Kit Clash - How Armies Identified Themselves Through History

In the FIFA World Cup Quarter Finals Morocco will be trying to complete its 2022 Iberian conquest, having seen off Spain in the last round. As with that clash though, there is a small sumptuary issue. Both teams play in an appropriately festive red and green home shirt. So, before they battle for a place in the semi-final, they will do what football teams at all levels do - one will change into a different kit in order that both sets of players, and of course the fans, can distinguish friend from foe.

It raises the interesting historical question of how armies differentiated between each other. Because, for a long time, combatants did not wear unique identifying colours or uniforms that made it easier for troops to avoid friendly fire. Men at arms certainly didn’t turn up with kitmen packing a spare set of tunics to avoid a colour clash. Roman Legionaries were not likely to take pity on the Barbarians and offer to play skins.

When it came to clashes of cultures, telling ally from enemy would not have been too hard. When the Arab conquests swept out of Morocco and across the Mediterranean and into what is now Spain and Portugal, racial, tactical, and different clothing habits likely made telling Umayyad from Visigoth extremely easy.

But when similar cultures fought, then telling friend from foe became harder and more important. How did they do it? And just how much friendly fire would have occurred because armies were not wearing suitable team kit?

To some extent, military markers have been around in battle for as long as humans have fought. Perhaps the most famous battle uniform of the ancient world was Constantine’s decision at the fateful Battle of The Milvian Bridge to order his soldiers to paint their shields with the Chi-Ro symbol, an early Christian identifier. Although intended more to call on divine support – since Constantine saw in the heavens the words “conquer by this sign” - it would have had the happy accident of making his army’s job easier in the battle that would make him Emperor and turn the Roman Empire Christian.

The Chi-Ro symbol

The Battle of The Milvian Bridge - Guilio Romano

In general, the style of war makes a big difference to how important military identification, or lack thereof, is. The historian Xenophon describes Spartans being allocated red cloaks, something which became a distinctive feature of the city state. But it would have been relatively rare that cloak proved decisive in battle. For one thing, it is likely that the Spartans would have shed them before battle for freer mobility. More importantly, the men of Lacedaemon were drilled in the tight hoplite formation – which prioritized keeping units in close proximity to each other with shields overlapped. In this style of combat, being separated would often mean speedy death rather than 300 style feats of individual glory as you identified and rushed back to red-coated ranks. You didn't need identifiers as much as you needed total trust in the man and men next to you. Such would be the pattern for a long time.

The same was certainly true of Rome, for a long time the inheritor of Sparta's red. But the suggestion that the common legionaries marched with red tunics as they are often depicted in film and tv is likely wide of the mark. Roman soldiers had to provide their own tunics, and with red an expensive dye, it is likely that most would have found better uses for their money. Like the Spartans, Roman commanders were more interested in drilling the men into a perfect fighting force than they were in the colour of their tunic.

That doesn’t mean that they went without any form of identification. From 104 BC onwards, legionnaries fought under eagles, and they guarded these marks of their unit with their lives. This remained true even in the civil wars, providing a way for soldiers dressed identically on different sides to identify a legion loyal to Caesar or Pompey. The strict rules of discipline that governed the Roman army - turning and running was brutally punished, including by decimation - meant that the direction an army faced and the proximity of a banner would have likely been guide enough to friend or foe, whether they were fighting Romans or any of the peoples whose lands they went to conquer.

That was also true in the shield wall style combat that remained the norm in Western Europe long after the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Like hoplites, Saxons in a shield wall would fairly easily be able to tell who the opposition were – mostly they were the ones facing you. Of course, shield walls did break, and then inevitably things got messy.

A section of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting a cavalry charge against a shield wall - easy for both sides to tell who is who

When that happened, you might have been able to rely on your senses. A Saxon finding himself in a routed shield wall might well identify a Dane through his blond hair and beard or his preference for an axe, although it is worth noting the Vikings’ beards were a source of pride and were more likely to be well-groomed rather than the shaggy messes common in popular depictions now. Even easier would be to tell if you recognized the language an enemy soldier was shouting in. This would of course be more difficult if you were fighting a local dispute. But whether you were fighting men from the next village or overseas visitors, the easiest way of all to tell was the same as it had been for Roman or Spartan - a soldier’s direction and behaviour. It doesn't matter how many different designs there were painted on shields, if one was overlapping yours, he was a friend. Running away was still one of the surest ways to die in battle.

It was as armour advanced and armies grew back towards ancient levels that military identification became more of a preoccupation. Men were better protected in full suits of armour, and, with the exception of crusades, most European Wars at this time involved fighting people who looked a lot like you and fought with similar weapons.

Medieval Europe inherited much from the ancient world, and just one example was the practice of standard bearers. Just as Roman legions fought under their eagles, so men at arms fought under their lord’s standard. Soldiers were expected to remain nearby. But with so many lords raising troops, the heraldry on a battlefield would have meant potentially even more confusion between friend and foe. Nobles would have been well schooled in the markers of nobility, but the peasantry called up to fight may not have known many markers beyond their local lord's.

In England, organized military marking seems to have begun with the Battle of Evesham in 1265, Simon de Montfort’s rebels wore white crosses on their uniforms, just as they had done in an earlier encounter. Like Constantine’s Chi-Ro the mark was supposed to help corral divine favour, highlighting the righteousness of their opposition to Henry III, but it also served as an identifier. According to Chronigraphus, aka William Rishanger, de Montfort was eager to claim the credit for the idea when Henry’s army imitated the trick with red crosses, saying "They have not learned that for themselves, but were taught it by me.”

Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, in rebellion against Henry III, dies at the Battle of Evesham. Note that the artist has included red crosses on the arms of Henry's forces, albeit not de Montfort's own white crosses.

Nonetheless, army markings did not immediately become commonplace following Evesham. Perhaps Henry did not wish to honour the defeated de Montfort’s idea by making it standard practice. Instead, Medieval Europe continued to do what it had long done, it developed systems of identifying individuals much more effectively than they did whole armies. In a rather apt characterization of the class consciousness of feudal society, the means of identification served to protect those who could afford elaborate armour with family or personal identification. A livery or special armour marked that soldier as a man to be captured alive and ransomed rather than killed. Naturally it did nothing for the common soldier, who, by virtue of his lack of valuable armour and personal ensign, was designated as someone much more expendable.

Slowly though, the idea of distinguishing armies did start to cut through. On the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V instructed his soldiers to wear the red cross of St George, the same symbol that Henry III’s forces had used against De Montfort, on back and front, something that no doubt helped minimise friendly fire in the chaotic battle that followed. The very fact that this is recorded suggests it was noteworthy. Equally, that it was something that had to be painted on relatively near to the battle rather than something the troops arrived in France bearing suggests it had not become standard practice in the century and a half between the two battles.

The Battle of Agincourt, 15th-century miniature, Enguerrand de Monstrelet

From the 15th century, there were gradual steps towards greater identification of armies’ uniforms, and not just in Europe. At a similar time, the sashimono was revolutionizing military identification in Japan. Best translated as a back flag, the sashimono bore clan markings, helping identify armies from the 15th to the 17th century who were otherwise fighting in similar styles and wearing similar armour. However, predominantly the movement was still towards better denoting individual lords rather than dressing an army representing multiple lords in a single style. It would take more centralised states to make this final transition.

Rear view of Onikojima Yatarô Kazutada in armor with a sashimono, a woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the series Six Select Heroes

Perhaps for that reason, mistakes were inevitable. Ironically in fact, one of the Middle Ages’ most famous pieces of friendly fire was a result not of no identification but of mistaken identity. At the Battle of Barnet in 1471, the Earl of Warwick, who by that time has defected to the Lancastrian cause, attacked his own men when fog caused him to misidentify the Earl of Oxford’s sun badge as a Yorkist star. Oxford, thinking Warwick had turned his coat again, fought back, leaving Edward IV an easy job to seize on the chaos in the Lancastrian lines and slay the Kingmaker.

Like most things in history, the development of military identifiers has not followed a straight line. After Agincourt or following the Tudor victory in England, armies did not start immediately wearing state rather than individual lords’ colours and emblems. It would not be until the development of standing armies in the 17th century that troops in England began to dress the same, and in some sense, with the state doling out uniforms, they were reaching back to traditions that were much more resonant of Xenophon’s Spartans than they were of the Earl of Oxford’s suns.

As for the colour they chose – well it would be the same as that of Sparta, of Rome, of the Janissaries, and the same that both Portugal and Morocco would like to wear for their quarter final – red.