[oil rippling] Fire! [oil exploding] Roel Konijnendijk: So,
boiling oil, it didn't happen. Sorry. I mean, you can
just throw boiling water. Hi, my name is Roel Konijnendijk. I'm a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Oxford. I'm an expert in ancient
warfare, and I'm here to talk to you today about premodern
warfare in modern movies. [soldiers charging] So, this is the supposed
Greek concept of othismos, which literally means pushing. And about 100 years
ago, a scholar in Oxford who clearly had rugby on his mind decided that this should be conceived as a literal mass shoving. We have no evidence of that. Nobody ever says that that's the case, but for some reason,
this really caught on. And so for the last 100 years,
it's been controversial. But generally speaking, I mean, people didn't want to fight like that. Spears are right in your face. So there's a lot of reasons
to want to avoid this. [spears clanging] So, this moment, where they switch from fighting in formation to going after individuals
who are still resisting, that seemed very realistic
for most of these fights. Make sure you can kill as
many of them as possible, because that's when they're vulnerable. That's when they're not fighting back. So that's when you can just
spear them in the back. And that's exactly what
happens in this scene. It's only very much
later in Spartan history where they say, "We don't
chase the fleeing enemy," because if you chase the enemy, then you're caught out of formation. You become vulnerable. But at this time, the
time of the Persian War, so the Spartans had no rules against this, and, indeed, it's a true story. You can't really dispute that, but in sense of the
tactics and the weapons, it feels like a fantasy movie. Maybe three or four out of 10. [soldiers marching] If the old man's in range,
why isn't everybody shooting? They're making all these
people on the walls hold their arrow for a really long time. And these are really heavy bows, so it's exhausting and pointless. Plate armor is intended
to keep arrows out. Bows aren't guns. They are meant as a suppressive weapon. You use it to keep their heads down. And so of course you would still use it, even against people wearing plate armor, because even the feel of arrows sort of pinging off your
armor or falling around you is going to make you much
more cautious and hesitant. [dramatic music] Obviously, attacking walls with ladders is just a really, really
risky proposition. And usually it doesn't work. If you believe they don't
have either the courage or the strength to resist
you, then you might try this. You just put a lot of
ladders against the walls, swarm up, take the place. If you expect it to be defended, it puts you in such a
position of vulnerability, approaching the walls one at a time, and that's just not going to go well. But obviously it is a very common tactic. I mean, you can go to the
British Museum right now and see depictions of people
assaulting walls with ladders. Yeah. So, I mean, the problem when you see these kind
of siege scenes in movies, that they always seem to make it really easy for the attacker. If they want to go right up to the wall, they can just do that. If they want to bring siege engines, if they want to bring catapults or rams or towers up to the walls, they can just do that. It's like they're trying
to make it possible for this place to fall. Whereas in reality, I mean, one of the most common
forms of fortification is, very simply, if you have
the ground like this, you dig a ditch, and you
pile up the sand behind it, then you build your wall on top of that. And now what do you have? The enemy wants to approach
you from the front. They end up in the ditch. Suddenly the wall they're
facing is much higher. If they want to bring siege
towers or battering rams, they fall into the ditch. They would have to fill
up the ditch first, before they can get to you. All that time, they're
right under your walls. In movies, they never do this because that would slow things down. They want to keep the assault engaging. That's why a lot of the
tactics that they show you are actually too simple, and they're missing a lot of the points that would actually be used. [orcs growling] Well, firstly, that
hill is much too steep, so everybody would die. But [laughs] these horses would just slide to their deaths, unfortunately. But if we take that out of the equation, I always thought it was
validated by the fact that he uses the light of
the sun to blind the orcs, which means they lower their
pikes at the last moment. So the idea is that he
creates those openings that the horses need to see in order to push their charge. So you see them sort of
wavering and breaking just before the charge hits, which is exactly the point. That makes it conceivable
that this could have worked. I mean, it is still a fantasy, and they're doing many things wrong. On the other hand, it certainly hits a number of points where you're like,
well, this is realistic, using sort of layered initiative in order to overcome the defenses. Yeah. I mean, four out
of 10, five out of 10. This is just wrong. I mean, what are they doing here? Like, this is, where are
they getting the idea that the Scots in this period were wearing, like, leather and war paint? Like, these are just
ordinary, medieval infantry. They would be wearing chain
mail and helmets like this. They just deliberately
made them into savages. Why would you make them into savages? They were sophisticated people. They had disciplined pike formations. It's so bizarre. So, fire arrows are not
entirely unhistorical. They did exist, but
usually you would use them during a siege assault, for instance, like you could use them
to set things on fire, which is what they are for. So, buildings and stocks and supplies would -- straw-thatched roofs. Because it would create
chaos and distractions. This idea of involving
fire in battle scenes is just something that Hollywood loves. I mean, you just want to have fire because it's a nice spectacle. [soldiers yelling] Also, how would they have done this without the English noticing that there was a field of oil
or something on the ground? Like, they wouldn't have been like, "Oh, that's probably there for no reason. I'm just gonna stand in front of it." [soldiers charging] They just do this, all these movies, they just sort of charge into each other, like horses' lancers. They just sort of mash into each other, like, no regard for anything. And then when people ask me, like, "So, in a battle like this, how would you know which
one is on which side? Like, how would you know
who to stab, basically?" Like, yeah, you wouldn't, obviously, if it went down like this, you would have no idea,
which is why it didn't. As soon as your formation
gets so messed up and so disorderly that the
enemy are in your ranks, you know you've lost. Now, you would, infantry would often charge into battle in the sense of that it would run the last distance to meet the enemy, because
everybody's afraid. Nobody wants to be there, really, because they know they're
about to be in mortal danger. So you run and you scream to get yourself through that point and to psych yourself up and to know that there's a lot of you who are all in it together. But then you'd probably, by
the best modern theories, you'd probably slow down
when you get to the enemy, and then you would start
stabbing at each other in more or less even lines, because otherwise everything would just, you would just lose control. This is a joke. I mean, like... from the equipment to the tactics, like, none of this has any bearing on what actually happened except that William Wallace was defeated. That's basically it. [laughs] Two out of 10 or one out of 10. That's one of the most common forms of ancient artillery,
is these bolt shooters. They would shoot these big rods. These sort of metal bolts. They're very effective. They shoot further and more
accurately than arrows. There's an account of somebody getting blown off his
feet and pinned to a tree by one of these things. They are very useful in
a siege because, again, they clear the walls. You don't want to stand there. I mean, what is the point here? This forest is clearly very wet. It's not going to burn. It just looks cinematic. And they form a testudo! Of course they do. I mean, it's not ridiculous. I mean, the Romans did have a formation like that, it was called testudo, and they did use it in a few occasions when you knew you had to pass through a bunch of arrow fire and you didn't want to
lose any casualties, but it's a desperate measure. So then you're stuck waiting, essentially, for the enemy to stop shooting at you. So, in a battle situation you wouldn't want to waste your time trying to get into that formation and then waste your time
trying to get out of it again when the enemy's right there. Instead, you would just try to get through that zone and
get into the thick of it. Maximus: Do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! Roel: It's an endless debate
whether those speeches actually happened, because it's hard to speak to an entire army for the people, especially without a microphone. But it is something that
is very, very common in descriptions of battles. So the best we can do is
assume that they did happen and that they were a very
important part of it. [soldiers charging] So, the cavalry here bizarrely
charges through a forest. This is a really bad idea. Your horses are going to break their legs. Like, you'd try to find open ground. I mean, it uses a lot of actual Roman tactics and equipment, so I guess six out of 10, but it's a mishmash. The whole point is just that they're just doing "Saving Private Ryan." This is just made up because
they wanted to have a scene like "Saving Private Ryan." Resisted landings are not
common in ancient warfare, because they're very kind
of a modern warfare thing. Most of the time, they would just find a
suitable beach somewhere a reasonable distance
away from their target and land there. And then they would
advance on their target. These are just stakes for show. Who are they gonna stop? Like, they're not trying to
land tanks here or anything. People can just walk through them. Like, if you want to fortify anything, in antiquity, in the Middle
Ages, in the modern day, ditch and a palisade. It's that simple. It's easy, all you need is a bit of wood and some shovels, and
they haven't done it. They just put some stakes up
here and there for no reason. Just kind of sprinkled some stakes. This kind of shield
formation is total rubbish. I mean, come on. There's nothing like
that in Greek history. They're not going to be like this overlapping sort of turtle thing. In the period where this poem is set, there was no mounted cavalry. And even in later periods, you rarely have people
actually fighting on horseback. It's hard to work out how
to use cavalry tactically. It's difficult to use it if you don't have very many of them, and horses are just very precious. It costs an enormous amount
of money to maintain a horse, so you don't want to waste your horse on something like this guy and his hammer. Charging all together. They have no sense of order. And, in fact, if you look
closely in one of these scenes, just to the left of Paris, after the next shot of
Paris running away, I think. [laughing] The extra
falls down on his face. I mean, I love that, because
it just shows exactly why you wouldn't want
to be doing this, right? Because if everybody's
running all together, you're just going to trip over yourself. Like, everybody gets in each other's way. Like, they're doing a beach landing, which is obviously inspired
by an earlier movie. It has nothing to do with history except that they have swords and arrows. Yeah, I mean, what do
you want? Two out of 10? So, again, where is your ditch? Where is your ditch?! You've got to have a ditch! Otherwise they're going
to run those siege towers right up to your wall. You know this! And obviously Jerusalem at
the time did have a ditch, and it had a pre-wall and another ditch, so that you can't just put your siege engines
right up to the wall. [hammer clanging] Of course they start throwing fireballs. [sighs] Stop it with the fireballs! [soldiers shouting] Admittedly, it is realistic here that they are very concerned about trying to keep their siege
weapon from catching fire. The defenders would try
to set them on fire, and so it's very important
to protect them from that, usually by covering them with wet hides. [soldiers shouting] [oil burbling] So, boiling oil is a big trope, right? You see it in a lot of movies. It's not a thing. Didn't happen. Sorry. So, there's no evidence
of it ever happening. There's no description of people being smothered in boiling oil. Certainly not oil that's
already been set on fire. I mean, you can just throw boiling water and it does the same thing,
which is hurt people, or you can just throw rocks. But they cost you nothing, they take no preparation, and you just throw them at people. They get hurt. It's great. So boiling oil is just
needlessly elaborate, and you're burning fuel. You don't want to be burning
things for no good reason. In the account that we have of this siege, it says there was constant
fighting outside the walls, and there were also assaults on the walls. This one's better than
the other one, actually. Better than Helm's Deep. Again, they should have
been digging ditches. Literally all they do is just stand around carrying, like, spears
from one point to another. You should be digging
ditches. Many ditches. Once your first ditch is
ready, build another one. The female characters, other than the ones who
have been trained to fight, are basically just sort of hiding in the dungeon and not doing anything. In actual sieges, especially when it was this desperate, I mean, they would just
be expected to contribute. Women, children, old men,
everybody does something, because there's always
things that people can do even when they don't fight. You know, go and carry arrows and stones up to the people on the walls, go put out fires, help
with water and food, help with clothing and the wounded. There is no way you would
just stick them away in a corner somewhere. These catapults are
obviously in the wrong place. They should be on top of the wall. Like, why would you put
them outside of the walls? They're going to be overrun. You can't move them out
of the way quickly enough, so put them on top of the wall. That's where you put your artillery. So, you can put your cavalry in front, and it totally works, if you don't expect your
enemy to stand their ground. So, putting your cavalry
in front is a time-tested, very common strategy, totally works, unless you're fighting ice zombies, who are not going to break,
and they're not scared of you. You're just wasting your cavalry. So it's the right tactic
for the wrong moment. There are probably several battles, other battles in "Game of Thrones" where this could have worked really well. Should you find yourself fighting an army of ice zombies, so, put your artillery on the wall, dig many ditches, just lots and lots of ditches. You can put, of course,
your infantry in front, if you want to confront them there, because that means that you will have several stages to fall back on. After that, you won't sort of
blow everything all in one go. But put your cavalry
away from the main line so that once the enemy is engaged, once your ice zombies are
stuck against your line, you can then swoop in from the side, where they are not expecting
you, and overrun them. I mean, it's not going
to really necessarily win your fight against
an army of ice zombies, but at least it means
that you are fighting them in a way that they don't expect. At least you will have done something with your cavalry that made sense. But otherwise, I mean,
obviously it's all a bit silly. So, what should we say, five out of 10? [dramatic music] I mean, this movie had an Oxford professor advising on the movie. You can see all the little
details that they got in terms of their dress, in terms of their tactics and maneuvers. Like, all of this is as good as we can get it, almost. It's really, really precise, except for the fact that,
for the Persian Army, they still went with this kind of slightly racist depiction of, you know, flimsy warriors wearing
eyeliner and things like that. It doesn't really reflect
reality at this point. They would have been much more organized and much more heavily equipped, but this is just the way
that people like to depict Persia in general and the East. It's just...it leaves a
bad taste in your mouth. [soldiers charging] In fact, throughout this period, the Greeks were the ones
who fought like that, whereas the Persians were
known to be much more organized and to advance silently into battle, which was something that the Greeks were really impressed by. Camels, always useful,
because they scare horses. It's kind of a theme
throughout Persian history. They would use camels to
scare off enemy cavalry. With this movie, like, all
the equipment is just right. Like, these guys, you know
these are the Companions. You know, later on, there are
going to be some Thracians. Like, you can pinpoint
very exactly who they are. The whole pike phalanx is
exactly depicted accurately, with all of the weaponry, the spacing between the men, and the kind of blocks
in which they maneuver and things like that. Now, this is obviously a bit silly. People wouldn't deliberately
impale themselves on a giant stick. It's much more likely that they would just sort of stop in front of that
and start falling back. And you don't actually
expect a big pike formation to actually kill all those people, because people don't, you
know, they try not to die. They're going to run away from it. I mean, this is exactly
as it says in the sources. This is our best reconstruction of how this battle happened. This is, in terms of ancient warfare, this is the most accurate depiction that you'll find anywhere, and I would give this nine out of 10. Kill them all! [soldiers charging] Roel: Stop! No! Where are your missiles? Now, this is where -- [sighs] These battles, they would be about trying to disrupt the formation, not trying to slam into
it and hope it goes away. I mean, you'd be throwing, you'd be shooting arrows at it and throwing javelins at it to try and see if you can
create some gaps in it. And then eventually,
once you saw a weak spot, you might sort of rush forward. And so you could use your
swords and your spears to try and create a hole
in the shield walls. It doesn't do any, it
doesn't achieve anything. Yeah, no, Vikings would
definitely use shield walls. I mean, that aspect of it is realistic, except the fact that it's
a three-layered shield wall seems a bit excessive. That's a Roman formation. But you do have, obviously
Viking shield walls are the way they would fight
pitched battles when they did. So they would try to avoid pitched battles and mostly would fight in surprise attacks, ambushes, and sieges. So this is a rare occasion where, according to this scene, apparently they actually
had numerical superiority, so then they could risk it. So, this one, I would probably give, like, six or seven out of 10. And so, this movie is
entirely based on the romance. So, not on the historical record. It's essentially just a fantasy story. This formation, [laughs] in the historical record, there is something called
the eight-gates formation, which isn't described. It means a really elaborate
infantry formation that has these sort of
changing, shifting shield walls, which is intended to trap enemy cavalry. And so that's what you're
seeing happening here, is that they are using
shifting shield walls to trap enemy cavalry. There are a couple of
descriptions of it happening in a sort of competitive maneuvering, where two armies are
sort of trying to show that they have more
control and more discipline by competitively moving troops around. But actually there is no evidence that it was ever used in
a battle to defeat anyone. It's much too complex. The amount of control that you would need over every individual detachment, the amount of coordination
of each single man, everybody has to know
exactly where he has to stand for this to work. And none of them can, you know, even a stray arrow killing one of them would disrupt this entire formation because it would create a gap. So it's just not feasible. That seems sort of wildly optimistic as to the abilities of any infantry force. [drum beating] In real life, if you could
get that close to cavalry, why not just stab them? It's another one of those
things that is based on a story, so how can you judge it? Like, it's cool, it's evocative, but it's not historical. It's got the equipment right, so maybe four.
