrups, which actually make a huge difference in how effectively a cavalryman can use a lance from horseback
Frick me how do you not come up with something as simple as a place to put your feet?
the same way no one figured out to put many small pieces of paper together into a codex form book before they figured out how to make one super long piece and rolling it between two sticks
it's easy to think something is obvious when you've been exposed to it your entire life, originality is difficult
Anon humans in their current form have existed for some 300-400k years and we didn't have the idea to just plant seeds until about 20,000 years ago, and no one had the idea of making a "wheel" for thousands of years after that.
You live in a world where technology can spread, and spread quickly, and where even relatively poor people can get their idea built/invented, and where that invention can easily be preserved for future use/expansion. It is entirely possible someone in rome had something similar to a stirrup... and it was simply forgotten, lost, or even actively suppressed because the Roman Empire was actually shockingly despotic when it came to any invention that would disrupt the economic security of existing markets/products. They were very fickle at times when it came to developments
Now imagine all the people who HAD ideas but were dirt poor peasants or even slaves so never had their ideas seriously listened to, or never learned how to write their idea so it just died with them. Or they couldn't get the infrastructure to construct their idea.
that's actually more or less how a lot of knight fighting went in the middle ages once you got to close range
>knock off horse
>Are they pinned under horse? If so, stab them through the joints/visor/mail
>oh they're up? use polearms to knock them down
>get your peasant levy buddies to repeat the stabbing
>repeat as necessary
The romans may well be in a worse position that way. At least the euro romans had beasts of burden. Latin America notably had... alpacas and llamas. They had no oxen, no horses, no donkeys, nothing like that. So now you'd be dealing with Romans who had even LESS access to labor than the conquistadors, who'd have the benefit of specially bred mastiffs, horses far stronger than the Roman ones (assuming they even had them, and the horses didn't just replaced by llamas) due to superior breeding, etc.
>the Roman Empire was actually shockingly despotic when it came to any invention that would disrupt the economic security of existing markets/products.
Roman cavalry was always the highest classes. If they had stumbled into advancements like the castled saddle and stirrup it would have directly cemented the cavalry on the battlefield and in society. They faced other heavy, fully armored cavalry but those cultures didn't have the castled saddle-stirrup either so even when devoted to the heavy charge it didn't fare well against heavy infantry.
>get your peasant levy buddies
Largely a myth.
Here's the scenario
>roman centuria deviated from it's path and ended up on the Caribbeans/South America
>establish themselves on the region and make a roman tribe
>it's now the 16th and the spanish/portuguese found millions of latin (real) americans
Perhaps they have a few more resistances to old world disease, but far from complete and they still suffer greatly.
The civilisations the spanish encountered were already organized and warlike and they still fell, and it's not likely their technology would be much improved from what the mesoamericans had as a ~80 legionaries wouldn't exactly have a comprehensive knowledge of roman metalworking, shipbuilding or engineering, the latter of which the mesoamericans were already really good at.
So maybe the latin mesoamericans don't get destroyed by cortez and a few hundred guys who were making it up as they went like the aztecs, but fall they will as the europeans get more capability to support larger expeditions.
This, they got turned around while walking over the pacific ocean.
Conquistador is such a vague term that it could mean anything. They might not even have any cannon or plate armor with them depending on the group in question. Spanish tercio vs ~2 roman centuria (about the same manpower?) would be more interesting. Sure, arquebuses will frick Romans up in close range, but suppose that the first volley is fired from too far and the Romans realize that they must charge in before they can reload?
The Romans would start getting killed by cannonfire while the enemy appears to be dots on the horizon, would get confused, then scared, then they would run. At which point they get charged down by caballeros and slaughtered to a man.
Even if they managed to close the distance (they won't), it's not like they have a chance against the pikemen.
Except that a single tercio doesnt have cannon with them.
Or cavalry, for that matter.
You are dramatically overestimating the effective range of the kinds of field cannon these armies employed.
>Just charge two football fields against a muskrat line that fires every six seconds
conquistador armies of cortes and pizarro had like several hundred dudes in them
Yes for one reason, the gauls.
In modern times we think of the celts as technically backward and barbarous, this is untrue, the celts were in many ways more advanced than the romans, however celtic society was insular and despised change.
When the celts began to realize the romans ment to exterminate them they unleashed the big guns, to my knowledge there is no word for what "THEY" were but we know what the romans called the gladiators based on them, Crupellarius.
The Crupellarius were bigger, stronger, and faster than the average legionnaire, and likely the best fighters Gaul could muster, with armor so advanced they required no shield,
the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
this gaulish fullplate became the basis for segmentata.
>the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
imagine dying like this
>the romans knew they were fricked. however the general realized they had equipment for digging through metal in the form of the Dolabra pickaxe, and so they killed the weaker soldiers then mobbed the Gaulish warriors in their steel full plate to the ground and held them down while they picked through them like ore veins.
that's the Revolt of Sacrovir in 21ad, there's no indication that the Gauls invented the crupellarii armor just that there were Gauls being trained as crupellarii by 21ad
>this gaulish fullplate became the basis for segmentata.
the Romans already had segmentata by at least 9ad if not earlier, and it's much more likely that they were introduced to it by the Parthians than the Gauls
What is the tactical advantage to leaving the benis vulnerable to attack?
facilitation of tactical rape
Having a saddle and horse blocking that area generally means that you don't also need a codpiece.
yes.
How many? under what circumstances?
The conquistadors did very well in combat but the primary reason the aztecs lost is because they made enemies with literally every single tribe they encountered all of whom were happy to throw in with the spanish.
The Spanish only wanted to frick their daughters, not eat them.
>a Roman Centuria
>How many?
80 legionaries +1 centurion
81 romans with knowledge of the terrain vs ~400 spaniards
Read it as a response to the OP moron.
>Could 80 Romans defeat Conquistadors?
>"How many?"
I choose to believe you're a reddit spacing homosexual who doesn't know how many men are in a roman century
Conquistadors were pretty OP for their time and place.
Natives only had obsidian & couldn't really crack armor.
I think the polearm would beat the frick out of the legion.
Here's a dude demonstrating spanish armor & weaponry .
I'm going to just assume you mean Cortes' conquistadors. It would be an interesting match up considering that the vast majority of Cortes' soldiers were rodoleros, a type of soldier that originated in the Italians trying to bring back the sword and shield fighting style of the Roman legions. Considering Cortes had 1300 men and is fighting a single Roman centuria he's definitely going to win this by force of numbers but the rodoleros didn't carry any ranged options the way Roman legionaries carried pila and the rodoleros has a fairly small shield and longer side sword compared to the much larger roman scutum and shorter gladius. But if we bump the numbers to three cohorts of 480 I'd say the Romans have a good shot of winning.
Close, but the lack of pikes does not mean a lack of missile troops. Cortez fielded a lot of crossbowmen (literal bargain bin milsurp of the day) but still had a decent number of arquebus and cannons ghetto rigged to field use. The rank and file would be less armored than a legionary, likely only having a shield and helmet with brigandines and the rare breastplate or half armor for a minority of troops, but between guns and crossbows and cannon and a very small number of lancers-pistolers it'd be a far more mixed force. gunpowder and missile weapons would likely inflict severe causalities at the opening of an even numbers engagement, but any protracted melee could go the legionnaires way.
TLDR: 15 cannons and a dozen stirrup cavalry for his initial 600 man force would make a battle against a cohort of 480 probably very one sided.
>Close, but the lack of pikes does not mean a lack of missile troops
in 1520 Cortes had 1300 men total, at least 1000 of which were rodoleros, by 1521 he had only 700 rodoleros and only 118 crossbowmen and arquebusiers
No because of gun powder but they could have beat the Normans which were like 700 years later.