I've been reading a lot online recently about historical battles, and one thing I've heard again and again is a description of a "press" of scared, angry men (mostly holding sharp things) all shoving and pushing against each other in what must have been a chaotic/frightening event (a battle, shieldwall, etc). I have also recently seen some videos of crowd disasters at events (e.g. shows, sports games).

My question is, how common would it be for soldiers to simply be crushed to death by their own (or the other) side in a pre-gunpowder battle, and do we know how much this varied from army to army and from time to time (I could imagine it may be possible a significant amount of a well trained army's training may possibly have been to avoid this)?

Thank you in advance

My question is, do we know