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weaponsandwarfare.com
29
Monday 2016
Iron
was first utilized as a technology of war around 1300 bce by the Hittites. By
the beginning of the first millennium bce, the secret of iron metallurgy and
cold forging had spread to Palestine and Egypt by way of the nomadic invasions,
and perhaps to Mesopotamia as well. Iron weapons were superior to bronze
weapons because they were heated and hammered into shape rather than cast,
making them stronger, less brittle and more reliable than their bronze
counterparts. Within a few centuries the secret of tempering was discovered and
diffused, and iron became the basic weapon material for all the armies of the
period.
The
invention and diffusion of iron smelting, cold forging and tempering created no
less than a military revolution in the classical world. The importance of iron
in the development of classical warfare lay not only in its strength and
ability to hold an edge, but also in the widespread availability of iron ore.
No longer were civilizations dependent on copper and tin deposits to make their
bronze weapons. Five hundred times more prevalent in the earth’s surface than
copper, iron was commonly and widely available almost everywhere. The plentiful
supply of this strategic material allowed states to produce enormous quantities
of reliable weapons cheaply. In fact, a democratization of warfare took place,
with most members of an army now being issued iron weapons. Now almost any
state could equip large armies with reliable weapons, with the result being a
dramatic increase in both the size of battles and the frequency of war. The
first people to take full advantage of the potential of the Iron Age were the
Assyrians.
Assyrian
monarchs had long understood the precarious strategic position of their state.
Centred on the three major cities of Nimrud, Nineveh and Ashur on the upper
Tigris River, in what is now north-western Iraq, Assyria was cursed with a
dearth of natural resources and few natural barriers to keep out enemy
invasions. Assyria lacked wood for constructing forts, temples and dams, stone
for building walls and castles, and iron ore deposits to forge weapons. Assyria
also lacked the large steppes necessary to support large horse herds, essential
for chariotry and cavalry. If Assyria was to survive, it needed to expand at
the expense of its more advantaged neighbours. Beginning in the fourteenth
century bce, the Assyrians successfully resisted Mitannian, Hittite and Babylonian
expansion and subjugation to finally emerge as a regional power under
Tiglath-pileser I (c.1115–1077 bce). The empire created by Tiglath-pileser did
not long survive his passing, and a new phase of expansion began in the ninth
century under the reign of Shalmaneser III (858–824 bce). By Tiglath-pileser
III’s reign (744–727 bce), the Assyrians had expanded into Syria and Babylonia,
securing their western and eastern frontiers.
The
Assyrians quickly mastered iron metallurgy and applied this new technology to
military equipment and tactics. By the eighth century bce, the Assyrians had
used their large, iron-equipped armies to conquer much of the Fertile Crescent,
and, for a short time in the seventh century, Egypt as well. The general size,
logistical capabilities, and strategic and tactical mobility of the Assyrian
army were indeed impressive, even by modern standards, with the lessons learned
by the Assyrians being passed on to the Persians.
As
early as 854 bce at the battle of Karkara (modern Tel Qarqur), Shalmaneser III
was able to field a multinational army of over 70,000 men, made up of 65,000
infantrymen, 1,200 cavalrymen and 4,000 chariots. By the eighth century bce,
the entire Assyrian armed forces consisted of at least 150,000 to 200,000 men and
were the largest standing military force the Near East had ever witnessed. An
Assyrian field army numbered approximately 50,000 men and was a combined-arms
force consisting of various mixes of infantry, cavalry and chariots which, when
arrayed for battle, had a frontage of 2,500 yards and a depth of 100 yards.
Still, the Assyrian army, as large as it was, seemed small when compared to
armies that appeared some three centuries later. For instance, by 500 bce, a
Persian Great King could raise an army of around 300,000 men from his vast
territories, and Alexander may have faced a Persian army at the battle of
Gaugamela of perhaps 250,000 men, including 20,000 cavalrymen, 250 chariots and
50 elephants.
The
Assyrians also recognized the need for increased specialization in weapon
systems. With the exception of an elite royal bodyguard and foreign
mercenaries, Assyrian kings relied on a farmer-militia raised by a levée en
masse. But as these mobilizations increased in frequency, the Assyrians began
to supplement their militia muster with an ever-growing cadre of specialized
troops. By Sargon II’s time (r. 721–705 bce), the Assyrian army was a
combined-arms fighting force of heavy and light infantry, cavalry, chariots and
siege machinery supported by specialized units of scouts, engineers, spies and
sappers.
Assyrian
heavy infantry were armed with a long, double-bladed spear and a straight sword
for shock combat, and were protected by a conical iron helmet, knee-length coat
of lamellar armour (a shirt of laminated layers of leather sown or glued
together, then fitted with iron plates) and a small iron shield. There is some
evidence that can be gathered from the panoply depicted on stone bas-reliefs
that the Assyrian royal guard was a professional corps of articulated heavy
infantry who fought in a phalanx. In battle, these Assyrian heavy infantrymen
were organized in a battle square with a ten-man front and files twenty men
deep. But even if these troops were capable of offensive articulation, the
financial resources, drill, discipline and esprit de corps necessary to field
large numbers of these specialized troops was not a dominant part of the Near
Eastern art of war, so if present, it was not the decisive tactical system that
it would become under the Greeks. Instead, light infantry archers were probably
the main offensive arm of the Assyrian army.
Assyrian
archers wore a slightly shorter coat of mail armour and the same conical helm
as their heavy infantry counterparts, and are often depicted with a
shield-bearer carrying a large, rectangular shield made of densely matted reeds
covered with oiled skins or metal, similar to a pavise of the medieval period.
The shield was curved backward along its top edge to provide extra cover from
long-distance arrow or stone attacks and against missiles fired from enemy
walls. Archers came from many regions within the empire, so bow types differed,
with the simpler self-bow in use as much as the composite bow. The Assyrians
invented a quiver that could hold as many as fifty arrows, with some arrows
fitted with special heads capable of launching combustible materials. Referred
to as ‘the messengers of death’, these flame arrows were targeted at enemy
homes or crops. Slingers constitute another type of light infantry employed by
the Assyrians. They are often depicted on stone bas-reliefs standing behind
archers.
Changes
in technology also enabled Assyrian ironsmiths to design a stronger chariot,
with builders emulating earlier Egyptian designs by moving the wheel axis from
the centre to the rear of the carriage. The result was a highly manoeuvrable
vehicle that reduced traction effort. Still, the chariot suffered from terrain
restrictions, unable to exploit its impressive shock capabilities on anything
but level ground. Perhaps the chariot remained the dominant weapon system into
the early Iron Age because of the sociology and psychology of the forces the
chariot led and faced. In the Bronze Age the chariot was the weapon of the
aristocracy, ridden into parade and battle by a social class culturally
ordained as superior to the common soldiers who gazed upon these often
excessively decorated weapons. It is possible that the utility of cavalry was
not fully tested by the Assyrians because of a carry-over preoccupation with
the Bronze Age domination of the battlefield by chariots. For over 2,000 years
chariots were free to scatter formations of poorly equipped and weakly
motivated infantry. This preoccupation with a battlefield anachronism would
continue with the Persians as well, until their final defeat in 331 bce at
Gaugamela by a Macedonian army unburdened by chariots.
Most
significantly, Assyria was the first civilization in the west to exploit the
potential of the horse
as a mount. The introduction of larger, sturdier horses from the Eurasian
steppes gave the Assyrians a new weapon system, the cavalryman. The first
Assyrian cavalry were probably nomadic cavalry, perhaps Median mercenaries from
tributary states across the Zagros Mountains on the Eurasian steppes. But not
wanting to rely on foreign horsemen, the Assyrians began to develop their own
cavalry corps, specializing in both light and heavy tactical systems. Assyrian
light infantry emulated their nomadic neighbours, riding smaller, faster steeds
and firing arrows from composite bows on the fly. It is notable that writers of
the Old Testament called these Assyrian cavalrymen ‘hurricanes on horseback’.
Assyrian light cavalry faced all kinds of opponents, including camels used as
platforms for Arab missiles, with mounted archers sitting behind the beasts’
jockeys back-to-back and firing at pursuing Assyrian infantry and cavalry.
Assyrian
heavy cavalry was in a state of continuous evolution. The original mounted
lancer modified the equipment of foot soldiers to meet the needs of shock
combat. The armoured coat was reduced to waist length and the shield was made
smaller. Heavy cavalry were armed with both sword and lance, but the absence of
a stabilizing stirrup meant Assyrian lancers, like their other classical-age
counterparts, thrust out and loosened their spear at their enemy as they passed
instead of riding through their target using the synergy of horse and rider.
Over
time, the Assyrians developed their own cavalry corps and their own horse
recruitment, acquiring specialized ‘yoke’ horses for chariots and riding horses
for cavalry from as far away as Nubia and Iran. It remains a mystery why this
weapon system, far superior to the chariot in both strategic and tactical
mobility, was never fully exploited by the Assyrians. Possibly the lack of the
horseshoe made the use of cavalry in rough terrain too expensive in animals, or
the Assyrians’ preoccupation with chariots precluded them from sustaining large
forces of both chariots and cavalry.
