Why don't Armies(with overwhelming numbers) flow in continuous troops at a breach?

Griffith

Banned
I watched the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings Trilogy this week. I notice during the sieges once a breach like the blown wall in Helm's Deep or the battered gates in Minas Tirith was created, the Orcs simply send in hordes and hordes of unlimited troops into the breach continuously until they overwhelm this enemy.

As in the entire army quickly tries to run into the breached area nonstop no matter how many are killed. There is no sense of organization of "Send X Unit" and then "Send X Unit later" and such. Basically like the gamed human waves of the Chinese in the Korean War, they simply keep sending their Orcs into the breach until even when whole units are getting killed until they overwhelm the defenders. The only time they stop and organize in the Siege is when they reach another obstacle like another strong gate or a separate city wall as seen as they are ramming the final gate of Helm's Deep or as seen throughout the various parts of the Siege of Minas Tirith in which they literally temporarily stop as they take each layer of the city so they could bring in a ram and attempt to break the gate of the next wall.

However I also watched the Bakshi Lord of the Rings adaptation. In This version, the Orcs besieged Helm's Deep at a better organized manner. Yes they sent in a large force to swarm in the breached walls in the Siege. But when Theoden did a counter attack at the end of the movie, the Rohirrim though they were winning the Siege at least because their counter cavalry charge was so aggressive the Orcs were literally retreating from the ground they took in the fortress and were getting hacked to pieces.........

Until when Theoden finally chased went outside Helm's Deeps perimeter he finally saw the force thats been attacking Helm's Deep was only a small fraction of Saruman's army and outside the castle walls stood another organized group of Orcs that was waiting throughout the siege for either the initial wave of Orcs to take over the castle or get repulsed. This force basically was going to attack and finish off what was left of the fortress had the initial Orcish wave failed. And they were a CONSIDERABLE distance from the Fortress and were organized in mass formation standing their like waiting for their turn.The number of Orcs awaiting outsid eof Helm's Deep were so much Theoden's cavalry charged stopped in their tracks out of sheer demoralization and shock that there will still many Orcs outside the fortress and they would have been routed if Gandalf did not come with reinforcements.

Were as the Jackson trilogy portrayed the Uruk-hais as sending in non-stop flow of troops into Helm's Deep once it was breached and basically disregarding and formation once they got into a castle. Basically a disorganized barbarian style attack in the Jackson Trilogy after breaching the wall as opposed to the Bakshi movie where they literally were organized into at least two separate sections groups to be used at various intervals of the siege.

Now I notice so many movies LONG BEFORE the Jackson Trilogy was made pretty much portrayed sieges in the same manner as Jackson's movie did. With the exception of when they are ramming down castle gates or when there is another wall within the castle to breach, movies before Jackson's adaptations who that once the gates or a section of the walls were breached, the rest of the siege proceeded in the same manner as Jackson's LOTR where they send in hordes and hordes of seemingly unlimited troops to attack into that breach nonstop until that section has been overwhelmed by the besiegers. Basically win through sheer numbers and disregard almost any formation and tactics minus bombarding with artillery and ramming castle walls.

However I read in real life most sieges resembled the Bakshi version of Helm's Deep where on section of the besieger's forces get sent in and even if the besiegers outnumber the defenders by a ratio of say 50 to 1 or even 100 to one, the Besiegers remain organized in formations in their attacks and use different groups throughout the sieges to enter the fortress's breach at various interval to reinforce troops currently fighting int he castle or to continue the attack if the initial group sent into the breach was wiped out.

I very rarely read about the Besiegers hurling in their entire force to enter a breach like they're canon fodder and even at the final intervals of the siege, the besiegers often attack still in an organized manner using different units for different stages of the final days of the siege.
 
So basically, Why don't they try to funnel everyone into a single breach?

Because you're packing everyone into a relatively rough, small area, where they're gonna be packed in, mostly unable to defend themselves, and can get all clogged up with the dead.

It's sort of the same issue when a bunch of people start swarming towards a door in an effort to get out all at once and they end up getting stuck because everyone wants to get out first.
 
I believe you need to outnumber a fortified defender by 10-1 to really have a chance. I assume most commanders care... somewhat... about the live of their soldiers, or at least need to continue to have large numbers of them for other wars not to sacrifice wave after wave as fodder.
 
Along with the points mentioned above there is also an issue that besieging armies couldn't just sacrifice men pointlessly as there is always the possibility of a relief army showing up to rescue the besieged, if the besieging army didn't have the men to fight off the relief army or perhaps they capture the castle but lack the men to fight the relief army they might find themselves besieged in turn, leading to the besiegers fighting two sieges at once or another several weeks/months defending a possibly ruined fort that is lacking supplies.

There of course can be an impact on morale when losing so many men or farmers within the army wanting to go home to tend their crops before everyone starves back home.
 
The thing is that you are going to crush your troops if you continously tried to flood soldiers into the breach.A human stampede will probably result and the people who gets killed in the stampede will most likely be your own troops.
 
It also requires quite a bit of organization and timing that really isn't doable until things like portable radios come online. As other people have noted, if you crowd too many people into an area at once, they just get in each others' way, so you need to limit the flow to below that threshold. But (since presumably your men have to start from their camp), you can't actually see how crowded things are at the front when your men start marching, and you can't issue commands readily to the mob of men.
 
You want to funnel a massive amount of men through a choke? Sounds like a recipe for hemorrhaging losses while allowing the defenders to take few.
You also have to account for moral just how many of their comrades corpses do you expect your men to walk over?
 
A better solution is to "improve" or enlarge the breech so a large enough opening will permit weapons (i.e., archers, gunfire, canon) to inflict casualties.
 
Top