History buffs - historical slave turnover question

[NewJeffCT]

Lol in real life you could probably have a huge slave army and a an army of trained and well equipped regulars outnumbered 4 to 1. And the regulars would most likely chop them to pieces.
In D&D this would be an army of slaves made up of 1st level commoners with a few experts and even the leaders would likely still be commoners or experts of 2nd or 3rd level all with padded armor and improvised weapons. The regular army would be warriors of 1st or 2nd level with officers who were between 3rd and 6th level. Or even officers who were regular fighters. Likely all with scale mail, shields and longswords. And likely supported by archers and a troop of heavy cavalry.

True, but if you have a slave army of 400,000 vs a professional army of 25,000? Maybe add another 25,000 to the professionals for militia call-ups & levys and you are still at an 8-1 ratio with half of your 1 as being around the same level as the slave army. And, I would imagine there would be at least several talented gladiator types among the slaves that could act as leaders.

However, that was not how I imagined my little scenario - no one big apocalyptic battle. This evil slave trading nation is selling around 50,000 slaves per year to various nations around the continent with a population of about 20 million. Per Celebrim's turnover ratio, I calculated the total number of slaves that have passed through this nation and are still living is around 400,000. But, this total is divided between maybe 3 dozen nations and city states...

Now, if this slave trading nation put a special, seemingly innocent, brand or tattoo on each slave before selling them, and recently, they just happened to obtain a long lost ancient artifact that allowed the high priests of this evil god to control these slaves through this brand or mark, just think of the mass havoc it could cause. And, out of the havoc arises the minions of this evil god to restore order from the chaos...

 

[Celebrim]

True, but if you have a slave army of 400,000 vs a professional army of 25,000? Maybe add another 25,000 to the professionals for militia call-ups & levys and you are still at an 8-1 ratio with half of your 1 as being around the same level as the slave army. And, I would imagine there would be at least several talented gladiator types among the slaves that could act as leaders.

You might want to look up Boudicca's Revolt. Several hundred thousand Briton barbarians versus probably 15,000 or so Roman Legionaires. Exact numbers are hard to say, because the Briton figure probably includes the women and children, but the casualty figures are probably close to accurate. The Briton's lost 80,000. The Romans lost 400.

You don't successfully form an empire if you don't have no how to deal with mobs of irregular fighters.

Even during Spartacus's revolt when the Romans are losing, you are dealing with situations where the Romans are often outnumbered 10 to 1, and even then I'd say the main difference is Spartacus was a lot better at leading armies than your average slave commander.

In my opinion, the Veteran Roman Legions are better modeled as 3rd and 4th level fighters than as 1st level warriors. These aren't part time amateur warriors. These are well trained battle harded units that go around mauling barbarian armies, putting down slave revolts, crushing rebellions, and defeating the best armies in the western world often despite a lack of imaginative tactics or good leadership.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

It's worth noting that as much as I love the idea of slave revolts, Haiti is the only long term succesful slave revolt in our historical record, AFAIK. They're very hard to pull off.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'd guess that as the Marius reforms of the army began to really have thier impact, and more and more of the empire began to see themselves as Roman, the difficulty of raising up a revolt on the level of the Spartacus revolt got alot harder. As the army became less and less centralized, the need for the big plantations declined, and associated practice of hauling populations off to Italy as part of the booty of war diminished. Certainly no big slave revolts ever happened again.

It is an interesting question of why not further large scale slave revolts. Not certain that I totally buy this explanation, but certainly a lot of these were factors.

As I understood it Roman agriculture got more large scale not less as time went by, were the major revolts of that period all coming out of a particular model of plantation?

Certainly I would also expect that as infrastructure within the core imperial domains got better it became harder to organize anything so much as bandits without running into a pretty swift and nasty response from local forces.

 

[S'mon]

In my opinion, the Veteran Roman Legions are better modeled as 3rd and 4th level fighters than as 1st level warriors. These aren't part time amateur warriors. These are well trained battle harded units that go around mauling barbarian armies, putting down slave revolts, crushing rebellions, and defeating the best armies in the western world often despite a lack of imaginative tactics or good leadership.

Well, I think it depends on the demographics you use - if the average slave is a Com-1 (default D&D demographics) I can't see the average 60AD Legionary being better than a Fighter-1 or Warrior-2; that's still a huge disparity in combat ability. In that sort of demographic I'd reserve Fighter-3 for Sparteatei (sp?) or similar ultra-elite troops - Alexander's Companion Cavalry, say. Roman legionaries weren't individual supermen (and they knew it) - but they were better disciplined, equipped and trained. If the average slave is an Exp-3 I'd say Ftr-3 for Roman legionary would be about right.

 

[S'mon]

One reason for the late-Republic slave revolts was that the Senate didn't allow any significant military forces to be stationed in Italy, fearing a military coup. With the Principate, Augustus' reforms created among other units the Praetorian Guard as the Emperor's personal field guard, based in Italy, elite troops who could easily put down a local uprising. I think he also greatly expanded the Urban Cohorts (Rome's City Guard), created a professional fire-fighting service, etc.

 

[Celebrim]

It's worth noting that as much as I love the idea of slave revolts, Haiti is the only long term succesful slave revolt in our historical record, AFAIK. They're very hard to pull off.

Considering that it is Haiti that we are talking about that must be some strange definition of success that I'm not aware of.

 

[S'mon]

Considering that it is Haiti that we are talking about that must be some strange definition of success that I'm not aware of.

Successfully killing all the French and creating an independent state?

 

[palleomortis]

True, but if you have a slave army of 400,000 vs a professional army of 25,000? Maybe add another 25,000 to the professionals for militia call-ups & levys and you are still at an 8-1 ratio with half of your 1 as being around the same level as the slave army. And, I would imagine there would be at least several talented gladiator types among the slaves that could act as leaders.

However, that was not how I imagined my little scenario - no one big apocalyptic battle. This evil slave trading nation is selling around 50,000 slaves per year to various nations around the continent with a population of about 20 million. Per Celebrim's turnover ratio, I calculated the total number of slaves that have passed through this nation and are still living is around 400,000. But, this total is divided between maybe 3 dozen nations and city states...

Now, if this slave trading nation put a special, seemingly innocent, brand or tattoo on each slave before selling them, and recently, they just happened to obtain a long lost ancient artifact that allowed the high priests of this evil god to control these slaves through this brand or mark, just think of the mass havoc it could cause. And, out of the havoc arises the minions of this evil god to restore order from the chaos...

STEAL THE THING MAN!!!! STEAL IT STEAL IT STEAL IT!!!!

 

[palleomortis]

I don't quite understand what you are saying, but you seem to be suggesting that if you kill a slaves master and free him, that he'll be so grateful that he'll be willing to fight for you to the death.

I would be very surprised indeed if this was always the case. Each particular would differ from slave to slave. Lawfully aligned slaves from a culture that accepts slaves are just as likely to fight to the death for thier masters, and even those with no particular love of thier masters might not see the fact that there master was a hard man (or woman) as reason enough to kill him. Remember, in many cases the slave will see himself and be seen as part of the family, and this is especially true if they are born into the family. Consider that the antebellum South's slave culture is widely regarded as one of the most degrading in history, and yet I happen to know many cases even then where newly freed slaves begged thier former owners to let them stay on with the family as hired hands and in fact did so. This may seem strange to us modern folks, but its probably not historically unusual. And even among slaves that see the death of thier master and their freedom as good things, most aren't going to be in general wanting to do anything more but head for the hills or home.

Unless you've got someone with a +30 or better Diplomacy skill, don't expect your actions to be treated by the society at large - even by the slaves - as anything more than random acts of terrorism with occasionally fortutious consequences. See John Brown, for example.

Ok, so you don't have the brightest or most inlightend slaves. I guess that kinda takes out my hopes. STUPID SLAVE!!!