Huge clash based on historic battle

to follow. Thus began a battle so fraught with casualties, the ground disappeared under mounds of corpses.

Snow’s army lost all sense of order as arrows rained down upon them.

Once Ser Davos, who had remained behind with the reserves, brought the last set of Snow’s soldiers into the fray, Ramsay employed his secret weapon: several rows of disciplined soldiers who had remained far from the battle.

These soldiers surrounded the writhing, fighting mass, entirely encircling them with a wall of shields.

The only things poking out from between those shields were long spears, which the Bolton soldiers used to stab the trapped soldiers as they slowly marched forward. It was truly a death vice.

To history buffs, much of this battle might feel familiar. Classics scholars probably did a double-take at that shield wall, which they would have correctly recognised as a Macedonian phalanx.

Fully developed by Philip II of Macedon and used by his son Alexander the Great to conquer most of Persia, it refers in broad terms to a military arrangement formed by several rows of men bearing those large shields seen in Sunday’s episode.

They use the spears to stab through the “wall,” which is essentially impenetrable.

Those history buffs might also have noticed the familiar strategy employed by Ramsay – pulling Snow’s entire army into a disoriented, bloody mass and encircling it with fresh, organised soldiers. Called the “pincer movement” or “double entrapment,” it is a tactic that has been used in many battles over the years, including the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, on which the scene was originally to be based.

But “needs changed,” so Sapochnik chose to base it on what might be the most famous example of the strategy: the Battle of Cannae during the Second Punic War, in which a small army led by Hannibal of Carthage defeated a Roman army in 216 BC.

Sapochnik told Entertainment Weekly: “Initially we based it on Agincourt which took place between the French and English in 1415. But as needs changed, as did budgets, it became more like the battle of Cannae between the Romans and Hannibal.”

In that famous battle, Hannibal led a Carthaginian army of about 50 000 soldiers. The Romans had almost twice that. Just as in the show, the armies met in two straight lines, but while the Romans’ line grew disoriented in the chaos, the Carthaginian line widened to a crescent.

Hannibal’s soldiers slowly encircled the Romans, as cavalry sneaked up behind the fighting men to close the circle and, eventually, slaughter most of the Romans.

And, unlike in Snow’s case, the Romans did not have a Littlefinger/ Sansa- led deus ex machina waiting around the corner.

Of course, in the episode, Snow’s soldiers attempted to escape the trap by using the pile of corpses as a stairway of sorts. Game of Thrones co- showrunner David Benioff said that idea came from American history.

“The Battle of the Bastards becomes incredibly compact,” Benioff said.

“All these men, all these combatants, crammed into this incredibly tight space on the battlefield. You read accounts of the battles in the Civil War where the battles were piled so thickly it was actually an obstruction.”

In the Game of Thrones, you live or you die. But apparently, you learn some history along the way. – Washington Post

The Battle of the Bastards. At least 70 horses were required for filming