The Successes of the Roman Army

The Roman army was the most dominant force in the entire known world for hundreds of years, and rarely tasted defeat. The fact that the roman empire spread as far and wide as it did is also largely due to the fact that their army was so powerful. Through countless battles and wars, the roman army was also able to constantly adapt and improve, which is one of the reasons that they were as dominant for as long as they were.

One of the main reasons that the roman army tended to defeat a lot of numerically superior enemy armies was due to the fact that they had better discipline and organization. As well as the use of famous formations such as the tortoise shell, the Romans were able to remain disciplined in their shield walls even when faced with charging barbarians. The fact that other armies would tend to freely charge into each other meant that many of them would simply crash against a roman shield wall.

The other main advantage that the Romans had over most of their adversaries is that all of their soldiers were professionals, and as such were trained for years before they ever got to actually fight. To this end they were a lot better equipped to deal with combat when it did happen than tribes of people who were using untrained peasants as soldiers. As well as this, the systems that the Romans had in place meant that their troops also had the best equipment available to them at the time.

One of the things that roman soldiers would train for extensively was how to march effectively, and they could cover great distances in a fraction of the time it would take others as a result. This was made even more effective by the fact that the Romans would built straight roads between their territories, meaning that they could simply travel faster than other armies. This in turn meant that often Romans would be able to choose the battleground before the enemy arrived, and would also have more time to prepare.

Being able to choose where a particular battle would take place would also allow the Romans to ensure that the turf suited their style of battle. The would often position their army on the top of a hill for example, forcing their enemies to take a long and slow trudge up to the shield wall while being pelted with various projectiles. Having had to run up a steep hill carrying fairly heavy weapons, most attackers would be tired, and the battle would be easily won for the Romans.

As well as this, the training that the Romans received would mean that they were often in better physical shape for fighting than other groups of the time. When battles started to take hours and the soldiers were becoming exhausted, the Romans would often have the stamina to outlast the enemy. Often many enemies of Rome would find that they were either stuck in a losing battle, or were forced to retreat.

A practice that the Romans also used effectively to ensure the success of its armies was to integrate new troops every time they conquered a new territory. Rather than just slaughtering the remaining inhabitants of a place after taking it over, the Romans would draft the men into their own armies, sending them to the opposite end of the empire to fight. The reason they sent them as far away as they could was in order to ensure that they could not desert or try to return to their own country as easily.

Something else that many roman emperors did was to give the chiefs of barbarian tribes titles and land, making them friends of Rome. They were also allowed self governance to a degree, and in return would give some of their men to Rome for use in its armies. This in itself avoided a lot of wars, and the fact that local tribes could give the Romans information about the lay of the land and any unruly tribes that might be around them was also helpful.