The Nitpicker’s Guide to Ancient Warfare: Raids

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @David Flin here

 

[Death's Companion]

Very good stuff, its underrepresented considering it probably makes up a solid majority of all human conflict throughout history and is still happening right now today.

One thing worth mentioning is that with the notable exception of nomads, a motivation (beyond profit) for counter raiding is that professional raiders especially with mounts are very hard to catch in the act in days before standing armies so stopping raiding could often be futile, its hard to defend everywhere and hard to catch people on the move. But their own homestead is generally stationary and a deal easier to find and a deal more burnable. Even if the individual in question and their family is not present when you arrive, if they're spending the next few weeks or months rebuilding their shelter so they don't freeze to death over winter they're probably less likely to be a bother in the near future.

It was very much a thing that border security in many times and places was hard to distinguish from genocide. Punishment expeditions, bribing different groups of raiders to turn on each other, scorched earth or strategic settlement of people to act as a buffer or disarming moving troublesome people further away from vulnerable areas all were frequently practiced, hence the importance of legal quirks like national borders or unique and difficult terrain or a nomadic lifestyle.

 

[Thande]

There is that suggestion that the entire Indo-European religion (i.e. the ancestor of Norse, Greek, Roman, Slavic paganism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism) was based almost entirely on needing to provide a moral justification for raiding and counter-raiding cattle after horses were domesticated. Of course, that's a rather simplistic idea, but it does show you how important it is to human history.

 

[David Flin]

One thing worth mentioning is that with the notable exception of nomads, a motivation (beyond profit) for counter raiding is that professional raiders especially with mounts are very hard to catch in the act in days before standing armies so stopping raiding could often be futile, its hard to defend everywhere and hard to catch people on the move. But their own homestead is generally stationary and a deal easier to find and a deal more burnable. Even if the individual in question and their family is not present when you arrive, if they're spending the next few weeks or months rebuilding their shelter so they don't freeze to death over winter they're probably less likely to be a bother in the near future.

And, of course, as an expansion of this, raiders can be bought off. That was, apparently, the origin of the term "blackmail", or "black meal." From the Border Reivers (inevitably); a riding family would offer protection to a settlement in return for payment. That payment meant that the riding family wouldn't burn down the houses of those who paid it. Quite often, the riding family would "settle scores" from any others who did.

The English and Scottish governments both outlawed the paying of such protection money (but curiously, demanding such payment was quite legal). The law was, as usual, completely ignored in the Borders, which continued with their habits.

 

[Death's Companion]

And, of course, as an expansion of this, raiders can be bought off. That was, apparently, the origin of the term "blackmail", or "black meal." From the Border Reivers (inevitably); a riding family would offer protection to a settlement in return for payment. That payment meant that the riding family wouldn't burn down the houses of those who paid it. Quite often, the riding family would "settle scores" from any others who did.

The English and Scottish governments both outlawed the paying of such protection money (but curiously, demanding such payment was quite legal). The law was, as usual, completely ignored in the Borders, which continued with their habits.

A large reason that walled settlements became the norm during Rome's decline and were before its rise was often not to actually stop raiders so much as give them second thoughts about trying to just waltz in so they'd piss off and bother someone else or be open to negotiating for a portion of the wealth and stores inside the city in exchange for not burning out what was outside the walls.

There was a similar trend in the Hundred Years War in France, especially after the ancestor of the modern football hooligans got involved where there was a drastic rise in private and public fortifications. Hobbes was not working from nothing when he proposed that absolute unchecked power by the monarch was the most sure protection a people could have, he was wrong for reasons and the process of that absolution was massively destructive and disruptive in itself but basically it came from living through a period of anarchy.

You mention societies shape the armies that fight, but to an extent the armies fighting often shaped societies as periods of intense violence and lawlessness (I repeat myself) generate reactions that echo down the centuries.

 

[David Flin]

You mention societies shape the armies that fight, but to an extent the armies fighting often shaped societies as periods of intense violence and lawlessness (I repeat myself) generate reactions that echo down the centuries.

Huh. You're almost quoting from my last chapter.

 

[Death's Companion]

Huh. You're almost quoting from my last chapter.

[Insert Here] minds think alike?

 

[David Flin]

I gather it's either Great Minds Think Alike or Fools Seldom Differ.

Take your pick.