Modern Sparta?

Leuctra was oblique order with light infantry support - complex manoeuvers compared to any of the kindergarten crap the Spartans thought was complex.

Other Greeks used light infantry as a support as well, though hoplites were the backbone. and oblique order was in its root still hoplite warfare, though modified.
 

archaeogeek

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Other Greeks used light infantry as a support as well, though hoplites were the backbone. and oblique order was in its root still hoplite warfare, though modified.

Oblique order is not hoplite warfare, it's a refinement of warfare which requires not only well-trained soldiers, but also a commander who has control over their troops. I'll also note that light infantry is something that regularly defeated the spartans because of their lack of own.
 
Oblique order is not hoplite warfare, it's a refinement of warfare which requires not only well-trained soldiers, but also a commander who has control over their troops.


Oblique order is refined hoplite warfare. It's still phalanx, using core phalanx tactics and weapons, only not deployed as usual

I'll also note that light infantry is something that regularly defeated the spartans because of their lack of own.

Under right conditions, when Spartans couldn't deploy hoplites as usual
 
So nobody wants to discuss the militant Deist Prussia destroying feudalism like some century-earlier Napoleon?

I did read Valdemar's response and I thought the point of Westphalia was that states would NOT interfere in the internal workings of other states and that a state's religious orientation was set by its king.

Besides, even if there was legal reason to attack Prussia if Frederick II secularized its government (at least the parts he had authority to), would Austria, France, etc. be willing to do it?
 
So nobody wants to discuss the militant Deist Prussia destroying feudalism like some century-earlier Napoleon?

I did read Valdemar's response and I thought the point of Westphalia was that states would NOT interfere in the internal workings of other states and that a state's religious orientation was set by its king.

Besides, even if there was legal reason to attack Prussia if Frederick II secularized its government (at least the parts he had authority to), would Austria, France, etc. be willing to do it?

Austria would, especially if this happens after the First Silesian War.
 
Austria would, especially if this happens after the First Silesian War.

At that point, though, the religious issue is a pretext for war by a state that has a more concrete grudge--Silesia.

And is there anything in Westphalia that gives a state the right to intervene in the religious affairs of a neighboring state? I thought the whole point of Westphalia was that this kind of thing would STOP.
 
At that point, though, the religious issue is a pretext for war by a state that has a more concrete grudge--Silesia.

And is there anything in Westphalia that gives a state the right to intervene in the religious affairs of a neighboring state? I thought the whole point of Westphalia was that this kind of thing would STOP.

True, but it was not much time after Fred's incoronation. Deism would not be entrenched yet, so Austria could use it as rallying cry to crush Prussia, or at least to try (it'would not be a good time for Austria too, if the War of austrian succession happens on schedule).
No idea about Westphalia, but in the middle of the war of austrian succession I guess it could not matter less.
 
If the USSR ends up with a stronger military influence than it already had you'd have something like this.

Only if we can arrange for the Red Army and Party to become indistinguishable. The Soviets were, indeed, probably the most Sparta-like modern state, but they were so only at the bottom. At the top was a somewhat paranoid, but otherwise non-militant privileged class. That privileged class spent most of its time allaying the risks of uprising from below, but did so through populist language and material rewards. Military strength was very much a secondary source of enforcement.

Is that possible? Hrm....
 
Only if we can arrange for the Red Army and Party to become indistinguishable. The Soviets were, indeed, probably the most Sparta-like modern state, but they were so only at the bottom. At the top was a somewhat paranoid, but otherwise non-militant privileged class. That privileged class spent most of its time allaying the risks of uprising from below, but did so through populist language and material rewards. Military strength was very much a secondary source of enforcement.

Is that possible? Hrm....

Using that aone could say a lot of Arab and Africans were that way. Leaders got in through military coup/uprising. Military was running the show and military was mostly used to keep population in check rather than to be used against external threats.
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned North Korea. Truly the closest you get to a Spartan state in the post-WWII era.

For a more ATL flavor, how about the Hussites?
 
Using that aone could say a lot of Arab and Africans were that way. Leaders got in through military coup/uprising. Military was running the show and military was mostly used to keep population in check rather than to be used against external threats.

Yeah, but the late Soviets had a clear class system with membership in the privileged class predominantly determined by birth and ethnicity. That's Sparta-like.

African and Arabian models have not approached such a clear class division with any degree of stability. It doesn't make you like Sparta if a class briefly seizes power - they have to hold it. Nor in those cases was the military a distinct community from the national population as a whole. The closest it came was having minority groups running the government, as in Iraq with its all-Sunni military. That situation did have some stability, but it wasn't really the case that the Sunni were a privileged group to the same scale as the Spartans.
 
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