EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY ===================== by Al A. Nofi Testimony of the Witnesses: Comments and Commentary on War Number 1 "One more such victory and we are undone." So observated Pyrrhus of Epirus as he regarded his losses after his second victory over the Romans, at Asculum in 279 B.C. Pyrrhus had sought to emulate in the West, the achievements of his cousin, Alexander the Great in the East. Posing as the champion of the Italiote Greeks, he brought to Italy an army of 30,000 men organized and trained in the Macedonian fashion, along with a sizable contingent of elephants with which to terrorize the Romans, whom he considered a barbarian tribe. He began to have second thoughts after his first battle with them, at Heraclea in 280 B.C., where, watching the Romans deploy their legions in to battle line, he is said to have remarked that "These Romans do not fight like barbarians." A terrific battle ensued, with great slaughter on both sides, in which the Romans, about 35,000 men under P. Valerius Laevinus, were ultimately defeated, largely because of their unfamiliatiry with elephants. By Asculum, the second battle between the Romans and Pyrrhus, the Romans had begun to work out techniques for coping with his "advanced technology weapon system." As a result, the Romans, who numbered perhaps 40,000, came close to beating him in the fierce two day fight, which was won when Pyrrhus' elephants routed the Roman cavalry. The casualties were enormous, perhaps 10,000-12,000 on each side. The losses were particularly great among the veterans whom Pyrrhus, himself among the wounded, had brought from Epiros, which prompted to make the above remark., and gave history the phrase "Pyrrhic victory." After Asculum, Pyrrhus abandoned his efforts in Italy for a time, and attempted to aid his Siciliam Greek allies against the Carthaginians, who were allied with Rome. But he later returned to Italy for one more try. It was a near-run thing, but Pyrrhus failed to win his third battle with those clever Romans. At Beneventum in 275 B.C. about 21000 Roman and Allied troops under M. Curius Denatus won a tough fight with Pyrrhus' 23,000 men and 18 elephants. After Beneventum, Pyrrhus decided to go back to Greece, where the pickings seemed easier. Pyrrhus' failure to subdue the Romans resulted from his assumption that his victorious military system would remain so. Believing that the enemy would not change in the face of defeat, he himself ultimately went down to defeat. This has been a common failing in the history of war, and one which has often led to disaster, as it did not only for Pyrrhus, but also for Napoleon, for France in 1940, and for Germany in 1942-1945. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Testimony of the Witnesses: Comments and Commentary on War Number 2 "This Frenchman will kill us all!" This was the conclusion of Spanish Captain Cosme Damian de Churruca on the disposition of the Franco-Spanish fleet ordered by the French Vice-Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve, as he watched Lord Nelson's British fleet approaching at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. Churruca was a fine captain, a distinguished explorer and navigator in the tradition of Britain's Cook or France's LaPerouse, and by no means a novice to battle. Like Churrucca, so too were many of the other Spanish and French captains present. But the commander of the combined fleet, Villeneuve was far less experienced than many of his subordinates. A nobody and a courtier, he had been promoted far above his level of competence by Napoleon, a man who knew little about maritime warfare, and, worse, knew not the extent of his ignorance. The conduct of war at sea had been changing radically over the decades leading up to Trafalgar. The British particularly had begun to question traditional regulations that required fleets to fight in parallel lines, regulations which had led to nearly a century of indecisive action at sea. And so, at first tentatively, and almost by chance, but later with increasing boldness, British admirals had begun to break the rigidity of linear battles, seeking instead to cut through the enemy fleet, isolating portions of it and reducing it to ruin piecemeal. This bold break with tradition had resulted in a number of unusually decisive victories in the closing years of the eighteenth century. The leaders of the French and Spanish navies had failed to keep up, despite the fact that the British seemed to be winning with increasing frequency and intensifying decisiveness. And so, when Nelson's fleet brought the combined Spanish and French fleets to battle, he found them prepared to fight in the traditional fashion, deployed in line. Although Churrucca and other fine young officers among the French and Spanish captains were aware of the danger from the innovative British tactics, Villeneuve persevered. Villaneuve survived the ensuing disaster, Churrucca, and thousands of other good men, did not.