Guerilla War at Troy

 

   Guerilla War at Troy

In the Iliad, Homer records the battle as being fought mainly along traditional military lines with vast armies being pitched against one another on the battlefield. Ancient Greek warfare typically was fought using a phalanx formation, a large group of heavily armed soldiers who advanced en masse in an attempt to overpower the enemy who were generally arrayed in like manner. These troops were supported by ranks of archers, slingers and charioteers. However, there is much evidence in the epic that indicates that both sides in the conflict were also engaged in what we would call guerilla warfare in modern times. In this paper we will explore the use of such irregular warfare techniques.

The famous catalogue of the ships gives us a great amount of detail about the Achaean men who sailed for Troy, their fighting strengths and their leaders. In total Homer reports that there were 1,186 ships in the fleet with soldiers in 29 contingents from different cities on the Greek mainland and the islands. Based on the average number of men per ship, scholars estimate that the total Danaan force numbered between 70,000 to 130,000 men. It is thought that the Trojan forces and their allies equaled them in numbers. Both armies consisted of infantry carrying shields, spearmen, archers and horse-drawn chariots which usually bore a charioteer and a fighter. Agamemnon himself suggested that the Achaeans far out-numbered the Trojans, although the Dardanian forces were supplemented by allies.

The Greek fighters were arranged in contingents that reflected their home territories and their family units and before a battle or skirmish commenced, the men were marshalled together in their separate contingents by their leaders.

Just as goatherds arrange their own flocks separately, after they have been mixed in the pasture, so the leaders of the men easily maneuvered their soldiers, moving them left and right and up towards the front of the battle line.

The actions of King Nestor of Pylos give us a pretty good idea of how the Achaeans arranged their warriors for battles and the tactics that they used on the battlefield.

Nestor was ordering his troops into ranks and was urging them on to battle. Around him were the great Pelagon, Alastor, Cromius, Haemon the ruler and Bias the shepherd of the people. He put the charioteers with their horses and chariots in the front and placed the many brave foot soldiers in the back so that they might hem in the fighting. He put the cowards in the middle so that even if they did not want to fight, they would be forced to do so. He gave the first order to the charioteers and told them to rein in their horses and not to move in a tumult through the crowd. He ordered those who were skilled charioteers and eager to fight the Trojans not to go it alone, either up front or behind the lines, because they would be more easily conquered if caught fighting alone. He advised that any man in a chariot coming upon another should reach out with his spear towards that man, for that would be a better move. In such manner even the ancients of long ago were able to destroy walls and cities if they kept such tactics in mind.

In his book The Trojan War: A New History published in 2006 by Simon & Schuster, military historian Barry Strauss proposes that both the Greeks and the Trojans made good use of guerilla warfare tactics.

Commando raids, sabotage, kidnapping, theft, spying, throat-slitting in the dark, and ambushes at the stable door all made poor propaganda, however effective they may really have been. So whatever references to such practices survive may only be the tip of the iceberg.

Homer mentions a number of ambushes, covert operations, raids, sorties, and scouting expeditions in and around Troy, almost all carried out by the Greeks. In the Odyssey all of Odysseus’s actions from his return to Ithaca until the slaughter of the suitors and the maids may be seen as one big exercise in irregular warfare, an armed uprising without an army.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare characterized by small, mobile groups using ambushes, sabotage, and hit-and-run tactics to harass and disrupt a larger, more conventional military force. It often involves unconventional strategies, sometimes involving civilians, and can be a component of a larger political or military strategy. The term, derived from the Spanish word for "little war," originated during the Peninsular War in the early 19th century. With this definition in mind, let us examine some incidents of guerilla warfare found in Homer’s Iliad.

An army that filled 1,186 ships had to be fed and with a war waging on the Trojan plains, there was no place or time for agricultural endeavours. If you can’t grow it or raise it yourself, the next best alternative is to steal it from someone who can. The Achaeans regularly raided surrounding cities and took what they wanted and supposedly carried on the practice for all the years that they were encamped on the Trojan plain. Achilles himself boasted of his prowess with this guerilla tactic that most certainly had a severe impact on the enemy by disrupting Trojan supply lines.

Twelve cities of men have I destroyed with my ships and eleven by land and from all these I have taken forth a goodly amount of wealthy treasure and all of it I bore back to Agamemnon the son of Atreus.

It is interesting to note that these raids and the pillaging of surrounding towns to gather supplies and exert dominance over the Trojans, also resulted in sources of conflict among the Achaeans themselves. The booty that was gathered was often distributed in ways that were unsatisfactory to many of the leaders and their soldiers, and in the case of the Chryseis and Briseis affair, the impact of the withdrawal of Achilles from the battle had enormous negative consequences.

In Book X of the Iliad we find Diomedes and Odysseus planning a spying venture into the camp of the Trojans in an attempt to discover their battle plans. Diomedes told Nestor that he preferred not to go alone on the mission.

Then the great-shouting Diomedes spoke to them. “Nestor, my heart and my heroic spirit encourage me to enter the encampment of those Trojan enemies who are nearby, but if some other man came with me, I would feel more comfortable and daring about it. If two go together, then one can determine before the other how best to act but if one goes by himself, he is not as sharp in his thinking and may miss the mark.”

Unbeknownst to the Achaean spies, the Trojans themselves were planning a similar foray into the night. Hector looked for a volunteer to infiltrate the Greeks and found one in Dolon.

When he had gathered them together, he revealed to them his shrewd plan. “Is there one among you who will take it upon himself to accomplish this deed and perform it as a great gift? His reward can be relied upon. If he agrees, I will grant him a chariot and two horses with high-arched necks, the best of those found by the swift ships of the Achaeans, and to him will be attached great glory if he can get near those speedy ships and see if they are closely guarded or whether our beaten foes are planning among themselves to escape or to keep watch throughout the night, having been overcome with troubles.”

Dolon answers Hector’s call and makes a deal to be awarded the noble horses of Achilles if he is successful.

“My heart and my noble spirit urge me on to go near their swift ships and to spy out what is happening. But come now and lift up your staff and promise me that you will grant me the horses and the richly fashioned chariot that even now belong to the son of Peleus and I will prove to be a great spy for you and will not let you down. I will go right up to their encampment and even to Agamemnon’s ship where I will learn from the chieftains sitting in council whether they plan to flee or to fight on.”

            We know from the narrative that Dolon is captured by Diomedes and Odysseus and they question him closely. He gives up all the information that he has and begs for his life but his fate is sealed. Killing a prisoner of war is certainly a tactic of guerilla warfare.

Looking at him with anger, the mighty Diomedes then spoke to him. “Do not think at all about escaping Dolon, even though you bear a truthful message, now that you have fallen into our hands. For if we were to set you free or let you go, you would certainly come back to the ships of the Achaeans either to spy upon us or to wage battle against us. But if you were subdued under my grasp and lost your life, you would never again thereafter bring misery and hardship to the Argives.”

            In the Odyssey Helen relates the story of how Odysseus infiltrated Troy dressed as a poor beaten beggar to spy upon the Trojans and to learn about their plans.

He beat himself up with wretched blows and threw an old rag over his shoulders and he went this way looking like a slave into the broad streets of the city of the enemy. He hid himself disguised like a beggar near the ships of the Achaeans. Looking like this he entered the city of the Trojans and nobody said anything. I recognized him with certainty and I questioned him but he tried to avoid me with his cunning.

And when he had killed many of the Trojans with his long sword, he returned to the throng of the Argives and brought back much news to them.

            The Achaeans attempted to use another type of guerilla action, namely psychological warfare. Achilles had withdrawn from the fighting in a fit of pique and refused to engage in the war because of the personal hurt done to him by King Agamemnon in the Briseis affair. Patroclus approaches Achilles with a plan that he will don the hero’s armour and enter the battlefield disguised as the son of Peleus. This move will terrify the Trojans into thinking that Achilles has rejoined the fight and that their days are numbered.

Allow me to shoulder your armour so that the Trojans, on seeing me think that I am you and leave the battle so that the hard-pressed sons of the Achaeans might be able to catch their breath and recover a bit from the battle. When we are fresh we will be more able to drive weary men away from our ships and tents and back to their city.

            Achilles warns his friend Patroclus not to push things on the battlefield but to return to their ships as soon as he has made his point and tricked the Trojans into believing that Achilles himself is fighting. They will have thus achieved a psychological advantage over the enemy.

If you glory in the victory of battle and are successful in slaying the Trojans, do not press forward to Ilios for one of the everlasting gods of Olympus is liable to step in and enter the fray for Apollo who shoots from afar bears them much friendship. No, turn around and come right back once you have cast the light of deliverance on the ships and let the rest of them battle it out on the plain. For I would hope O father Zeus and Athena and Apollo that no man of the Trojans escapes death, nor any of the Argives no matter how many there are, except the two of us escape death so that we alone might dash down the towers of Troy.

            Of course we know that the plan goes badly and that Patroclus is slain by Hector. His death in turn leads to the actual return to battle by Achilles, the death of Hector, the dissipation of the wrath of Achilles and the ultimate downfall of Troy.

            Indeed the downfall of the citadel of Troy happened because of a superb guerilla war tactic, the Trojan horse. The undoing of the Trojans by the Achaeans and their wooden horse is one of the most famous events in history. With Hector dead, the Trojan War was rapidly drawing to its conclusion when ‘the wily and crafty Odysseus, he of the many counsels’, pulled off the greatest deception of all time and a stroke of pure military tactical genius. The events surrounding the use of the Trojan horse are not even reported in the Iliad and are only briefly mentioned in the Odyssey. It is mainly from accounts such as Vergil’s Aeneid and other ancient literary works that we find out what happened. The tactic was brilliant in both its conception and its undertaking and is the only report of any kind of siege weapon used in the ten years of the Trojan War. Odysseus had the Achaeans construct a huge wooden horse that was capable of concealing thirty warriors in its body. They dragged the wooden horse to the gates of Troy in the middle of the night and left it there. The Danaan fleet then sailed off, as if for home, but only went so far as the island of Tenedos, where they hid from the view of the Trojans. They were assisted by Sinon, who passed himself off as a Greek defector. Sinon convinced the Trojans that the Danaans had given up the fight and had sailed home and had built the horse as an offering to Athena, in atonement for them having previously desecrated her temple in Troy. He told them that the Greeks had built it too big to take into the city, so that the Trojans could not bring it in and gain the favour of the goddess themselves. However, if they were to remove a portion of their city wall, they would be able to drag it inside, and this they did. Under the cover of darkness the Greek warriors, captained by Odysseus, descended from their hiding place within the horse, opened the city gates to their comrades and sacked Troy.

            While many of the irregular war moves depicted in the epics might not perfectly fit a modern definition of guerilla warfare, they are certainly outside the bounds of the usual military tactics employed by armies of the time. Ambushes, raids, spying ventures, disguises and deceit and the use of psychological tactics all serve to exploit the fears and the uncertainties of the enemy. Reconnaissance missions, espionage and the disruption of supply lines also play their part in achieving the goals of these irregular military tactics. Homer’s epics tend to highlight the intense severity of one-on-one combat duels and the clash of phalanxes on the battlefield, but we must not fail to mention the role that guerilla warfare tactics also play in the narratives.