So, what was the Greek's game plan to beat the trojans and get past the walls?
I assumed they had some kind of strategy even if they did overwhelmingly out number the trojans. But that strategy went out the window when Agamemnon ordered the charge after his brother's unexpected death.
We see Odysseus with a very concerned look on his face during the charge saying "our men are too close to the walls"
Send in Achilles.
shareCrush the Trojan Army in the fields in front of Troy, and then hope your army can over run theirs back into the city. If you don't and they seal the doors, then you put them under siege until they surrender and submit to Greek rule.
shareYou would think if a siege was the game plan they would have brought ladders, catapults, or hell maybe a battering ram.
Not sure how Achilles would have changed the outcome if had he been in the battle.
For a siege, you just bring troops. You surround the objective and keep them from getting food from outside, while you live off their crops and herds. That other stuff is for if you get impatient. Based on the story, the Greeks were awful patient...
So why even attack the city? Why not just surround it? Why would they mass their entire army and march on the gates if all they had to do was stand guard outside and kill anybody who came out?
shareI have never seen anything remotely rational about the Greek... strategy. Years, they spent, and the only explanation is something about honor. It certainly seems like their plan was to lay siege, fight the Trojans at any opportunity and avoid doing anything like erecting seige-works or towers. I guess that this being an affair of honor, doing anything like mining was out of the question as well, although I guess Odysseus would have been up for dirty work. I wonder if the actual Trojan War, assuming there really was any one real historical precedent, might have actually been a long series of excursions, with the Greeks arriving, camping and making trouble for a few months at a time over a period of many years.
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