From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@toppoint.de)
Date: Wed 10 Jul 1996 - 07:56:00 EEST
Dominic McNamara chides (among other people's) my use of the term Celts, and
steps forth with a lot of (useful) archaeological evidence from Britain and
the late Roman republic. Sorry, Dominic, but that's not the period or use of
the term I had in mind.
There are contemporary literary descriptions of the Celtic speaking invaders
of the classical world at the time of the early Roman republic, or during
the diadoch's rule in Alexander's former empire. They have been written (of
course) by the people raided or even invaded by these "barbarians".
(The term "Celts" is likely about as valid as the term "Anglo-Saxons" to
describe a "nation" of migratory groups harrassing the classical world at
that period. I didn't say "La-Tene warriors" because I am not sure whether
Brennus' troops really were... For another artificial term, consider "Greek".)
The reports are quite uniform in their description of the warriors -
wielding long swords, wearing little or no armour (or clothing), and scaring
the hell out of the ranks trying to face them off. None of these had
received special training to deal with such crazies, and if they had, facing
them in earnest was a different cup of tea.
After some time of these lunatics keeping the upper hand, the military
leaders of the other nations found out how to motivate their men to do what
they were trained for in spite of the terrible noises etc those "savages"
made. Marius for instance led his legions close to the enemy barbarians'
camps, without attacking, and slowly made them lose their irrational fears.
Robbed of this weapon, the barbarians were indeed easy meat for hardened
veterans; the problem was to harden the veterans the first time...
That's where my parallel with the war elephants comes in - when an army
faced these the first time, the sheer terror of moving towers on the
battlefield was sure to break the formations and wreak havoc. Once the
troops had gotten used to another cruel weapon of war, it could be dealt
with rationally, and elephants started to cause as much (or more) losses on
their own side as on the enemies'. Like with the Celtic furor, the initial
shock had worn off.
> If one must draw analogies between celtic and orlanthi
>warfare....(personally i have always thought of the orlanthi as more
>resembling the early-mid saxons, but never mind).
Could you please detail which saxons you mean? Those in southern England,
those giving the French coast the name "litus saxonicus", those three tribes
south of the Elbe causing trouble to the Frankish kingdom, or the tribe
north of the Elbe sharing trouble with the Danes? Saxons is almost as
collective a nown as Celts...
Apart from that, I agree to a certain extent with the "Saxon" parallel,
especially for the east-Manirian tribes. For Heortland, I lean heavily on
"Anglo-Saxon" customs and names, and some of Sartar's lawgiving aspects in
Sartar (bringing in literate Lhankor Mhy scholars) remind strongly of the
English law-giving kings of the fifth to ninth century.
My analogy for the late First and most of the Second Age are the Danubian
and Rhone valley oppidae of the late Hallstatt and early La Tene period,
though, with the Greek and Phoenician traders replaced by Malkioni God
Learners (and possibly Waertagi for the Phoenicians - never leaving the sea
shore for long...). When this culture broke down (fall of the EWF and
Dragonkill), less refined ways (in Glorantha even artificially imported by
Alakoring) take over. When the Trader Prince influence becomes dominant in
(Gloranthan) late 13th century, there still are adherents of the wilder way.
Think Welsh in the foothills and upper valleys of the Storm Mountains, with
the westernized Hendriki taking the role of the Anglo-Saxon invaders (though
speaking a common language - mostly, that is).
>First of all, the romans, if we assume they fight like lunars, would
>generally sweep their way through any number of orlanthi rabble.
After the reforms of Marius and Sulla, sure - they were especially trained
to deal with barbarians. Before that, the (admittedly good) Roman troops
were facing mainly "civilised" enemies (including the Gaul and Hispanian
allies of Hannibal who did well under Phoenician tactical command). On the
one occasion when they got into direct confrontation with a powerful Celtic
leader (Brennus) they received a beating. (IIRC that's when they relegated
their Equites to show troops rather than elite shock troops.)
How can I twist this back to a Gloranthan context?
The Lunar Empire had to change their dominant tactics with their main foes.
They started out facing the mounted forces of the Pentans and the Carmanians
in Rinliddi, and came up with a revival of the phalanxes of old Daxdarius,
using Carmanian cavalry armour at first. The Dara Happan rebels followed
suit using their own ancient designs (taken from temple statuary?) and
allied with the Lunars. Employing these tactics (plus heavy magical warfare)
the Lunars conquered all of the Carmanian occupied Peloria (that's
everything north of the Orlanthi regions...). Their first major military
fiasco occurred when Jannisor led an alliance of Orlanthi-like hill
barbarians supported by numerous other forces (sable riders, Char-un, Dara
Happan rebels) all the way to Glamour. Don't believe the "The emperor
ordered his cities to surrender" propaganda crap in the Fortunate
Succession, the Lunars were on the verge of collapsing, and one of the
reasons was the charismatic and heroic leader of the coalition, in true
Orlanthi heroic style. (In fact, I am somewhat astonished that the Lunars
even considered to accept personal challenges of their leades in this and
later wars - that is unsound military thinking...)
In the following Wane, the Conquering Daughter set out to learn about the
barbarians, adopted some of their ways, and made them adopt Lunar ways in
return. I was told that she had some serious falling out about her barbarian
policy with her august father, even leading to warfare. After that had been
settled, though, the Lunar way of warfare included people used to fight
barbarians, which had not been conquered by Lunar phalanxes...
I'll skip the century of nomad trouble following this era as irrelevant in
the Lunar dealings with Orlanthi. Suffice to say that the Lunar infiltration
and aquisition in southern Peloria held even through the downtime of the empire.
Hon-eel continued Hwarin Dalthippa's course of aquisition of barbarian
When the Lunar kings had been thrown out by Palashee Longaxe, the Lunars
territory through subversion in the newly developed kingdom of Tarsh as soon
as the Empire could spare magical ressources to this end. Again, there were
no Lunar phalanxes involved, but mostly barbarian allies reinforced by a few
Lunar temple troops.
waited with their reprisal until their pet barbarian warleaders had learned
enough about Lunar military and magic to strike back. Even so, the so-called
barbarians proved to be their mettle in the first battle, destroying most of
the expeditionary force. Only a very barbarian style counter-raid made
Phargentes king of Tarsh...
Phargentes became the epitome of the Lunar provincial commander, a perfect
The first heavy involvement of Lunar Heartland troops came with the Sartar
Euglyptus seems to keep some Heartland units when he (and not Moirades)
mold of native and imperial virtues. Using his native forces drilled with
Lunar techniques he remained victorious for most of his career.
invasion of 1602, where the full force of Lunar magic crushed the civilised
array of Sartarite defenders in a series of a few battles and sieges. No
wild naked savages (except the Telmori unit) facing them there...
becomes governor-general of Sartar. These are destroyed in ambush at the
Hill of Orlanth Victorious, so that the only veterans remaining are the
semi-native settlers in Wulf country.
Plenty of room for green boys (no, no conscripts, but forcibly volunteered)
scared out of their wits by both regular Lunar army magic (i.e. chaos
manifestations) and their enemies' savagery. Neither comes as a surprise,
both will be able to break them, be they Pam's Lodrili troops trained to
stand through charges or other unfortunates stationed here.
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