Irregular Warfare Through the Ages

This thread is spurned by talk of non-standard warfare tactics we have been seeing in the more recent conflicts.

Notably warfare methods used in the Libyan revolution and mentions of the Finns in WWII using non-standard methods of war fare to fend off the Soviets.

Irregular warfare is older then dirt and it has played important roles in history.

So discuss your era's, tactics, and other unusual methods of fighting.

The Vikings, for instance, would strike in the middle of night and burn, loot, and inflict ruinous, burninating mayhem on folks.

Lol. Night combat wasn't all that uncommon but it certainly was risky. Were there any special ways they conducted their nightraids? I admit the Viking method of raiding via hit and run from the shore is pretty handy. It helped give rise to the fortified coast towns and the alliance of the towns support each other to fight the vikings.

Does the medieval practice of catapulting plague-infected corpses into beseiged castles count?

I am willing to bet when it was first done very much so. But it eventually became something you would consider doing. If I recall that is what helped spread the black death from Asia.

Interestingly Checmical/Biological warfare is not all that new. I would say mining under the walls when it was first used is a nice tactic before that became a common option.

What about medieval commandos? Like using experienced swimmers to put holes in the hulls of ships.

edited 15th Apr '11 5:30:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Vikings were big fans of Pillage Then Burn.

edited 15th Apr '11 5:31:13 PM by Deboss

Indeed. Kind of hard to pillage when it is on fire. HA! A viking can't pillage you if your on fire.

He could if he was drunk enough.

Mirrors to concentrate sunlight and burn ship sails!

^ Busted by the Mythbusters.

Greek Fire count?

Irregular for the time so yes. (common nowadays with incendiaries of all kinds)

Just one problem, nobody's been able to recreate it in over a thousand years.

They have recreated variants (never the original) and there are lots of logical guesses as to what it may have been.

If I remember there was a lot of risk to using Greek fire.

How about building a peninsular land bridge to attack an island fort.

edited 15th Apr '11 6:41:07 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Didn't the Persians make a huge bridge to cross from Turkey to Greece?

Not exactly an island, but still.

Given that castles had moats which essentially made them islands, this applies to siege warfare too. Pretty sure filling in (or attempting to fill in) the moat was a common tactic.

I think irregular warfare is more viable than it's ever been, because of higher population densities and a much higher regard for civilians overall. Back in the day, if an area was problematic, they would probably just raize it. Nowdays, only the worst dictators would try that, and the pop. density and structural density of cities makes it much harder.

Plus, stuff doesn't burn quite as easily as it used to.

edited 15th Apr '11 6:46:43 PM by deathjavu

I believe they were supposed to have lashed ships together to do it.

More of a floating bridge.

The island fort I am thinking of was taken by one of the Alexanders I think. they literally dug up a bunch of dirt and rocks and dumped it into the sea to reach the fort. The new addition to the land is still there to this day.

How about those wacky bladed chariots and Elephants?

Ohh my favorite is diverting a river to invade inwards.

An impromptu pontoon bridge sounds pretty cool.

edited 15th Apr '11 7:03:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV

A standard but little-known technique in regiment combat (amongst us civvies, at least):

Never surround your adversary entirely. If you do so, they'll fight like a cornered beast as there's no hope of escape. If you leave an avenue of egress to the battlefield, you can give them hope of survival and then close in when they try to use it.

And then they fight like made beasts caught in a trap. That is also a common military tactic.

Real serious Kludge style warfare I think really takes off in modern wars.

Mongol cavalry, ninja, the Sealous Scouts, SF....why do you have to make great threads like this when I'm not going to be around to answer?

Because my awesomeness is beyond your reach. Just kidding. Thanks for that stuff though. Come back add to the page. I have to go dig up my neat little books on Isometric and irregular war fare :3

Tuefel, you're thinking of Tyre. The siege of Tyre, by Alexander the Great [1]

edited 16th Apr '11 11:20:23 AM by pathfinder

Thankyou Pathfinder.

British rangers used this sort of thing in America during the wars there against the French. Basically groups of light infantry using the terrain to ambush French soldiers.

(Naturally this was before the wars of independence.)

edited 16th Apr '11 12:38:36 PM by GameChainsaw

^ And then we used the same tactics against the British not 20 years later in sweet delicious irony.

The city Tueful is talking about is Tyre, now in Lebanon. Everyone thought it was impentrable, but being such a cool guy he jsut made it a penisula and captured it.

The Vikings didn't really have anything unusual other then a lot of terror antics. Half the sotries of their cruelty are probably stories they spread themselves to scare people.

edited 17th Apr '11 6:36:34 PM by Erock