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The Celts, often exemplified as the Gauls, advance, Pillage, raze, plunder. Lacking any cohesion, no formations, brute force with no professionalism, so how could they even remotely compare, as theyclearly had no profound understading of the art of war. Or so some people think.
Hopefully today I'll be able to present to you a different picture, one born of extensive unbias research, evaluation of archaeological data, and literary scrutiny.
This misunderstading and a very reductive description of the way of war of the Celts isn't a modern myth, it's infact an idea that was born in the ancient period itself. After all Ethongraphic and Classical historical narratives give us the perspective of the Mediterraneans:
In the words of Levi:
And so The image of a brutal savage begins to take shape.
Connect that with dramatic events such as the Sack of Rome and the Sack of Delphi, and the concept of an ancient terror, was born.
Zooming out a little bit, before we begin our usual deep dive, as we do on this channel, I want to ask a question: who were these Celts? What was their warfare like? What do we know about these interaction between cultures? What was the Celtic response for instance, to the Strong frontal clashes of Mediterranean tactical warfare?
The Celtic Peoples
The best answer to the question who were the Celts is probably this: The Celts are an iron age culture, which embraced an array of peoples, connected by a series of common traits, some cultural, some linguistic, and maybe a common religious baseline.
Cisalpine Gaul, Transalpine Gaul, Britonnic, Caledonian, these are only some of the many people that we could consider Celtic.
And remaing within what could be considered macro-groups we have the Gauls (France, Italy, Switzeland and Austria) Pannonians (Eastern Europe), Galatians (Turkey), Britanni (England, Wales, Scotland), Gaeli (Ireland), Celtiberians (Spain). On this video we will zoom in this picture and mention several actual tribes, but this gives you an idea of what we are talking about.
Modern understanding tends to separate the Caledonians, from the Brittonic Celtic cultures of souther Britain, but it's also important to say that the Romans didn't. The Pics will become a definite political entity relatively late in the 3rd century AD, so beyond the scope of this video, and even thoug it's farely possible that their ancestors spoke a different variety of Celtic compared to the southern Brittons, culturally they were very similar. The Romans do not perceive any distinction, and only tell us that in Caledonia, the Brittons tend to be bigger and red hair is more common than blonde.
And in the occasional instances when the Romans do use a separate name for them, Caledoni, they use it to define what they perceive to be a regional variation of a single cultural core.
War
When talking about Celtic warfare, the first thing to establish is that we cannot generalise or speak in absolute terms, that's because Celtic warfare evolved in different areas at dissimilar rates, and in different fashions.
Let me give you one example. Even though continental Celts in the second half of the fourth century BC had already begun to dismiss the war chariot, such item of war will endure in Brittonic realities, as insular Celtic cultures, when compared to the Continental ones, were in a way, frozen in time. A similar phenomenon is clearly apparent in irish gaelic Celtic literature, and their warrior descriptions.
In a way this also points to the fact that the influence of other civilizations, and outside preassure, plays a pivital role into war development.
The archaeological record shows us a plurality of approaches to warfare.
The depth of such topic renders the task of compiling all information about weapons, armour, metallurgy, technological development, in one video harduous. Hence this video will serve as a starting introduction to the topic, and we will mostly cover general wardfare, armour, helmets and shields. If you like this type of video and would like me to make a second one exclusively dedicated to say Celtic weapons such as swords, polearms and ranged, let me know in the comments below.
Through the Span of time
For our comprehensive analysis Chronological and geographical variation need to be taken into consideration.
Part of this was undoubtedly driven throught the contact with Mediterranean civilizations, Etruscans, Scythians and other.
Battlefield tactics, weapon and armour design, metallurgy development, the shift from bronze to iron, regional variations, all need to be visualized as a vortex of sorts.
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