The Ancient Roman pilum (Roman Legionary military tactics and warfare)

[Music] you [Music] the Roman legionary is probably the most effective and famous soldier in history he carried the Pelham this was a very specialized in unique type of javelin but to understand it we should understand the military doctrines of the Empire's that came before Rome at the core of these militaries would be heavily armored spearmen or pikemen the Macedonian falen Guide for example carried the fifteen to twenty two-foot long sarisa as well as the sword as a backup weapon these men would deploy in rectangular units consisting of 256 managed these units would line up alongside each other forming a formidable wall of spikes that was nearly impossible for cavalry charts or superior numbers to break through behind them archers would be deployed where they could rain down fire on their enemies and relative safety on either side of this wall lightly armored extremely fit and mobile skirmishers would be deployed as well as in front of the wall for me a screen where they can distract harass and weaken incoming enemy troops these scrim asurs would usually carry three to five javelins each and could typically hurl them 50 to over a hundred yards away with diminishing accuracy this could be particularly devastating to a densely packed formation of infantry or cavalry arguably the most important role that a scrimmage was held was protecting the sides of the large body of pikemen who could be devastated if attacked from the rear they also had to protect the main body of the army from opposing skirmishers who could inflict high casualties with a hail of javelins if allowed to do so this nearly impenetrable wall of pikes had one major weakness if the enemy could get around it they attack it from the rear it is hard to defend yourself when you're carrying a 15 20 foot long heavy you're trying to pull out your sword wheel around to protect yourself and a densely packed group of men the units would fall apart which is why in the age of the world you saw such large disproportionate amount of casualties and so many battles as a battle began a few hundred maybe a couple thousand would die on either side but as soon as one side can break through the enemy line were managed to get some cavalry around and pack it from the rear one side would break and pretty much be slaughtered as the soldiers would try to run away they would be chased down by the skirmishes or cowboy the Romans use this system and didn't like it so they sought to change it to do this they changed the equipment that their soldiers carried primarily their heavy infantry got rid of the 15 20 foot long spear and replace it with a javelin which had three major design changes first it increased in weight which decreased its range but also increased its ability to punch through armor and shields secondly they used substandard honoured for part of the shaft which would cause it to bend after impact which mitigated the problem of somebody picking up your weapon that you just threw at them throwing it back at you and spearing you through the chest with it the Pea limbs third innovation was a pyramidal shaped head which caused a square-shaped hole to form where it had penetrated this made it incredibly difficult to remove because pulling a square out of a square shaped pole is much harder than pulling a circle out of a slightly larger circular shape unlike the standard Java the PM was usually thrown at the very last moment before both lines of infantry will clash against each other this didn't doubt the line of enemy soldiers who are lucky enough to get hit and render enemy shields that were hit nearly useless while charging with the heavy p.m. stuck in your shield you can either stop and try to finagle to peel him out of your shield drop it and join you fellows in the charge or stumble along with the cumbersome weight smacking against your shield try not to trip on it this weapon would prove to be so effective that the Romans moved from only part of their infantry carrying the PLM to all of their heavy infantry carrying the peel of the Romans would later create a variant of the peel 'm that had a large lint ball at the center of the shaft which again decreased the range but increased the punching power there are also accounts of the iron males being replaced with wooden pins at the center of the shaft this again had the effect of snapping it in half and rendering the useless to the enemy once thrown after throwing the p l'm the romans would close in for the kill drawing their short sword the Gladius which the word gladiator comes from and hopefully finishing off the enemy thank you for watching this has been upon me feeis this is a reupload of a video I made quite a while ago where I recorded the audio on my cell phone so I wanted to redo the audio and re-upload it if you enjoyed this content consider leaving a like subscribe I enjoy reading all your comments and if you do subscribe be sure to hit that Bell to receive notifications when I create any new content thank you so much bye