War in 100 Events (eBook)

Archaeological finds from Jebel Shaba, in the Sudan, and Nataruk, in Kenya, indicate that groups of nomadic, hunting-gathering members of the species Homo sapiens sapiens had begun waging war on each other.

Evidence for deadly human-on-human violence goes back at least as far as 50,000 BCE. It consists of weapons, such as stone-made spear and arrow points; bones that have been broken, crushed or perforated; and, occasionally, graves. However, such violence on its own does not amount to war. Whether early humans understood the differences between crime, police action, feuding, war, and genocide in ways similar to our present understanding of these things is doubtful. Thinking of it, it seems rather unlikely. What Jebel Shaba and Nataruk do prove, though, is that 12,000 or so years ago humans were engaging in collective violence against each other.

The motives that drove our remote ancestors to engage in war must have resembled those found in more recent, and much better known, hunting-gathering societies. They probably included conflicts over access to natural resources such as watering places and hunting grounds; disputes over women and the sexual and reproductive possibilities they offered; the need to avenge insults of every kind; and general competition.

Normally the warring societies must have lived fairly close together, though there may have been exceptions to that rule. Tactically, conflicts probably took the form of skirmishes, ambushes, and raids. The time and location of some encounters may have been prearranged. Each ‘campaign’ separately was short, lasting no more than hours or, at most, days. However, the frequent recurrence of hostilities meant that, relative to the size of the warring societies, over time casualties could amount to a considerable part of the populations involved. The findings at Nataruk seem to show that no one was spared. In later tribal warfare, though, while adult men would be slaughtered, young women and children were more often taken prisoner. Either way, entire societies could be, and presumably sometimes were, wiped out.

Recent discoveries in the field put an end to the common, but mistaken, idea that war only emerged after the agricultural revolution led to a surplus and made settled communities possible. In other words, le bon sauvage is a myth. This does not, however, necessarily mean that our ancestors were incapable of friendship, altruism, kindness, or love.

The earliest raw materials from which weapons were made were bone (for spear and arrow points), stone (used, in addition to points, for maces and knives), wood (for shafts, clubs, and bows and arrows; bows are a very ancient weapon, going back to at least 60,000 BCE); and linen, hemp, silk, sinews, and rawhide (for bowstrings). The middle of the fourth millennium BCE saw the introduction of bronze in the Indus Valley. From there it spread north-eastward to China and Korea, as well as westward into the Middle East and Europe.

As this list implies, the ingredients of bronze – copper and tin – may be found in many different places around the world. Harder than copper, whose military use was essentially limited to maces, it could be moulded into any desirable shape and sharpened to a fine edge (though some earlier weapons, made of obsidian or animal teeth, could be very sharp indeed). It also lasted longer than organic materials did. These advantages explain why it was used to manufacture, among other things, weapons such as spear and arrow points, swords, daggers, axes, and halberds. Later defensive equipment such as helmets, shields, armour, and greaves were added.

Manufacturing bronze requires quite sophisticated technology. Such technology in turn presupposes specialised craftsmen as well as permanent settlements. Societies that did not form such settlements could not produce it, though they may have acquired the weapons by trade or plunder. In the most advanced societies bronze remained the main material for manufacture of military equipment until about 1000 BCE, when it started to be replaced by iron and steel.

Described in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BCE), the Battle of Banquan is often considered the earliest recorded battle in history. However, over two millennia passed from the time the battle took place to its being mentioned in the Records. As a result, the details are somewhat obscure. Not only is the exact location where it took place disputed, but it may actually have consisted of three separate battles which subsequent generations, less interested in the military detail, compressed into one.

The antagonists were Yandi, ‘The Flame Emperor’, on one side and Huangdi, or ‘Yellow Emperor’, on the other. During most of China’s history Huangdi was regarded as a key figure in the creation of Chinese civilisation. However, not long after the overthrow of imperial rule in 1911 CE he lost that status and came to be considered a legendary or, at best, semi-legendary figure. Among the many useful devices Huangdi is supposed to have invented was the first bow. Climbing a mulberry tree to escape a tiger, he used a stone knife to fashion it out of the surrounding branches as well as the vine that was growing on it. His men, belonging to the Youxiong tribe, prevailed over their enemies, the Shennong. The latter seem to have been nomads who entered the North China Plain from the north and the east, starting a pattern that was to shape Chinese history for the next 4,000 years or so.

After the battle, Yandi was murdered, leading to the amalgamation of the two tribes. Together they formed the Huaxia (‘grand beautiful’) people, generally seen as the ancestor of China’s Han civilisation.

This clash between Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt and the Hittite King Muwatalli II is the earliest of which we have a detailed account, complete with information about formations, weapons and tactics. Most of the information is contained in reliefs and inscriptions Ramses had made and put up in various temples. Hittite records also mention the battle, though in far less detail.

In the spring Ramses and his army, consisting of about 20,000 men, divided into four brigades with about 2,000 chariots between them, left Egypt. Marching by way of the Sinai and Canaan (Palestine), he entered Syria from the south-west. There he almost fell into a trap as some local people, perhaps Hittite spies, informed him the enemy was still 200km away. In fact, the distance between the two forces was only about 11km. As a result, when the Hittites attacked Ramses only had two of his four brigades immediately available. Said to be ‘more numerous than the grains of sand on the beach’,* the enemy easily broke through the Egyptian array.

If Ramses’ account may be believed, at one point he was left on his own, with ‘no officer, no charioteer, no soldier of the army, no shield-bearer’† to help him. What saved him was the god Amun, hard fighting, and, above all, the fact that the Hittites smelled victory. Abandoning the pursuit, the Hittites turned and started plundering the Egyptian camp – probably not the first, and certainly not the last, time such a thing happened. The remaining Egyptian brigades arrived on the field and counter-attacked. They drove the enemy into the nearby river Orontes, killing many and forcing others to swim across ‘like crocodiles’‡ so as to make their escape.

The relatively plentiful information we have about it apart, the battle is remarkable for the fact that it was fought with the aid of as many as 5,000 horse-drawn chariots on both sides. This makes it the largest such encounter in history. Apparently the Egyptian chariots proved lighter, faster and more manoeuvrable than the Hittite ones.

The day ended with what may have been a tactical victory for the Egyptians. However, they were unable to maintain themselves in Syria. Over the next fifteen years the two sides continued to fight each other in northern Palestine and southern Syria. Hostilities were finally concluded in 1258 BCE by means of a treaty, a copy of which is now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

*    Quoted in J. Tyldesley, Ramesses II: Egypt’s Greatest Pharaoh (London: Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 70–1.

†   Quoted in M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature. II: The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 65.

‡   Quoted in R. Overy, A History of War in 100 Battles (London: HarperCollins, 2014), p. 323.

The reasons that led to the Trojan War – the kidnap or elopement of Helen by or with Paris of Troy, the jilted Menelaus’ ability to persuade his brother Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, to retrieve her, and the subsequent campaign – do not need repeating in detail. Suffice it to say that it lasted for ten years before the city finally fell. The Iliad, on which all other literary sources drew, gives the number of Greeks as 50,000 and that of Trojans as 10,000. By another interpretation the figures were 250,000 and 50,000 respectively. No fewer than...