Premodern Scouting/Reconnaissance Tactics

I was wondering, in the premodern era; ie, before 1850, and for ancient, medieval, and early modern eras; how precisely did military scouts go about performing their duties? I'm thinking; what percentage of an army would be allocated to reconnaissance duties, how they would be deployed, what information would they be required to gather, and how they would go about doing this (ie, how often they would return to the main army, how they would be equipped, and what sort of tactics and methods scouts would employ).

Thanks!
 
Even up through WWI (albeit more so on the Eastern Front), much of scouting was done on horseback, then reported back to command. The telegraph, telephone, radio, and airplane began to change things tangibly only during WWI, so I'm not sure where you're pulling '1850' from as the date when reconnaissance changed forever.

As for size? It varies. Light cavalry, parties of five to five-hundred, depending on the main unit size and the expected size of the enemy. Much of the combat engagements fought throughout history were skirmishes between opposing scouting parties. I'm paraphrasing LSCatillina here but for the most part, medieval warfare comprised of sieges and the actions therein. It was the duty of scouting parties to identify the positions and routes of the enemy armies, to prepare their supposed targets for a siege when they should happen to arrive.

Armies very rarely spent themselves fighting each other---soldiers and the treasure needed to pay them were precious, so pitched engagements really were only necessary when a campaign of successive sieges/sacks of enemy towns wasn't an option, or could only be prosecuted once the enemy army was routed.

Scouts, thus, provided the extremely necessary information of "figuring out where the hell everyone is, and where they're going". This could be done a number of ways:

-Scouts can ride ahead of a main army to locate the enemy, so that the army can meet them in battle/avoid them;

-Established outposts along a frontier can send riders -back- to a main army to achieve the former goals;

-A continuous border patrol can achieve the former, as well (etc.)

As for the actual reporting itself, that depended on the distances involved. Equipment and tactics depended on the army doing the scouting.
 
By blundering around by and large, occasionally bumping into their opposite numbers a short distance away while looking for food, liquor or women.

Seriously, Frederick the Great once lost a critical day in deploying his army to assault a ridgeline defended by a plantation of young pine trees.

I expect for the more sophisticated armies recon consisted of trying to find a route to a known objective that was passable.

Gouvion St Cyr, Marshal of the Empire, got his start during the revolution because the was trained a a painter and could sketch. They put him in charge of the advance scouts.
 
In European contexts, the question of being open vs. covert mattered a lot. Scouts were POWs if caught, spies were hanged. Other cultures took a less rigid attitude here. The Roman army had units of speculatores and exploratores, and it seems that at least some of them were good at blanding in, disguising themselves and looking around.

Accounts also show that local knowledge was actively sought. Armies often depended on trustworthy guides, or not so trustworthy ones.

Generally, bear in mind that the premodern countryside (and the countrside still) is a pretty big place. A single man can hide in it for a long time. As long as a scout does not go too close to guarded positions, he is not at great risk of discovery.
 
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