I came across a video that I thought was the perfect illustration of what is commonly seen in static line battles. I'm going under the assumption that it would be okay to use this video as it was made public on social media, and my apologies if I assumed incorrectly.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=300333730939038
Note: sometimes parts of this video get fuzzy when I watch it, but usually the entire video is pretty clear.
Not a whole lot, actually.
There are a lot of things that can happen in a battle that determine how the tactics play out. Is the commander dead or alive? What is the objective? Are you there merely to serve as a distraction? Are you taking it easy on the other side because they haven't won a battle yet? Are you letting ineffective fighters on the front line because they need to have fun as well? Is it hot? Are you using a cohesive unit of well trained fighters, or is it the rabble that was left over from the attrition? Etc.
Then Why Talk About the Video?
Even though we don't really know what is going on, we can still use the video to illustrate some hypotheticals. Use it as a thought experiment for what you would do in similar situations and what kinds of decisions you would make. You might even draw different conclusions than I would, and that's perfectly okay. No one has all of the answers, but we can all work toward more informed decision making.
Initial Impressions
Let's begin with a screen shot.
- People seem to care about winning the battle based on the yelling I hear and the intensity of the fighting
- It appears to be a single death battle based on the fact that the lines look like they are thinned out and the fact that calibration seems to be above average. There are also a lot of people standing around on the perimeter who are not fighting, so I assume they have been killed.
- It appears to be late in the battle as the lines look thin, there are lots of dead people on the sides, and there seems to be a below average level of unit cohesion.
Weapons Mix
The front line of the unit on the left appears to have 7 spears, 2 shields, and one pole axe. It looks like at this point in the battle that they have thinned out enough that they don't have much choice in what they are fighting with as the second rank looks fairly sparse. If they wanted to, for example, set up a shield wall on the front line, I don't think they'd have enough shields to do so.
The unit on the right appears to have a couple more shields in the front line and maybe one or two fewer spears. They also seem to have enough fighters in the second and third ranks to fight with whatever they'd like.
There does not appear to be any archery, throwing weapons, or artillery.
Do You Want More or Less Shields on the Front Line?
Answer: That entirely depends....
So in a nutshell, all else being equal, the more spears you have on the front line, the better you are going to fight a static battle. The more shields you have on the front line, the more prepared you will be at executing a charge and repelling a charge. A line with more shields will also be better at a slow advance as a line with more spears needs to maintain a gap of 10-11 feet, so every step forward from the former results in a step back from the latter.
In this example, it actually looks like the unit on the right is more interested in taking ground than killing, so they have a few more shields in the mix and are pushing toward the end of the bridge. If they can break through the end of the bridge, they can possibly wipe out this thin line with their higher numbers and get into the backfield of another bridge, giving their side a big advantage on that bridge.
The unit on the left, by contrast, has little choice but to try to kill more fighters on the opposing side to try to nullify the numbers advantage.
In battles like these, I used to be a huge advocate for having only spears on the front line. A few things have happened in the last decade or so in the East and Atlantian kingdoms that has changed my mind. One is that they have moved away from a front of mostly shields to more of a mix, which gives them a good balance of charging power while also fending off spears. The other is that a lot of the bridge battles have moved toward timed control point battles rather than attrition battles, which takes some of the advantages away of a front line full of spears. The reason being that a line full of spears may kill more, especially if adept in collapsing into a kill pocket when absorbing a charge, but they are not very good at holding or gaining ground.
Weaknesses in the Line
Another screen shot later in the battle:
At this point in the battle, it appears the left unit had realized that they were not strong enough to hold their position on the bridge, so they pulled back off the end of the bridge. This is often what we call "capping the bridge." Essentially that means to create an arc from one corner to the other on the end of the bridge, forcing the other side to fight in a kill pocket where the left unit can get more spears into the fight with better angles of attack.
This is not the prettiest of kill pockets, again probably because it is a collection of whatever fighters were still alive near the end of this battle, but they do appear to have the most critical pieces covered.
The blue arrow at the top points to the most critical potential weakness in a capped bridge. The smallest of gaps in that position can allow a line of right handed shields push through the gap and into the back field. Placing a shieldman in this spot (like they have) shores up that critical corner. A spear or a pole can also stand in that position, giving them a good angle to stab into the open side of a charging shield, but they must be backed up by a strong shieldman so that they don't get run over.
The blue arrow on the bottom of the picture shows the next most critical weakness. In this case they have a spearman in that position, which can be dangerous if the right team wishes to punch through, but the left team has that spot solidly backed up by at least two shields.
The middle blue arrow shows the third most critical spot, which is a potential weakness in the middle of the line. The key here is to make sure that after you've shored up both corners, that you don't leave the middle so thin and without shields and poles backing it up, that a group of shields can punch right through it and into the backfield.
Why Were There No Shield Charges?
From the perspective of the unit on the left, they didn't really have the shields to spare. Keep in mind, a charge doesn't win the engagement, rather it resolves the engagement more quickly. Sometimes the resolution is to the advantage of the unit that initiates the charge, but sometimes it isn't. It is possible that the unit on the left could have quickly brought all of its shields to the front and mounted a charge. It's even possible that due to the greater proportion of spears in the front rank of the unit on the right (once the left brings its shields up) that the left would have killed more fighters than they would have taken in casualties, but it is my belief that the casualties that they would have taken would have left them with too few fighters to hold the bridge, thereby leading to a fallen bridge more quickly.
From the perspective of the unit on the right, they may have been able to mount a charge and might even have been in a good position to do so. There are a few factors that may have prevented it:
- No single coordinated unit to pull it off
- They are tired
- There is a risk that it won't work
- They look to be winning the bridge anyway, so why take a risk
- No one thought it was a good enough idea to take the initiative to call the charge knowing that they could be responsible for a failed charge and the loss of the bridge
- A lack of leadership (maybe the commanders were dead)
Final Thoughts
The whole goal of this post was not to give tactical answers to a situation on a bridge, but rather to understand why bridge battles often play out the way that they do. I find that often times commanders and tacticians in the SCA view fighters like they view miniatures in a table top game. By that I mean that they imagine that they can send a command down to the fighters, and that the fighters will all implement the command as intended.
In reality, fighters are going to have natural tendencies that they'll follow, and as a commander one needs to understand what those tendencies are and how much those tendencies can be overcome. Truth be told, a lot of what I wrote above only applied to a portion of the fighters in the video. There were likely a number of fighters who did what they did purely because they wanted to fight and managed to work their way to the front line, regardless of whether or not taking a spot on that line was to the benefit of their side.
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