Roman Military Strategies

The Romans were the strongest military force on the face of the earth from its rise and fall from power. It had advances in its recruitment system, weaponry, and its greatest advance is its strategy. Romans had some of the greatest militarily strategic minds in the whole world during the empires glory. They came up with many strategies to render an enemies forces helpless. They had strategies to take out the defensive units of an army and stir chaos on the battlefield. If their forces were weaker than another army, then they use the terrain to their advantage. They had many maneuvers to take on any threats to the nation.

The Romans had a couple different units that dealt with different threats and had different roles to help further the roman victory. They had the heavy infantry which was the main body of the roman legion and usually dealt with most of the combat against the enemies main fighting force.They were set up into three equal lines. There was the light infantry which set up as a screen or a Quincunx in front of the heavy infantry to hide their maneuvers, sometimes dealt with dangerous units like elephants, and harass the enemy. The cavalry stayed to the sides of the army to protect from flanking and turning. Lastly they had reserve troops just in case the fighting gets very bad and they have to win the battle for the empire. They had many formations for certain situations where they were outnumbered and outmatched. They had a wedge formation, a line formation, the Cannae tactic, the Zama tactic, the strong right flank tactic, and the protected flank tactic. The wedge formation was used to split an army and use a divide and conquer method. The straight line formation is used to protect the flanks of the army from smaller, more compact armies. The Cannae tactic lets the enemy army split ours but at the cost of getting flanked. The Zama tactic is used to split an enemy into three parts at the cost of getting split yourself. The strong right flank is used to turn an army and pin them. The protected flank was used so a part of the legion is protected from flanking but was risky and was easy to be pinned against a natural barrier. This was used when part of the army is tired, injured, or outnumbered.

When engaging an enemy the soldier were cautious because the wanted large pensions and land after retirement rather than battle glory. This lead to some other formations and tactics that kept the Roman soldiers protected in battle like The Tortoise and The Orb. There were also some offensive strategies to take on an enemies forces. The Skirmisher formation was used by light infantry when harassing the other army. Then they had a formation to repel cavalry. No matter the odds the Romans faced they always had a plan to take on the challenges of another force.