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Worlds of Design: The Nature of Armies
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<blockquote data-quote="Ixal" data-source="post: 8738886" data-attributes="member: 7030132"><p>A rather disappointing read to be honest.</p><p>Armies are such a complex topic.</p><p></p><p>Lets start with national armies.</p><p>The existence of national armies highly depends on food productivity and if a nation can afford to have people who do nothing useful except training to fight. Which is why you see the first national armies in the ancient empires which managed to maximize food production.</p><p>Interestingly in those times armies differed quite a lot from each other both in equipment and tactics.</p><p>There is a nice video about how the social structure of a nation influenced the organisation of an army (and why no nation was able to copy Rome)</p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]dfKNbuxekEo[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>When you do not have the ability to support a large number of soldiers who do nothing productive then it might at first seem logical to recruit your workers when needed. But people quickly found out that this has a lot of downsides. Such drafted soldiers are usually poorly trained and poorly armed as except in very rich nation the soldier had to bring his own armor and weapon. And the real downside is that your campaign have a short time limit, the soldier has to be back at home for the harvest, and even worse when you suffer losses during your campaign you are now lacking farmers and at least a local famine is all but guaranteed.</p><p>Still this was used. From Vikings which often were farmers who went plundering in the off season to the Chinese banner system were families were assigned to different banners and when soldiers were needed a specific banner was called upon and each family had to send one soldier.</p><p></p><p>Mercenaries very quickly discovered to be a much better alternative. You get trained and well equipped soldiers and leave your farmers working on their farms. If mercenaries die nothing happens.</p><p>They also do have downsides though. As they live by waging war they become a problem is peace time. Either you continue paying them or you have some very high skilled and armed bandits on your land who plunder to survive.</p><p>Also the loyality of mercenaries were questionable and you have several instances in history where battles were decided because mercenaries did not fight. For example the Swiss did not fight other Swiss, so when two armies which both contained Swiss mercenaries met the Swiss simply refused to fight.</p><p></p><p>That doesn't mean that the national army went fully away, they just took a different form. A noble calling on all his vasalls who of course come with their vasalls and all of them having their private household guard are also technically a national army (although during those time the idea of nation did not really exist in Europe. The king replaced in practice the nation).</p><p>Here a nice video how armies were formed</p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]F2cm-rsDfjw[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>As for logistics, they were and are super important.</p><p>A genius leader might win a victory with fewer troops, but still, you need to manage to bring thousands of soldiers with their equipment and in good order to the same place and the same time. And that is not as easy as it sounds.</p><p>Armies require huge amount of food and water, much more than what you can forage from nature on the march. And without mass transportation bringing enough food with you was an issue as everything that carried food also consumed food, so it was quite inefficient.</p><p>Really advanced countries could have well stocked supply depots for their army to take, but that only works on their own territory. Once you leave it, or when you organization is not quite as well, you have to basically steal food from the local population. And you can only steal food once (maybe twice), so an army could not sit still and wait, they had to continuously be on the move to steal more food. And large armies had to split up and walk different paths to their destination in order to supply themselves. And all this had to be coordinated in an age without radio.</p><p></p><p>Many battles were decided by logistics. Napoleon was ultimately defeated at Waterloo, but his downfall began when the Russians denied him food and shelter by burning their own capital down. The Mamluks managed to defeat the Mongols by denying them grazing grounds and forcing them into a disadvantageous position. And the Ottomans found out (multiple times) when sieging Vienna that it is not a good idea to let their raiders burn down any farm and village in the area when you are then having to siege a city for weeks and rely on said farms to keep your army fed.</p><p>Nice article about that with an fantasy example of completely unworkable logistics.</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2019/10/04/collections-the-preposterous-logistics-of-the-loot-train-battle-game-of-thrones-s7e4/[/URL]</p><p></p><p>And I just saw that Acoup just did a 3 part series about logistics</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/08/12/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-iii-on-the-move/[/URL]</p><p></p><p>They also did a series about how generals commanded their troops in pre modern armies as it was pretty hard and often impossible to relay orders to the troops once the battle began.</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/05/27/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-i-reports/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/03/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-ii-commands/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/17/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiia-discipline/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/24/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiib-officers/[/URL]</p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiic-morale-and-cohesion/[/URL]</p><p></p><p>Of course magic and fantasy changes all that. Especially D&D which tends to ignore everything about logistics and gives you easy ways to keep soldiers fed and supplied because logistics are boring according to the authors.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ixal, post: 8738886, member: 7030132"] A rather disappointing read to be honest. Armies are such a complex topic. Lets start with national armies. The existence of national armies highly depends on food productivity and if a nation can afford to have people who do nothing useful except training to fight. Which is why you see the first national armies in the ancient empires which managed to maximize food production. Interestingly in those times armies differed quite a lot from each other both in equipment and tactics. There is a nice video about how the social structure of a nation influenced the organisation of an army (and why no nation was able to copy Rome) [MEDIA=youtube]dfKNbuxekEo[/MEDIA] When you do not have the ability to support a large number of soldiers who do nothing productive then it might at first seem logical to recruit your workers when needed. But people quickly found out that this has a lot of downsides. Such drafted soldiers are usually poorly trained and poorly armed as except in very rich nation the soldier had to bring his own armor and weapon. And the real downside is that your campaign have a short time limit, the soldier has to be back at home for the harvest, and even worse when you suffer losses during your campaign you are now lacking farmers and at least a local famine is all but guaranteed. Still this was used. From Vikings which often were farmers who went plundering in the off season to the Chinese banner system were families were assigned to different banners and when soldiers were needed a specific banner was called upon and each family had to send one soldier. Mercenaries very quickly discovered to be a much better alternative. You get trained and well equipped soldiers and leave your farmers working on their farms. If mercenaries die nothing happens. They also do have downsides though. As they live by waging war they become a problem is peace time. Either you continue paying them or you have some very high skilled and armed bandits on your land who plunder to survive. Also the loyality of mercenaries were questionable and you have several instances in history where battles were decided because mercenaries did not fight. For example the Swiss did not fight other Swiss, so when two armies which both contained Swiss mercenaries met the Swiss simply refused to fight. That doesn't mean that the national army went fully away, they just took a different form. A noble calling on all his vasalls who of course come with their vasalls and all of them having their private household guard are also technically a national army (although during those time the idea of nation did not really exist in Europe. The king replaced in practice the nation). Here a nice video how armies were formed [MEDIA=youtube]F2cm-rsDfjw[/MEDIA] As for logistics, they were and are super important. A genius leader might win a victory with fewer troops, but still, you need to manage to bring thousands of soldiers with their equipment and in good order to the same place and the same time. And that is not as easy as it sounds. Armies require huge amount of food and water, much more than what you can forage from nature on the march. And without mass transportation bringing enough food with you was an issue as everything that carried food also consumed food, so it was quite inefficient. Really advanced countries could have well stocked supply depots for their army to take, but that only works on their own territory. Once you leave it, or when you organization is not quite as well, you have to basically steal food from the local population. And you can only steal food once (maybe twice), so an army could not sit still and wait, they had to continuously be on the move to steal more food. And large armies had to split up and walk different paths to their destination in order to supply themselves. And all this had to be coordinated in an age without radio. Many battles were decided by logistics. Napoleon was ultimately defeated at Waterloo, but his downfall began when the Russians denied him food and shelter by burning their own capital down. The Mamluks managed to defeat the Mongols by denying them grazing grounds and forcing them into a disadvantageous position. And the Ottomans found out (multiple times) when sieging Vienna that it is not a good idea to let their raiders burn down any farm and village in the area when you are then having to siege a city for weeks and rely on said farms to keep your army fed. Nice article about that with an fantasy example of completely unworkable logistics. [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2019/10/04/collections-the-preposterous-logistics-of-the-loot-train-battle-game-of-thrones-s7e4/[/URL] And I just saw that Acoup just did a 3 part series about logistics [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/08/12/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-iii-on-the-move/[/URL] They also did a series about how generals commanded their troops in pre modern armies as it was pretty hard and often impossible to relay orders to the troops once the battle began. [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/05/27/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-i-reports/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/03/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-ii-commands/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/17/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiia-discipline/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/06/24/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiib-officers/[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiic-morale-and-cohesion/[/URL] Of course magic and fantasy changes all that. Especially D&D which tends to ignore everything about logistics and gives you easy ways to keep soldiers fed and supplied because logistics are boring according to the authors. [/QUOTE]
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