The studies
concerning the ancient military phenomena in the Romanian area, offers the
full image of an original military way of thinking gained after long
experiences, ancient teachings, an unbreakable desire for freedom -highly
spread in the North-Balkan Thracian civilization- and the supported and
praised activity of skilled military leaders such as Decebal. The decision
to give Decebal the royal title had a precise reason: this choice was made
by the king Duras and his council, in the circumstances of the year 86 A.D
when the Romans prepared to move the military operations on the free land of
the Getae in the North Danube.
In front of this great threat some things had to be done: the resistance in
front of the attacks had to be organized, the anarchical tendencies of local
leaders had to be put off, the whole population had to contribute to the
general improvement of the defensive system ,discipline was a must, the
increase of military skills and qualities of the Dacian army, a good and
operational system of alliances and so on. All these could be achieved only
through the wise leadership of a young, strong commander and a skilled
diplomat. The very thing of naming Decebal king of Dacians was a practical,
realistic thing; these two features were essential in the Dacian military
and political ways.
Dacian horseman with draco
They could analyze objectively the given situations, their own economical, demographic, military powers (units, weapons and techniques, training, fortresses and so on) and those of the enemy. This is a known fact and the Romanian military doctrine used it as a prove of the continuity: all those who could fight were risen to battle in case of foreign attack.
The military ways of the Dacians and of their descendants, the Romanians, can be characterized by flexibility and ability of adapting to new; they were also very imaginative and creative being able to create new forms and military procedures astonishing to the enemy. As an example these facts are illustrative:
1. Dromichaites introduced the general Seuthes in the enemy lines as a traitor (strategy used by Stefan the Great in the battle of Scheia-1486) with the exact purpose of luring Lysimachos' army to take a secondary
road to the fortress of Helis, through "unfavorable places" in a dry and deserted land without water and any other way of survival, where, the Dacians prepared the attack against the exhausted Macedonians;
2. the strategy of the Odrisian king Seuthes, who, while being invaded by Athenians in the Thracian Chersones hired "2000 Getae lightly armed and secretly ordered them to assault -as if they were the enemy-,to set fire to the whole country and to attack those who guarded the walls of the fortress ". When they saw such thing, the Athenians " took heart, got off the sailboats and approached the walls. Seuthes came out from the fortress and met the Athenians as the Getae joined his troops. When these reached the back
of the Athenian units , attacked them from behind and, being assaulted from one side by the Thracians and from the other by the Getae,the Athenians were crushed".
3. the strategy imagined by Decebal during the first battle from Tapae (88 A.D) when, overwhelmed by Tettius Iulianus' forces and in order to make the Romans withdraw "he cut the trees about the place and he leaned the weapons against the trunks so that the Romans fear soldiers could be near and withdraw, which it happened". Decebal was famous for his skills in "setting traps" and he was, through the power of his genius, as Dio Cassius says, close to stopping the war with Traian by using two unexpected methods :
a) he sent to Moesia, in July of 105 A.D, a diversion unit which in nowadays terms we would call a "commando" unit with the mission of killing Traian as "he could easily be reached" for the "war made him receive without selection any man who would want to speak to him. So, Decebal sent to Moesia some runaways to kill him but these could not do it; one of them was caught, tortured and he confessed the whole plan plotted by Decebal";
b) he invited to the negotiations and captured the commander of the Roman legions occupying Dacia at that time, general Gnaeus Pompeius Longinus whom he wanted to use as a pressure instrument against Traian. Decebal would ask Traian through messengers to free "the country as far as the Hister and to return the money he had spent with the war; only under these conditions would he see Longinus alive again". This plan failed too because the prisoner committed suicide and Traian proceeded to the "second Dacian war " which, given the famous "slyness" of Decebal, he carried rather “cautiously than with ardor". " Avoiding the war at any cost, saving the population and the goods from those who attacked was another feature of the Dacian and Getae military mental conception, which joined the general Romanian military conception. Burebista, Dicomes, Coson interfered in the fights between the emperors and those who were thought to be
people's enemies (Caesar, Octavianus) in order to sustain others in their political climbing whom they considered allies and with whom they had various negotiations (Pompeius, Antonius). This was the way of the Dacians, the same way in which after centuries, Mircea the Old would sustain Musa, Mustafa and Bedr-ed-Din between 1409-1418 against Mehmed I, the youngest son of Bayazid Ildîrîm and the ally of the Byzantine Empire, in order to eliminate the Ottoman danger .
Once the war broke loose, the negotiations were only used to gain the necessary time to organize the defense and to protect the goods and the not-fighting part of the population. Cassius Dio wrote regarding this aspect that "Decebal was ready to accept (in the winter of 101-102 A.D) all he would have been asked, not because he wanted to actually do what he would be asked, but to regain his breath". Altogether with the care for the population and for their goods, the Dacians had another strategy of defense; these were the strategies that involved every part of the population, as small as its role might be, in order to constantly harass the enemy physically and psychologically, lure it in various traps and ambushes to reduce its number bit by bit. We can easily use a remark made on Stefan the Great's account as a general characterization for both the Dacians and the Romanian : "they did not dare to come in the open" (in front of the turkish armies, in the plains of Buceac-1484), they prefered to stay in narrow, mountainous, wooden or swampy areas and to attract the enemy in these parts to prevent them from using all their forces. Here, we find another original features of the military Dacian way of thinking: using permanently the nature as an ally, the preference for a flexible military unit, easily moved and powerful in any given circumstances, giving up final battles and defending their fortresses instead, using a wide military operational area and a strong system of alliances, keeping a spare area in which they would organize the army and concentrate the power in case of defeat (as Decebal did after he left Sarmizegetusa and withdrew in the unoccupied territories inside the Carpathians).
Dacian taraboste- drawing by Radu Oltean www.historyarts.ro
All this offers our ancestors a dynamic character regarding the military ways and also a creative and varied formula of defending what was theirs.
Avoiding human loss was one of the main cares of the Dacians -the population was considered to be the most precious thing of the land-and also avoiding material loss as it was very important in order to keep the defense strong .Their methods and strategies aimed at achieving victory with little loss and in short time against various attackers, superior (military speaking) to them. According to the great historian Radu Rosetti "it is most admirable the fact that the Dacian strategy although inferior as military force ,but with great tactics succeeded in opposing the Romans such strength that could not be defeated if there weren't those powerful techniques and many years of effort".
As essential features of the Getae and Dacian military strategy continued by the military concept of the Romanians we can emphasise on: the just proportioning of the general aims (stopping and pushing away the attackers, the upheaval of the two forces fighting the battle in their favor so on) with the means (their own strength and the one of the enemy); the just choice of the strategic objectives (the strategic defense, followed by the counter-attack or the attack in order to overthrow the enemy's front and to move the military operations on the enemy's territory) and of the just forms of military action; gaining and keeping initiative to control the moment and the place of the battle; concentrating all forces to achieve initiative; acting strategically using allied forces; keeping a spare area in order to be able to react in unfavorable situations; adapting to certain circumstances given by the land or the weather and especially keeping the initiative of starting a battle in special circumstances such as hard winters and in special areas such as wooden mountains, dry land or swamps.
Burebista in 49-44 B.C , as well as Cotyso (perhaps a descendant of Deceneu at Sarmizegetusa, or perhaps only a local "king"), Zyraxes (a king from the Northern Dobrogea, with his dwelling place at Genucla) in the years 31-28 B.C, the presumed father of Decebal, Scorilo (Coryllus) or Duras (Dorpaneus) who in 69 A.D knew how to use wisely the civilian wars in Rome starting the first counter-attack destined to throw the Romans back to Macedonia ,were kings and leaders who had as essential goal the freedom of the Getic throne from the Southern Danube, then invaded by Romans. For building a strong system of alliances able to keep away enemy forces the Dacians used the quarrels between different enemies, succeeding to join the Scythians against Darius in 514 B.C and against the governor left by Alexander the Great in Thracia, Zopyrion (326 B.C or as some historians say, 334/333, 331/330 b.C); with the Celts (109 B.C), the Bastarnae (29-38 A.D, 85-86 A.D), the Quads and the Marcomanni (88-89 A.D), the Sarmatians especially the Roxolane (69 A.D.,85-86 A.D, 101-105,117-118 A.D.), the Boe (101-1029) and even the Macedonians (171-168 B.C) against the Roman Empire. They invoiced the common interests regarding the military issues, joining the Thracian tribes from the Northern Balkans (ex: the Tribalii in 335 B.C, the Moesii, rebelled in 26, 69, 86 A.D), the Greek colonies (339 B.C when, controlling a Getae and Histrian coallition a "rex Histrianorum" shows up; in 326 B.C when the Dacians are Olbia's allies against Macedonians; in 300-392 B.C, when Dromichaites conducts all military efforts to put an end to Lysimachos' invading plans; in 72-71 B.C ,61 B.C against the Roman proconsul of Macedonia, and so on) Ariovist, the king of Suebians (60-50 B.C) or Pacorus II, the king of the Partae (103-105 A.D), etc.
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A moment of logical persuasion was represented by Decebal's call to his neighbors in the spring of 105 when, as Dio Cassius tells us ,"he instigated them to war" saying that if they leave him, they will endanger themselves, that freedom was more easily kept if they fought by his side and that if they left the Dacians die ,later, all alone without any allies, they would follow them in death. In military defense, the Getae and Dacian leaders tried to build up their plans in such manners adapted to their enemies' force and objectives. Considering the data we have, in the year 514 B.C in front of the huge Persian army (around 700000 warriors and 600 sailboats) "being determined to stubbornly resist", the Getae attacked the invaders "even before they arrived to the Hister". |
Heavy cavalry wearing a Sarmatic armor
The catafractari
In front of the most powerful military units of the age (the Macedonian phalanx of the military genius, Alexander) the Thracians from the North-Balkans will decide in 335 B.C to shut the passes in the Balkans and to crush the enemy through an unusual tactics: they besieged the enemy in a uneven, dangerous land specially arranged "Posada" style and then, the concentric attack should give them full victory.
Arrian wrote : "They had brought wagons (war chariots?) and putting them in front, used them as entrenchments to fight from them if they were attacked. At the same time, they thought of crushing those wagons against the Macedonian phalanx from the highest place of the mountain. They imagined that, the harder a wagon hit a compact phalanx the easily it was scattered by the violence of the hit". The same source mentions the withdrawing of Syrmos' Tribalii, which permanently followed the enemy as far as the Danube, and the coming of the state union's army in the Southern plain with 4000 horsemen and 10 000 pedestrians determined not to let the enemy cross the river. In the same way, the last great Dacian ruler, Decebal will organize, as would his descendants-Mircea the Old, Vlad the Impaler, Stefan the Great, Ion the Terrible or Mihai the Brave-the whole Danube's shores. Crito, as a witness to all this said that forcing the Danube frontiers by the Romans in 101 A.D had brought them "an attack, as they passed the river and prepared to disembark". The resistance was decided where the general conditions were very difficult (uneven land, wooden mountains, deep and wide river)-in Haemus, the Banat's Carpathians or near the Danube. Florus writes about the "Dacians who depend on the mountains", about the proconsul of Macedonia, C. Scribonius Curio who gave up his campaign of crossing the Danube in 75-74 B.C "terrified" by "the darkness of woods" and about Vergilius' fear of the "Dacians who come from the Hister which plots against us".
If the enemy succeeded in crossing the frontiers, the second stage of the Dacian military strategies emerged: the flexible defense, organized as the army moved, with their own camps highly systematized. It is well known the situation in 101-102, when the Romans managed to penetrate through various places, trying to turn the left flank of the Dacian front in order to fully surround Sarmizegetusa. These flexible units passed into a strategic waiting and when the initiative was gained and maintained they arranged and "engineered" the whole place. It is now when the "Popular war" involving all social classes joins in, the harassment of the enemy day and night, the crushing of scouts or defense systems with the mobile light cavalry, the luring of the enemy on dark secondary unsafe roads, the burning of the land and all in all the artificial arrangements to get the perfect Getic desert (in which Zopyrion's army died in 326 B.C) are now most used methods to exhaust and madden the enemy. The villages were set on fire, the wheat was buried, cattle and population hidden and as Arrian wrote, Alexander marched through "deserted places" in the Southern plain.
This depressing picture was very much alike to the one offered to Mehmed II the Conqueror in 1462 by the army of Vlad the Impaler. The sources regarding Lysimacos' campain from 292 B.C against Dromichaites tell us that Seuthes, "had brought the Macedonians in unfriendly territories where they suffered of hunger and thirst"; "Lysymachos' army was tortured by hunger. Friends advised the king to get away as soon as he could and to abandon the thought that his army could save him. Lysimachos answered that it was not fair to leave his men and friends, organizing some shameful escape for himself". At the end of such 'Psychological" war, when the enemy could not oppose with the same force, the third stage of the Dacian military strategy emerged: the final battle, surprising the enemy on an unfriendly land already arranged in which their own war mechanisms had already been installed. It is well known that the Tribalii used a war mechanism organized on 4 lines: in the first line the weak warriors for exhausting the enemy, in the second the brave ones, in the third the horsemen and in the last, the women to encourage those who fought.
Tarabostes
Underneath this joke of Nicolaos of Damascus it can be really appreciated that the infantry was the basic weapon , the horsemen were left to do the surrounding through turning the enemy's flanks, opening the final attack sustained by the pedestrians and to organize in certain moments the counter-attack in pointed formation. Defeated, the enemy could be taken prisoner as it happened with Lysimachos' Macedonian army, could be killed as it happened with Fuscus' legions or forced to withdraw chaotically, situation in which the Dacians followed the enemy until it crossed the frontier or until it was totally crushed. This pursuit was made with the light cavalry detachments directly or on parallel directions, in the latter situation the enemy was surrounded and stopped from withdrawing by blocking the passes. In these given circumstances, the enemy army of Zopyrion was completely crushed on its way back to Oblucita; it was surrounded on swampy land, while a storm broke loose and destroyed all its fleet and the Getic army managed to "erase it from the face of the earth". When the enemy wasn’t completely crushed, only banished across the river with great loss, the pursuit could be longer, the Dacians organizing while they moved a counter-attack in order to free the Southern parts of the Danube, occupied by foreign army. In such manner acted the Getae in 514 B.C when permanently harassing the Persian army on its way back, they organized the counter-attack of the Getae and Scythian army joined by other Balkan tribes and Greek colonies.
The consequences of this attack were felt all the way to Small Asia. The counter-attack was prepared and successfully done while the closing of enemy troops could not be stopped; the Getae wanted to open a second battle front which would ease the efforts on the main front or which would permit refolding the armies. According to some information from the ancient authors this plan of battle brought Decebal the final victory in 87 A.D. The contradictory data which had come to our attention, regarding the Roman attack in the Northern parts of the Danube lead by Cornelius Fuscus, are taking us to contradictory hypothesis. Petrus Patricius, Tacitus, Iordanes and Juvenal offer us the first data : deliberately irritating the Roman Senate through the demand that the peace be compensated by a certain sum of money collected from each Roman citizen, "two oboli each citizen", Decebal decided the moment of attack-he decided the start and the direction in which the war would go.
The invading army crossed the river at East from Oescus (Ghighen) on a bridge made of boats, it was commanded by Fuscus and moved South-North, on the Olt valley. It wanted, by forcing the Turnu-Rosu pass to make a special maneuver organizing the attack on Secas and Mures valleys and by that isolating the powerful Dacian fortress from the Orastie mountains.
"Skilled in setting traps", Decebal prepared a huge ambush in the mountains in the narrow pass Olt. He was the first to give birth to a military tradition very well represented by the battles in 1330 and 1395. Specialists in organizing the opposition in the mountains and woods, "the Dacians even from the first encounter defeated the Romans, killed their general Fuscus and robbed the riches from their military camp, even capturing the flag of the V legion Alaudae" (Iordanes).
The second hypothesis sustained by Suetonius and the poet Martial, suggests the existence of slight victory of Fuscus at the beggining. To stop his advance, Decebal launched a powerful counter-attack in Dobrogea, trying to weaken the back of the Roman front through destroying all military base in Moesia.
Forced to withdraw, Fuscus had concentrated all his forces to defend the fortresses from the Lower Danube, hence he was crushed in the final battle which ,it is said to have been somewhere around Adamclisi. The mausoleum from Adamclisi it is said to be his and on it there are carved the names of the 3800 soldiers he lost.
After some years, it is said that Traian added to this mausoleum as a sign of his victory over Dacians the final trophy. Both hypothesis lead us to the same conclusion: the Dacians obtained a great victory due to the courage of their warriors , to their realistic strategies and of course to their skilled leader-Decebal.
A second counter-attack took place in a similar situation in the early spring of 102, when Traian returned on the battle-fronts from Hateg. Several months before, after the victory from the second battle of Tapae (autumn, 101),while the main Roman forces began to "climb mountains" getting close to "the Dacian royal dwelling place", the Moorish cavalry ordered by Lucius Quietus had began to force the Valcan pass in order to surround the place and, "attacking from other side, it slaughtered many and many it had caught alive; then, Decebal sent his messangers"-of course, only to get some time to organize his army to overthrow the situation. The Dacian king "knew how to escape sane from a defeat", so he used the short time he got because of the winter. Counting on the Getae support ,on the Thracians and Getae in Moesia Inferior-ready to rebel against Roman authorities -,on the alliances with the Roxolane , Bastarnae and perhaps on the Partian king Pacorus II, before the Danube thawed he attacked the Romans in Moesia trying to free the territories on the right side of the Danube. He also tried to intercept "Traian's communicating with the Empire's resources" and to catch the Roman army from the mountains between two battle-fronts, like in a pair of tongs.
The events carved in Traian's Column, scenes XXXI-XLIV proved the realism of his strategic ideas. The nature itself had to interfere through the early thaw which caused great loss to the Dacian cavalry while crossing the river and at the same time, giving Traian time to embark quickly and to move his units to support the garrisons from Moesia, attacked by Dacians. The courageous act to turn the right flank of the Roman front failed, 3800 soldiers died in the final battle from North-Eastern Durostorum (Silistra) and South of Axiopolis (Cernavoda) where, it will be built the great monument and a new city of Tropaeum Traiani will be founded. Traian managed to stop the attack and to keep the situation under control. In great hurry he embarked with his available forces on his fleet (Classis Flavia Moesica), returning on the main battle-front to continue the assault in the mountains of Orastie. The new attempt of Decebal to gain time by sending "the most brave pilleati" as messengers, failed. The main forces of the Roman army, conducted by the very Traian, together with the Moorish cavalry started to advance again to Sarmizegetusa, organizing its positions by building the so called "castrum" (military base) "on the high cliffs of Jigoru Mare, Comarnicel and Varful lui Patru".
Many of the forces from Moesia Inferior penetrated Transilvania through Bretcu pass and Bran (after the military base from Targsor, Malaiesti, Pietroasele, Drajna de sus were built), through Turnu Rosu; the last ones were commanded by the governor Manius Laberius Maximus which organized the attack in the Western front. Many of this counter-attack's features, failed mostly because nature opposed it-in the exact way in which 19 centuries after this moment the same failure would occur to the Romanians in Turtucaia-will have been direct results of the rich legacy of military art left by the grand era of the brave leaders Burebista and Decebal. Called in front of the Getae and Dacian armies joined together by the great poet and king, Deceneu, the Getae king Burebista started in extremely short time (61-55 B.C), with the purpose of stopping the aggression (the proconsuls actions, 3 great military campains one after another which had a great success but disturbed the unity of the Norh-Balkan Thracian state.
One was against the Boii and Teurisci from North-West, another against the Greek fortresses from the Western parts of the Black Sea which wanted an alliance-as a continued action of the one that took place in 61 B.C when C. Antonius Hybrida's legion was crushed in Histria and against the Scordisci and Illyrians from the united land of Tisa and Danube.
These were, as many more, the actions meant to answer the Roman aggression which wanted to rule, after 111 B.C the Thracian and Getae lands between the Hister, Haemus and the Sea. They will be continued after the Romans created Moesia (15 A.D) and after they left here, as a permanent threat a bastion (Scythia Minor), by the unified Dacian state from Sarmizegetusa. As a first military action, these kings, (Scorilo or Duras), initiated the campaign from 69 A.D to free the land from the Southern Danube as far as Haemus mountains; this campaign was surprising, because of the great number of Getae and Dacian units and because of the large parts of Moesian, Thracian and Getic population involved and encouraged to rebel.
There were also the Roxolane involved against the Romans. To prevent any Dacian military action from taking place, the emperor Vespasianus (69-79 A.D) encouraged Rubrius Gallus to take strong measures in order to defend the new province of Moesia: the emperor gave him 4 legions, enforced the Danubian fleet (Classic Flavia Moesica) whose base was established at Aegyssus (nowadays Tulcea) and Noviodunum (Isaccea). A grave threat was starting from this point on to hang over the Dacian state from the Northern Danube. The military bases system, the Moesic territories and the roman fleet, not only made any attempt of freeing the land almost impossible, but gave the Romans the possibility of returning through Scythia Minor the Dacian front and to restart from best positions the attacks.
This attack was necessary for the Romans, and on its victory depended the final defeat of the Dacian kings who could not accept the loss of their southern lands, the ruling over the greatest European economical artery-the Danube-also a strategically and military spot. Given these circumstances, when the confrontation between the Northern Thracians and the Romans had reached -after a quarter of millenium from the Macedonian collapse in the battle from Pydna (June the 6 168 B.C) and after its last attempt to regain freedom (146 B.C)-its final stage, Decebal's ascension as Dacia's king took place. He was a prince, perhaps a Duras' nephew, if not son; Decebal could have been apprenticed as a commander in 82 A.D when the Dacians took the initiative of attacking the Romans in order to free the Dacian-Moesian lands and when, Domitianus (81-96 A.D) managed with hardness to put an end to these attacks, by asking the help of the German units.
It is sure that Decebal conducted the campain from the winter of 85/86 which was very close to succeed in reuniting the great Dacian state of Burebista. Except for the names and the peoples participating to this battle, we could easily compare this campaign of Decebal-the only Dacian campaign thoroughly described-with the campaigns described in the Medieval chronicles of Mircea the Old, Vlad the Impaler, Stefan the Great or Mihai the Brave. Crossing the Danube in the winter and attacking the Roman units at every military base along the Danube, the Dacians managed to annihilate most part of Roman garrisons. They "started to sack the Danube shores, ruled by a long time now, by the Romans, destroying the units and their commanders", wrote the Goth historian, Iordanes.
The ruler of this province at that time was Oppius Sabinus and the Goth (Get)ruler was Dorpaneus; "in the battle, the Romans were defeated and Oppius Sabinus was beheaded". The whole Southern Danube military system was ruined, numerous "military bases and cities" fell, the communication lines were interrupted, and as Tacitus says, "the legions' fortresses and our very ruling was doubted in those times". To save this whole situation, Domitianus was forced to use all Empire's resources. He arrived at Naissus (Nis) to personally watch the military operations, engaged the Pretorian guards in the battle giving Cornelius Fuscus the title of "Pretorian prefect", commander of all armies gathered at the Danube. After he put an end with hardness to the Dacian attacks, the emperor tried to organize the defense; he split the newly conquered province of Moesia in two: Inferior and Superior attaching each one of these a powerful military unit. These two were meant to be watching and attack military bases from which, Domitianus wanted to attack the Dacian state. From that moment on, the last episode of the conflicts between the Dacians and the Romans started: "the biggest war for the Romans, in those times", a war "against the Dacians" that lasted for 20 years, against those who organized themselves under the command of the "fierce" king Decebal, a war that will be ended gloriously after the campaigns from 101-102,105-106 by the worst enemy of the Dacian king : Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus (98-117 A.D).
It is the Romanian people's legacy what these two civilizations : Thracian-Dacian and Roman had left, all their material and spiritual accomplishments. As the great historian Vasile Parvan said, this Dacian opposition was like " a love song that peoples rarely sung to their endangered countries". In the mental conception and in the military art belonging to the people of this land these experiences of the ancestors would leave traces and true valor regarding all aspects of war and defense, of involving the whole human potential of the land in order to defend it from a more powerful attacker, of certain techniques and trainings, of overthrowing the ratio of forces through constant harass of the enemy and its exhaustion, of gaining and keeping the military initiative, of saving the non-fighting individuals together with the goods, of deceiving the aggressor and luring him in deserted areas where he is hit and ruined, of having a powerful system of alliances and the examples could go on.
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The archaeological proves, together with the written sources allow us, with certain blanks, of course the reconstitution of the Thracian-Getic-Dacian military phenomena and at the same time to establish some similarities concerning the units, the materials used and the techniques, the armies and the defensive system and how it worked ,between those of the Northern Thracians and those of the Romans. The reconstitution of the military phenomena offers us certain clues regarding the originality of the military thinking in the North-Balkan Thracian area, the developing of the military art as a result of the experiences and depending on certain features of the land and on the mobilization of the population, according to the principle of participating to a battle with all forces, protecting those who did not fight and measuring in just ways the enemy's powers. It can also be stated that in political and diplomatic areas, the Thracians had an active strategy; when a conflict broke out, they used an active defense strategy, stopping the attacker, using unusual and special maneuvers (harass, the maneuvers involving in and out directions, setting the land and crops on fire etc), luring the enemy deep within the country but on secondary deserted roads, far away from the political and religious core of the state, overturning all situations through turning the right flank of the enemy and using a counter-attack on the main direction. |
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The attack was strategically very well prepared especially when it aimed to stopping a land from being taken by the enemy (as an example, the Southern lands, invaded by Romans) and it was accompanied, in Burebista's era by an unification process, to organize a Dacian state. The Dacian military commandments have always had in their sight surprising the enemy tactically and strategically, acting very unusual and unexpected, using every gift of the nature surrounding them in order to dazzle the enemy. The study of the military phenomena in the Northern Thracian civilization conducts us to some conclusions-as the similarities between the Romanian Medieval military art and the Contemporary one are quite many and on this basis we can identify some general features of the native military society :
1) the originality and the high degree of evolution in the Thracian and Dacian civilization is similar to the Roman one;
2) the continuity of the Romanians in the Dacian abode is provable through the evolution of some specific features of the military phenomena;
3) it was a legacy left to the Romanians, the doctrine according to which it is the duty of all those capable of wearing a weapon to defend the ancient Thracian-Dacian land.
Dr. Mircea Dogaru
Army and society in Romanian area, The political studies, defense and military history Institute
Translated and adjusted
Codruta aka Pădure
Grupul Sarmizegetusa
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