Concerning the Use of Magick in Combat in Pre-Modern Europa

(this essay originally appeared as Essai en thaumaturgie dans la guerre, by Contamine Fils. Translated by E.C. Müller, 2624 AUC.)

Introduction

Other writers have addressed various aspects of combat, particularly personal combat, with many useful tracts concerning the use of sword and shield, horse and lance, archery of every type, and so on. Few, however, have addressed what is popularly known as the battlemage in all his various manifestations. In this libellus I endeavor to survey briefly the full range of magical combat, with the hope that specialists will be able to add depth to where I have provided breadth.

Overview

All warfare is divided into three parts: offense, defense, and logistics. Within each of these there falls a two-fold division; namely, the strategic and the tactical.

Offensive warfare is comprised of the chevauchee, the attack, the counter-attack, and the siege.

Defensive warfare occurs either in the field or in a siege.

The logistics of warfare includes everything from supplying the army with food and drink to clearing roads to the work of agents and spies. The reader need take only a moment of reflection to realize there is at least occasional cause for fighting in any and all aspects of logistics.

For the purposes of this essay we leave aside warfare at sea or other bodies of water. [Ed. Note – this work also comes before the Great War, and so does not consider warfare below ground or in the Second World]

Defense

In general, there is preparation and repair of enchanted items, then there is actual defensive combat.

Strategic defense means fortifying points. On the battlefield, this means taking steps to guard the camp, including the setting of traps. While in modern times dwarven specialists handle this activity, through earlier centuries it was a human activity. Dwarves are more skilled, all agree, but the traditional structure of clan-and-canton, so well-suited for construction projects with their build camps, was a positive hindrance when it came to active battlefields.

Tactical defense is countering fireballs and other attacks. This includes countermining in a siege. Tactical defense means identifying the threat: its direction, nature, imminence. Then you have to have a skill or spell to counter it, and time enough, and accuracy enough, to be successful.

All this makes tactical defense extremely chancy. And expensive. Ideally you field enough magery in enough places to counter every possible attack, but that almost never happens. More practical is to ward the armor, and to kill the enemy’s mages.

Defense Siegecraft

Here is where dwarves shine, both in ancient and in modern times. Dwarf crafters are able to reinforce walls, place traps on every approach, and ward gates or other vulnerable points of defense. They have long been adept at countermining, though in this activity they often took a more supervisory role, with ogres and sprites doing much of the heavy work (or, in certain times and places, kobold slaves did that).

Mages within a fortress or city maintain wards on the defense works, often on some sort of regular basis, as most wards will weaken over time. Dwarf-work is rather more lasting, though hardly eternal. But dwarf-built walls can be expected to stand for many generations. Gates require more frequent maintenance.

In all cases, though, a war will cause a city to re-evaluate its defenses. Mages will be hired, principally to engage in efforts to repulse an attack or to break a siege by clearing the way for a sally. Here is where the battlemage appears most often.

Fire is the most coveted weapon, for it can be set against ladders, catapults, rams, and other tools of assault. This provides the raw material for troubadors and chroniclers, who delight in dramatizing the grim business of war. In truth, almost any form of magic that involves throwing or casting at a distance will be of use in defense during a siege.

This is most often used on the walls themselves, getting as close as possible to the enemy while providing the maximum protection possible to the mages. At times there are examples of fortified shelters build specifically for a particular mage.

Mining

Peculiar to siegecraft is mining, and peculiar to siege mines is the participation of ogres and sprites. These formed a partnership many centuries ago, a partnership that has lasted longer than many a human alliance.

While dwarves regularly supervised the work of countermining (or offensive mining; see below), ogres with their great strength did the manual labor. Properly trained and supervised, an ogre can dig farther and faster than any other creature. Moreover, once a breakthrough is achieved, they are fierce warriors in close spaces.

But there is more than plain physical activity involved. Magic is at work as well, and here sprites excel. They are able to detect the actions of the enemy at a distance, so effectively that ignorant people in earlier times believed they could see through the earth itself. Their magic, ephemeral and difficult to describe, served to protect the miners as well as to disrupt the enemy. And in the case of a breakthrough, sprites were almost as fearsome as ogres.

The battles that took place beneath walls and trenches rarely were of the sort to catch the imagination of poets or chroniclers, but what little direct evidence we have suggests there are as many heroes among ogres and sprites as among humans or elves or dwarves.

Offense

Not all battles are of the same type. There are set pieces, running fights, skirmishes, sieges, naval battles. Any of these will have multiple types of units, including cavalry, infantry both light and heavy, archers.

Battles have maneuvers, including recon, skirmish, charge, counterattack, flanking, pursuit. Each will have their own ideal mix of units, but battlefield realities usually knock these askew.

Offensive Siegecraft

Here again we find dwarves, ogres, and sprites at the forefront, with humans and elves used in other roles, including that of a general assault. As a city or castle wall is the chief point of defense, so the attacking army is chiefly concerned with undermining or otherwise destroying those walls. This has been the case ever since the very first documented instance of magic in a siege; namely, the siege of Constantinopolis in 1131 AUC.

The most common tactic is to strike where the enemy is weakest, which in this case means launching an assault against a portion of the walls undefended by a battlemage. There are innumerable examples of this, reinforced by accounts where a strongpoint–usually a single castle–was held because mages were deployed on every front. Few lords have that kind of wealth to spend on a single fortress, but it has happened.

The Battle Mage

A true battlemage is extremely expensive and is a huge risk to put onto a battlefield, for the loss of one is usually irreparable. Most battlemages will be out of position, cast unreliably, be blocked or outright killed. They are vulnerable to normal attacks, so to protect them requires a contingent of guards, adding to the expense. Any active battlemage instantly becomes a target.

Battlemages can operate at a distance, by line of sight, or in direct contact. It will depend on the individual. Direct contact is risky and best suited to assassination rather than open battle.

Line of sight offers a bit of protection, but it also invites direct countermeasures. Indirect fire is safer but is also less accurate.

There is also attack by proxy, which is the magical use of animals and plants, fire snakes and their variants, and the whole panoply of magically-enhanced missiles.

In nearly all circumstances, tactical combat magic becomes less useful the more closely the two forces engage. A battlemage can be valuable in skirmish and in pursuit. They can do well in raids, or as part of a flanking maneuver.

Many medieval battles developed by accident, largely because of poor intel. Such battles develop piecemeal. Mages are so valuable you would never concentrate them all in the same place, except in highly unusual circumstances. You would scatter them all along the line of march or battle front. They would stay apart in camp as well.

It was standard practice to send a mage or two with foragers, on recon, or other detached operations.

Combat

Staves and Wands

Even with a magic wand, some sort of action must precede. At minimum, magic wands work a gesture and a few words. Another mage might chant or sing, even dance. Whatever it is, it gets done for each salvo, which means an expenditure of energy and resources over and over during the course of battle.

Magic emanates from or is commanded by the wizard. That was the fundamental understanding of earlier ages. There was as yet no knowledge of phlogiston or aether. Some mages spoke of tapping into a power source, variously described, then channeling it into a target, but the language used was still mystical and idiosyncratic.

Most wizards learned from a master—an individual or in a school. These had methods. Since all this was the caster using his own phlogiston to interact through the aether with other phlogiston to affect the physical realm, really all methods worked, much as all regular combat disciplines work. There are more ways of doing it wrong than of doing it right—there’s a form of that aphorism in every discipline. Some do meditation of one sort or another. Some do physical acts. Some make use of staves or charms or gems. Some use drugs. Many use rituals and incantations. Of a hundred paths, only the hundred and first is correct—another aphorism.

But there are enchanted items. Anyone can use these, though certain mages can use them more effectively. Most times, the effects are too slight to be noticed (they can, however, be measured with the right instruments). Sometimes, though, the effects are strong. This is why the sword in the stone worked. It wasn’t just any stone. Exactly that sword could go only into that particular stone, placed there by a particular spell at a particular time, to be withdrawn by only one particular person.

But for combat we are looking for reliable replication of effect.

The schools could only turn out people who have mastered what the school teaches. This didn’t necessarily make them a good battlemage. The best source was the retired battlemage who took on disciples.

The good ones produced mages who can make attacks quickly and reliably. There was a trade-off, though. Faster and better drains the mage more quickly. Like a battery. Rituals were a way of supercharging. Enchanted items will slow the rate of loss. Push too far and hard, and the host system can collapse. The mage dies.

Madmen rarely can cast, but psychopaths can.

Mages win sieges but lose battles. That’s conventional wisdom. Wizardry is not reliable enough and is too expensive to make any but exceptional use in a set battle.

But what about mages forming their own army? Or a squad anyway. A dozen or a score of wizards could certainly take an island or a district in a city. As outlaws they could be fearsome. Such groups are short-lived. They tend to form around a capo and dissolve when he dies.

Orc magic is widely feared. It tends to be based around natural forces—storm, earthquake—so does damage en masse. Orcs can be careless of their own lives, so a hailstorm of rocks might fall even on their own troops.

Enchanted weapons are the most highly prized, for these are almost completely reliable. They can be distributed and employed in various ways, and most do not require much skill to wield.

Many enchantments are modest: an edge that doesn’t dull, armor that is proof against some particular magic, shields likewise.

Also valued are magic beasts. War dogs, war horses, centaurs, dragons, wargs, were-creatures. These can be commanded, and so used in battle.

The most effective way to disrupt a magical attack is to kill the mage. An arrow is ideal. Failing that, a sneak attack or assassination. Failing both, a plain charge by cavalry or even infantry can carry the mage off with the rest of the enemy. Least effective, usually, is a mage attack. That mage, during battle, is better used elsewhere than in trying to counter or kill an opposing mage.

Logistics

There are two aspects to battle logistics. The first is getting to and from a battle site, making sure the army has what is needed and leaves nothing behind. The second is the movement of men and supplies during an actual engagement. Both involve communications, transport, and construction.

Engineers of every type—though mostly dwarves and elves—are found engaged in this activity. In early centuries, these were hardly more than ordinary people with certain abilities, employed ad hoc rather than as permanent professionals. Roads, bridges, camps, points of production (arms and armor), siegecraft, all required specialized skills and experience.

Smiths, for armor and weaponry, but also for a thousand ordinary items, and a hundred magical ones. Artisans generally: carpenters, coopers, and so on. Any of these can have a magical aspect, especially with enchantments.

Transport could include magical animals, portals, and other. Elves were adept with animals generally and with magical animals particularly.

Pixies are attracted to armies, even down to modern times. They’re a pest, sometimes bad enough to require specialists to handle them, known colloquially as pixie patrols.

Spycraft

Leaving aside diplomatic intelligence, which is its own realm, we look here at battlefield intelligence. The enemy’s numbers, movements, plans, and resources. Spycraft is the means by which such intelligence is gathered and transmitted.

The crux of spycraft is to put a man inside. He is hidden, or else he poses as one of the enemy. He observes. He might steal objects (reports, plans, artifacts). And he must report in a timely—and secret—manner. This could be as simple as sneaking back to report in person, but could also be some magical means: a portal, crystal ball, magic pigeon. The spy might be single-purpose, sent to learn something specific and return; or, he might be permanently embedded or stationed. [3 – for example, the observing stations during the Great War]

The spy might need special qualifications. Experience in estimating numbers, ability to recognize magic weapons and preparations, and of course skill in concealment and duplicity and silent combat. Unless some form of telepathy is involved, or an invisibility spell, none of this requires a mage, but only requires someone familiar with magical aspects of warfare. A mage who also had these skills and knowledge might be far more useful in another, less risky service. But maybe you could have a good spy—a soldier first—then send him to a kind of spy training. Give him magical tools if he has no natural abilities. An experienced man could become a sort of spymaster. He has survived. He knows what is needed.

All this naturally implies counter-measures, to stop spies, to mislead them, and to capture them.

Conclusion

The battlemage was but one component of the army of the Middle Age. He was neither the crucial hero nor a mere appendage. He was expensive, used principally by the wealthy and powerful, in the service of particular rather than general interests. His role has changed in more modern times, but that is a separate topic.

This essay merely outlines the contours of the topic. It must be left to others to add form and color to what is little more than a silhouette. Even so, it is to be hoped that the reader will have found something useful in this sketch.