A common misconception, arising from children’s history books, Hollywood movies and real-time strategy video games (such as the scene above from ROME: Total War) is that pre-modern battles were fought by two sides with clearly distinct uniforms and easily distinguishable colors. This was in fact very rare — with the exception of some highly professional military forces such as those of the Roman and Ottoman Empires, peasant garb was the norm for most soldiers on history’s battlefields. How, then, did soldiers distinguish friend from foe on a complex battlefield?
Uniforms were rare, and color-coded outfits that we are accustomed to seeing on screen were unusual. Sometimes soldiers would wear a marking, ribbon, armband, or even a number to distinguish them from the enemy. But even if they had armor, that didn’t make it a uniform. For example, the terracotta army discovered in the tomb of the first Emperor of Chin revelas seven styles of armour, which do not appear to have been standardised within separate units.
Language and race could sometimes make differentiating between sides easy, but not always. Mercenaries have been common throughout war in human history, from the Greeks soldiers who fought for Persia during the time of Xerxes to the French Foreign Legion that fought its colonial wars.
And what about civil wars? During the English Civil War in the 17th century between monarchists and parliamentarians, soldiers from each side would be given a “watchword” for each seige and battle. This word would be known only by those fighting on the same side. In an isolated confrontation, an opponent would be challenged with the watchword and if unable to answer, would be regarded as the enemy and treated as such. In the US Civil War, in some battles soldiers would enter the field with numbers pinned on their backs, both to distinguish them and to make arranging the body count after the war easier.
Not until the 19th century and the rise of the state and nationalism did uniforms for soldiers become common. That complication is worth keeping in mind when you watch your next epic battle scene or play a video game.
“…the rise of the state and nationalism…”
More importantly, the rise of factory production and chemical dyes. Only then did vast quantities of uniformly colored cloth become available.
If you read the wonderful Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon’s Grande Armee, there is a lot of discussion of just how hard it was for a handwork economy to generate enough uniforms for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and how hard it was to come up with quantities of dye that would actually last under field use. On long campaigns even “uniformed” troops were marching in threadbare, bleached out uniforms. No doubt earlier armies would have liked to have had truly uniform “uniforms”, but until we had factory production and dyes, it was not achievable.
Plus, uniforms just make it more difficult to switch to the winning side during the battle.
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My impression was that standard, distinctly colored uniforms for soldiers came into being in Europe in the 17th century as part of the general revolution in military affairs that came with Mauritz of Nassau and his system of standardized drill. With all the black powder smoke on the battlefield, brightly colored uniforms and big, distinct battle standards really helped keep the friendly fire casualties down. The British redcoat dates back to the beginning of the 18th century at least, certainly contemporary paintings show it. Although Lex’s point about the difficulty of prducing large numbers of colored uniforms in pre-industrial times is well taken, the size of armies prior to the French Revolution tended to be much smaller, too.
I believe it was a general rule of thumb that regulation uniforms were introduced a lot earlier for officers than for non-coms. This was particularly the case in the Royal Navy: regulation uniforms were first issued for officers in the mid-18th century, and for ratings something like a 100 years later!
Nick: indeed, officers have had uniforms through a good part of history (Hannibal’s soldiers being the first with their white tunics with crimson linings), but regulars wearing uniforms is much more recent as per the post. Of course, powerful professional, imperial armies, that in many ways acted more like police forces in the provinces, were different — hence Roman, Ottoman, and as James points out, British uniforms. But that was the exception, not the rule.
I was thinking about this the other day when reading about the battles between Caesar and Pompey’s forces during the Roman civil wars. I guess that it would have fairly easy to distinguish enemy troops when it was Romans fighting Celts, Persians or Goths, but hellishly difficult when it was Romans fighting Romans. In the case of Romans vs ‘barbarians’, key distinguishing features may have been different weapons, different battle garb, and different ways of fighting and manoeuvring, rather than ‘uniforms’.
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Hmm. You remind me about two journal entries I’ve written some time ago about this very subject. One examines the prevalence of uniforms in ancient and medieval fighting forces while the other deals with battlefield identification among non-uniformed fighting forces. Both of them are somewhat simplistic since they’re meant as guidelines for fiction writers rather than actual historical discourses, but they may be able to add something valuable to the debate.