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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 811904" data-attributes="member: 5328">Well, the Southern Soong (a mediaeval Chinese Empire) maintained a standing army somewhat over 1% to defend their northern borders. But they had a number of significant advantages (highly productive (wet rice) agriculture, good water transport from their farming areas to every point on their defended border, etc.), and even so the effort destroyed their economy in a generation and they were overwhelmed. Apart from that I don't know of any pre-Modern polity that has maintained a standing army of 1%.I don't count knights doing 40 days a year of guard and ward in royal castles a 'standing army'. Most feudal kingdoms maintained a standing 'army' consisting of only a couple of hundred knights of the Royal household out of populations around a couple of million. Call that 0.01%.Nations with a citizen-soldier tradition and a law requiring all free men to own arms (eg. the English, the early Franks and Germans) can mobilise every free man  between 15 and 55 in either agricultural off-seasons or during dire emergencies, for campaigns up to about 90 days. Allowing 50% for women, 50% of the population under the age of 15, figure that as about 10-20% of the total population. But the troops are usually not very good.10,000 men was a big army in England at a time when its population was about 4,000,000 to 5,000,000. Call that 0.2%.Check up on King Harold's mobilisation of the fyrd in the summer of 1066, when he was expecting the Danes and the Normans to attack. I think the muster of the North under earls Edwin and Morcar took about five days, but it was by no means complete. The fyrd of the South was called out, assembled, kept waiting, and dismissed four times during the summer. So each muster can hardly have taken weeks.On the other hand, the muster of the First Crusade took two years: but you might consider that a counter-offensive.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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