Maneuver Warfare - Early Examples

Early Examples

For the majority of history armies were limited in their speed to that of the marching soldier, about equal for everyone involved. This meant that it was possible for opposing armies to simply march around each other as long as they wished, with supply conditions often deciding where and when the battle would finally be fought. In prehistoric times this began to change with the domestication of the horse, the invention of chariots and the increasing military use of the cavalry. The cavalry had two major uses: one, to attack and use its momentum to break infantry formations; and two, using the advantage of speed to cut communications and isolate formations for later defeat in detail. Perhaps the last and most famous example of this ended with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, prior to which Henry V of England avoided combat while marching to Calais to resupply, allowing him to pick the battlefield.

One of most famous early maneuver tactics was the double envelopment, used by Hannibal against the Romans at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, and by Khalid ibn al-Walid against the Persian Empire at the Battle of Walaja in 633 AD.

The retreat of the centre of the Athenian & Platean Hoplites at the battle of Marathon against the forces of Datis in 490BC- and the subsequent pincer movement by the Athenian forces on the flanks used a similar tactic. In this case the intent was to draw the Persian core forces, Persians & Saka axemen, forward while the Hoplite flanks drove off their opposite numbers and then enveloped the Persian centre. Prior to the battle Datis had re-embarked his cavalry (to which the Hoplite formations had little real defense) which substantially weakened his position. Losses on the Athenian side were 192 plus 11 lost from the Platea contingent. Losses from Datis' forces numbered 6'400 on the line of battle itself, along with unknown casualties caused as a result of nearby marshy ground and panic.

Khalid's invasion of Roman Syria in July 634, by invading Syria from the most unexpected direction, the Syrian desert, is also an example of taking enemy defenses by surprise. While the Byzantine army held the Muslim forces in Southern Syria, and had expected the reinforcement from the conventional Syria-Arabia road in South, Khalid, who was in Iraq, marched through the Syrian desert and entered Northern Syria, completely taking the Byzantines by surprise, cutting off their communications with Northern Syria.