How did ancient armies find each other?

Scouts on light fast horses (some armies that fought in hilly locations used light foot troops) with light weapons would sweep ahead and to the sides of armies looking for the enemy. Once they spotted the enemy they raced back to the main army with the news.

How did medieval armies find each other?

Just to add to this good response, the conventional way armies found each other was through the use of scouts, especially cavalry scouts. Generals would regularly deploy hundreds, or even thousands of scouts in the general direction of the enemy army.

How did knights tell each other apart in battle?

Seriously, how did knights tell each other apart during medieval battles? 🙄 They all looked basically the same. They were dozens of banners, coat-of-arms, heraldic displays, etc. Moreover, in melee combat there is no time to think or to recall colors and style…

Where did the two armies meet?

Answer: At the battle of thermopylae, the persian army numbered around 125,000, too many to move by ship, so they built a huge pontoon bridge across the bosphorous and marched along the coast, through Macedon, to Athens.

When did the two armies meet?

Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade. Elements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it.

How do you identify one side in a medieval battle?

In the end, there was not a uniform (heh) way of identifying one side from the another on the medieval battlefield. Friendly fire incidents did occur – at the Battle of Barnet in 1471 some Lancastrians mistook their own reinforcements for Yorkists, throwing the Lancastrians into disarray as they fought each other.

How did people tell friend from foe in medieval warfare?

Compared to say, the 18th century, there wasn’t a standardized, color-coded way to tell friend from foe. Instead, there were a variety of kinds of battlefield identifications used in different times and places in the medieval era to identify individuals, groups within an army, and armies.

When did the means of identification of soldiers become more common?

That said, in the 13th century means of identification became much, much more common. In the late 12th and 13th century, two ways of identifying individual soldiers developed.

How clear was the visibility on a medieval battlefield?

Indeed compared with the smoke of an early modern battlefield, visibility on a medieval battlefield would be relatively clear (though this clarity would decrease as the 15th and 16th centuries progressed). It is important to remember that the melee was not necessarily the normal shape of medieval combat.