Carrhae - could Crassus have won?

[Nihonius Legio]

The best scenario for a horse archer against heavy infantry is to lure a group away from the main body and into a larger force of fresh heavy calvary of troops. Heavy troops especially can only go so far so fast without getting tired. A smart general wouldnt make this mistake. A large body of men with large shields like the Romans can take alot of crap. Sepparated from the main force, the men lose confidence. Running, they lose strength. Attacked, they lose men.
I never have really looked into what happened at Carrhae, I just know Crassus was crushed...and killed. I feel ashamed to have never looked into it.

[SagittariusRex]

Look at Alexander the Great's campaign through Afghanistan to see how horse archers were successfully handled by an army built around infantry and cavalry. You choose your battlegrounds carefully to help in breaking the "wheel".

Marrying a local princess and/or adding thousands of horse archers to your own army doesn't hurt.

[wulfgar60]

But Caesar was blessed with a totally obscene luck, so.............


His piety in prayer must have great. Crassus needed some tips in praying to the gods from Caesar! Cearsar only ran into real trouble when he decided he was one of the gods!

I don't go with the incredible lethality of archery either. If that was the case. After blowing Crassus away, Surena would have marched on the rest of Rome's middle eastern possessions. Possibly leaving them the European continent because he thought they were funny.

In which case the Romans would have abandoned the legionarie in favor of horse archers. Although horse archers must have had something going for them. They were used throughout the iron age. And the Romans made increasing use of them in later centuries.

One source quotes Surena as having 6-8 thousand horse archers and 1000 cataphracts. And Crassus as having 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. It appears Crassus had the strategic advantage in shear numbers.

One would wonder if Surena was even expecting to win decisively. And if his mission was simply to slow Crassus down via harassment.

It appears that Crassus was initially in the position to afford losses and still have plenty of manpower.

The more I look at it. The more it appears the failure of Crassus. He failed to act quickly enough to bolster morale and discipline. His army lost it's order on the march and became strung out. And ended up in a position that was indeed very vulnerable to Surena's horse archers.

The main question is not whether Crassus could have originally adopted a better strategy. But what do you do, when he found himself in the position he was? I don't think his position was hopeless, he had the surplus of manpower.

I believe most of the horse archers came from the Suren Kingdom. And were nominally Parthian allies.



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[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Suren, hence Surena. I understand the army facing Crassus was raised
by the man named Surena, from his family retainers as such.

He was the formost of the Parthian nobles.

[Robert Vermaat]

Suren, hence Surena. I understand the army facing Crassus was raised
by the man named Surena, from his family retainers as such.

I always understood that 'Suren' meant 'general' or something. Maybe that happened later?

[wulfgar60]

The Suren were a noble family of Parthain blood. Colin McEvedy's "Peguin Atlas of History" has the Suren kingdom marked off as some sort of semi-independent of principality.
The full name of the Iranian general who opposed Crassus is given as..........Eran Spahbodh Rustaham Suren-Pahlav, son of Arakhsh and Massis..........But Hell, you guys can just call me "The Suren"!

www.iranchamber.com/history/surena/surena.php

The article goes on to give the leadership of Crassus a bad rap.

By this time the Crassus himself was prostrated with despair. But Octavius and Cassius, his lieutenants, cowardly resolved that their only hope was to escape under cover of darkness, and seek shelter behind the walls of the city of Carrhae.

[SagittariusRex]

Surena (the Suren) is a name and a title. The head of the Suren clan and/or a general. Whoever he was, he was put to death soon after his victory at Carrhae by the king he served.

The best tool for the job dominates the battlefield, and that depends on terrain, culture, and leadership.

In the east it was mostly horse archers and heavy cavalry, in the west it was infantry and heavy cavalry. Western armies of mostly infantry did well in the east under the right leaders (Alexander). Eastern armies of mostly horse archers did well in the west under the right leadership too (Attila). Both modified their armies and tactics to penetrate deep into the territory of the other.

For a similar massacre (for similar reasons) of a western army by eastern horse archers, look at the Horns of Hattin/Battle of Hattin in 1187 during the crusades.

Horse archers were very important in the east, and foot archers were in the west when the bows got good enough (see Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt) until something better came along (firerams). Archers might have been more popular in the west much earlier if their bows had been better. Until the English longbow of the 1300s, the range and power of western "self" (one piece of wood) bows was very inferior to the composite (horn/wood/sinew) bows of the east.

Crossbowmen are easier/quicker to train to a useful level w powerful enough weapons, but the rate of fire is slower and they are clumsy on horseback.

[Gregg]

The name of the Suren has been lost to history. The Iran Chamber site is sincere but occasionally too enthusiastic for their own good. There is no real evidence for the name of the Suren, and except for Plutarch's description we can say very little about the Suren himself.

As for the clan, the house of Suren MAY have had it's family seat in Sistan in Southeastern Iran. And Gondophares, who established the Indo-Parthian kingdom, MAY have have been a member of the Suren dynasty. And the family seems to have continued into the Sassanian era.

Gregg

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

The possibility that Suren developed an army specifically to oppose the Romans in an all or nothing attempt to defeat them is proposed by Gareth Sampson in his book The Defeat of Rome!

He makes somevery sound hypothesis on the defeat, and it is not that Crassus is incompetent, rather that the army facing him was a total departure from the normal Parthian forces faced by the Romans.
It would be understandable considering Roman success up til then.
And also explain his execution by Orodes afterwards...he was a brilliant leader, and was a threat to the weaker monarch. Makes a lot of sense.

[Watcher]

Personally, I feel that CRassus was an idiot, as far as it pertains to military action.

It is such a shame that Caesar was murdered before he could invade Parthia. Then, and only then, could we judge him with absolute certainty.

The same can be said for Trajan. Such a pity.

[Sardaukar]

Other Roman commanders did show that Parthians were very vulnerable for their reliance of horse archers and cataphracts. Both were very vulnerable to infantry missile troops.

That was the reason why most even relatively successful commanders did have very big proportion of their army as archers and slingers vs. Parthians.

Even Marcus Antonius in his ill-fated expedition never faced total annihilation Crassus-style, because his main force was composed so that Parthians wisely avoided combat with it. His failure was loss of his supply train and siege engines. Latter was even more devastating by lack of trees in area, hindering Romans from taking towns and cities.

Pure cavalry armies always had trouble taking down combination of heavy infantry and missile infantry, if latter army had discipline. Mongols, while highly successful, were no means immune to same facts either.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Exactly! Crassus was caught out because of the exact formation of the force he faced in that one situation, plus its baggage train....as pointed out in the book, he may well have acted differently if he had realised
this was not just an ordinary Parthian force....

Crassus was not an idiot, he actually was normally a very cautious commander, who trained his men and preferred to choose his own place to fight.

His scouting vanguard was worsted by Saurens, and they did not
observe the true nature of the army, I guess having your ass mauled
can restrict you chances/abilities for careful and accurate observation....

Other Romans learned from this mistake.

[marcust]

It sounds like to me what did Crassus in was the Parthian horse archers and cataphracts, well as others have pointed out they were vulnerable to infantry missle troops so perhaps if he had used a few of his Gauls as scouts then retreated and dug in then he could have converted a bunch of his men into missle troops the legionaries would have known how to use a javelin (Where were the Veles the artillery, and the Principes?) According to Vegetius soldiers of the republic had to know how to use a bow and perhaps some of them would know how to use a sling (Also train the Gallic cavalry), so while they may not be the best missle troops you will have enough to unleash a storm that will keep off the horse archers, perhaps if Crassus had heard of the Parthian arrow reloading system he could have also utilized that and placed his light cavalry where if they ran off the new roman missle troops would shoot them down so they also will keep the horse archers off the infantry's back, build battlefield artillery support, Then take the Gauls which now can use missle weapons and make sure they have a bow, a sling, three javelins, a sword, and a long cataphract lance, then take all the armor (and re-issue cut down sheilds) that the new missle troops don't need anymore and convert it into barding and full mail with bronze scale cuirasses made from Principe chest plates for the Gauls, then give the Gauls a long heavy metal shaft that has and a big round and a flanged leather wrapped two or one handed grip on one end and several long thick steel spikes on the buisness end to get through the parthian cataprhact armor, also take note that the horses bellies are still vulnerable and after armoring that, train a small force of Gauls to go among parthian horses and gut them (Like the battle only more organized :wink: ) Then you fire on the horse archers and the retreat the light cavalry that ran away is positioned so that they will get shot if they run so they have to stay and fight and they have a small portion of the new gallic cataphracts among with a another force of GC's positioned far off on the flank so after the horse archers back off the cataphracts come in half the GC's ride forward then fake a retreat the Parthian cataphracts pursue they get ambushed by the other half of the GC's who do their thing then retreat back to the infantry were have the other half of the GC's are positioned as a screen and they also are resting Half 1 of the GC's takes their (Half 2's) place and the fresh Half 2 charges the parthian cavalry then retreats meanwhile the roman infantry has been moving in armed with lances so they hit the cataphracts then the rested GC's charge in full strength into the parthian cavalry caught between the infantry and pikemen they break and are masacred in the retreat, the survivors flee through the horse archers, the new missle troops have not been idle they have advanced toward the missle troops the roman light cavalry and the small force of Gallic cataphracts pin them down with missle fire the cataphracts on the flank move in, once the surviving parthian catpahracts disorganize the horse archers they and the missle troops and the light cavalry and the GC's with the light cavalry charge and the pursuing infantry and the main force of GC's swarm the parthians. Note: A third of the force was left on the field a smaller force was left in reserve, another third to guard the camp and a smaller force to guard the supply trains and lines and baggage trains.

Victory for the romans

So what does everyone think?

[Proximus]

I think they did not used those methods so they lost the battle

I think this battle was not equal. Romans had strong weakness against armored horse archers (yes, cataphracts had a bow, too, as bow was an important weapon for nobility) and fast horses archers. Horses archers could throw a salve and retreat before their own arrows hit ! Bows where not the least of the bows. Double curved as we know for scythians and sarmatians bows.

And they had kontos to strike hard. But it seems legionaries could stand against again a charge. Strong on feet and well protected.

They can stand arrows too, but infinite arrow just don't give them a chance.

So if they send roman cavalry, it would be harrassed by arrow before being charged by cataphracts, and then... well cataphract armor is not there for nothing, it gives advantage against arrow, against swords, against spears...
Reccords says Crassus lost his son who charged with gallic horsemen. Didn't work, so.

No. I think you are right in some of your words : the only way to win a battle like this one is to have other equipment.

Or to not be there, in the middle of nowhere, in a plain, where the ennemy wanted you to be.

Roman could have won the battle.

Crassus, I am not sure.