Psychological warfare misleads, intimidates, and demoralizes the enemy. This use of threats, propaganda, and subtler strategies has been employed for millennia to influence adversaries’ thinking. Civilians and soldiers alike are targets of this cunning. Those who can control their targets’ emotions and reasoning emerge victorious over superior forces.

10 Aztec Death Whistles

Aztec death whistles sound like the “scream of 1,000 corpses.” Twenty years ago, archaeologists unearthed two of these skull-shaped instruments in Mexico. They were clutched in the hands of a sacrificed man at the temple of the wind god.

Initially believed to be toys, the whistles were used in rituals and war. Designed to sound like a human howling in pain, death whistles were reserved for rare occasions.

Some insist that death whistles were used in sacrifices and to guide the recently deceased to the land of the dead. Others believe that their main use was psychological warfare.

At the beginning of a battle, the whistles’ unnerving sound would break the resolve of the enemy. Some experts believe that these death whistles allowed listeners to enter a trance state. Aztec physicians frequently employed sound in healing.

9 36 Stratagems

The 36 Stratagems is an ancient collection of Chinese proverbs on warfare. Most are based on the art of deception and use subtle psychological techniques to undermine an enemy’s will to fight.

The work contains proverbs so universal that they have become cliches. It contains sections on “Attack Strategies,” “Chaos Strategies,” “Desperate Situation Strategies,” and many other scenarios. All modern versions of 36 Stratagems are derived from a ragged copy discovered in Szechwan at a book vendor’s stall in 1941.

The work’s author and publication date remain unknown. Most experts trace the work’s origins to the Warring States Period between 403 and 221 BC. Some of the proverbs refer to specific events as early as 35 BC. In addition, most experts now believe that there was no single author and that 36 Stratagems was compiled over centuries.

8 Sacred Shields

In 525 BC, the Battle of Pelusium marked Egypt’s decisive defeat by the Persians and a milestone of psychological warfare. Led by Emperor Cambyses II, the Achaemenid Persians swept in from the east and exploited the Egyptians’ reverence for felines.

The invaders drew cats on their shields. Some speculate that they may have pinned real cats to their protective gear. The Egyptians worshiped the feline god Bastet and refused to harm their sacred symbol. In Stratagems, Polyaenus insists that the Persian front line contained dogs, ibises, sheep, and cats—all sacred to the Egyptians.

According to Herodotus, Cambyses invaded because he had been tricked by the pharaoh. Cambyses had requested the hand of Amasis’s daughter in marriage. Assuming she would become a concubine, the Egyptian ruler disguised the daughter of the former pharaoh in her place.

When Cambyses discovered the charade, he attacked. Polyaenus believed that Cambyses’s victory was due to psychological warfare.

7 Terror Tactics Of Tamerlane

Born in 1336, Timur the Lame (aka Tamerlane) was a 14th-century Uzbek chieftain. Despite the paralysis of half his body, he conquered Central Asia, most of the Muslim world, and parts of India.

Legends of Tamerlane’s terror tactics are legion. Historians estimate that his forces slaughtered 17 million people—5 percent of the world at the time. He became infamous for building pyramids with the skulls of his vanquished. The technique was intended to spread fear in anyone who dared to oppose him.

Some say that he beheaded 90,000 residents of Baghdad and built 120 pyramids with their skulls. After he defeated Delhi, Tamerlane slaughtered the city as a lesson to India. It took nearly a century for Delhi to recover from the devastation.

After defeating the Ottoman Empire, Tamerlane took the Byzantine gates home with him. He also took the sultan in a cage, which he kept on display in his parlor.

6 Vlad The Impaler

Vlad III (aka Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler) was one of the most adept students of psychological warfare in history. The 15th-century Romanian prince spent much of his youth as a political hostage of the Ottomans.

Although he was treated well, Vlad developed a bilious hatred of his captors. Some speculate that the Ottomans even taught him his favorite method of psychological warfare: impaling.

In 1462, Sultan Mehmet II invaded Vlad’s territory. Upon entering the capital, the sultan was greeted by what looked like a forest of Ottoman POWs’ festering corpses impaled on spikes.

Nearly all records of Vlad were written by his enemies. While far from factual, they provide insight into the fear he inspired. Vlad was forced to find ingenious means of fighting with limited resources. Psychological warfare offered the solution. It might seem cruel, but it was an effective tactic against a force much larger than his own.

5 Philip II Of Macedonia

Philip II of Macedonia laid the groundwork for the “greatness” of his son, Alexander. When Philip took the throne in 359 BC, Macedonia was a fractured backwater subject to the whims of foreigners. In less than a year, Philip quashed all internal threats and set up Macedonia to become an ancient superpower. He was a master of psychological warfare.

When doing battle with the Chalcidian League, Philip destroyed the city of Stagirus. According to ancient accounts, it would have been hard for a visitor to tell that the city had ever been inhabited. The remaining Chalcidian cities surrendered without resistance.

During the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip employed two strategies of psychological warfare. First, he tired out the Athenian and Theban rebels through boredom, forcing them to wait in the blistering sun. Then he made a false attack, which drew them toward a slowly retreating front line that ensnared them.

4 Genius Of Genghis Khan

Terror was Genghis Khan’s greatest tool. He destroyed cities that opposed him—slaying soldiers and civilians alike. During the siege of Merv, each Mongol soldier was ordered to decapitate 400 inhabitants before burning the city to the ground. The death toll may have been inflated tenfold, but Genghis wanted it that way.

Genghis often exaggerated the size of his forces. He placed dummies on horseback and had each soldier light a string of bonfires at night. When attacking both Samarkand and Europe, he advanced on fronts over 1,300 kilometers (800 mi), preventing the enemy from knowing his numbers.

Genghis’s feigned retreats lured pursuers into a prepared position where archers annihilated them. Without fail, Genghis knew more about his adversaries than his enemies knew of the Mongols. Genghis exploited this lack of information to create division and fear. He also terrified opponents with camel-mounted kettledrums thundering with Mongol cavalry charges.

3 Suicide Army

King Goujian of Yue reigned between 496 and 465 BC, the latter part of the Spring and Autumn Period that was marked by a conflict with the state of Wu. During this battle, Goujian had his front line decapitate themselves as a bizarre form of psychological warfare.

According to a history of ancient China called the Shiji, Goujian’s suicidal front was composed of condemned criminals. However, some believe that “criminals sentenced to death” should be read as “soldiers willing to die.” This reflects an ancient Chinese worldview that one would be compensated for sacrifices made during life.

Decapitation might be better translated as “committing suicide by cutting your throat.” This was a common technique in ancient China. However, others believe that the self-decapitating soldiers are nothing more than a legend.

Either way, after years of struggle, Goujian overcame his adversary and annexed their territory.

2 War Chariots

During the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC, Hittite forces used heavy chariots to crash through the lines of Ramses II’s Re division (aka Army of Re), causing chaos and terror.

In contrast, the lighter Egyptian war chariots were manned by a driver and a fighter, usually with a bow and arrow and occasionally a spear. They could maneuver more quickly than their enemies in heavier chariots, which could allow the Egyptians to dispatch their enemies before the enemies returned to their own side.

Most experts believe that the invading Hyksos introduced the chariot to Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. By the 15th century BC, Thutmose III had over 1,000 chariots at his command. These were used against infantry and had an enormous psychological impact on untrained and inexperienced soldiers. By 1000 BC, mounted cavalry replaced the war chariot.

1 Hannibal’s Folly

Carthaginian General Hannibal Barca drove the Romans mad with his psychological warfare techniques in the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). During the Battle of Trebia in 218 BC, Hannibal lured the Roman forces across the Trebia River with an attack of Numidian horsemen.

Hannibal lay in ambush on the other side and slaughtered the Romans, who emerged disorganized, tired, and freezing. At the Battle of Lake Trasimene the following year, he goaded Flaminus into battle by exploiting the Roman general’s headstrong nature.

Hannibal’s name is almost synonymous with his march over the Alps with war elephants. Curiously, this bold attempt at psychological warfare was actually a blunder. Elephants were not adapted to the cold environment. Those that survived the trek were weak and ineffective.

Abraham Rinquist is the executive director of the Winooski, Vermont, branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the coauthor of Codex Exotica and Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.

For most of the history of warfare, defensive technology was far in advance of offensive weapons. A stout wall was enough to keep most enemy armies out of your cities and strongholds. This mismatch means that the history of war is filled with sieges.

In order to break into a city or castle, or to stop besiegers from getting in, humans have poured all their ingenuity into creating a wide variety of weapons. And what’s a deadly siege weapon without an equally diabolical strategy for its use? Here are ten inventive, and frankly bizarre, siege weapons and tactics from history.

10 Pigs

King John is commonly regarded as the worst king in English history. His inability to get along with his nobles led to them rising in rebellion several times. After one of these revolts, they forced the king to agree to a charter of rights, Magna Carta, that is still celebrated as a foundation of English civil rights. But John being John, immediately after agreeing to Magna Carta, he changed his mind and had it declared invalid. The barons rose in rebellion again.

In the First Barons’ War, one of the castles held against John was in the city of Rochester. The king tried many ways to take the castle: diplomancy, bombardment, and bribery. He managed to capture the outer yard of the castle, but the rebels in the defensive keep would not yield. So the king turned to pigs to save his bacon.

John set his engineers to digging beneath the walls of the keep. When the tunnel was ready, he ordered that “forty of the fattest pigs, the sort least good for eating” be used to burn the support beams of the tunnel.^[1] The fire was so intense that the tunnel collapsed and took part of the tower above with it. The rebels held out a while longer but were eventually starved into surrender.

9 Dead Bodies

When you are sitting outside of an enemy’s walls, and your catapults are useless against them, it must be dispiriting. An army camp in the past was an unhealthy place to be, and epidemics could easily devastate a besieging force. When the city of Caffa in Crimea was being attacked by the Mongols in 1346, they found more effective things to launch over the walls than stones.

The Black Death had not yet ravaged Europe, but the invading Mongol army brought the disease with them. Instead of retreating and tending to their dying, they put the corpses filling their camp to good use. The bodies were put into catapults and hurled over the walls in hopes that “the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.”^[2] “Mountains of dead” were catapulted, but it was not the smell which was deadly—the plague came in with the rotting corpses. Caffa held against the siege, but it is thought that ships fleeing the city may have helped spread the plague into Europe.

Use of biological weapons was also considered by those under siege. In the 17th century, as the siege of Candia dragged on into its 21st year, the inhabitants of the city came up with a plan to make a poisonous liquid to infect the army outside. It would be the essence of plague distilled from the spleens and sores of plague victims. As far as we know, this plan was never used.

8 Heat Rays

When the Romans attempted to capture the Greek city of Syracuse, they faced not only the strong-willed resistance of the inhabitants but also the genius of Archimedes. The mathematician and inventor is said to have created weapons that could lift the Roman ships attacking the harbor clean out of the water before dropping and sinking them. But he is also supposed to have created a method of burning the ships before they even got close.

Using mirrors, or polished shields according to some historians, Archimedes directed the light of the Sun onto the ships. The heat is supposed to have ignited the tarred wood of the vessels’ hulls and destroyed them. Some dismiss the idea out of hand, but several attempts to recreate versions of the heat ray have shown that it is possible to set fire to ships in this way.^[3] Even if they did not burn the Roman fleet like this, then all those dazzling mirrors would have certainly distracted and blinded the sailors on board.

7 Rocket Cats

Franz Helm was an artillery master in 17th-century Germany, and he literally wrote the book on siege weapons. In one text, he described how you could use a cat to destroy your enemy:

Create a small sack like a fire-arrow. If you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited.^[4]

What caught the eye of most researchers were the illustrations that went along with this plan—they make it look as if the cat will be propelled over the walls with a rocket. While it is thought that fire or rocket cats were probably never used in battle, there are records of fire pigs. When the city of Megara was besieged, those inside drove off the elephants outside by smearing pigs in oil and setting them on fire before releasing them from the city.

6 Sand

In any movie about a medieval siege, there will be a scene where defenders are shown heating water or oil to pour down on besiegers as they attempt to scale the walls. But if water or oil was too valuable to waste due to food shortages, other hot things could be dropped from the walls. At the siege of Caen in 1346, Sir Edward Springhouse was knocked off a ladder, and the defenders threw burning hay down on him, roasting him in his armor.

Other people under siege have had to get even more creative. When Alexander the Great was attacking the city of Tyre, his men faced something even worse than scalding oil. The defenders of the city took the fine sand of the local area and heated it until it glowed red-hot.^[5] This was poured down on the attackers. The fine sand would find its way into any piece of armor and lodge there. Men were driven wild with pain and would strip off their armor, leaving themselves to be picked off by archers on the walls. The sand could also be carried by the wind to the enemy ships and ignite their sails.

5 Greek Fire

Greek fire was a weapon that inspired terror for hundreds of years. It was a liquid that would burst into flame on contact with water and would burn anything it touched. It could be launched from catapults at enemy ships and siege weapons or sprayed over a wide area. No one knows the exact recipe for Greek fire, but it is thought to have contained caustic chemicals, pitch, and resin. The only ways to extinguish Greek fire were said to be sand, salt, or urine. One crusader who faced Greek fire thought the only defense was to fall on your knees and pray for deliverance.

As well as being used in the defense of cities, there was also a hand-operated Greek fire weapon called a cheirosiphon that could be used to attack a city.^[6] The cheirosiphon was placed on a siege tower that would be wheeled up to the city walls, and the device would shoot a stream of burning Greek fire onto the defenders and buildings inside.

4 Toilets

Most people take the ease of modern plumbing for granted. In the Middle Ages, however, a toilet in a castle could simply be a board projecting over the walls with a hole cut in it that allowed waste to fall below. While you might think that this is going to be about dropping dung on besiegers, toilets could, in fact, be a way for an enemy to get inside.

Chateau Gaillard was built by Richard the Lionheart and was supposed to be impregnable. But it was captured less than ten years after it was built. King Philip II of France captured the outer parts of the castle but could not take the inner keep. One of his men saw that a castle toilet, or garderobe, might offer the way in they were looking for. A soldier was sent up the narrow, feces-spattered gap that led up to the toilet. He crawled up, opened a window into the castle chapel, and let the French soldiers take the impregnable castle.^[7]

3 Exploding Mill Wheel

In 1552, Ottoman forces laid siege to the Castle of Eger in Hungary. The castle was in a good defensive position, as it commanded a hill which gave the castle guns an advantage over enemies beneath. The tens of thousands of Ottoman troops heavily outnumbered the defenders, however, and were able to keep the castle under almost constant bombardment. The outer walls of the castle began to crumble under the fire, and the defenders’ cannons could not harm the besiegers.

Inside the castle, a man named Gergely Bornemissza developed weapons that could reach the attackers. He took the mill wheels, the heavy stones used to crush grain into flour, and stuffed them with gunpowder.^[8] Because the castle of Eger was at the top of a hill, these explosive millstones were able to pick up a huge amount of speed as they rolled into the enemy camp and exploded, scattering burning wood and shards of stone into the Ottomans.

2 Piggybacks

In the 12th century, Germany was a patchwork of small principalities loosely held together in the Holy Roman Empire. It was not unusual for states to go to war with one another. In 1140, Conrad III went to war with the Duke of Welf and surrounded the city of Weinsberg. For a long time, the citizens held out. Conrad III told the inhabitants that unless they surrendered to his forces, he would burn the city to the ground and kill everyone inside.

When the city did not yield, Conrad was determined to follow through with his threats. Eventually, starved, the citizens of Weinsberg had to give in. Conrad ordered everyone to be gathered in one place to submit and face death. The men of the city, so they said, were willing to die, but they begged for one favor—that their women be allowed to go free. Being a chivalrous man, Conrad gave the women permission to leave the city with whatever they could carry.

When the time came for the women to leave, the besieging army was startled to see them walking bent-backed out of the city with their menfolk on their backs.^[9] Some in the king’s army thought this was a shameful trick, but the king is said to have laughed and allowed the women and the men to go free.

1 Bees

The benefit of a wall is that you can hide behind it if the enemy throws something at you, and you can also use its height to drop things down on them. Besieging armies are not stupid, however, and will try to avoid giving you the chance to hit them by either digging underground or using shields to keep themselves safe. When the Vikings attacked Chester in the tenth century, they used wooden coverings called hurdles to keep the defenders’ thrown weapons off them as they attempted to destroy the walls. The inhabitants got creative.

First, they took all the beer in the city and boiled it in cauldrons before pouring it down on the Vikings. The wood had staved off stones, but the beer found its way through and burned the attackers “so that their skin peeled off.” The Vikings responded by covering their hurdles in animal hides so that the boiling liquid ran off to the sides. But the defenders had one more trick up their sleeves. They took the beehives in the city and hurled them down on the Vikings. Understandably upset by this treatment, the bees set about stinging the Vikings.^[10] The Vikings gave up their efforts and abandoned the siege.

Most people can name some basic military maneuvers. There’s the ambush, the charge, deception, artillery or aerial bombardment, just to name a few. But some battles have been won with much weirder tactics. The following examples are some of the most bizarre, yet brilliant tactics ever successfully deployed on the battlefield. 

10. Operation Mincemeat

It’s 1943, and the Allies were cooking up an elaborate scheme to mislead the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany, about their military intentions. The key ingredient? A corpse and a whole lot of imagination.

Operation Mincemeat involved taking a corpse, dressing it up like a drowned military officer, and equipping it with a briefcase full of fake documents hinting at an impending attack on Southern Europe. Then, they released this “corpse of deception” off the coast of Spain, a region known for its pro-German sympathies. Lo and behold, the ruse worked like a charm. The Germans took the bait, shifted their troops, and, unbeknownst to them, danced to the Allies’ tune.

It’s the kind of audacious plan that makes you appreciate the lengths people will go to in the name of strategy and a good plot twist. The corpse might not have known what was going on, but it played its part in a game that ultimately helped tip the scales of a world at war. Operation Mincemeat, where fact meets fiction in the grand theater of war.

9. The Ghost Army

No, it’s not an army of badass phantoms and wraiths like in Lord of the Rings. But the real Ghost Army is just as cool.  It was an Allied ploy during World War II that used inflatable tanks, sound effects, and other deceptive techniques to create a mirage of a much larger and powerful force. Imagine a canvas city, complete with faux radio transmissions, designed to divert the enemy’s attention. They were master illusionists, utilizing tricks of sight and sound to make the Axis second-guess and make costly missteps. They also deployed the “army” in areas that, when photographed by German reconnaissance aircraft and delivered to Nazi high command, made it seem like the Allies were planning to attack far away from their actual target. 

Their performances were both gutsy and pivotal, contributing significantly to the Allied success. A reminder that in the theater of war, sometimes the most potent weapon isn’t a gun or a bomb, but an artful and convincing illusion. 

8. The Double Siege of Alesia

The year is 52 BCE, and Alesia, a hilltop fortress in present-day France, is the focal point. 

Vercingetorix had gathered a coalition of rebellious Gauls inside the fortress, presenting a challenge to Julius Caesar’s legions. To break this deadlock, Caesar devised an audacious plan. He encircled Alesia with a massive fortification: two concentric rings of defenses. One faced outward to repel attacks from Gallic reinforcements, while the other faced inward to contain those within Alesia.

This was a dual siege—a testament to Roman engineering expertise and logistical finesse. The Gauls inside the walls resisted fiercely, while their brethren outside tried to break through. The Romans were severely outnumbered, and being attacked from all sides. Vercingetorix did everything right and… still lost. It was Caesar’s magnum opus, and the reason why he’s one of history’s greatest generals. 

7. Hammering periscopes

U-boats, the deadly submarines of the German navy during the World Wars, were the terror of the Atlantic. Like most submarines, their crews used periscopes to scout and target enemy ships. 

During World War II, the Allies developed brand new techniques for dealing with U-boat wolfpacks, in order to protect precious shipping lanes. One such innovation was hammering periscopes. You read that right, and no, it’s not a euphemism. This intriguing tactic, employed by the Royal Navy, literally involved patrols of sailors sneaking up on exposed periscopes and smashing them with hammers. In other cases, they’d simply shove canvas sacks over them and tie them tight. 

Once blinded, the submarines would be forced to surface, making them easy targets for Allied naval and air units. It wasn’t the most sophisticated strategy, but if it works, it works. 

6. The Night Witches

The Night Witches were a remarkable group of female aviators in the Soviet Air Forces during World War II. Officially known as the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, they earned their more ominous nickname from the Germans due to their stealthy night raids and the distinctive sound their planes made, which their victims on the ground compared to a witch’s broomstick.

Composed entirely of women, the Night Witches flew outdated Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, which were slow and made of wood and canvas, but highly maneuverable. They conducted their daring bombing missions under the cover of darkness, wreaking havoc on German positions with precision and speed, all while remaining virtually invisible in the dark. The pilots often flew multiple sorties in a single night. 

5. Flaming camels

Timur, also known as Tamerlane, was a Turco-Mongol conqueror and military genius of the 14th century. One of his notable tactics, involving flaming camels, was employed during the Battle of Ankara in 1402 against the forces of the Ottoman Empire. Yes, you read that right. Yes, it means exactly what it sounds like. 

During the battle, Timur’s army faced a formidable opponent in the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I. Timur loaded camels with straw and hay, setting them ablaze before releasing them into the enemy ranks. The sight of these flaming camels charging towards the Ottoman forces panicked their war elephants and horses, causing disorder and chaos among their ranks.

The confusion created by the flaming camels threw the Ottoman formations into panic, allowing Timur’s forces to capitalize on the disarray and gain the upper hand. Timur won the battle, capturing Bayezid and dealing a significant blow to the Ottoman Empire.

4. Bring your pets to war day 

Yes, cat paintings. See, the Ancient Egyptians revered cats and believed they possessed protective qualities. 

At the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC, the Persian Empire, led by Cambyses II, fought against the Egyptian Dynasty under Pharaoh Psamtik III. It unfolded near Pelusium, a pivotal location on Egypt’s eastern border, acting as a gateway to the Nile Delta. The Egyptians had extensive fortifications. But the Persians had cats. Yes, cats. 

What set the Persians apart was their innovative battle strategy, revealing a keen grasp of Egyptian culture. Understanding the Egyptians’ veneration of animals like cats tied to their religious beliefs, Cambyses II directed his troops to drive these sacred animals ahead of them, and some accounts suggest they even depicted cat images and other sacred animals on their shields. This psychological tactic struck deep into the hearts of the Egyptian soldiers, instilling fear of harming these revered animals and invoking divine retribution. This hesitation proved advantageous for the Persians, enabling them to breach the Egyptian defenses and claim a major victory.

3. Self mutilation

Zopyrus was a Persian general who played a significant role during the siege of Babylon in 482 BC. He decided on a daring and brutal plan to weaken Babylon’s defenses: he deliberately mutilated himself. Zopyrus believed that this act would enable him to gain the trust of the Babylonians and infiltrate their city from within.

And it worked. He executed this plan by cutting off his own ears and nose, making it appear as though he had suffered severe punishment from King Darius. Presenting himself to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as a defector, claiming mistreatment by the Persians, he gained the trust of the Babylonians. Over time, he was given a position of authority within the city.

Exploiting this newfound position, Zopyrus orchestrated the sabotage of Babylon’s defenses, ultimately leading to its capture by the Persian forces. Losing the war seems like a better fate, but hey – at least it worked?

2. Releasing one prisoner

World War I was defined by stalemate, where neither side could gain an upper hand. But it wasn’t for lack of men to hurl into the teeth of enemy machine guns. Both sides improved too. Poison gas, tanks, and airplanes all made their debut here. But the most decisive tactic employed by anyone in the entire war was arguably when the Germans released a single prisoner back to Russia. 

His name was Vladimir Lenin, and he did exactly what the Germans intended: sparked the Bolshevik Revolution which began the Russian Civil War, destroyed the Czarist empire and knocked Russia out of the World War One. Just like that, the entire eastern front was brought to a close, and Germany was able to focus fully on the western front against Britain and France. With all their troops freed up, the Germans moved over to the offense in the west and advanced in the 1918 Spring Offensive, which nearly brought the Allies to their knees. Unfortunately for them, they ran out of steam just as the Americans arrived, and it all fell apart. But still, by simply releasing Lenin, the Kaiser’s army very nearly defeated all her mighty enemies single handedly. 

1. Hannibal beats an enemy fleet with snakes

In one intriguing episode of Hannibal Barca’s military campaigns during the Second Punic War, he demonstrated his flair for unconventional tactics. During a naval skirmish against King Eumenes II of Pergamon, Hannibal took an audacious approach to unsettle his opponents.

Rather than relying solely on traditional naval strategies, Hannibal directed his troops to collect venomous snakes from the local terrain. He then ordered his men to hurl these venomous creatures onto the enemy ships. The effect was immediate and chaotic. The Pergamene sailors, freaked, abandoned their posts in a hurry, leaping into the sea to escape the animals. The result? The ships were deserted and Hannibal was left in command of the area. It wasn’t his most famous victory – Cannae or Lake Trasimene likely has that honor – but it was one of his most innovative. And it’s proof that he wasn’t just good at his job. He was one of the most innovative commanders in history.

In war, strategy is everything. A single well-executed maneuver can be the difference between victory and defeat. This was certainly the case with the Trojan Horse, a brilliant tactical move that allowed the Greeks to take control of Troy. But, while the story of the Trojan horse may be a thing of fiction, the use of wacky but clever ploys in war is not.

Here is a list of some of the most clever deceptive tactics that have been used in war throughout history.

10 Fake Paris in World War 1

Paris is a city rich with history that stretches back centuries. But during World War I, German bomber planes flying by night were an imminent threat to the iconic landmarks of the French capital. The French came up with a pretty ingenious plan to build a fake Paris replica out of wood and canvas, complete with lights, so that it would fool the German pilots at night.

The decoy city would be located just outside the real Paris, and it would be designed to confuse and lure the German pilots away from their true target. Fortunately, the war ended shortly after construction began, so the plan was never fully realized. The story of the fake Paris is a reminder of the lengths that people will go to in times of war. It is also a testament to the power of human ingenuity and creativity, even in the face of adversity.^[1]

9 German City Does Not Go Dark to Avoid Bombing

Like France, German cities were also terrorized by nighttime air raids. In World War II, one German city called Konstanz, which sits near the border of Switzerland, was able to elude bombardment by refusing to turn out the lights after dark. In order to protect itself from nighttime air raids, German cities were forbidden from using any lights. Street lamps and buildings went dark, and citizens were not allowed to use candles and had to cover their windows with curtains or black paint.

On the other hand, their Swiss neighbors—who were neutral in WWII and thus not targeted by the Allies—remained illuminated at night. By keeping their lights on, Konstanz was able to fool the Allied forces into thinking they were part of Switzerland and managed to make it through the war mostly unscathed.^[2]

8 Ghost Army

If you think deception is an art, then the U.S. Army took it to new heights during World War II. They went so far as to gather a team of artists and audio experts to create an elaborate phantom military unit of inflatable tanks and phony sound effects and radio transmissions to fool the Nazis.

The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the “Ghost Army,” was made up of around 1,100 soldiers who were tasked with creating lifelike dummy tanks, trucks, and artillery. They also played recorded sounds of battle to make it seem like there were more troops than there actually were. The bluff created a distraction that tied up enemy resources and preoccupied them with a military presence that wasn’t really there while the real Army maneuvered elsewhere.^[3]

7 Foiled Camisade During the War of 1812

During the war of 1812, one town on the coast of Maryland managed to fool the British during a nighttime siege. St. Michaels was a shipbuilding town targeted by British forces approaching via the Miles River. When an attack by the British became imminent, the townspeople decided to take action.

They placed lanterns in the treetops around the town, making it appear as though the town was at a higher elevation than it actually was. When the British rowed onto shore in the night, they were met with cannon fire by the Americans. This drove them back to their ships, from which they fired upon the town. Because they aimed at the lights in the trees they thought were windows and buildings, they ultimately shot over the town and failed to hit anything.^[4]

6 Army Builds a Fake Base to Fool Saddam Hussein

The Gulf War was fought in the early 1990s as a coalition of forces from more than 30 countries sought to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Before the first bombs fell on Baghdad in 1991, the U.S. military was engaged in a battle of wits with Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator had invaded Kuwait and was dug in for a long occupation. In order to drive him out, the U.S.-led coalition needed to mount a surprise attack. But how could they keep Saddam guessing about their plans?

The answer was Forward Operating Base Weasel, a secret military base set up for the purpose of deceiving the Iraqi leader. By sending out false radio signals, including recorded Egyptian radio traffic about the Americans and planting bogus intelligence, the coalition was able to convince Saddam that the main attack would come from the south when in reality, it would be coming from the west. It was a daring plan, and it worked like a charm. Thanks to the brave men and women at Forward Operating Base Weasel, Saddam was caught off guard when the real attack came, and his forces were quickly routed.^[5]

5 Vietnam POW Plays Stupid to Deceive Captors

Douglas Brent Hegdahl III was only twenty years old when he was taken captive by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. A Navy seaman, Hegdahl had been on a ship in the Gulf of Tonkin when he fell overboard and was picked up by a North Vietnamese fishing boat. Hegdahl was immediately taken prisoner and spent the next two years in captivity.

During that time, he developed a deep understanding of the Vietnamese language and culture. However, he was able to fool his captors into thinking he was stupid and harmless. He exaggerated his country accent and expressed a fascination with communism. As a result, he was treated relatively well and was dubbed “the incredibly stupid one.” He was allowed to roam the POW camp freely and would secretly sabotage the Vietnamese by doing things like putting dirt in gas tanks to disable them. He was eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange. After returning to the United States, Hegdahl was tapped for his knowledge about the Vietnamese as part of negotiations for ending the war.^[6]

4 Hannibal of Barca Tricks Romans

A trap is only as good as its bait, and when it comes to luring in his enemies, Hannibal of Barca is a master angler. In 216 BC, the Carthaginian commander found himself and his army cornered in a valley in Campania. Unfortunately, his army was situated in a valley with Romans guarding the only way out—a mountain pass.

Seeing no other way to escape, Hannibal took a herd of cattle and stampeded them toward the pass with flaming torches on their horns. The guards, thinking the cattle were Hannibal’s soldiers, rushed to confront them and his army safely slipped away under cover of night. It’s a story that has gone down in history as one of the most clever military maneuvers, and it’s a testament to Hannibal’s resourcefulness as a leader.^[7]

3 Operation Mincemeat

In 1943, British intelligence came up with an outlandish plan to deceive the Nazis that sounds straight out of a spy flick. The plan, codenamed Operation Mincemeat, involved planting false documents on the body of a dead man and releasing the body into the sea off the coast of Spain. The corpse was that of a homeless man but was given a fake identity to pass off as a dead British officer.

The hope was that the Germans would learn of the corpse and believe the contents of the phony documents attached to it. The plan was successful, and the Germans were led to believe that the Allies were going to invade Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. As a result, they diverted troops to these areas, which helped ensure the success of the Allied invasion of Sicily. Operation Mincemeat is now considered one of the most successful deceptions in military history.^[8]

2 Opium-Laced Cigarettes

In World War I, the British and the Ottomans were embroiled in a slow, drawn-out battle in the trenches. Eventually, the British learned that the Ottomans had run out of cigarettes, at which point they sent packs to the enemy. However, the action was far from altruistic as they also attached propaganda in an attempt to demoralize and taunt their adversaries.

The Ottomans willingly took the smokes but defiantly discarded the propaganda, showing no intention to surrender. The British prepared to raid the enemy but, before doing so, sent over more cigarettes, this time laced with opium. By the time the British launched their attack, it was an easy victory as their enemy was too strung out to put up much of a fight.^[9]

1 Cats on the Battlefield

Back in 525 BC, a war was waged between the Persians and Egyptians. In the battle of Pelusium, the battle-tested Persian leader Cambyses II was able to get the best of Egypt’s young inexperienced pharoah, Psametik III. In Egyptian culture, cats and other animals were held as sacred. Cambyses II knew this, and according to ancient accounts, he had his army show up to battle with images of cats painted on their shields.

Additionally, Persian forces released a large number of cats, dogs, and sheep onto the frontlines. The Egyptians were fearful of causing harm to these animals and were so alarmed at the sight of Persian soldiers throwing cats at them that they fled in panic. As a result, many Egyptians were slain in the process, and the Persians were able to take control of Egypt with relative ease.^[10]

In the past, we’ve covered just how expensive war can get and, as many people know, the defense budget of a country like the United States or Russia is enough to make Elon Musk break into a sweat. But not every victory has to break the bank and there is more than a little precedent to suggest some effective and devastating tactics don’t need to cost very much money at all. Let’s take a look at ten of history’s cheapest but most creative military tactics. 

10. The WWII Ghost Army

Anything known as a Ghost Army is probably going to be cool no matter what it entails, but in the case of the Ghost Army most famously deployed during the Second World War, it’s also incredibly creative and more than a little sneaky. 

Otherwise known as tactical deception, the Ghost Army was a tool meant to deceive Hitler and the German forces during the war and it relied not on the strength of soldiers and weapons so much as the creativity of artists. 

Known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, this division built fake armies. Inflatable tanks and rubber airplanes were combined with radio transmissions that were designed to be intercepted by the enemy. They featured actors playing out parts, making it seem like troop movements and deployments were happening when, in reality, everything was for show. They even set up speakers in forests to broadcast the sounds of war and make it seem convincing to those on the ground.

This army of fakers numbered around 1,100, but their work was able to create the illusion of around 30,000 soldiers. Their work was effective enough that they were able to draw German forces off and save lives as a result. Records obtained from Germany after the fact indicate the deception was a total success, meaning tens of thousands of lives and millions worth of equipment were spared. It was also kept secret from the public stateside until 1996.

9. Aerial Ramming 

The deadliest fighter pilot of all-time was Erich Hartmann, who has been credited with 352 kills in the air. Now, many of his victims were Soviet fighters, but, for the sake of argument, let’s say he took out 352 P-51 Mustangs, one of the most common US fighter planes of the war (pictured above). At a cost of about $58,000 at the time, he would have destroyed over $20 million in fighter planes. That’d work out to over $340 million today. Obviously, shooting the man down didn’t work out very well at the time, so what else could have been done? One lost cost alternative to a traditional dog fight is the extremely dangerous technique known as “air ramming.”

Like running another car off the road, air ramming involves hitting an enemy plane with your own plane. You can see why this is a tactic that isn’t done often. The goal is to not get yourself killed in the process, so it takes a steady hand, a keen eye and nerves of something a little harder than steel. And it’s a tactic about as old as flight itself. 

Rumors of the tactic date back to even before WWII, but many people considered them wholly unreliable. After all, what kind of maniac could or would do such a thing? But consider if you’re out of ammunition, head to head against an enemy in the air and fully expecting to be shot down, what do you have to lose?

Back in 1956, two Soviet fighters took on two Hungarian planes and witnesses on the ground watched one of the Soviet pilots very clearly maneuver his plane into the enemy, destroying them both in the process but allowing the Soviet, who knew when he’d need to jump ship, float safely to the ground with his parachute. The pilot denied it was intentional, but witnesses say his intent and the result were very clear. The pilot later admitted that, when his guns failed him, he rammed the plane to take it out. 

8. Quaker Guns

Sometimes your best chance for victory is just to make the enemy think you’re going to win, even if you can’t. Like the Ghost Army, you can achieve this by making them believe you have more resources than you really do. And in the American Revolutionary War, this took the form of Quaker cannons, named for the pacifist religious group.

From a distance, a Quaker cannon looks like any other cannon. But get close enough and you’ll notice it’s less a powerful piece of artillery and more of a painted log. Colonel William Washington had his men turn a pine tree into a fake cannon and threatened to take out men in a fortified barn if they didn’t surrender. They all gave up. Nearly 100 years later, the same trick was being used during the Civil War.

7. Chu Songs from Four Sides

In the year 202 in China, the Chu army had reached a place called Gaixia and were trapped in a canyon. They were surrounded by the Han army. Many of the Chu army were destroyed or captured and as night fell, only a small force remained. The leaders of the Han army had their soldiers, and the captured Chu army begin to sing traditional songs of Chu. 

The Chu army, confronted with songs of their homeland on all sides, began to fear that Chu had fallen and they were all that remained of their people. Many soldiers deserted and the leader of the Chu army is said to have taken his own life, causing the remaining forces to surrender. 

6. Hammering U-Boats

German U-Boats were a powerful force during WWI and sank upwards of 5,000 ships. Defeating them was a serious priority, and detecting them was not easy. Sonar did not exist at that time, so a vessel hidden underwater was all but invisible. Sometimes the most low-tech methods prove surprisingly effective. 

For a time, the best way to deal with a submarine was to detect and disable the periscope. At night, small boats would go out on patrol with just a couple of soldiers on board, hunting for periscopes. When they found one, they’d cover the periscope with a bag and then smash it with a hammer. If the U-Boat wanted to see anything, it had to surface, and that left it open for attack.

5. Operation Christmas

They say war is hell, so if you can make the enemy focus on something better, maybe they’ll give up the fight, right? There’s evidence it works. Just look at Operation Christmas.

In an effort to counter the guerilla forces in Colombia, the military opted to decorate some Christmas trees. Deep in the jungles where the guerilla forces were known to move about, soldiers would pick massive trees and drape them in thousands of Christmas lights. They even filmed it to make commercials. The lights would activate on a motion sensor and a banner would light up that said, “If Christmas can come to the jungle, you too can come home. Demobilize. At Christmas, everything is possible.”

The tactic resulted in about 300 guerillas, 5% of their total force, giving up and going home. They tried a similar tactic the year after and another 180 packed it in. 

4. King Harald Faked his Death

King Harald Siggurdson’s life is steeped in unbelievable tales of heroism and strength. It’s said he triumphed in countless battles against countless enemies through strength as well as intelligence and few stories exemplify that as well as the tale of his Sicilian campaign.

It’s said that he laid siege to four different towns during the campaign, often under-manned compared to his enemies. If he couldn’t starve his enemies out, he’d use some trickery to gain the upper hand, which happened during the fourth campaign. 

The town was well fortified and seemed unbeatable, so he began to spend his days in his tent. Eventually rumor spread that he was gravely ill and, finally, his men gave word to the enemy that he had died. His final wish? As a Christian man, he wanted to be laid to rest on church grounds. Inside the town.

So the town opened its gates and a coffin containing Siggurdson was brought in by his men who used it to block the gates, allowing the whole army and a very much alive Siggurdson to sack the town. 

3. Zhuge Liang’s Victory by Shame

No one likes a show off but, as it happens, showing off and rubbing someone else’s face in your greatest can apparently save lives if you do it enough. That was what happened when Zhuge Liang, military strategist and Prime Minister of the Chinese state of Shu back between 221 and 263, was tasked with defeating Meng Huo, an enemy chieftain.

The story of Meng Huo’s defeat has become the stuff of legend because it kept happening. According to those legends, Liang captured Huo on the field of battle. Instead of killing or torturing the man, he gave him a tour of his army, showing off how great it was and asked what he thought, Meng Huo was not impressed, so Liang released him. They did this a total of seven times. 

After seven captures, Meng Huo realized that Zhuge Liang’s forces were superior, and he voluntarily surrendered himself and ended up joining the other side.

2. The Battle of Pelusium 

Getting into your enemy’s head can be invaluable and turn the tide of any battle. But what does that mean in a practical sense, and how could it best be exploited? Arguably one of the greatest examples of this occurred when Cambyses II, a Persian king, met the Egyptians during the Battle of Pelusium. This was a major battle that essentially put Egypt in the hands of Persia and started Egypt’s 27th Dynasty. 

Cambyses II was taking on the forces of Pharaoh Psametik III, and he was an experienced tactician. He was also aware of the Egyptians’ beliefs and, in particular, their reverence for all forms of life, in particular those creatures that they viewed as earthly representations of their gods. 

For Egyptians, cats were associated with the goddess Bastet. The goddess was both nurturer and fighter and had a prominent cult of followers. Few Egyptians would dare harm a cat lest they earn the goddesses ire. So Cambyses littered the battlefield with them and painted their images on the shields of his men. 

The Persians carried cats into battle, which caused the Egyptians to fear loosing arrows against them. Cambyses let loose dogs, ibises, sheep and any other animals he thought the Egyptians would be too afraid to harm. The tactic worked, and the Egyptians either fled or were slaughtered.

1. The Whistling Sound of Falling Bombs

Psychology has a lot of impact in war as we’ve seen. Dive bombers used to mount Jericho trumpets on the front of their planes so that when they went into a dive, the plane would blare out that iconic wailing sound we associate with them and cause panic. Likewise, most of us recognize the high pitched whistling sound of a bomb being dropped if from nowhere else than old movies and even cartoons. It’s even the sound a cartoon will use for a character falling.

If you’ve watched any modern footage of war zones as bombs are deployed, you would not have heard that telltale whistle. Like the dive bombers of WWII, only certain bombs made that sound because an actual whistle was attached to the casing. 

The sound and pitch change as the bomb drops, thanks to the Doppler effect. This meant that, on the ground, you had an audio warning of the speed and distance to the bomb, which you have to assume played havoc with a lot of people’s minds. Knowing your potential destruction is closing in fast would have chilled even the hardest soldier and severely shaken the nerves of all who survived. All that for the cost of a whistle.

“We romanticize swords so much. Imagine everyone is swinging tire irons at each other.” 

– John Dolan 

Anyone who tries to conceptualize military engagements from a millenia or two ago is going to have their impression heavily shaped by influences that themselves were heavily influenced by fantasists, such as pulp fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. It’s difficult not to imagine berserker Vikings axing their way through villagers caught off guard, vast Chinese or Japanese ranks struggling amidst forests of arrows, or Spartans plowing their way through, well, anybody. And all of it is done for optimal cinematic effect. People with a need for escapism will want to picture themselves in that situation, usually on the winning side.

While it’s no surprise that real life is very different from re-creations done for show, we often get the very basics wrong. So let’s take a look at what combatants from the distant past actually had to look forward to, and hopefully better appreciate how far removed we are from that reality. Not only was the past more horrifying than fiction wants us to believe, it was also often (and surprisingly) far more mundane. 

10. Barbarian Mercenaries Caused Rome’s Decline

Unless a civilization reaches a degree of influence where it is designated an “empire,” it is invariably regarded as just an unusually large mob of savages. How often have we seen Roman conquerors pitted against dirt-caked crowds under haphazard piles of furs just running at the legions like kids being let out on the last day of school? This an especially handy perception when nationalists wish to claim that the Roman military heavily turning to barbarian soldiers in its last few centuries was the impetus to its downfall.  

A close look at the historical record debunks this. Julius Caesar himself was very candid that the Gauls he faced for eight years demonstrated considerable organization. Their weapons, clothing, and social systems all demonstrated they had very well-organized infrastructure. More to the point, some of the greatest Roman victories, such as the 356 AD victory at Strasbourg, were overwhelmingly due to specialized barbarian cavalry archers at nearly three to one odds. Even Caesar relied heavily on mounted German mercenaries to save his army at Alesia, the battle he won at the longest odds of his career. The evidence indicates that if barbarian mercenaries were the cause of Rome’s fall, they had been key to its rise as well. 

9. Ancient China Was Extremely Militaristic

We assume that because ancient nations were often at war, the only societies that would survive would be those which venerated the military. How were soldiers supposed to be motivated to go put their lives on the line if there weren’t concepts like martial honor to compel them, especially during times when there were limited material rewards to go around?

So it must be with Ancient China, which conquered such a vast and influential empire, right? This is a particularly common perception in the West, which primarily sees Ancient China through war stories such as Mulan, John Woo’s Red Cliff, or The Wall. 

There’s some evidence gathered by historians that indicates anti-militarism was a mainstream view in Ancient China. Confucius, as influential an advisor as China ever produced, was noted for his dismissiveness of soldiers and argued that military conquests undermined a ruler’s legitimacy. There’s an adage from Ancient China: “Good men do not become soldiers.” Much harsher than the relatively recent American saying, “mamas, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys.” A significant part of the appeal of Sun Tzu’s Art of War was that it prevented the loss of valuable resources and infrastructure to war by appealing to cunning over honorable warfare. 

8. Greeks Thought Archers Were Cowardly

In the Greek classic The Iliad, the character Diomedes is hit by an arrow and calls archery fit only for cowards. As posited by Peter Gainsford, this fed the misconception that this viewpoint was a mainstream belief among the Greeks, and not the grousing of a specific wounded character. This belief was further supported by the way that the close quarters formation known as the phalanx became so highly venerated for its supposed invincibility. So these days you see depictions of the Greeks, such as in both the graphic novel and film 300, where Spartan King Leonidas says this explicitly.

In reality even the Spartans, the supposed pinnacle of phalanx fighters, regularly used archers as a suppression technique during maneuvers. To be fair, there are no surviving accounts of Spartan archers devastating enemies, like Welsh bowmen or Mongol horse archers are known to have done, but archaeologists have unearthed tributes to archers in ancient Sparta itself. Not that they needed to confirm this point, as Greek mythology and epics such as Homer’s Odyssey are full of tributes to heroic archers. 

7. PTSD Wasn’t Acknowledged Yet

History classes often spread the idea that post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t really understood or recorded until the 20th Century. Even at the beginning of that era with World War I, the prevailing notion is that it was only dismissed as “shell shock.” Since life off the battlefield was so much harsher than modern amenities, it’s assumed people must have been conditioned with sterner stuff than they can muster now. Even Ancient Romans sometimes gave barbarian soldiers credit for being tougher because they believed civilization was softening up their troops. 

Ancient historians might not have used the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” but they recorded the effects nevertheless. Herodotus, famous for documenting the Greco-Persian Wars, named spear-carrier Epizelus as one suffering from psychological problems after the fighting ended. Centuries earlier, PBS reported that Assyrian tablets recorded the psychological harm that soldiers had suffered from their time in the service. While Ancient China does not have any known direct translation for the word, Huangdi’s Canon of Medicine from circa 200 BC very strongly alludes to veterans suffering from suspiciously similar psychological afflictions. The evidence indicates that less technology often does not necessarily produce super-soldiers.  

6. Ancient Ships Rammed Each Other All the Time 

Ancient ships ramming each other all the time seems like it would make sense, since wooden ships would naturally seem vastly more vulnerable to it than metal hulls. It’s very difficult to sink an enemy ship with arrows or any heavy equipment most ancient vessels could bring to bear in battle. Even using fire can result in an attacker’s own ship being set ablaze, an unusually literal example of backfiring. 

But as consistently reported, such as in Raffaele D’Amato’s 2017 book Imperial Roman Ships, it was not something any captain would do if they could avoid it. A successful ramming still risks ruining the structural integrity of anything from the hull to the mast of the attacker. Further, even if a ship one-hit killed its enemy, there was the danger of the ram being caught and the rammer being taken down with the sinking ship. This was why even much ricketier ships were often more successful because of their improved speed and maneuverability, such as Constantine’s navy in the 4th Century AD.  

This was the case in Ancient Asian naval combat as well. Even when the Korean navy began producing pioneer ironclad ships, which were celebrated for being unsinkable, they were hesitant to ram other ships with them because it was too risky. If anything, ramming ships is more common with modern navies, where ships have mass-produced interchangeable components, and the ability to scuttle ships making boarding a vessel for capture much riskier than back in the day.    

5. Roman Uniforms That Were… Uniform

You know what an Imperial Roman soldier looked like. Red tunic, leather armor that ended in a sort of skirt. Makes sense the empire would want a standardized item of clothing to help form a sense of cohesion with its legion. Except according to surviving documents, the Roman Empire very often couldn’t be bothered to make the effort. In fact, payrolls show that they actually docked soldiers’ pay for their uniforms, so the poorer troops weren’t going to try that. There are a number of letters from the period where the soldiers ask their own homes to mail them some clothes, including a particularly celebrated letter where one poor soldier stationed in Britain wrote to home asking them to send him wool socks. 

The idea every Roman dressed the same was overwhelmingly a Hollywood misconception. Those bright red uniforms looked very nice in Technicolor. It’s kind of a silly notion in hindsight: Red was a very expensive dye for the time, reserved for the nobles. Thinking every private dressed like that would be like if modern soldiers were portrayed as all going into battle wearing Louis Vuitton or Gucci uniforms. 

4. Wars Were Won on the Basis of Single Battles

One of the long-held beliefs about the American Revolution was that the Americans won their independence because while they couldn’t defeat His Majesty’s armies in conventional battles, they could turn to guerilla tactics to win the day. While we’ve talked before about how true that is, history lessons often treat the notion of American rebels preferring guerrilla tactics as some sort of innovation. There are practical reasons to think this was the case: Less-developed agricultural technology would have meant that fielding an army was not plausible, as either side would need to send troops back for the harvests or face ruin at home.  

Yet even in ancient times the concept of warfare and attrition were well understood. Emperor Fabius was particularly noted for his skill with them, and so the slang term of being tactically offensive to wear down an enemy, even one conventionally unbeatable in a pitched battle, acquired the nickname “Fabian tactics.” These would allow Rome to defeat Hannibal even as he slaughtered their armies four times on the Italian Peninsula during the Second Punic War. They almost brought Julius Caesar to a stop during the Gallic Wars, with Caesar giving Vercingetorix considerable credit for his skill in their use. According to New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare by Garrett Fagan and Matthew Trundle, even Sparta itself was brought to defeat by attrition warfare, in no small part because its extreme reliance on slave labor made their positions more tenuous if the troops had to be mustered for long. No amount of toughness will help troops that can’t be supplied or can’t seem to make progress.  

3. Very Heavy Swords Were Common 

It makes sense to assume that if a sword is going to be expected to chop away at people wearing armor and wielding shields, you’re going to want something as heavy as a sledgehammer. Not for nothing did warhammers become a popular implement by the time the Medieval era rolled around and soldiers needed to incapacitate those wearing the best deflections available. 

Well, in truth swords have historically been pretty light. As pointed out by Escapist magazine, heavier broadswords were likely only going to weigh about four and a half pounds, meaning that if someone can wield an average laptop without much trouble they’re on their way to being in shape enough to wield a sword. Even the heaviest (or at least the very heaviest swords known to have been used in real combat), the Middle European Zweihander, weighed 8.8 pounds. Considering that an American Civil War musket weighed about 9.75 pounds, that means that soldiers that tried to bayonet or club their enemies were performing a more laborious task than the strongest ancient swordsmen. 

2. The Soldiers Were All Men

Every time there’s a historical drama that features a woman wielding a sword in battle, internet commentators will come out of the woodwork to decry that as unrealistic. The assumption is that women and men are just operating at such inherently different levels of strength. Even fantasy programs such as The Witcher came in for heavy rebukes for these creative decisions. 

The common rejoinder is to point out specific female combatants from ancient times, such as Queen Boudica or Queen Tomyris. But that’s a fundamentally flawed approach, as it implies that such soldiers were the exception that proves the rule. Let’s instead consider the armies where female combatants were a practice barely even worthy of comment: there were Trung Trac and Trung Nhi of Vietnam, who not only led a defense of Vietnam that drove out the Chinese in 40 AD, but who also trained a general staff of 36 other women. Or there were the numerous iron age Celtic burial sites which included chariots and female skeletons buried with them. Still not enough armies where this was a regularly accepted practice? Hopefully the accounts of East Africa, where regiments of female archers from Western Sudan, or similarly large units of female warriors from Ghana who were still being pitted against European armies during the Medieval era will be enough to make the case. No one at TopTenz can decide for you. We’re not your mother. 

1. Long Swords are Ideal

As implied by the opening quote and our third entry, there is no arm through the ages as venerated as the sword. The most famous blade of kings, perhaps only the club is more universal. We’re certainly led to believe that an army armed with longswords would make short work of any row of spearwielders in close combat outside of maybe a phalanx. 

According to History.com‘s analysis of ancient warfare, armies where the soldiers were relying on swords were at a considerable disadvantage. The sword, even a short sword, requires considerable elbow room to be wielded properly. This is partially why the Roman legion strongly preferred short swords known as gladiuses after closing with their enemies, though even that was substantially supported by javelins and slings to create gaps in enemy lines. In conclusion, in ancient war, even the most classy individualistic weapon was no match for unit cohesion. 

Dustin Koski is the author of the fantasy novel A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong, where a character wields a spearspade. He hopes that someday he can spread the misconception that they were real ancient weapons.

“We romanticize swords so much. Imagine everyone is swinging tire irons at each other.” 

– John Dolan

Anyone who tries to conceptualize military engagements from a millenia or two ago is going to have their impression heavily shaped by influences that themselves were heavily influenced by fantasists, such as pulp fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. It’s difficult not to imagine berserker Vikings axing their way through villagers caught off guard, vast Chinese or Japanese ranks struggling amidst forests of arrows, or Spartans plowing their way through, well, anybody. And all of it is done for optimal cinematic effect. People with a need for escapism will want to picture themselves in that situation, usually on the winning side.

While it’s no surprise that real life is very different from re-creations done for show, we often get the very basics wrong. So let’s take a look at what combatants from the distant past actually had to look forward to, and hopefully better appreciate how far removed we are from that reality. Not only was the past more horrifying than fiction wants us to believe, it was also often (and surprisingly) far more mundane.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!