Project- Influences of Roman military on modern day riot control

[MonsGraupius]

The formation was just a four deep line, which to be honest I was used to drilling in anyway....
The interesting bit about the exercise was we were told not to be lenient on the 'rioters' as this was going to be as near as a life-like simulation as possible, likewise the 'rioters' were told not to be lenient on us either. So apart from using blanks for ammo we could beat the hell out of them with our batons and viz-versa!

So many questions ...
What happened? Did the rioters approach and have a "show off" - did they surge at you en masse?

And if you came into contact, was it resisting a surge or advancing?

Did you really need four deep? - could you have had 2 or even 1 deep?

Was the depth just psychological - or did you have a real physical need for the depth if so why?

If there was a surge - what happened to the line you were in - did it feel like it could give way. Did you all do a "miner's strike" and start pushing against the surge. And could you wield the batons when the rioters were surging?

And if you advanced - did you keep your formation, or did it "loosen up"?

[Nathan Ross]

How many people on this site are going to admit to being rioters?

At one point in my late teens I 'attended' a demonstration that was broken up by police baton charges. One thing I remember is that nobody stood their ground (except me - very briefly - as I considered that I could become a neutral observer if I wanted. I could not, it turned out, and after a few seconds of sang froid I ran about half a mile in half a minute!) But there was no way that anyone was going to resist, even if they had the means or inclination to do so.

[ValentinianVictrix]

I have undertaken training in riot control when I was in the Armed Forces here in the UK and actually took part in a simulated civil uprising on an island. I cannot say if Roman tactical doctrine was used or not because it was not expressly stated at being used. Shield use by riot control personnel is a fairly modern thing, you certainly don't appear to see photographs of Pre-WW2 Police officers or military personnel using them.

Can you tell us more about your experience in the simulated civil uprising. I'm particularly interested to know what it felt like being in a formation - even if you knew it was just simulated, it must have been quite life-like.

The formation was just a four deep line, which to be honest I was used to drilling in anyway....
The interesting bit about the exercise was we were told not to be lenient on the 'rioters' as this was going to be as near as a life-like simulation as possible, likewise the 'rioters' were told not to be lenient on us either. So apart from using blanks for ammo we could beat the hell out of them with our batons and viz-versa!

So many questions ...
What happened? Did the rioters approach and have a "show off" - did they surge at you en masse?

And if you came into contact, was it resisting a surge or advancing?

Did you really need four deep? - could you have had 2 or even 1 deep?

Was the depth just psychological - or did you have a real physical need for the depth if so why?

If there was a surge - what happened to the line you were in - did it feel like it could give way. Did you all do a "miner's strike" and start pushing against the surge. And could you wield the batons when the rioters were surging?

And if you advanced - did you keep your formation, or did it "loosen up"?

Ok, four deep line was because it had less chance of being broken into and also you did feel a sense of having a greater deal of protection. I think a one or two deep line would have been very difficult to maintain on a psychological level and may well led to our line breaking up once the rioters showed an inclination to 'get stuck in'.

There was a lot of posturing on both sides, name calling, finger poking, 'middle fingering' etc and then sections of the rioters would rush forward and then either start fighting with the line or back off just before contact, I suspect to try and lure us out of formation and then we would have been beaten witless.

I must point out this was in the 1970's and we were not given shields as they were not used then, we only had batons. Having said that several people on both sides had impromptu shields which were dustbin lids!

The rioters tended to run off if we charged forward, no one really wants to be bashed over the head or shoulders with a two foot piece of wood do they!

Keeping a line was fairly easy, especially with our military training. And what we found was we could march forward as a mass and slowly drive the rioters back, and then the 'snatch squads' would dart out and grab people and we would shield them as such to prevent the rioters trying to get back their members.

But, and this is a big caveat here, we were not armed with spears, javelins, darts and swords and the threat of death was almost negligible so you have to balance this against a real ancient warfare encounter.

What I would finally add is that if rioters realised they generally have the weight of numbers on their side then they could quite easily break through the lines, but for whatever reason I have rarely seen examples of them doing this.

[MonsGraupius]

Ok, four deep line was because it had less chance of being broken into and also you did feel a sense of having a greater deal of protection. I think a one or two deep line would have been very difficult to maintain on a psychological level and may well led to our line breaking up once the rioters showed an inclination to 'get stuck in'.

Interesting. I would have thought psychology would be that important - but I've never stood in a line with rioters.

There was a lot of posturing on both sides, name calling, finger poking, 'middle fingering' etc and then sections of the rioters would rush forward and then either start fighting with the line or back off just before contact, I suspect to try and lure us out of formation and then we would have been beaten witless.

I've seen this posturing on the videos and its repeated time and again. I'm surprised they didn't engage more.

I must point out this was in the 1970's and we were not given shields as they were not used then, we only had batons. Having said that several people on both sides had impromptu shields which were dustbin lids!

The rioters tended to run off if we charged forward, no one really wants to be bashed over the head or shoulders with a two foot piece of wood do they!

It would have been much worse with real swords. If you get problems with people engaging when it's mere sticks, how on earth would the ancients persuade their troops to engage? Your convincing me that the psychology is far more important than I'd given it credit

Keeping a line was fairly easy, especially with our military training. And what we found was we could march forward as a mass and slowly drive the rioters back, and then the 'snatch squads' would dart out and grab people and we would shield them as such to prevent the rioters trying to get back their members.

But, and this is a big caveat here, we were not armed with spears, javelins, darts and swords and the threat of death was almost negligible so you have to balance this against a real ancient warfare encounter.

What I would finally add is that if rioters realised they generally have the weight of numbers on their side then they could quite easily break through the lines, but for whatever reason I have rarely seen examples of them doing this.

I suppose, it's largely belief - if the barbarians/rioters saw it was possible to break through, then others would likely follow. So, presumably one of the key things the barbarians had to do, was to early on use their best forces to demonstrate to the rest of the "Motley crew" that it was possible to defeat the Romans. And once the barbarians had won the psychological battle - and believed they would win - then as they usually had the larger numbers they could annihilate the Romans.