Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare.
Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smaller groups, so that their eggs weren't all in one basket anymore.
Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated: the Romans learned of their mistake and made the necessary reforms to protect their troops.
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The Battle of Cannae would go down in history as a military example of how to line up all your troops for potential slaughter. Future generals and tacticians would forever know of that battle and how to avoid those conditions.
Most generals and soldiers would seek a battle of annihilation: if destroying the entire enemy force is possible they will attempt it. The problem is, its very, very difficult to achieve in practice.
As such, simply routing the enemy, is sufficient for most military goals.
To be clear, the key word in the quote above is medieval. He specifically says large battles were far more common in the ancient world:
> Pitched battles were far more common in the ancient world (think Persia, Macedon, Rome, etc) – this is a product of the larger size and greater organizational capabilities of those armies.
That is actually wrong. For a battle to occur, both sides need to agree to battle, except in rare circumstances. So, usually what happens is, that the general in a weaker position avoids the other guy, until he finds terrain suitable to his advantage. The other guy then of course is a lot less inclined to attack in for him unfavorable terrain. Compare that with a siege, the attacker knows where he needs to go, and what he wants to do, and for the defenders their fortifications are a lot better than moving somewhere else.
(It should be mentioned, some armies could force a battle. The Mongols for example where just so much more mobile, that they could actually catch an enemy who tries to evade them.)
Consequently also in antiquity, most engagements where sieges rather than set piece battles.
Isn't it kind of a useless distinction? I mean it's not like there are so many periods of pre-gunpowder history. We have ancient, medieval and that's it -you could add bronze age but we have so much less records-.
The whole "battles were rare, sieges where common" is a trope I believe some YouTubers started, but I don't think there's any solid pattern. Ancient armies pillaged the countryside to provoke encounters. Steppe peoples did pitched battles all the time because they didn't build walls. Medieval Europe may have had more sieges than battles because of religious homogeneity, but you can see how that model falls down soon in the thirty years war: if you don't engage the enemy they'll loot and pillage you to oblivion. Your people see how you are unable to protect them and desert you.
No, there is a very clear difference between warfare in the classical and medieval eras (in the West), and it dovetails with the collapse of large-scale political authority and the ability to muster large armies.
Another distinguishing factor is the widespread building of castles. During the classical era, fortifications were less useful because there were powerful states that could capture them anyway. But when even the nominal king or emperor had trouble mustering a force of fifty thousand men, the castle vs. the siege (and the raid) dominated most warfare. During the classical area many of those same places would have been sparsely populated, and certainly not well fortified.
Castles were less useful because you didn't need internal military structure to defend against the people from one province over. Roman cities for 100s of years didn't upgrade their city walls, even communities in Gaul stopped living in hill cities and so on.
Defensive structure really only made sense in specific border regions. There however large empires certainty did invest in such defenses. Border cities that were ready to be under siege and that could host an arriving army.
Think for example about the difference between pre-Hastings England and 100 years later. The castle sprawl was really dramatic after William took over, it really changed the dynamic
A Legion numbered 3000-6000 combat troops around the time of Cannae. The Romans had mobilized additional forces for this battle, and this included an increase in the number of legions as well as the size of some. It is probably more accurate to say that about eight legions (Romans and allies) were destroyed.
Fun fact: the South East Asia was safe guarded from the Mongolian invasion because they was stopped 3 times at Vietnam. The Mongolian had heavy casualties from all 3 of the grand campaigns, despite overwhelming number and was forced to retreat.
On other hand Mongol-Song wars were absolutely incredible on power imbalance. Some times with a single tumen (10000) vs entire Song armies at a time.
The entire Song military of 1m+ and god knows how much irregulars first exhausted its supplies by chasing a more mobile enemy across the central plain, and then defeated with "defeat in details" taken to its extreme, after Song understood that they can't match Mongols in open fields, and decided to go on defensive.
As Mongols set on fire more and more cities, Song's giant military started emptying granaries as they retreated south. With each lost commandry, Song was loosing more and more of its grain production, while having to dig deeper, and deeper into its reserve.
During the second invasion wave, Mongols had to set just few more major granaries on fire for Song military's grain consumption to exceed its production. After that their supply shortage started to snowball, and they lost almost all of its military to rout and desertion within a few years.
Well, there was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where temporarily united germanic tribes managed to massacre around 20 000 roman legionnaires under the lead of a roman-trained traitor.
I think Hannibal's a special exception. I'm not sure which hannibal you are talking about, but they weren't they all engaged in a generations-long blood feud that lasted 300 years? I mean, this was not some simple faction conflict. It was a war between two rival states to decide the fate of the entire known world.
> weren't they all engaged in a generations-long blood feud that lasted 300 years?
I'm not sure how "exceptional" a multi-generational war was in medieval or ancient times.
There were Five Crusades between ~1100 and ~1300 for example. The Chinese Warring States period was 475 BCE to 221 BCE. Japanese Sengoku period (A similar "Warring states" era) was 1467 - 1600. The Hundred Years' War was 1337 to 1453.
There were times of peace, and then there were times of conflict. Sometimes conflicts that last centuries.
As a state vs state thing, Carthage and Rome definitely weren't unique in ancient times. Hell, Carthage wasn't even the last state that Rome engaged with in multi-generational war, they just came the closest to actually winning.
What is interesting about that particular war though is that it did span the literal generations of the Barca family, of which Hannibal was a member, and for whom at least two full generations that I know of all became leading generals in the Carthaginian army.
Rome is also somewhat unique in that they were basically in a state of perpetual war after a certain point in their history. War begat war, especially as the territory grew and the results of victory were wealth and prestige for the families involved.
> Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated
I would argue that the Romans allowed themselves to be surrounded in the Battle of Carrhae by forming into a block. They got pinned and were badly defeated.
Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smaller groups, so that their eggs weren't all in one basket anymore.
Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated: the Romans learned of their mistake and made the necessary reforms to protect their troops.
-----------
The Battle of Cannae would go down in history as a military example of how to line up all your troops for potential slaughter. Future generals and tacticians would forever know of that battle and how to avoid those conditions.
Most generals and soldiers would seek a battle of annihilation: if destroying the entire enemy force is possible they will attempt it. The problem is, its very, very difficult to achieve in practice.
As such, simply routing the enemy, is sufficient for most military goals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_annihilation