Showing results for "Infantry" in Europe

From the time of Ancient Sumeria, the heavy infantry phalanx dominated the battlefield. Armed with spears or pikes, standing shoulder to shoulder with shields interlocking, the men of the phalanx presented an impenetrable wall of wood and metal to the enemy. Until, that is, the Roman legion emerged to challenge them as masters of infantry battle.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century.

In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world’s most important geopolitical players. It was a rise that would not truly start to wane until the 19th century.

Although the armies of the ancient Greek, or "Hellenic", city-states (poleis, singular polis) included both cavalry (hippeis) and light infantry (psiloi, peltastes, gymnetes), their mainstay was undoubtedly the heavy infantry known today as hoplites. Armed to the teeth with their distinctive round shield (aspis or hoplon), high-crested helmet (corys) and long spear (dory), the hoplites were some of the most efficient soldiers of their time.

When America entered World War I in April 1917, state National Guard units had never planned to mobilize for this kind of war, and the men who made up the hometown companies of each regiment never imagined that they would be asked to fight in what was then the most savage war in human history - they were “innocents” being thrown into a horrendous European conflagration. Made up of companies from 10 Ohio towns, the 166th Infantry Regiment became part of the famous 42nd Division, known as the “Rainbow Division”.