Page 233 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

2010 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal
virtues. • Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

sacked Rome in 390 BCE and to the Carthaginian general failed to secure their western border against the bronze-
Hannibal for ten years in the Punic Wars. The battle at wielding Tarascan civilization. Many Aztec soldiers gar-
Cannae in Italy is a classic example, with more than thirty risoned on this border would have been far more useful
thousand Romans killed. Rome was far more successful against the Spanish horse and steel. Although the Aztec
at sea, converting the Carthaginian navy into a Roman had a great military record during previous expansions,
navy by force and buying the Numidian cavalry of Han- the inability of Montezuma to attract allies and present a
nibal for the battle at Zama in 202 BCE. Later Roman united territorial front against the Spanish conquistadors
empire legions were ambushed by German barbarian from 1519 to 1521 was fatal to his empire.
tribes at Teutonburg Wald in 9 CE. The Parthian cavalry Great leaders, battles, and forces do exist in world his-
used the “Parthian shot,” whereby the Parthian cavalry tory. The successes of Alexander of Macedon and his
would break Roman ranks by feigning retreat only to let forces and of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and
loose with a volley of long-distance arrows on the disor- his forces are examples. However, numerous great deeds
ganized legions.This tactic was used repeatedly to break of warfare do not stand up well when compared to oth-
the legions, once killing the Roman emperor and more ers in world history.
than forty thousand of Rome’s finest in one afternoon. By
the end of Roman power, during the fourth century CE, Gaps in History
Roman military forces were struggling to integrate cavalry In world history gaps exist where evidence is not available.
and legions to hold up the crumbling empire. The comparative approach can shed light on these gaps
Other supposedly invincible forces that did not per- when used contextually.Warfare as an ephemeral activity
form so well include the elephant-equipped armies of leaves little evidence. Historical records can be supple-
classical and medieval India. Hundreds of war elephants mented with archaeological evidence to help identify and
led armies as large as 500,000 men.Yet, neither the ele- explain the role of warfare in world history, especially in
phants nor great numbers of men deterred waves of nonliterate areas.This is the case for pre-Columbian war-
invaders, usually on horse, who swept into India period- fare and for warfare in early Eurasia and early Africa.
ically, putting the elephants to flight and capturing thou- Written records of Minoan chariots on the island of
sands of soldiers on a regular basis. India’s territory and Crete in the Mediterranean are an interesting case.
population sizes proved far more effective than its mili- Minoan civilization (2500–1500 CE) was a seafaring cul-
tary forces at slowing and absorbing periodic invasions. ture that controlled sea trade.Warlike neighbors, such as
The vaunted Aztecs and their last leader, emperor the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Egyptians and Hyksos to
Montezuma, are another example. Although these war- the south, and the Hittites and Mitanni to the east, used
riors, professional soldier clans equipped with weapons chariots as an integral part of warfare. Mycenaean cities
of Stone Age technology, fought bravely and well against such as Tiryns were walled, and we can recall the Greek
the Spanish invasion, their record in Mesoamerica (the poet Homer’s epics for images of what Bronze Age war-
region of southern North America that was occupied dur- fare looked like. Yet, Minoan palatial estates were not
ing pre-Columbian times by peoples with shared cultural walled and had no need of chariots for war on an island
features) is not so good. Before the Spanish conquest the protected by Minoan ships. Current thinking suggests
Aztecs and their emperor failed to subdue a hated rival that the chariot records were instead representative of
civilization whose homeland was only miles from the elite status (as the number or size of automobiles can be
Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan. The Tlaxcallans became today in industrialized states). This was the case during
faithful allies of the Spanish, providing logistics and ten peacetime for Egyptian nobility. A comparative, contex-
thousand soldiers whose volley-fire arrow tactics were tual approach to warfare in this case yields negative evi-
lethal to the Aztecs. The Aztecs and Montezuma also dence that Minoans used chariots for war.