Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Max_Killjoy]

Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.

We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/cz82lh4/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4qrucv/so_im_a_king_or_other_highranking_feudal_lord_i/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dtg01w/how_much_loyalty_did_the_commonfolk_and_soldiery/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xwqqf/high_and_late_medieval_europe_10001450/cffbn8h/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vaug2/which_type_of_people_where_typically_standing_in/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40s21k/were_there_any_standardized_weapons_in_medieval/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ujq7p/im_an_english_tradesman_in_1355_whos_handy_with_a/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cn8dic/how_were_the_logistics_of_raising_an_army/

[fusilier]

Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time). I suspect most peasant levies of a large size were for local defense. I seem to recall reading that when peasants were levied for more distant conflicts, they were usually in smaller numbers, and used in a logistical role: helping to manage the supply trains, perhaps digging field fortifications, etc. -- but I can't find my source on that, so I may be mistaken.

Similarly, cities often had a militia that was usually called out to man the city walls when needed, but was rarely used in an offensive capability. That changed over time, but still the size of the militia that could be used to defend the city would usually be significantly larger than that which could be sent on offensive operations.

I'm also sure all this varied by time and place. I think in some places there were prohibitions against arming serfs, and a peasant levy would only be of the free and wealthier peasants (those who could afford some weaponry and maybe had a little training).

[fusilier]

Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.

We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/cz82lh4/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4qrucv/so_im_a_king_or_other_highranking_feudal_lord_i/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dtg01w/how_much_loyalty_did_the_commonfolk_and_soldiery/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xwqqf/high_and_late_medieval_europe_10001450/cffbn8h/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vaug2/which_type_of_people_where_typically_standing_in/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40s21k/were_there_any_standardized_weapons_in_medieval/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ujq7p/im_an_english_tradesman_in_1355_whos_handy_with_a/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cn8dic/how_were_the_logistics_of_raising_an_army/

I found the response here to be particularly interesting:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/

Thanks for sharing those links.

[Calthropstu]

Digging for more sources, but, the idea that peasant levies were that big of a big deal in "medieval" European warfare has been, more recently, heavily challenged by those studying the matter.

We can start here with a deep dive into the armies of the period.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/cz82lh4/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4qrucv/so_im_a_king_or_other_highranking_feudal_lord_i/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gvi41/how_were_medieval_armies_organized/cu269h2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dtg01w/how_much_loyalty_did_the_commonfolk_and_soldiery/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xwqqf/high_and_late_medieval_europe_10001450/cffbn8h/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vaug2/which_type_of_people_where_typically_standing_in/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40s21k/were_there_any_standardized_weapons_in_medieval/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ujq7p/im_an_english_tradesman_in_1355_whos_handy_with_a/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cn8dic/how_were_the_logistics_of_raising_an_army/

Not even going to bother with these links. Reddit is the very definition of "non credible source." If you can point me to some ACTUAL journals on the subject, cool. But reddit links are useless as credible sources.

[Tobtor]

Not even going to bother with these links. Reddit is the very definition of "non credible source." If you can point me to some ACTUAL journals on the subject, cool. But reddit links are useless as credible sources.

While some reddit things ARE poor, several of the links are from people with some knowledge. So dismissing it outright is silly. People spendt time to give an approximating answer.

I would like to second fusilier's recommendation the the link about England in the 12th century witch ends in a bibliography for more scholarly nature.

So Calthropstu, I think your answer is somewhat arrogant.

A note on peasants etc: Danish laws from around 12-13th century mention specifically that you can send another member of your household (but not slaves, and if you do so anyway the slaves can be freed by the king). So while fusiliers "Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time)." is important, it is also important to note that any household might encompass several adult males, and also among peasants there er expandable younger sons or farmhands from poor families.

Also note that the "military" service was mostly meant for landholding peasants, a way to get out it was sell you land to knights/nobles and then rent the land. At least in Scandinavia this was part of reducing the number of "free peasant" and turning them into "serfs" during the 13th century.

Also some peasants might be free but not have enough land to do military service, these where lumped together in clusters and then only one of them need to go (either by volunteering a male person of their household, drawing lots, taking turns etc.).

Alas a lot of the answers you get is from the late medieval period, and thus from a period when it was outfaced.

[Max_Killjoy]

AskHistorians is not a generic subreddit.

It has high standards for both the questions and the answers it allows, and is moderated by actual historians, etc.

[Calthropstu]

AskHistorians is not a generic subreddit.

It has high standards for both the questions and the answers it allows, and is moderated by actual historians, etc.

If I went to quote it on a research paper, would it be admissable? I have a very high standard for what I believe to be credible facts when it comes to history, especially since I AM LITERALLY WATCHING CAMPAIGNS TRYING TO REWRITE FACTS I MYSELF LIVED THROUGH.

So with ancient historians who literally can no longer defend themselves, I will have to go with established fact rather than some subreddit. Seeing as how I know 100% that peasant levies were in fact a thing, the fact that subreddit is claiming otherwise tells me exactly how 'credible' it isn't.

[fusilier]

If I went to quote it on a research paper, would it be admissable? I have a very high standard for what I believe to be credible facts when it comes to history, especially since I AM LITERALLY WATCHING CAMPAIGNS TRYING TO REWRITE FACTS I MYSELF LIVED THROUGH.

So with ancient historians who literally can no longer defend themselves, I will have to go with established fact rather than some subreddit. Seeing as how I know 100% that peasant levies were in fact a thing, the fact that subreddit is claiming otherwise tells me exactly how 'credible' it isn't.

Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).

But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.

----------
Since you asked for more "grounded" information, this is one of the references I have to hand, but it's a little more narrow in scope:

Mercenaries and their Masters, by Michael Mallett, is considered to be the major "point of departure" for study into Italian Warfare and mercenaries from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.* The focus is on the developments of the 15th century, so the earlier large communal levies aren't covered in depth. But this is what he has to say on militia levies in that period:


. . . a significant proportion of the infantry in any Italian army were local men, and this proportion of course increased enormously when one looks beyond the professional infantry to the militia. Militia levies were used by all the Italian states of the fifteenth century, if only as pioneers. In Venice and Milan by the 1470's they were being put on a semi-permanent, trained basis . . . All the Romagna condottiere princes used militia levies, and papal cities were occasionally called upon to produce them for local service. Not even in Florence did the rural militia organisation disappear completely as the humanists thought, although the levies were usually largely used for pioneer duties.

However, even given this degree of local participation in the army, one is not implying something approaching a national army nor suggesting that many men were fighting for home and country. The militia were conscripts and usually unwilling ones; the desertion rate was high and they could not be relied upon to move far from their homes.
pg. 226.

Referencing a thirteenth century battle, he gives this breakdown:

The Florentine army which was defeated by the Sienese at Montaperti in 1260 contained about 1,400 communal cavalry and about 6,000 communal infantry supported by some 8,000 infantry levies from the rural areas of the Florentine state.
pg. 12.


Furthermore, the use of militia levies survived longer into the fourteenth century than has sometimes been thought. . . . In May 1302, when the Florentine army took the field to besiege Pistoia, it was made up of 1,000 cavalry, and 6,000 infantry. The paymaster's accounts, which have survived, show that about half the cavalry were Florentines, and of the infantry only 1,000 were foreign mercenaries while the rest were made up of crossbowmen and shield-bearers from the city militia, and contingents of militia infantry and pioneers from the countryside.
pp. 43-44.

These quotes reflect a shift in the system in Italy, although levies continued to be used throughout the period, they made up a smaller proportion of the armies than before and in some periods may have been omitted completely. Italy was fairly dense in population, and politically fragmented, so while some lessons could be applied to a broader scope, details would likely vary across Europe.

------
*So of course most popular representations ignore it, and regurgitate outdated, debunked, 19th century writings of Sir Charles Oman.

[fusilier]

A note on peasants etc: Danish laws from around 12-13th century mention specifically that you can send another member of your household (but not slaves, and if you do so anyway the slaves can be freed by the king). So while fusiliers "Keep in mind that peasants usually had other work to do, which could not be abandoned for too long (although in certain seasons they might have more time)." is important, it is also important to note that any household might encompass several adult males, and also among peasants there er expandable younger sons or farmhands from poor families.

That's a good point! There would be some number of "excess" peasants that could be employed in a military campaign for a longer period (if not, possibly, looking to a "career change"). So while you couldn't expect to levy all able-bodied peasants (except perhaps, for a very short period of time), a smaller proportion could be levied for longer term service. Which would seem to fit well with some of the accounts I've read.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).

But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.


I was going to say, some of those posts have what amounts to a bibliography.

[Calthropstu]

Well, I wouldn't quote anybody here in a research paper either . . . in general, I was always reluctant to use an internet source, but they could be useful in finding relevant works (in a library or maybe an online journal like jstor).

But, some of those linked, did provide their sources, so you could look them up, and get the information directly.

----------
Since you asked for more "grounded" information, this is one of the references I have to hand, but it's a little more narrow in scope:

Mercenaries and their Masters, by Michael Mallett, is considered to be the major "point of departure" for study into Italian Warfare and mercenaries from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.* The focus is on the developments of the 15th century, so the earlier large communal levies aren't covered in depth. But this is what he has to say on militia levies in that period:


pg. 226.

Referencing a thirteenth century battle, he gives this breakdown:

pg. 12.


pp. 43-44.

These quotes reflect a shift in the system in Italy, although levies continued to be used throughout the period, they made up a smaller proportion of the armies than before and in some periods may have been omitted completely. Italy was fairly dense in population, and politically fragmented, so while some lessons could be applied to a broader scope, details would likely vary across Europe.

------
*So of course most popular representations ignore it, and regurgitate outdated, debunked, 19th century writings of Sir Charles Oman.

So yeah, this kind of information directly refutes what was being claimed earlier. The specific army being called out was more than half levies. The original statement was that there was no levies or rounding up of people to act as soldiers. The information you provided directly refutes that.

[fusilier]

So yeah, this kind of information directly refutes what was being claimed earlier. The specific army being called out was more than half levies. The original statement was that there was no levies or rounding up of people to act as soldiers. The information you provided directly refutes that.

Yes. However, the issue wasn't just about whether or not levies were used, but what was the character (or make up) of a levy. And Mallet's work doesn't really go into that detail.

The popular image, that they rounded up all the peasants and forced them to fight with whatever farm implements they had on hand, seems unlikely. Although it may have happened from time to time, only in cases of extreme emergency.* On the other hand, peasants who had sufficient wealth might be expected to maintain arms and give service if levied. That's what the detailed response in this link covered:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/

In a two part response it described who was likely to be levied, under what conditions, what obligations they had, and also provided a bibliography so that the sources could be checked (note: I have not checked those sources). In this case, however, it is specific to Norman England (which, frankly, probably more people on this board care about than medieval Italy, but my sources are my sources).

I find it's often the case that a refutation of some part of a popular image: i.e. that peasant levies rarely, if ever, involved rounding up all able bodied peasants and forcing them into service, ends up being exaggerated: i.e. peasant levies weren't a thing. Nuance is lost, and a different, but also wrong, idea creeps into the popular imagination.

*Also consider that not everybody levied was necessarily expected to fight. Pioneers were mentioned, and many farm implements would be useful in that role. Furthermore, the logistical needs of an army could be quite large, and often each man-at-arms might have several people to support him. Those support personnel may also be armed and capable of fighting, but in a diminished capacity.

[Calthropstu]

Yes. However, the issue wasn't just about whether or not levies were used, but what was the character (or make up) of a levy. And Mallet's work doesn't really go into that detail.

The popular image, that they rounded up all the peasants and forced them to fight with whatever farm implements they had on hand, seems unlikely. Although it may have happened from time to time, only in cases of extreme emergency.* On the other hand, peasants who had sufficient wealth might be expected to maintain arms and give service if levied. That's what the detailed response in this link covered:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/

In a two part response it described who was likely to be levied, under what conditions, what obligations they had, and also provided a bibliography so that the sources could be checked (note: I have not checked those sources). In this case, however, it is specific to Norman England (which, frankly, probably more people on this board care about than medieval Italy, but my sources are my sources).

I find it's often the case that a refutation of some part of a popular image: i.e. that peasant levies rarely, if ever, involved rounding up all able bodied peasants and forcing them into service, ends up being exaggerated: i.e. peasant levies weren't a thing. Nuance is lost, and a different, but also wrong, idea creeps into the popular imagination.

*Also consider that not everybody levied was necessarily expected to fight. Pioneers were mentioned, and many farm implements would be useful in that role. Furthermore, the logistical needs of an army could be quite large, and often each man-at-arms might have several people to support him. Those support personnel may also be armed and capable of fighting, but in a diminished capacity.

It's actually fairly easy to reason out. My rejection was the "levies weren't used and that never really happened" however, those things did in fact happen from time to time.

I remeber reading something about gathering unwilling soldiers as levies during an incursion from another lord. I also remember looking for the exact law that allowed it. Never actually found it, but this was in high school before google. I basically just browsed library shelves and read random stuff.

[Brother Oni]

It's actually fairly easy to reason out. My rejection was the "levies weren't used and that never really happened" however, those things did in fact happen from time to time.

You really should go read the links. For example, this link (https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/) has the question "I am a healthy male English peasant working the land for a minor Baron circa 1100 AD. One day the Baron comes and says the King has asked him to raise an army. Who is responsible for arming, armoring, and training me? If I have money saved up can I buy better equipment? Who decides?"

The top answer has the bibliography:
Alfred's Wars, by Ryan Lavelle
Military Obligation in Medieval England, by Michael Powicke
The Military Organisation of Norman England, by C. Warren Hollister
England Under Norman and Angevin Kings, by Robert Bartlett
Warfare Under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066-1135, by Stephen Morillo
"The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd", by C. Warren Hollister, The English Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 304 (Jul., 1962), pp. 417-436
"Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Saxon england", by Richard Abels, in The Battle of Hastings, ed. Stephen Morillo, p57-78
Medieval England: Rural society and Economic Change 1086-1348, by Edward Miller and John Hatcher
"The Knight and the Knight's Fee", by Sally Harvey, Past & Present, Volume 49, Issue 1, November 1970, Pages 3–43

This post quite clearly supports the levy system was in place.


In any case, your earlier answer to peasant levies was "This happened. Mainly Poland, Japan and China that I know of. I think other Eastern european nations as well. They did this to look far more threatening than they actually were."

Aside from the blip of the Yuan Dynasty, the other main Chinese Dynasty of the medieval era, the Song, didn't really go in for peasant levies and dealt with invading barbarians by paying off other barbarians to do their fighting for them (yiyi ziyi).
During the Yuan, the Mongols made up the cavalry, while the vast bulk of the infantry were Chinese and Korean conscripts or defected soldiers.


Japan is complicated. You had ashigaru who were the definition of peasant levy (ie peasants stripped off the land, given a spear and told to fight), but by the time of the Kamakura period, you also had the semi-professional ashigaru 'mercenary' bands who prowled the edges of the battlefield and were paid in loot. When the majority of your fighting is done by ashigaru, it's a far cry from 'making them look more threatening than they actually were'.

It's not until the Sengoku period (which is more Early Modern than medieval) that the ashigaru solidify into a 'professional' soldier caste, primarily under Oda Nobunaga. There were even samurai generals who specialised in leading ashigaru troops (Toyotomi Hideyoshi being the prime example).

[Calthropstu]

You really should go read the links. For example, this link (https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce2y3e/i_am_a_healthy_male_english_peasant_working_the/) has the question "I am a healthy male English peasant working the land for a minor Baron circa 1100 AD. One day the Baron comes and says the King has asked him to raise an army. Who is responsible for arming, armoring, and training me? If I have money saved up can I buy better equipment? Who decides?"

The top answer has the bibliography:
Alfred's Wars, by Ryan Lavelle
Military Obligation in Medieval England, by Michael Powicke
The Military Organisation of Norman England, by C. Warren Hollister
England Under Norman and Angevin Kings, by Robert Bartlett
Warfare Under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066-1135, by Stephen Morillo
"The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd", by C. Warren Hollister, The English Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 304 (Jul., 1962), pp. 417-436
"Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Saxon england", by Richard Abels, in The Battle of Hastings, ed. Stephen Morillo, p57-78
Medieval England: Rural society and Economic Change 1086-1348, by Edward Miller and John Hatcher
"The Knight and the Knight's Fee", by Sally Harvey, Past & Present, Volume 49, Issue 1, November 1970, Pages 3–43

This post quite clearly supports the levy system was in place.


In any case, your earlier answer to peasant levies was "This happened. Mainly Poland, Japan and China that I know of. I think other Eastern european nations as well. They did this to look far more threatening than they actually were."

Aside from the blip of the Yuan Dynasty, the other main Chinese Dynasty of the medieval era, the Song, didn't really go in for peasant levies and dealt with invading barbarians by paying off other barbarians to do their fighting for them (yiyi ziyi).
During the Yuan, the Mongols made up the cavalry, while the vast bulk of the infantry were Chinese and Korean conscripts or defected soldiers.


Japan is complicated. You had ashigaru who were the definition of peasant levy (ie peasants stripped off the land, given a spear and told to fight), but by the time of the Kamakura period, you also had the semi-professional ashigaru 'mercenary' bands who prowled the edges of the battlefield and were paid in loot. When the majority of your fighting is done by ashigaru, it's a far cry from 'making them look more threatening than they actually were'.

It's not until the Sengoku period (which is more Early Modern than medieval) that the ashigaru solidify into a 'professional' soldier caste, primarily under Oda Nobunaga. There were even samurai generals who specialised in leading ashigaru troops (Toyotomi Hideyoshi being the prime example).

Yes. The purpose of warfare in Japan was a lot different than elsewhere. Japan didn't battle other countries very often. Attacking Japan was difficult externally. Most of it was internal. So the use of peasants was a lot more useful. You were basically fighting your near neighbors and, assuming you survived, you could be back quickly. A lot of that happened in China as well. The use of peasant levies falling into disuse in Europe probably coincided with someone realizing how dumb an idea it was to deplete your work force for war.

But it was definitely in widrspread use for a long time. Not exactly sure why, since the Romans didn't use them and lasted a really long time.

[Pauly]

But it was definitely in widrspread use for a long time. Not exactly sure why, since the Romans didn't use them and lasted a really long time.

Before the Marian reforms the legionnaires were essentially levies. Citizens obliged to arm and equip themselves for war and subject to being called up. Same with the citizen hoplite in Greece.

The whole reason of why the Marian reforms were enacted is complicated, but one of the reasons was that the voters didn’t like it when friends and family, not to mention themselves, were called away for extended military campaigns.

[Martin Greywolf]

Definition of levy

This is our main issue, really. What even is a levy? Sure, you can say it's anyone who is going into a war unwillingly - but then, what about people who enlist these days into the army in times of peace for 5 years and are told just before they go out that a conflict started and they have to deploy? Are they levies?

With that in mind, we need to distinguish between not just un/willingness to fight, but also between an obligation to do so.

However, that obligation is also problematic - if it comes form voluntary enlistment, it's all well and good, but historically, they also come from social status, and even modern day voluntary enlistment can be driven by economic factors, i.e. you are so dirt poor and economy is so bad that is your only option. To say nothing of not reading what, exactly, you're signing.

What further complicates this is that while these days, we are all citizens with theoretically equal rights and liberties, this was not the case historically, and this divide goes much deeper than just nobles and paesants. For Hungary between 1000 - 1300, there are about four not quite distinct phases of development, where the number of social strata fluctuates between about a dozen to as few as five. Without accounting for monastic hierarchies, so the real number is probably double that at least.

And every social category has their own set of freedoms and obligations, and is some cases, a social category is umbrella term for a number of real groups. Take conditional nobles, for example, who had almost "full noble" freedom (called golden freedom), but that freedom wasn't tied to their social status, but raher to the land via royal grants that, while somewhat standardized, were issued on case by case basis. So, Spis/Zipser saxons had different conditional nobility rules than those of Transylvania, despite both being conditional nobles.




EN
LAT
Military duty
Personal freedom
Land ownership


King
Rex
does what he wants
is freebird
all the land


Nobles
Nobiles
to the king
golden
full


Castle iobagions
Iobagiones castri
to the castle
yes
yes, cannot be stripped of it


Citizens
Cives
to the castle
yes
No


Castlemen
Cstrenses/Udvornici
to the castle
No
No


Villagers
Villani
none
no
no



Personal freedom = can get up and leave for brighter futures without telling anyone, those that don't have it must seek permission from their lord

Land ownership = only land tied to their social status, they all can own land if they buy it from the owner, although renting in exchange for a yearly tax was far more common

Note the lack of freemen paesants, by this time they were merged into the nobiles. Villani also have no military duty expectation, so legally they can't serve unless they want to and get their lord's permission.

There was also a church heirarchy separate from this, and Hospites was a legal status that could be tacked onto almost any of the above, save for the king, with some special privileges on case by case basis (so, that doubles our chart, really).

There were also privileged cities, that stratum was elevated from cives, castrenses and iobagionnes castri and was, again, case by case, so we get 3 more rows to that table.


What is the levy myth, and why Eastern Europe

There is this idea that medieval non-nobles were forced to go into battle with a single pitchfork. Both sides of the Cold War used it, for very different reasons, and so this myth infested popular culture and even academia to some degree.

This is most definitely a myth, barring extreme emergency situations. Even USSR-style conscripts, taken en masse from unwilling and untrained general population, weren't done very often, at least not until pre-modern era. Hell, even that Soviet example was born of extreme emergency.

Seeing as noth NATO and Warsaw pact said that Eastern European history had these, they are very much associated with Eastern Europe, and examples that are given of them usually include Hungarian paesant rebellions, Hussite uprisings and so on. All of these should be judged on individual basis, and the scope of that discussion is beyod me - I know a fair bit about Hussites, but Hungarian paseant revolts are not in my area of specializing.

That said, there are examples of these kinds of unrests in western Europe in equal numbers, what with several French revolutions, Froissart explicitly mentioning poor farmer slingers and so on. But, much like eastern cases, these are in medieval times (barring migration period), exceptions rather than rules.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Jensky_kodex_Zizka.jpg
15. century VIenna codex

https://img.ceskatelevize.cz/program/porady/15996/foto09/cast_08.jpg?1401716422
Czech Jan Zizka movie, 1955

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/9e/cd/ca9ecdc7ec432766b0cb86a1f770a5be.jpg
modern Osprey book


https://manuscriptminiatures.com/image/10116/1000
Illustration has them heavily armored, text says:


The commons of Spain according to the usage of their country with their slings they did cast stones with great violence and did much hurt


Who has to serve?

This is a complex question. The real answer is, look at the time and place of choosing, find out what all the social strata are, and figure out what their obligations happen to be.

Nobility, which is in itself a groups that likely has several strata in it (iobagiones regis, servientes regis, nobiles, hospites, cives etc.), usually have to serve, no exceptions. Under what circumstances they are obliged to show up (all, defensive wars only, etc) varies, but the expectations is there.

This sort of olbigation also applies to social classes we wouldn't call nobles, but are still privileged - burghers, iobagionnes, people who were given land on the border to settle in with the understanding that they will defend said border and so on. The obligation to serve is as baked into their social standing as it is into the nobles.

Problem is, are you required to serve personally, and what do you do in the meantime? Because if one family is required to give one fully armed soldier to the army if the call comes, you can run into issues. Small families, individuals that are badly needed at home for one reason or another and so on. If you aren't rich enough to afford a mercenary to go instead of you (which may or may not even be possbile, depending on time, place and social stratum), you have to go even if you don't want to - does that make you a levy?

And that is what most medieval levies are - raised from population that usually does some other thing (farm, craft etc) that is required to supply one soldier in X equipment per Y households. In theory, those soldiers are either mercenaries, or the population itself, and since they knew they will have to serve, their training is reflective of that.

In practice, some areas with martial culture (german Landsknechts, Hungarian border nomads in ~850~1100), you get pretty solid, even elite, troops out of them. In other cases... not so much. And if they aren't mercenaries on long term contracts, they will definitely want to return home fairly soon, to get back to their usual craft.

When you levy even more

Note that these levies are all legally required, and the king is the law. Meaning that if the king says so, the levy amounts can increase, much like issuing special taxes - both of which are almost foreign to us modern folks, but were par for the course historically, the city of Presov was paying 100 florins of special war tax in 1516, wich was a fifth of their usual taxes on top.

That means that all of that previous point? Yeah, it can get tossed right out the window if the king or other person capable of changing laws decides they need more soldiers. One can find himself in position of expecting to never have to serve on account of having paid for mercs, and then the laws change and he has to go.

And since this depends on how, exactly, laws are written and what the unwritten traditions are, we get even more chaos.

But should you levy?

This is probably the key point here - while a given lawmaker theoretically has the ability to call all men to arms, it's a really bad idea. There have been constant attempts to establish a standing army once migration period was over - in Hungary, we have: royal army, banderial systems, royal cities required to supply soldiers, royal army again, all supplementing nobles (just nobiles, not servientes regis, or... you get the picture) who should show up - how nobles should show up is regulated by two Golden Bulls and many more lesser documents.

All of that means that you try to levy as few people as you can, because famines and economic shortages are not fun. That said, you do have tha capability, so these sort of soft levies, where you increase some numbers in already pre-established laws, are done fairly often (as in, every time a really major war break out), if not every time.

Even monetary taxes for times of war were frequently abolished for a given city or person if they were in a bad spot.

Who pays for all that crap? And what about training?

Depends. Usually the guy who gets levied is expected to come prepared, gear and all.

How that expectation is managed varies, from "if you own X worth of stuff, you have to have at least Y equipment" to "you are required to serve, show up however you want", in the latter relying on the unwillingness of the person in question to be shanked and therefore investing in gear. Hungarian royal cities were required to supply one soldier "in full panoply of war" per about a hundred people. Since these were wealthy citizens, a popular theory is that this "full panoply of war" was in reality a knight-like combatant, with heavy armor and one or two squires.

That said, many cities and castles had armories that stored surplus weapons, in case they got attacked and had to arm their population. People who would be issued these were probably not the most capable combatants, and if you levied these regardless, you were about to run into morale problems. Incidentally, this is how Hussites were armed initially, by emptying these stores and then making more weapons out of whatever thay had on hand.

As for training, we know this was an issue no matter what level of society you were on. People like Ulrich von Lichtenstein (noble and a pro jouster) or Johannes Lichtenauer (probably burgher, pro swordsmanship teacher) did exist, but weren't all that common - devoting your whole life to martial pursuit was kinda rare, as you can glean from Fiore de'i Liberi's foreword to Flower of Battle, where he mentions not only teaching high-ranking nobility right before thay had to fight, but also (according to him) lesser, bad teachers he put in their place - on five occassion, with swords.

There are aslo many laws that suggest that the people in charge were aware of this and supported pastimes that would get you a pool f semi-trained soldiers. England's famous longbow laws, Balearic isles and their sling-oriented child rearing, general support of wrestling as a pastime for the lower classes and so on. You can find this even in modern times, with pre-WW2 countries supporting civilian shooting clubs to get a population with unusually high levels of marksmanship and weapon familiarity.

As for formalized training, run by the military authority, that was vanishingly rare before early modern era (Greek city-states militia and Roman armies being the major notable exceptions) - at least on a higher level. It is very possible, even likely, that, for example, some of those border villages in 900s Hungary had some sort of training regimen they went through, but it has been lost to time and illiteracy.

So did levies happen?

Short answer is yes, but they were more willing and better armed and trained than you imagine, and those unarmored, pitchfork-weilding paesant mobs were very, very rare.

[Clistenes]

Aside from the blip of the Yuan Dynasty, the other main Chinese Dynasty of the medieval era, the Song, didn't really go in for peasant levies and dealt with invading barbarians by paying off other barbarians to do their fighting for them (yiyi ziyi).
During the Yuan, the Mongols made up the cavalry, while the vast bulk of the infantry were Chinese and Korean conscripts or defected soldiers.

I would like to point than Sun Tzu mentions, in his book "The Art of War", the problem of conscripted soldiers running away and returning to their villages. He said that was one of the several reasons it was a good idea to enter enemy territory as soon as possible (so the conscripted soldiers were afraid of splitting from the army and wouldn't desert...).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?

I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.

Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.

[GeoffWatson]

Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?

I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.

Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.

I guess the king would ennoble them (or one of them?) and grant them the land, on condition that they pay taxes and work for him - having powerful adventurers in his employ could be very useful. Limited to a certain amount of time per year (or whatever you agree on).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Thinking with my gamer hat on another option might be for them to get a pet noble. Some younger child from an impoverished line who is allowed to own property but doesn't have too much else going for him (or her) maybe. His name goes on the deed to the land, he gets a corner of it to himself to build a nice little cottage or something and he gets to brag about his large estate and maybe could get another title or a good match for marriage out of it if he plays his cards right. He signs an agreement with the party to lease the rest of the land to them indefinitely for the grand sum of nothing per year, and all the buildings on that land are owned by the party separate from the ground. The deal could even work without the noble living there. He just stays where he is now on the other side of the country, but he gets to brag about how much land he owns elsewhere.

I am not basing this on any actual historic situation, but deals like that must have been made around the rise of wealthy traders and such.

[Brother Oni]

I would like to point than Sun Tzu mentions, in his book "The Art of War", the problem of conscripted soldiers running away and returning to their villages. He said that was one of the several reasons it was a good idea to enter enemy territory as soon as possible (so the conscripted soldiers were afraid of splitting from the army and wouldn't desert...).

He also says 'Do not raise soldiers twice, nor food three times', implying that a skilled commander doesn't need to raise a second levy and by getting into enemy territory, you can live off their supplies rather than your own.

That said, the 5th Century BC is a long time difference from the medieval era, not least culturally (during the Warring States, almost everybody fought and soldiering wasn't as looked down upon).

[snowblizz]

Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era?
Yes. The Kingdom held some lands (the exact intermingling with what is the king's demesne and more abstractly state land would vary a bit depending on how the king managed to operate). The Church held some lands. The nobility held some lands (the king's demesne would sort of land here). And peasants held some lands. These are the 4 major categories of landowning. However, there are variations to the exact status and rights and ownership over the lands.

State lands and peasant lands were the main taxable subjects. Nobles and church held someone their land tax free, but not necessarily all of it.



Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?

That would depend a lot on where you are, Hungary and Poland e.g. were more strongly nobility controlled and as such tended to have laws that favoured them more. Other places had other rules. It should be noted, for the benefit of the crown normally. I'll take Scandinavia, mostly Sweden as my example. It wasn't for an overt concern of the peasantry the crown protected them. They were the only subjects that could easily be taxed so normally it was in the interest of the crown that as many free peasants existed. It was not uncommon that royal tenants were allowed to buy their land to become freeholding peasants. Usually because the crown needed quick cash.

Mostly it was perfectly fine for not-nobles to own land. The main exception I've seen was that land that had belonged to nobility could not be sold to a lesser social strata. This doesn't mean any land ever owned by a noble was out of bounds, just a more tightly limited inherited land considered essentially as your family estate. Usually this would also be the lands you were entirely exempted from taxation or had special rights on. e.g. from 1396 in the Kalmar Union a noble could only claim tax exemption one such manorial complex that was considered their place of residence. If a noble had received a land grant or bought land from other land owners they'd be generally free to dispose of it as they saw fit.
Similar rules could also apply to peasant land where your relatives enjoyed a legal first right to refusal on lands that has been inherited in your family. IIRC these rules were in part still around into the 19th century when rules on landownership became more modern and holders got complete rights to the land they owned. Again if you expanded by purchase or breaking new ground those lands were not necessarily considered part of your family's property and could be freely sold to others. Sometimes restrictions on nobles buying up land from peasants also existed.
The rules could also be applied to royal lands farmed by tenants that had been sold or donated to nobility or church or even the tenants themselves, usually retroactively to shore up the crown's financial difficulties.

Not all of these land revisions were successful ofc but as the state develops they do get more effective in controlling who owns what. In general thus we have a system that to a certain degree tries preserve ownership of land in appropriate categories (and medieval society tended to like their godly anointed social order, at least those benefiting from it). The most annoying actor for the crown was ofc the church from whom donated land could not easily be returned. Even land owned by nobles could eventually fall outside of inheritance or otherwise be returned.



I've got a party who wants to buy property that was formerly set aside (haven't decided exactly how the deed was set) to a church that ended up getting wiped out. They're not nobles, but are very wealthy and personally powerful.

Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.
A wiped out church would probably be claimed by the royal treasury and revert back to the kingdom. Conceivably also if land was donated to the church by nobles they might want to have it returned to them. Historically, powerful and ruthless kings sometimes managed a reduction on both nobility and/or church to restore lands donated, usually in a bid to strengthen the state and/or the secular rulership class. Normally under the guise that the land had not been properly turned over, which ofc might very well have been true.

In the context of a wider European mediaeval system there is nothing strange with your players being able to purchase land. There is no need for them to become nobles. The main issues I can see would be in the owning the property as a group and not an individual. Though mediaeval society did feature the idea of a group, a society of sorts, owning property. So e.g. would a guild work, or certain "social guilds" I don't really know what are properly called.

[Martin Greywolf]

Question relating to the 1300's Hungarian strata (and branching out from there): were there patterns in how land ownership worked in Europe at about that era? Only nobles could own land? Others could buy, but only under conditions? Everyone except landed nobles generally rented (maybe on long term lease?) from nobles?

It varies by time and place. Generally, there are these ways you can own land:

In perpetuity

The land is yours, can be passed down as inheritance and you can do whatever you want with it.

As holder of office

If the king chooses you to be the Ispan of a county, or magister tavarnicorum or any other function, low or high, you will get temporary ownership of said land with it. You are to take care of it and not defraud it for your own personal use, but you do get tax income from it. It is essentially a form of payment for your services, and in case of Ispans it also gets you the money you need to carry out said office of Ispan - closes Anglofrench title being a duke.

Since the land is not yours, you cannot sell it, but you can rent either it or profits from it to people - but the second you are stripped of that Ispan title, the land reverts back to the king, potentially leaving people you gave it to to pay off your debts dry - standard procedure is, it will lower your debt and they dutifully hand the land back over.

If you see a LOT of potential for misuse and conflict, well, you're absolutely correct.

Rented

You rent the land in exchange for one or more of: military service, cut of what the land produces, hard cash. This is often used to pay off large debts, by the by.


These three ways of owning land then further interact with your own personal freedoms and obligations.

If you are a farmer, you are tied to the land in the sense that you need to farm it and pay taxes from it and in exchange receive a cut from what you produce. The difference between a serf and a free farmer is in whether you can decide to just up and leave one day, a free farmer can, no questions asked, a serf has to have an agreement with the owner of the land (usually involving monetary compensation for his freedom, and such an agreement can either free the serf entirely or just transfer his services to someone else).

This sort of dynamic carries on through all social strata - if you are a conditional noble, the king ennobled you with the understanding that you will own a piece of land and give military service. But said ennoblement doesn't give you the land in perpetuity, merely rents it out to you from the king, meaning that while you can rent it, you can't sell it. And yes, this may result in chains of renting on occassion.

However, said renting is often regulated - see the post above where castle iobagions have land that cannot be taken away? Well, that land belongs to the castle, which will have a castellan appointed to it, and that stipulation means the castellan will get the castle's lands, some of which belong to the iobagions. The castellan cannot take this specific portion of iobagions and rent it out to someone, he has to let iobagions take care of it and merely tax them - he can only rent out the non-iobagion portions of the land.

You can probably see the huge mess this is (or to use the academic parlance "land ownership and relations tied to it are complex"), as well as a good potential for PCs being conditional nobles.

Buying land

Theoretically, everyone but slaves can do it, and slaves are almost or entirely gone from Hungary at this time. Problem is that actually buying a land in perpetuity isn't cheap, and renting is far more affordable.

Buying a piece of land does not grant you any privileges, if you were a serf, a serf you remain, but that land you bought is now yours and your lord cannot tax it, he can only tax the land he rents you, your own land belongs under either royal, city or church taxation.

So, you are still taxed, but taxes are lower. Usually.

Also consider that if you local lord rolls up with a few gentlemen and demands you sell him that land for a pittance, you - an unarmed serf - will have hell of a time refusing. Strongarming like this did happen, and on occassion even made it in front of the judicial system and was punished.

Land as means of upwards social mobility

While land doesn't in theory get you social status, having some will almost definitely see you move up the social ladder, usually by means of marriage, either yours or that of your children.

The jump will not be high, but moving from a serf to a burgher is a pretty good deal, and nothing is stoppping your children from doing another upwards hop the next generation - there are quite a few families that did very well for themselves in this way.

This is all in flux

Remember that this sytem is inherently unstable. Someone can come and claim the land he inherited came with the status of a iobagion or a cives and so he should be given said title, and all he needs to do to convince courts is get some people in good standing to vouch for him. A social status can be stripped, someone who was just a iobagion can be elevated to a cives for his services and/or bribes and so on.

Entire social strata can disappear, such as free farmers - they either climbed the social ladder up into nobiles, or down into villani, because one bad harvest can ruin you to a point where you have to sell your land to local noble and become a serf. And if you start to give a specific set of loosely related privileges to some people, you can end up with another social stratum appearing, that being the burghers of royal free cities that only started to apper in 1300.


Of course they think that there are strong laws about what others can do on their private property, thinking that this is the modern era. Heh.

If they get that land in perpetuity, they will have even more freedom than modern day, because only laws that will matter will be royal, none of those pesky local lord's laws. If they have it rented or as part of an office, more laws will apply and what they can do with the land may or may not be limited further by specific conditions.

Even then, a king can still stop them from doing whatever they want, there was a royal ban on building stone castles without permission in Hungary until Mongols came and almost wiped it out - after that, it was lifted, and a century later, there was a massive amount of noble magnates that destabilized the kingdom, showing us exactly why that ban existed in the first place.

All in all, there will be a contract to sign, and that should spell those conditions out, especially in DnD - using "they will own it in accordance with ancient customs" formula is kind of a low blow on DMs part, even though it is historical. And very annoying if you want to know what those customs were.

Edit:
One last chapter

Oh, right, one more thing. A piece of land has three components you can sell or rent: administrative and judicial control, actual land and profits. Let's take this for an example.

You, a noble, decided to rent a patch of land to a bunch of serfs to start a village. They will work the land, and you get the stuff - hell, you even gave them a break from your (but not oryal or church) taxes to help them start out. THis is actual land.

After five years, you decide that coming over there is too much of a hassle for every time two guys have a row and tell the villagers that they can elect a villicus, a mayor, from among them, and if you okay their choice, he will ahve judicial and administrative powers in your name. This is, obviously, renting a judicial and administrative power over said land. And yeah, it's usually not worth much by itself, since it's more of an obligation rather than gain.

Then, you want to arm up to do well in a coming war, and decide to take out a loan. You tell the merchant who gave you the cash that, until the time the debt is repaid, he will receive all the taxes due from the village mentioned above, he just has to collect.

After the debt is repaid and war won, and you gained a lot of land and status, you decide that one of your familiars (nobles in your service, not a magic raven) needs to be rewarded, so you rent him the administrative control and profits from that land, so long as he remains in your service.

Note that, unless you said otherwise in some contract, all of this renting is done at your pleasure and you can decide to rescind it at any time.

So, yeah, you can absolutely rent the same piece of land two times and be on the level.

Can a serf rule a village this way?

Theoretically yes, in practice, there would be a royal petition started to elevate him (with that much land, straight to nobiles), and it would amost certainly be granted. Or he would get strongarmed by the local lords to sell it to them.

You usually saw this land in personal ownership done in small bits by non-nobles, as a nice bonus to majority of what they had rented - thee exceptions being wealthy iobagiones castri and cives, whou would own sizeable patches of the countryside, and could be either elevated to nobiles, or remain as they were until burgher social stratum formed properly in 1350ish. And it was, of course, named cives, despite having very little to do with the preceeding cives social stratum, because this is medieval terminology and you can't have nice things.

[Catullus64]

Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.

I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.

[Martin Greywolf]

If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

The academic consensus is that while it probably did happen, it happened much more rarely.

The chief reason we see PTSD so often these days is that, in a warzone, nowhere is safe, what with artillery, rockets, snipers and inability to parry any of the above. A pre-modern warfare doesn't usually have that problem, if you're camping out in a field, you will be able to see the enemy coming and either get ready or run away. And while the melee battles are arguably more personal (albeit not more visceral, a bullet does a lot to a body), they also last a fraction of the time.

The longest battles in medieval times usually lasted about 3 or so days of intermittend clashes, now compare that to battle of Somme that was measured in months. Even occupying a small town properly will take weeks of fighting if the enemy decides not to pull back - battle of Berlin took two weeks, and that was with overwhelming Soviet advantage and a lot of Germans surrendering.

That said, there are rare references to people suffering from PTSD, most often quoted being Achilles, and I remember seeing references to knights retired to a monastery who had very loud nightmares about his time in war.

Finally, there is cultural aspect to it. We can't get too deep into it because it ties into religion, but the gist of it is that modern society places a high inherent value on human life, and we are told that taking it away is one of the worst things you can do from an early age. Take a society that isn't built around that notion, like ancient Rome, and you will have greatly lessened PTSD from that direction.

On the flip side, PTSD is not limited to wartime trauma only, so you will see it to develop from whatever that particular society has as a taboo - Spartans and covardice being an excellent example.


If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

Can't discuss that as per forum rules, unfortunately, as most if not all of it is directly tied to religion.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thanks everybody. That gives me something to start with. Of course, there are complications--the noble who owns that property[1] is a misandrist, adventurer-hating, hyper-religious-traditionalist. And the ex-mother-in-law[2] of one of the party members. And the people they're trying to ward out are actually covert agents provocateurs of the neighboring nation, who are trying to start a fight.

[1] A duke, technically. Because the "kingdom" is more like an umbrella group of dukes. The whole area is new to this whole "nobility/fantasy feudalism" thing, having formed as part of the explosive self-disassembly of a larger fantasy-communism-but-with-unions nation about a generation ago. The "king" really only controls one small area and has persuasive power over the Council of Dukes. The dukes were mostly[3] just the largest land "owners" or the highest-notoriety union bosses in a particular area. No serfs. The only other real noble rank is the yarl. And the direct power of the dukes and yarls strongly depends on which duchy you're in. Some? Nobody cares about rank except when dealing with people from other duchies. Others? Rank is very important. Sadly, they're in one of the latter types.

[2] Halflings are matriarchal, with men being quite rare (1/10 adults, the rest die in infancy due to genetic issues), are (functionally) sold off to another family. The party-member's wife was the adopted heir to the duke, before she got (rightfully) accused of being involved with the group that destroyed the church in the first place and fled from the law. But before this, the husband had run away from home with their son (a grave act against tradition) and become an adventurer (an even graver breach of tradition). Which leaves that particular party member rather in a bad odor with the duke. So he's not even going to the negotiations.

[3] 3 of the 6 anyway. One of the others was chosen by vote of the clans of the area that was going to be made a duchy--she lost the vote. She's only a notional ruler, and knows it. A second was chosen by a fair competition--he out wrestled the other contenders. But isn't actually all that harsh. In fact, he's one of the more progressive dukes. The last of the other dukes was somewhat of a pirate (ok, privateer) during the tumultuous end years of the fantasy-communistic government, although her daughter now runs the ship. All she really cares about is that the trade keeps flowing.

[Grim Portent]

Then, you want to arm up to do well in a coming war, and decide to take out a loan. You tell the merchant who gave you the cash that, until the time the debt is repaid, he will receive all the taxes due from the village mentioned above, he just has to collect.

This makes me wonder what legal recourse, if any, the merchant has if the lord who rented them the right to collect the taxes from a village loses their title over the village to another lord through any mechanism, like having their land stripped from them or being deposed in a war. Can the merchant sue for the right to keep collecting taxes until the original deal is paid off, do they have to chase up the former landholder for their dues, do they just have to eat the financial loss, does the new title holder have to pay off the debts accrued by the previous incumbent?

Presumably the fallout for the merchant, the village, the former lord and the new lord would all vary on a number of specifics, but it does strike me as something that has the potential to be an interesting scenario.

[snowblizz]

If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?
We can mention one way it would be "treated". Get yourself started on a hard case of alcoholism.

Without the knowledge of a clinical diagnosis you'd be falling back on traditional explanations such as being possessed, madness, etc etc etc.

[Martin Greywolf]

This makes me wonder what legal recourse, if any, the merchant has if the lord who rented them the right to collect the taxes from a village loses their title over the village to another lord through any mechanism, like having their land stripped from them or being deposed in a war. Can the merchant sue for the right to keep collecting taxes until the original deal is paid off, do they have to chase up the former landholder for their dues, do they just have to eat the financial loss, does the new title holder have to pay off the debts accrued by the previous incumbent?

Presumably the fallout for the merchant, the village, the former lord and the new lord would all vary on a number of specifics, but it does strike me as something that has the potential to be an interesting scenario.

The crucial point here is that the debt belongs to the noble who, well, borrowed money in the first place, it is in no way tied to the land. So, theoretically, once the land changes hands for any reason and you are no longer legally allowed to collect taxes, you keep going after the man, or after whoever inherited the debt. If who inherited the debt is in question, you will likely face hell of a legal battle to get your money back.

If a noble is stripped of his lands, well. That is extremely rare and usually happens because treason or some such (a case of attempted assassination that saw execution of family to third degree and stripping of titles to second comes to mind), but should that happen, the land reverts to the king. That usually means he will pay off any outstanding debts because, well, he's the king and therefore wealthy enough to make the bad rep from not paying up not worth it.

What tends to be more interesting is the exact opposite, where the merchant either claims the taxes weren't good enough to pay off the debt yet (it can happen with bad harvests, and proving it one way or another is tricky) or where the merchant is not merchant but rather another, more powerful noble, and he simply assumes direct control.

Turns out, if a powerful noble decides not to leave a castle when his rent expires, it can be pretty hard to make him do so. There were many, many cases of this, happening during Arpad-Anjou interregnum (and also land held as a result of an office being appropriated this way), including cases where nobles A and B were about equally influential, but noble B had backing of a powerful noble C. Fun times were had by, well, absolutely no one, it was utter chaos.

Fallout for the village itself was usually fairly mild - unless the country was in utter chaos (as during the Ottoman wars), they still just paid one tax. If the country was in utter chaos, well, there are cases from post-medieval Hungary of the same village being taxed seven times (by four sides of a two-sided war) for any number of claims, and looted if they refused to pay up.

[fusilier]

Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.

I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.

There's a list of pre-modern examples here, but it's pretty short (more from the early modern period on). It does give some older terms for PTSD, but again they are from the early modern period.

http://traumadissociation.com/ptsd/history-of-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html

Actually took me longer than expected to dig up even that, but the history of PTSD has been researched, so there should be some useful sources out there.

This article is less detailed and technical than I would usually share, but it provides a few examples from the ancient world, and a "contrarian" view.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-hidden-evidence-of-ptsd-in-the-ancient-world-eb83752b7d4e

[Part (emphasis on "part") of the contrarian argument is that many modern PTSD cases are associated with concussions, which on a modern battlefield are mostly caused by explosions. Such explosions being absent from ancient battlefields would, so the argument goes, result in fewer cases of PTSD. But I wonder if ancient (and medieval warfare) would have involved many concussions from being bashed over the head with some weapon . . .]

More generally, you might want to look for how they approached "madness" throughout history. Mental disorders do appear in various popular representations, Orlando furioso comes to mind, but not often attributed to combat stress (even if it affected a "warrior").

Wikipedia has a fairly detailed web page on the History of mental disorders:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mental_disorders

(Religion features heavily, but so do some other ideas like humoral theory).

[Pauly]

Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.

I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?

I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.

Lindy Beige has a video on it.
Short version is that it was rare in pre-modern times. Randomness seems to be a key element as being attacked by a bear or lion was seen as more stressful than being in battle.

Historically the first war that I am aware of that had large numbers of what we would now call PTSD was the American Civil War which featured long periods in trenches in the latte part of the war.
WWI had “shell shock” which we now consider to be PTSD. Armies learned that rotating troops in and out of the line, keeping comrades together and avoiding keeping troops in extended stays under fire were key elements to controlling the development of shell shock. By WW2 the British army was using tables to work out just how many combat hours a soldier could endure and withdrew soldiers with high number of battle hours from fighting units. With their systems of counting battle hours and keeping social and support structures for soldiers together they were able to get roughly double the number of combat hours out of each soldier than the US Army did with its repple depple system.

If you look back at Ancient warfare
1) There was a much lower degree of randomness.
2) Hours in combat situations were much lower
3) The social/support networks within the units were stronger than their industrial age counterparts.

PTSD obviously did occur, just to a significantly lower degree than it does in modern long distance extended timeframes warfare.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A question about building fortifications:

Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?

Assumptions:
* Technology level is pre-industrial (schitzo-medieval, with some Renaissance level improvements, plus magic described below). No non-animal power (water and wind power of course, but those aren't relevant here as much I don't think, as the site doesn't have much in the way of either).
* Area to be enclosed is roughly 2 acres, shape is free (does not have to be the star-shape, as no cannons), roughly a square 300'/90m on a side.
* Intent is for the earthworks to be ~8-10' high, with a stone topping.[1]
* Wood is available, but use of wood should be minimized[2]
* This is not intended to be a defense against a significant army incursion, and replacing it with a full stone wall is likely, but not currently in the picture. Speed is more important than defensive strength. Think that this is a replacement for a town's wood and stone palisade wall, not a primary military fort
* Only civilian, non-forced labor is available (this being a private enterprise), so cost matters.

Magic:
* There are specialist teams (groups of 5 specialized spell casters) who can move earth roughly at the rate of a modern excavator. They're expensive (~100x the cost of the same number of unskilled laborers) and limited--you can get no more than 2 of them on site at a time.

Terrain:
* Prairie, much like the Great Plains of the US before settlement.

[1] Stone is available, but the nearest good quarry is some distance (~5 miles) away and somewhat expensive. Most of the buildings in the area are packed earth (cob-style) or brick.
[2] Since there aren't significant local forests, all the major lumber has to be shipped from up-river and is thus expensive for large pieces. Small planks and beams are less so, but major timbers and logs are not readily available. Otherwise they'd use timber for the initial wall (palisade style).

[KineticDiplomat]

As a sort of historiography note for the PTSD question, it’s worth noting that during 2005-2020 period or so western militaries placed a substantial and expanded emphasis on de-stigmatizing PTSD and mental health issues. It might be the result of expanded research, it might be the result of making the grant source happy, but you’re going to find more than a few articles in that period that are going to be firmly on the side of “look - it’s been around all along, it just wasn’t reported for reasons x, y, and z”.

That said, anyone seeking to say otherwise is going to run into the fact that things like large scale peer reviewed statistical studies about mental health simply aren’t going to exist in many periods, making comparisons hard. And then we could get into conflated data - if a soldier has PTSD and a discipline issue, did the PTSD contribute to the discipline issue, did being disciplined contribute to the PTSD, are they unrelated, did the soldier falsify a PTSD claim in hopes of escaping consequences, did the chain of command end up disciplining the soldier over a legitimate mental health issue? If a drone pilot who never leaves the US reports PTSD, can it be laid against a Greek spearman breaking down with nightmares? We can’t possibly know, all we know is that any of those cases could be one more count in the data - and that the use of any of the above is likely to coincide more with the predetermined ideological bent of an author...

[fusilier]

A question about building fortifications:

Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?

Assumptions:
* Technology level is pre-industrial (schitzo-medieval, with some Renaissance level improvements, plus magic described below). No non-animal power (water and wind power of course, but those aren't relevant here as much I don't think, as the site doesn't have much in the way of either).
* Area to be enclosed is roughly 2 acres, shape is free (does not have to be the star-shape, as no cannons), roughly a square 300'/90m on a side.
* Intent is for the earthworks to be ~8-10' high, with a stone topping.[1]
* Wood is available, but use of wood should be minimized[2]
* This is not intended to be a defense against a significant army incursion, and replacing it with a full stone wall is likely, but not currently in the picture. Speed is more important than defensive strength. Think that this is a replacement for a town's wood and stone palisade wall, not a primary military fort
* Only civilian, non-forced labor is available (this being a private enterprise), so cost matters.

Magic:
* There are specialist teams (groups of 5 specialized spell casters) who can move earth roughly at the rate of a modern excavator. They're expensive (~100x the cost of the same number of unskilled laborers) and limited--you can get no more than 2 of them on site at a time.

Terrain:
* Prairie, much like the Great Plains of the US before settlement.

[1] Stone is available, but the nearest good quarry is some distance (~5 miles) away and somewhat expensive. Most of the buildings in the area are packed earth (cob-style) or brick.
[2] Since there aren't significant local forests, all the major lumber has to be shipped from up-river and is thus expensive for large pieces. Small planks and beams are less so, but major timbers and logs are not readily available. Otherwise they'd use timber for the initial wall (palisade style).

What exactly do you mean by stone topping? Basically an earthwork faced in stone? That's basically how most thick walls were made anyhow: two faces of stone and the interior is filled with rubble, earth, etc.

The "earth" to make an earthwork is obtained by digging the surrounding ditch, so the earth needs to be moved, but not very far. The ditch also serves to effectively increase the height of the wall that needs to be scaled. As you're not using the walls to resist artillery, then they don't need to be very thick, and the wood you have could be used to make "fraise" (a barrier of pointed sticks at the base of the wall).

However, if you have enough stone, you can make walls tall, while sacrificing width (again, no artillery to face), and so you could move less earth. Unfortunately I loaned my Civil War era engineer's manual out to somebody a couple of years ago, and never got it back -- so I don't have my estimates how much earth a man can move in x-hours, based on the hardness of the soil. Frankly I don't think it matters much. Unless you have a very limited number of workers, 3 months should be plenty of time to make a small fort. If you lack skilled masons, then field stone walls would probably suffice, although you need to be able to make mortar. 5 miles is not that far to haul stone from a quarry (you're not building Stonehenge, the stones don't have to be that large).

Oh, if you have source of clay and can fire bricks (this requires fuel), then bricks will work quite well as a replacement for stone.

Those are the musings off the top of my head. I do need to try to get that Engineer's manual back . . .

EDIT -- I was responding quickly and missed some key things. Again, I don't know how many man-hours it takes to move the required amount of earth, but also it's unclear how much you need to move. If simply piling up earth, then it will take more to get to the desired height. If making a composite stone(or brick)/earth wall, which will be thinner, it requires less earth, but more stone (and I don't think my manual covered that).

Also, 300 feet on a side is actually pretty big. A good sized camp could fit inside that enclosure, so that could house a fairly large number of soldiers. I'm not finding it quickly, but the roman legions would often make a temporary "marching fort" when they camped at night, the dimensions of that, and how many soldiers it contained, might be a useful guide.

[Grim Portent]

While not a wall, the motte for a small motte-and-bailey castle could take as little as 1000 man hours to make. The motte is basically a man made hill upon which you place a wood or stone keep, so it's not exactly a flimsy pile of loose dirt or anything. The whole thing, hill, keep and wall around the hill could take under a month to build, so using that as a general guide it should take just a few weeks at most to build just the wall and a trench.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What exactly do you mean by stone topping? Basically an earthwork faced in stone? That's basically how most thick walls were made anyhow: two faces of stone and the interior is filled with rubble, earth, etc.

The "earth" to make an earthwork is obtained by digging the surrounding ditch, so the earth needs to be moved, but not very far. The ditch also serves to effectively increase the height of the wall that needs to be scaled. As you're not using the walls to resist artillery, then they don't need to be very thick, and the wood you have could be used to make "fraise" (a barrier of pointed sticks at the base of the wall).

However, if you have enough stone, you can make walls tall, while sacrificing width (again, no artillery to face), and so you could move less earth. Unfortunately I loaned my Civil War era engineer's manual out to somebody a couple of years ago, and never got it back -- so I don't have my estimates how much earth a man can move in x-hours, based on the hardness of the soil. Frankly I don't think it matters much. Unless you have a very limited number of workers, 3 months should be plenty of time to make a small fort. If you lack skilled masons, then field stone walls would probably suffice, although you need to be able to make mortar. 5 miles is not that far to haul stone from a quarry (you're not building Stonehenge, the stones don't have to be that large).

Oh, if you have source of clay and can fire bricks (this requires fuel), then bricks will work quite well as a replacement for stone.

Those are the musings off the top of my head. I do need to try to get that Engineer's manual back . . .

EDIT -- I was responding quickly and missed some key things. Again, I don't know how many man-hours it takes to move the required amount of earth, but also it's unclear how much you need to move. If simply piling up earth, then it will take more to get to the desired height. If making a composite stone(or brick)/earth wall, which will be thinner, it requires less earth, but more stone (and I don't think my manual covered that).

Also, 300 feet on a side is actually pretty big. A good sized camp could fit inside that enclosure, so that could house a fairly large number of soldiers. I'm not finding it quickly, but the roman legions would often make a temporary "marching fort" when they camped at night, the dimensions of that, and how many soldiers it contained, might be a useful guide.

What I was thinking was that the wall would look like (seen from the outside):

1) ditch
2) small horizontal space to keep the dirt from tumbling in
3) packed earth (probably sodded with the heavy sod from the ditch to prevent rain from washing it away) slope, roughly triangular but with a flattened top several feet wide, about 8-10' high at the peak.
4) held in place with a field-stone + mortar retaining wall that also serves as the patrolling walkway.
5) (eventually) with a shorter regular stone wall, 5-6' tall, on top of the earth slope as as breastwork.

The point being to not need quite so much stone/stonework because all you're using it for is to support one side of the wall, not facing it.

I did some calculations and it seems doable just in earth-moving time assuming you have the equivalent of a mini-excavator + roller (in the ritual crew) and then most of the labor being building the retaining wall. Estimate was you have about 50 cubic feet of earth in a 1-foot-wide segment, or (roughly, with rounding) 6 m^3 per m of wall. From that and excavator speeds, I figured you could probably handle somewhere between 40 and 50 m of wall per day (just in earth-moving time), so I said roughly 1 month (32 days, in setting, as a round number) for a 200'x200' area (basically 1 acre) assuming you had one specialist crew and "plenty" of less-skilled labor. Shorter if you can hire another specialist crew (the real limiting factor here).

[KineticDiplomat]

You might find an instructive case in Fort McAllister, near Savannah (pop ~22k c 1861). Basically it’s little more than a dirt battery in 1861, because everyone thinks that the pride and joy masonry-based Fort Pulaski will hold the river. In April 1862, the union comes and proves brick forts don’t work anymore and all of a sudden the CSA needs a fort near Savannah, and they need it now.

Cue going from little more than a battery without any permanent quarters (the garrison lived in houses a bit down the road at the time), to a 30 acre enclosed earthwork fort with a proper ditch, bomb catches, traverses 10-15 feet high, shelters, firing points for six seaward and three landward guns, all made of dirt. It’s pretty forted up by July...so three months after the oh crap moment.

So, a two acre enclosure that’s basically just a tall berm? So long as you have the motivation, any town of decent size shouldn’t have an issue in three months.

[Fatefulforce]

Tod's Worshop -- circa 1400 BCE 960lb crossbow vs modern 150lb crossbow


Tod is awsome and runs one of the best Youtube chans

[TheStranger]

A question about building fortifications:

Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?


I know nothing about fortifications, but I know a little bit about moving dirt with a shovel so I'll weigh in.

First, let's use a circular enclosure for minimal necessary earth moving. A two-acre circular enclosure will have a perimeter of ~1,050 feet, which saves us ~150 feet of wall over your square fortification. So there's that.

Second, let's assume that you can maintain a 45 degree slope on your earthwork without the use of expensive wood/rock to stabilize a vertical wall. This has the disadvantage of being easier to scale than an actual wall, and the added disadvantage of needing more material because your wall is twice as wide at the base at it is high. But my intuition is that the labor to move dirt is going to be substantially cheaper than importing rock or wood, so let's go with that. Besides, building a good retaining wall takes its own labor and a bit more skill than hauling dirt, so you might not save anything in the end (but you do get a nicer wall out of it).

Let's also say that you want your wall to be three feet wide at the top. That means that a 10' high wall will have a cross-sectional area of about 130 square feet, and each foot of wall will require about five cubic yards of dirt. From personal experience, I'm going to estimate that one hard-working adult can move about that much dirt from Point A to Point B in a day. The actual amount might be a bit more or less, but that's probably close enough for our purposes and it makes the math easy. (If you go with an 8-foot wall, each linear foot takes about three yards of dirt.)

All of which means you need about 1,050 person-days of labor to complete your wall, or about 12 people working for three months. If you have three months, I'd suggest two crews, each with an ox-pulled cart to move the dirt from the ditch to the wall (two carts, actually - that way you can always have one being filled and one being emptied). Have your two crews work around the wall in opposite directions, with each crew having a few people in the ditch loading carts and a few people on the wall emptying carts, plus somebody driving the carts back and forth.

Since you have lots of time to do this, you can use that as a starting point but plan to take stock after a few weeks and hire more workers if needed. As for the mages, a little googling suggests that an excavator moves about 300 cubic yards in a day, so you save money having your mundane work crews and only bring in the mages if you start falling behind schedule or if you run into some hard digging.

[Pauly]

A question about building fortifications:

Assume you want to raise a US Civil War-style earthwork (with stone topping) wall around a relatively small area. But you need to do it before winter sets in--you have roughly 3 months. How much manpower would you need? Are there better (ie cheaper and/or faster) ways of doing this?
(palisade style).

If it’s civil war era which implies gunpowder cannons, you do not want stone, least of all small stones that haven’t been expertly masoned into position.

Stone shatters and creates shrapnel. Packed earth is all around better. Packed earth gambions were heavily used in the ACW as were sandbags. Stone, if used, would be better on the interior facing of the walls and allowing the packed earth to absorb the shock of cannon balls. You may have some interior stone buildings, but that would be to protect against stray ricochets and musket balls not aimed direct cannon fire.

Depending on the expertise of the engineers your basic design will be along the lines of a Vauban star fart with bastions and ramped walks deflecting cannon shots upwards. Ditches in the front to slow down assaults.

If you’ve got druids available you could grow grass on the sod to help keep it in place and bomba bushes as natural barbed wire where required, possibly in the ditches.

As previously sad 3 months is more than enough time to build an elaborated earthworks.

[fusilier]

What I was thinking was that the wall would look like (seen from the outside):

1) ditch
2) small horizontal space to keep the dirt from tumbling in
3) packed earth (probably sodded with the heavy sod from the ditch to prevent rain from washing it away) slope, roughly triangular but with a flattened top several feet wide, about 8-10' high at the peak.
4) held in place with a field-stone + mortar retaining wall that also serves as the patrolling walkway.
5) (eventually) with a shorter regular stone wall, 5-6' tall, on top of the earth slope as as breastwork.

The point being to not need quite so much stone/stonework because all you're using it for is to support one side of the wall, not facing it.

I did some calculations and it seems doable just in earth-moving time assuming you have the equivalent of a mini-excavator + roller (in the ritual crew) and then most of the labor being building the retaining wall. Estimate was you have about 50 cubic feet of earth in a 1-foot-wide segment, or (roughly, with rounding) 6 m^3 per m of wall. From that and excavator speeds, I figured you could probably handle somewhere between 40 and 50 m of wall per day (just in earth-moving time), so I said roughly 1 month (32 days, in setting, as a round number) for a 200'x200' area (basically 1 acre) assuming you had one specialist crew and "plenty" of less-skilled labor. Shorter if you can hire another specialist crew (the real limiting factor here).

Seeing as the ditch is made out of the same dirt as the wall, the angle should be the same, and you won't need a small berm between the ditch and wall. While sometimes used on larger fortifications, it could be undesirable as it might make it easier for enemies to climb.

So what kind of cross section are you imagining? A typical civil war earthen fort, with walls as high as you describe, would have a very wide "firing step." The parapet would be roughly breast high when standing on this "step." The interior of the parapet would be "revetted", some material would be used to make it vertical, and prevent earth from spilling *into* the work. This allows the soldiers to stand next to the wall to fire their muskets over the top. Typically all interior edges would be revetted, but it wasn't always done.

However, it appears that you intend just an earth wall, 8-10 feet high, that soldiers can stand on top of? That fits with some older (pre-musket) styles. Given that you're using prairie sod, I don't think you even need to pave the walkways with stone. The sod should be tough enough to take being trodden upon. Maybe use some stone to provide steps to the top? Or terrace the interior so that it's easier to get to the top? Gaps in the earth wall, for things like gates, entryways, posterns, etc., can be faced with stone.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Seeing as the ditch is made out of the same dirt as the wall, the angle should be the same, and you won't need a small berm between the ditch and wall. While sometimes used on larger fortifications, it could be undesirable as it might make it easier for enemies to climb.

So what kind of cross section are you imagining? A typical civil war earthen fort, with walls as high as you describe, would have a very wide "firing step." The parapet would be roughly breast high when standing on this "step." The interior of the parapet would be "revetted", some material would be used to make it vertical, and prevent earth from spilling *into* the work. This allows the soldiers to stand next to the wall to fire their muskets over the top. Typically all interior edges would be revetted, but it wasn't always done.

However, it appears that you intend just an earth wall, 8-10 feet high, that soldiers can stand on top of? That fits with some older (pre-musket) styles. Given that you're using prairie sod, I don't think you even need to pave the walkways with stone. The sod should be tough enough to take being trodden upon. Maybe use some stone to provide steps to the top? Or terrace the interior so that it's easier to get to the top? Gaps in the earth wall, for things like gates, entryways, posterns, etc., can be faced with stone.

So what you're proposing has the wall be simply the extension of the ditch's inner surface? That could work. As for cross-section, I had been working under the (mistaken, it seems) assumption that dirt-moving was the bottleneck here and thinking of it as a right triangle, roughly as wide as it is tall, so probably 11 ft across at the base, ramping up at a (roughly) 45 degree angle for 8 feet, then a 3 foot "walk" on the top, with the vertical side being held up by a field-stone retaining wall. That was to save on dirt needing to be moved. But if, as it appears, dirt-moving isn't the binding constraint, I could instead just do a roughly 20' wide (at the base) flat-topped triangle--8' of slope, then 3-5' of flat, then 8' sloping down on the inside. Then put a field-stone wall, roughly 4-5' high (with battlements) on top for cover for soldiers on the top.

Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.

One other side note--the culture in question shouldn't have much problem with the skills for building walls--their (common-language) culture name is the Wallbuilders. They build walls of some sort (ranging from a token string-and-stake border marker to one city having multiple stacked, serious stone walls cutting off access to the city, which nestles in a pocket canyon with inaccessible cliffs on all but a small approach. They're somewhat of defensive specialists. However, no one in the region has fought a serious war[1] in, well, centuries. First because there was no one neighboring to war against (expanding into wilderness), then because there's an international organization who owns all the adventurers/superheroes who tends to stomp on serious wars hard.

[1] there have been skirmishes and a protracted "civil war" that was basically just a bunch of feuding groups raiding each other, but those raids had force sizes in the low hundreds at most. Most of the nations of the region have only token militaries. Lots of monsters on the borders, but this area is way far away from any of the wilderness.

[fusilier]

So what you're proposing has the wall be simply the extension of the ditch's inner surface? That could work. As for cross-section, I had been working under the (mistaken, it seems) assumption that dirt-moving was the bottleneck here and thinking of it as a right triangle, roughly as wide as it is tall, so probably 11 ft across at the base, ramping up at a (roughly) 45 degree angle for 8 feet, then a 3 foot "walk" on the top, with the vertical side being held up by a field-stone retaining wall. That was to save on dirt needing to be moved. But if, as it appears, dirt-moving isn't the binding constraint, I could instead just do a roughly 20' wide (at the base) flat-topped triangle--8' of slope, then 3-5' of flat, then 8' sloping down on the inside. Then put a field-stone wall, roughly 4-5' high (with battlements) on top for cover for soldiers on the top.

Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.

One other side note--the culture in question shouldn't have much problem with the skills for building walls--their (common-language) culture name is the Wallbuilders. They build walls of some sort (ranging from a token string-and-stake border marker to one city having multiple stacked, serious stone walls cutting off access to the city, which nestles in a pocket canyon with inaccessible cliffs on all but a small approach. They're somewhat of defensive specialists. However, no one in the region has fought a serious war[1] in, well, centuries. First because there was no one neighboring to war against (expanding into wilderness), then because there's an international organization who owns all the adventurers/superheroes who tends to stomp on serious wars hard.

[1] there have been skirmishes and a protracted "civil war" that was basically just a bunch of feuding groups raiding each other, but those raids had force sizes in the low hundreds at most. Most of the nations of the region have only token militaries. Lots of monsters on the borders, but this area is way far away from any of the wilderness.

This sounds reasonable to me. I did remember I have a "Hand-Book of Active Service" which does have some information about field fortifications. I don't see anything about digging rates, but it does recommend a 45 degree slope for the earth, as your calculations used.

I would still consider using "fraise" (large pointed sticks sticking out from the base of the earthwork), if the wood can be found. At the very least it looks cool. ;-) It's also got a long history in the use of field fortifications.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This sounds reasonable to me. I did remember I have a "Hand-Book of Active Service" which does have some information about field fortifications. I don't see anything about digging rates, but it does recommend a 45 degree slope for the earth, as your calculations used.

I would still consider using "fraise" (large pointed sticks sticking out from the base of the earthwork), if the wood can be found. At the very least it looks cool. ;-) It's also got a long history in the use of field fortifications.

Good to know that my "make the math easier" simplification, which I arrived at by looking at a table of angles of repose, was about right.

I think that instead of fraise (because wood long enough to be meaningful is really scarce here[1]), I'll instead use thorn bushes, which are...not scarce. And grow big and gnarly and tangled. Plant those in the ditch and you'll strongly discourage people passing through.

[1] In fact, wood isn't used for fuel at all except as a show of ostentatious wealth. Instead, there's a (fantasy) form of bush, something like a compact tumbleweed that burns for a long time. That, plus animal dung, provides much of the heat and cooking fuel. Culturally, they're all about planting trees (often as wind-breaks or orchards)--cutting down live trees is discouraged. Much of the native wood that ends up used for things came from dead or dying trees. The rest was floated down the major rivers from the heavily-wooded hills and mountains ~100 miles away.

[Pauly]

Note--this is more in the vein of a "keep out incidental raids and mark the border" wall, not a "stop a horde of orcs" wall. And as a setting fact, there are no guns. Period. The creator god (aka ME) strongly dislikes them on aesthetic grounds and has designed the entire physics and chemistry to make it impossible. Magic-shooting artillery? Maybe (although that's not easy or common). Gunpowder (or any explosive-powder equivalent) cannons and muskets? Nope. Not gonna happen.
.

For fortifications.
- Tall vertical obstacles keep out people (and orcs et al). Thickness is only a consideration in answering the question “how hard is it to make the wall less tall?“
- Sloped thick obstacles keep out firepower. A trench is essentially a fortification with infinite thickness walls. Height only matters in making fields of fire for your defensive batteries.

The purpose of sloped fortifications in ancient forts was to make it harder to get over the vertical part of the wall. As soon as fortification technology was sufficiently advanced defenders built vertical walls of sufficient height and abandoned sloping earthworks as part of the built defenses. Even then forts were built on the top of hills where possible.

In the absence of cannons, or the magical equivalent, there is no need to make thick sloping earthworks a part of your fortification, unless it exists to put a tall wall on the top of it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For fortifications.
- Tall vertical obstacles keep out people (and orcs et al). Thickness is only a consideration in answering the question “how hard is it to make the wall less tall?“
- Sloped thick obstacles keep out firepower. A trench is essentially a fortification with infinite thickness walls. Height only matters in making fields of fire for your defensive batteries.

The purpose of sloped fortifications in ancient forts was to make it harder to get over the vertical part of the wall. As soon as fortification technology was sufficiently advanced defenders built vertical walls of sufficient height and abandoned sloping earthworks as part of the built defenses. Even then forts were built on the top of hills where possible.

In the absence of cannons, or the magical equivalent, there is no need to make thick sloping earthworks a part of your fortification, unless it exists to put a tall wall on the top of it.

But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.

As I see it, the hybrid approach gets you some of the benefits of the vertical, while being much cheaper/faster. If they were in the mountains or forests, the calculus would change to favor stone and wood. And field stone (which isn't all that common there either, but more than blocks of cut stone) is extremely labor intensive at scale.

Plus, there are aesthetic considerations. This particular culture has a history of using earth as a building material. Cob-style rammed earth buildings are the norm, with only rich buildings being timbered.

[Martin Greywolf]

I think that instead of fraise (because wood long enough to be meaningful is really scarce here[1]), I'll instead use thorn bushes, which are...not scarce. And grow big and gnarly and tangled. Plant those in the ditch and you'll strongly discourage people passing through.

Not really. I remember one occassion where I, a re-enactor with 1300 padded leg armor and leather boots, was a part of a LARP, with most of the LARPers using the usual not-that-durable costumes. A fight broke out, as it does, and I gleefully stomped right through thorn bushes, knowing full well my armor and actual, proper boots can take it, to flank the enemy shield wall. Unless your thorn bushes are some exotic variety with long and durable spikes, anyone with padded armor will be able to get through with a few small nicks in the armor, and anyone in metal will only be slowed down slightly by them.


But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.

As I see it, the hybrid approach gets you some of the benefits of the vertical, while being much cheaper/faster. If they were in the mountains or forests, the calculus would change to favor stone and wood. And field stone (which isn't all that common there either, but more than blocks of cut stone) is extremely labor intensive at scale.

The main reason this wasn't done is cost and labor. Pallisades and walls go quite a lot deeper down than you probably think, and erecting any earthworks on top of actual surface will make replacing the previous defensive structure a pain - not only do you need to excavate some ground twice, but you need to stabilize the new hole to make sure it doesn't just... fill itself in during the next rain.

This isn't to say walls weren't upgraded, clearly they were, and often, but if you are planning a defensive measures and already know you will be building a stone wall in near future, the logical thing to do is to make a mound-and-pallisade ring that will be fairly far away from where you want your stone wall to be, getting two layers of defense and avoiding having to dig up the same ground twice.

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/97/c2/10/97c21014f75bb47e7ff2675ad2592bc8.jpg
Pallisade and mound
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d4/a8/f1/d4a8f1e85eef7c5a24fc259c792fe720.jpg
Schematic stone wall
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/zm/ft8779p1zm/figures/ft8779p1zm_00002.gif
Actual stone wall, note both the scale (that wide base is ~5 meters deep) and the retaining wall to the far right


This was a fairly common practice, although you rarely see it nowadays, most stone castles don't have their pallisades reconstructed, and even then, finding any evidence for or against a pallisade can be a challenge archaeologically.

https://www.hotelannemary.sk/data/hotelannemary.sk/images/tmp/hrad_beckov_b_4556284e6e0be3dc.png
The white bits at the bottom is sun-bleached wood that for some reason lost to posterity (of the last two decades) wasn't slathered with whatever product they used to stop weather and bugs from eating it


Plus, there are aesthetic considerations. This particular culture has a history of using earth as a building material. Cob-style rammed earth buildings are the norm, with only rich buildings being timbered.

This was always a weak excuse. Sure, some aesthetic considerations will affect the final look, but when it comes to gross construction, functionality rules over all. There's a reason why fortifications against similar weapons looked almost the same.

https://jordanandjacob.com/wp-content/uploads/visiting-the-china-great-wall-all-you-need-to-know-bookmundi.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/36/1f/c2361f1d0fad892dcb3f6e1d983d825e.jpg
https://www.obnova.sk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/clanky_obrazky_spissky_hrad.jpg

[Telok]

But what if making a tall wall costs too much/would take too long? This is, in essence, a temporary wall. Eventually, they'll probably put up a taller, vertical wall. But they'd never be able to source enough stone for a 10' wall, let alone anything taller, before winter, let alone build the darn thing. At least without way more resources than they have.

Adobe. Sun, mud, straw. You said they have some experience with bricks? It's a cheap brick wall that should help until a more permanent wall is built.

[Tobtor]

Adobe. Sun, mud, straw. You said they have some experience with bricks? It's a cheap brick wall that should help until a more permanent wall is built.


Depend on climate. Mud bricks will fail unless you a firing them. That requires firewood (it needs quite alot!). Making bricks isn't a short cut to making a wall. It requies about the same time and resources (though it is different resources).


Sure, some aesthetic considerations will affect the final look, but when it comes to gross construction, functionality rules over all. There's a reason why fortifications against similar weapons looked almost the same.

Well... wooden walls and first doesn't last as long, so you cant see them today. That is what we see today is NOT what did did, but only the part that lastet.


Not really. I remember one occassion where I, a re-enactor with 1300 padded leg armor and leather boots, was a part of a LARP, with most of the LARPers using the usual not-that-durable costumes. A fight broke out, as it does, and I gleefully stomped right through thorn bushes, knowing full well my armor and actual, proper boots can take it, to flank the enemy shield wall. Unless your thorn bushes are some exotic variety with long and durable spikes, anyone with padded armor will be able to get through with a few small nicks in the armor, and anyone in metal will only be slowed down slightly by them.


I disagree. Bushes big and gnarly and tangled DOES stop you - al least for a time. Maybe you have seen different bushes than me. But even in full wintergear where "damage from thorns" is not an issue they do stop you cold. During an archaeologcal excavation we had to uses the big digging machine to clear it. Even that had some issues when it had to cross a 1m heigh dike with bramble (it was a komatsu PC240 digger).

The slowdown is not from "hurt" or injuries, but that is so tangled than you cannot push past it. You ceend to clear it with a weapon, wich slows you down. I think I saw a reference to Roman defenses used bushes/branches in ditches?

[VoxRationis]

I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.

What does a Bronze Age (more like Mycenaean Greece, not Egypt or Mesopotamia) rural landscape look like? How far apart are villages usually spaced? How big are the villages? I have been trying to find good claims on this. I've seen Medieval Demographics Made Easy (https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/medieval-demographics-made-easy.pdf); obviously, its purview is somewhat later than the era I wish to emulate. It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/) would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France. (And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.)

Some setting notes for clarification: this takes place in a Bronze Age society that practices partitioning of holdings between sons, usually leading to the penury of the average farmer and consolidation under large landowners (who often kill second sons at birth in an effort to prevent such partition). Socioeconomic status is flexible but viciously unequal; accidents of birth, death, and available neighboring land can cause a family to rise or fall in station dramatically. Elite males ride horses into battle and fight as archers, so it stands to reason that there should be a fair amount of pasture land somewhere. The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1) Depend on climate. Mud bricks will fail unless you a firing them. That requires firewood (it needs quite alot!). Making bricks isn't a short cut to making a wall. It requies about the same time and resources (though it is different resources).

2) I disagree. Bushes big and gnarly and tangled DOES stop you - al least for a time. Maybe you have seen different bushes than me. But even in full wintergear where "damage from thorns" is not an issue they do stop you cold. During an archaeologcal excavation we had to uses the big digging machine to clear it. Even that had some issues when it had to cross a 1m heigh dike with bramble (it was a komatsu PC240 digger).

The slowdown is not from "hurt" or injuries, but that is so tangled than you cannot push past it. You ceend to clear it with a weapon, wich slows you down. I think I saw a reference to Roman defenses used bushes/branches in ditches?

1) Yeah, that was my concern. They can fire bricks, but it's fairly expensive in fuel costs. That's why they prefer packed earth building. It's not a particularly dry climate, especially during the winter. Think Great Plains--hot and somewhat humid (there's a very large inland, freshwater sea not all that far away) during the summer, cold and wet during the winter.

2) And I was thinking of those big, totally tangled bushes that are hard to push past. Not rosebushes, but 3-4 foot high, densely-tangled thorny bushes. The kind that will act as a decent cattle fence, unless they're stampeding.

[rrgg]

Just for the record and to avoid any confusion, "rammed earth" often refers to a specific construction style that isn't the same as sloped, earthwork fortifications like what you'd usually see in early modern bastion forts. It was a somewhat labor-intensive process which involved slowly compacting bricks of earth down to about 50% of their original volume creating an almost stone-like material which was extremely sturdy and definitely could be used for vertical construction, including vertical fortifications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammed_earth


Regarding the simpler sloped earthworks and ditches, they have been used frequently for fortification quite a bit even before gunpowder weapons and seem to have been generally considered fairly cheap and quick to construct if you've got the manpower at least. Earthworks were a frequent feature of iron age forts and settlements, no matter what the period it's pretty difficult to fight across a deep ditch or up a steep slope.

According to vegetius regarding entrenched encampments: "There are two methods of entrenching a camp. When the danger is not imminent, they carry a slight ditch round the whole circuit, only nine feet broad and seven deep. With the turf taken from this they make a kind of wall or breastwork three feet high on the inner side of the ditch. But where there is reason to be apprehensive of attempts of the enemy, the camp must be surrounded with a regular ditch twelve feet broad and nine feet deep perpendicular from the surface of the ground. A parapet is then raised on the side next the camp, of the height of four feet, with hurdles and fascines properly covered and secured by the earth taken out of the ditch. From these dimensions the interior height of the intrenchment will be found to be thirteen feet, and the breadth of the ditch twelve. On the top of the whole are planted strong palisades which the soldiers carry constantly with them for this purpose. A sufficient number of spades, pickaxes, wicker baskets and tools of all kinds are to be provided for these works."

[AdAstra]

1) Yeah, that was my concern. They can fire bricks, but it's fairly expensive in fuel costs. That's why they prefer packed earth building. It's not a particularly dry climate, especially during the winter. Think Great Plains--hot and somewhat humid (there's a very large inland, freshwater sea not all that far away) during the summer, cold and wet during the winter.

2) And I was thinking of those big, totally tangled bushes that are hard to push past. Not rosebushes, but 3-4 foot high, densely-tangled thorny bushes. The kind that will act as a decent cattle fence, unless they're stampeding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillfort

Depending, this may offer a little bit.

The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.

Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.

[Martin Greywolf]

The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.

Okay, if you make the brambles thick enough to a point where they stop you be their sheer mass, it will work if it is high enough. Bu thorns will be of limited effect there, you will get simlar effect with hedges. How you want to get them grown in a few months, though... well, I guess you could always claim magic.


Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.

This is a terrible idea and will get your wall to crumble in a few years, damage by roots is quite a problem, even grass can damage a castle wall given enough time. Earthern wall will fare even worse.


I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.

What does a Bronze Age (more like Mycenaean Greece, not Egypt or Mesopotamia) rural landscape look like? How far apart are villages usually spaced? How big are the villages? I have been trying to find good claims on this. I've seen Medieval Demographics Made Easy (https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/medieval-demographics-made-easy.pdf); obviously, its purview is somewhat later than the era I wish to emulate. It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/) would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France. (And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.)

Some setting notes for clarification: this takes place in a Bronze Age society that practices partitioning of holdings between sons, usually leading to the penury of the average farmer and consolidation under large landowners (who often kill second sons at birth in an effort to prevent such partition). Socioeconomic status is flexible but viciously unequal; accidents of birth, death, and available neighboring land can cause a family to rise or fall in station dramatically. Elite males ride horses into battle and fight as archers, so it stands to reason that there should be a fair amount of pasture land somewhere. The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.



It also seems to advocate for a lower population density than the figures given in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry's semi-recent series on farming (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/) would imply, what with the proliferation of quite small farms cited in ancient China, ancient Rome, and 15-century southern France.

The problem here is the local maximums and minimums - the population desity will not be uniform for a country. Arable lowlands will have more people, tall mountains will have barely any and cities will have high concentrations. Things like gold deposits and major rivers will impact this, as well as stable vs unstable borders and so on and so forth. The more profitable and peaceful the region is, the more population it will usually have.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Istvan-Petrovics/publication/281490973/figure/fig1/AS:284515449753601@1444845177063/Major-settlements-and-trade-routes-in-late-medieval-Hungary.png
You can see the settlements, and therefore population, mostly concentrated in a west to north crescent


And incidentally, both are much lower than some other estimates of farm size I've seen on this forum, in the "is an acre too much" thread, where people insisted that a farm must be in the range of 80-120 acres to be viable.

Viable how? Self sustaining community has 50 people per 2 ha, with very, very primitive farming (fallow cropping with no fertilizer), as per this article (https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=humbiol_preprints). In that sense, yeah, you need 200 ares for a sustainable farming village, but that village has several farms, probably five or so (10 people per household is sort of a standard rule of thumb), and a portion of them does not look like farms (pasture, maybe, depends on how you fallow crop).

Problem is, you can't easily scale it down, just because the math works out to 4 ares per man doesn't necessarily mean one man can sustain himself off of that amount of land. And 50 people is a very small village, any lower and it will probably disappear by people moving out. Villages are usually in the 100-200 people range.


I'm trying to generate a map over which the players will travel between a coastal village and the fortress it pays tribute to, some 20 km away, and while it stands to reason that much of the area between the two should be devoted to crop fields, I also want to know how much of their journey will be through settlements, woods, and pastures.
[...]
The landscape has mixtures of rugged hills and lowland areas and is post-glacial. Due to MagicTM, there is no seasonal variation and crops can be grown year-round in the mild subtropical climate.

Assuming this is in a relatively stable region, likely all of it. Farmable areas will be concentrated in the lowlands, with hills reserved for pasture. Habsburg first military survey map (https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/firstsurvey-banal/?layers=136&bbox=1740504.5727963601%2C5691111.297597566%2C1749 595.8018480283%2C5693977.686158259) from 1700s shows us a village every 5-10 km on a road, with road and therefore village network denser in arable areas and sparse in the hills.

[VoxRationis]

The problem here is the local maximums and minimums - the population desity will not be uniform for a country. Arable lowlands will have more people, tall mountains will have barely any and cities will have high concentrations. Things like gold deposits and major rivers will impact this, as well as stable vs unstable borders and so on and so forth. The more profitable and peaceful the region is, the more population it will usually have.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Istvan-Petrovics/publication/281490973/figure/fig1/AS:284515449753601@1444845177063/Major-settlements-and-trade-routes-in-late-medieval-Hungary.png
You can see the settlements, and therefore population, mostly concentrated in a west to north crescent

No, I get that factors like the availability of water and arable land tends to affect density; I was asking more about layout within a particular density; a region composed of an approximate grid of ~100-person villages every kilometer will be somewhat different than one with ~400-person villages every two kilometers, despite having the same population density overall.


Viable how? Self sustaining community has 50 people per 2 ha, with very, very primitive farming (fallow cropping with no fertilizer), as per this article (https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=humbiol_preprints). In that sense, yeah, you need 200 ares for a sustainable farming village, but that village has several farms, probably five or so (10 people per household is sort of a standard rule of thumb), and a portion of them does not look like farms (pasture, maybe, depends on how you fallow crop).

Problem is, you can't easily scale it down, just because the math works out to 4 ares per man doesn't necessarily mean one man can sustain himself off of that amount of land. And 50 people is a very small village, any lower and it will probably disappear by people moving out. Villages are usually in the 100-200 people range.

They didn't really say what "viable" meant; I rather suspect a bias towards more modern farm systems in that thread.




Assuming this is in a relatively stable region, likely all of it. Farmable areas will be concentrated in the lowlands, with hills reserved for pasture. Habsburg first military survey map (https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/firstsurvey-banal/?layers=136&bbox=1740504.5727963601%2C5691111.297597566%2C1749 595.8018480283%2C5693977.686158259) from 1700s shows us a village every 5-10 km on a road, with road and therefore village network denser in arable areas and sparse in the hills.

Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.

Anyway, thank you for the information.

[snowblizz]

Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.

Anyway, thank you for the information.
Roads will avoid woods wherever possible, they are terrible places to put a medieval style road unless the other options are worse. It will also try to avoid water. Around these parts a lot of old roads were following the sand-ridges left by the iceage icesheet as it waxed and waned over the years.

Since the road will likely have been built to service the communities along the way you'd be seeing a lot of them. More than their area of coverage would indicate. So mostly you'd be passing fields and pasture. Fields around the villages which turn into pasture further out and if there's a lot of distance between two villages or the terrain is unfavourable they will have left it as woodland.

In a heavily settled area you don't have forest as such, you have highly managed woodlands. The problem is most of how it would go depends on the geography of your area.

[Martin Greywolf]

Sorry, what I meant by that was, "of their journey, how much would be through settlements, how much through woods, how much through fields," etc. I realize that the way I phrased that was not very precise.

Assuming it's fully settled area and there are no wars to empty it:


100% will be on a road, probably dirt, unless you have Roman-style highway
a village every 5-10 km, the shapes of which will vary, some will be more or less a circle, others will stretch alongside a stream, a village portion can be anything from 100 meters to a kilometer
for outside, vast majority (80-90%) will be some sort of agricultural land (wheat, vegetables, pasture, orchards, vinyards), small plots (~1 acre) divided by hedges or butts
the rest will be timber forests, planted and maintained specifically to provide timber, so les undergrowth and a lot of straight growing trees


This isn't a proportion of land, mind you, there is a lot more forest around, it's just that roads tend to avoid them for the most part, and since this is a coastal region, most of the villages will e on the coastline to have access to fishing and ship transport, and will therefore concentrate farmland to the shore and push the forests out. This is mostly due to you having to go to farm a lot more often than go to timber, and the kind of operation that needs a lot of timber (smelting, for one) being concentrated next to forest and deliberately away from housing.

Roads will follow villages, so you're likely to visit every single one between your starting and ending points, unless you deliberately try to avoid them by going via the side roads, which will slow you down, potentially quite a bit. If you try to cut straight through without following roads, you will be slowed down quite a bit and attract angry farmers.

If the area isn't fully settled yet or had a crisis or several recently, you will get some percentage of abandoned land, but what that percentage is depends on political situation - coastlines and river banks are usually first places to be settled at any rate.

Example road:


small village A, 130 meters (elongated)
farmland, 6 km
medium village B, 130 meters (circular)
farmland 2km
forest 3 km
farmland 3km
large village C, 1km (runs along a stream)


As a rule of thumb, a 2-3km radius around a village will almost always be farmland, with the upper limit being at about 10km in special circumstances (e.g. farming a fjord), although this should really be determined by travel time, not distance. About double that (4-6km, maximum stay at 10km) goes for grazing areas, and meadows for making hay and straw for animals in winter go all the way to that maximum of 10km. Beyond 10 km, the travel time is so long that anything but dedicated pastures with temporary summer camps is not viable.

Important note - this radius of 3-6-10 km is per village, if you have a village A and village B, they could be as far apart as 20 km without overlap. What you are more likely to see is villages concentrated along a road and having a kind of ellipse-shape to their zones, so you won't ever hit zones 2 and 3 while going on the main road. Terrain will dictate most of this, though.

Of the first two zones (3km farms and 6km pastures), 80 percent will be some kind of farmable thing, the final meadow zone has about 50 percent being in use. The rest goes to the forests, streams and otherwise unusable land. However, even the first famring zone will only have about 10 percent of its area used to actively grow crops, the rest of it being orchards or pastures.

You may have noticed that that gives a given village an area of ~2500 ha in the first zone, 250 ha of which is actively worked for crops. That's a lot more than 2-10 ha needed to sustain a village of 50-200 people, but keep in mind that's the bare minimum for subsistence, our actual villages want to 1) make a profit and 2) have some variety in their diet.

That area of 250 ha needs 1 000 man-hours to plow, which translates to 100 man-days assuming you take a ten hours of plowing a day. While this is hard physical labour, you only need one person strong enough to operate the plow, while driving the animlas can be done by a child. Assuming a household of 10 and traditional gender roles, we can estimate 3 males that can plow (2 being too young or too old) per 10 people. In a village of 50, that's 15, so even in that lowball case, a plowing can be done in a week (although I doubt this would actually be attempted, I have plowed with a small hand-tractor and it's hard, hard work, six days will make everything hurt). A more reasonable village of 200 people can do it in two days.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillfort

Depending, this may offer a little bit.

The use of plants as defensive measures is, while not always preferred, certainly something that happened. Aside from forests grown for defensive purposes in China, hedgerows can be nigh-impassable, with the hedge both contributing to the height of the obstacle and growing into the earthen embankment (often with stone too) beneath, making the whole structure very stable. Even in WW2 the hedgerows were a significant barrier that typically required demolition or tanks, usually modified with blades, to get through with any speed.

Having some particularly tough brush with deep roots growing out the side of the earthen wall should be quite effective at both shoring up the works and slowing any attempt to scale them. Or just use stone facing. Or perhaps even try to get the plants to grow through the stone facing, which should be incredibly frustrating to deal with and equally frustrating to get rid of.

As a side note on plants: larger forts and fortified towns apparently historically often had quite a few trees growing in/on them, possibly looking closer to modern "abandoned and overgrown" remnants than to clean cut restorations. Especially ones we start getting to the early modern period, where larger forts and longer sieges become the norm. Not only do plants work as cover for the defenders and obstacles for the attackers, but when you're actually under siege they form a source of firewood and material for repairs. Why only have stockpiles of dead wood that slowly rot away in peacetime when you can have a stockpile of living wood that keeps growing bigger?

[AdAstra]

Okay, if you make the brambles thick enough to a point where they stop you be their sheer mass, it will work if it is high enough. Bu thorns will be of limited effect there, you will get simlar effect with hedges. How you want to get them grown in a few months, though... well, I guess you could always claim magic.



This is a terrible idea and will get your wall to crumble in a few years, damage by roots is quite a problem, even grass can damage a castle wall given enough time. Earthern wall will fare even worse.






The problem here is the local maximums and minimums - the population desity will not be uniform for a country. Arable lowlands will have more people, tall mountains will have barely any and cities will have high concentrations. Things like gold deposits and major rivers will impact this, as well as stable vs unstable borders and so on and so forth. The more profitable and peaceful the region is, the more population it will usually have.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Istvan-Petrovics/publication/281490973/figure/fig1/AS:284515449753601@1444845177063/Major-settlements-and-trade-routes-in-late-medieval-Hungary.png
You can see the settlements, and therefore population, mostly concentrated in a west to north crescent



Viable how? Self sustaining community has 50 people per 2 ha, with very, very primitive farming (fallow cropping with no fertilizer), as per this article (https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=humbiol_preprints). In that sense, yeah, you need 200 ares for a sustainable farming village, but that village has several farms, probably five or so (10 people per household is sort of a standard rule of thumb), and a portion of them does not look like farms (pasture, maybe, depends on how you fallow crop).

Problem is, you can't easily scale it down, just because the math works out to 4 ares per man doesn't necessarily mean one man can sustain himself off of that amount of land. And 50 people is a very small village, any lower and it will probably disappear by people moving out. Villages are usually in the 100-200 people range.



Assuming this is in a relatively stable region, likely all of it. Farmable areas will be concentrated in the lowlands, with hills reserved for pasture. Habsburg first military survey map (https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/firstsurvey-banal/?layers=136&bbox=1740504.5727963601%2C5691111.297597566%2C1749 595.8018480283%2C5693977.686158259) from 1700s shows us a village every 5-10 km on a road, with road and therefore village network denser in arable areas and sparse in the hills.

In areas with significant rainfall, not having plant growth in your earthen walls will cause them to erode without question, unless it's rammed earth or adobe/cob (which will hold up fairly well, but will still be affected over very long periods of time). Curtain walls are a whole different thing, but for the sort of earthworks proposed plants should only be beneficial. Deep roots stabilize soil and are generally speaking, a good idea (though earthen dams can be compromised by woody growth, grass is beneficial). Elevated hedgerows, even those faced with stone that will be more vulnerable to damage from growth, have maintenance cycles on the order of over 100 years, as in Cornish and Devon hedges (though these are farm walls meant for soil protection and sectioning off land, they are very much walls).

[adso]

I'm interested in learning more about the relationship between distance and accuracy with ranged weapons. I'm particularly interested in bows, but anything relating to crossbows, spears, slings, etc would be similarly helpful. I've found a lot on the effective range of various historical weapons, but it tends to be presented as a fairly broad range. I'm wondering, within that range, what is the relationship between accuracy (ability to hit a human-sized target) and distance? Even some anecdotal evidence from someone familiar with a weapon regarding whether it is a linear vs. exponential decrease in accuracy would be great!

[Pauly]

Accuracy is essentially a function of velocity. The more arc you need to get the distance to the target the less accurate you become. There are some confounding variables such as stabilization (spin and/or fins), aiming devices and so on, but velocity is the main variable affecting the device/projectile. Skill of the user is probably higher importance, but I am assuming equally skilled users for this.

Edit to add:
Projectile mass is another factor at longer ranges. Lighter projectiles get affected by air resistance more than heavier projectiles. However I don’t know if man powered projectiles have enough flight time for this to be an important consideration.

[Squire Doodad]

In areas with significant rainfall, not having plant growth in your earthen walls will cause them to erode without question, unless it's rammed earth or adobe/cob (which will hold up fairly well, but will still be affected over very long periods of time). Curtain walls are a whole different thing, but for the sort of earthworks proposed plants should only be beneficial. Deep roots stabilize soil and are generally speaking, a good idea (though earthen dams can be compromised by woody growth, grass is beneficial). Elevated hedgerows, even those faced with stone that will be more vulnerable to damage from growth, have maintenance cycles on the order of over 100 years, as in Cornish and Devon hedges (though these are farm walls meant for soil protection and sectioning off land, they are very much walls).

So a crude mud wall having patches of grass or being studded with ferns would actually make it stronger?

[Gnoman]

There's two kinds of accuracy - mechanical accuracy and practical accuracy. Mechanical accuracy is the ability of a weapon system to hit a target absent any other factor. For this purpose, velocity isn't that important at all. What matters is the weight of the slug (which helps it avoid aerodynamic effects), the mechanical properties of the weapon (how well made it is, and how much error it introduces to the projectiles it launches), and the aerodynamic qualities of the missile - for firearms this is called the ballistic coefficient, and measures how "slick" it is toward the air it is passing through.


Practical accuracy is another matter. Most ranged weapons are much more accurate than the people firing them, and this is where velocity becomes the defining factor - the less ballistic drop you have, the better your hit rate will be. The nature of the weapon itself also makes a big difference. Something like a sling or javelin is going to be much harder with distance, because you basically have to aim it with your entire body. Meanwhile a crossbow, like a modern firearm, will be much more capable of finely refined aim. It will also be much less dependant on the physical state of the shooter - raising and firing a crossbow (though not necessarily loading it) is much less physically taxing than a bow or throwing weapon, and thus will be less likely to experience the effects of physical strain when firing.

As far as distance goes, the biggest thing is that every single negative factor is multiplied the farther out you're aiming. To give a concrete example (albeit one much more modern than you're looking for), a very good rifle will be accurate to "one minute of angle". This means that you can expect the mechanical accuracy of the rifle to place every round within a 1/60th degree cone extending from the muzzle. A rule of thumb to estimate the effect of this is that the base of this cone will be 1" across per 100 yards of range. So, at 100 yards, it will place every shot within a 1" circle - a very nice and precise grouping. Go out to 500 yards, and that circle becomes 5" - not nearly so nice. At 1000 yards, the circle is 10" - approaching the proverbial broadside of a barn. That's just the mechanical effects of the construction. Every factor - slightly off aim, trembles from fear or fatigue, a fly making you blink, whatever - will be multiplied in the same way.

This applies to all ranged weapons. Same reason why a throw from outfield to home base is harder than the same throw from shortstop even if you have the arm for it, or why basketball players usually find free throws much easier than 3-points from the other end of the court.

[halfeye]

Accuracy is essentially a function of velocity.

This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.


The Firefly 17-pounder was theoretically able to penetrate some 163 mm of armour at 500 m (550 yd) and 150 mm at 1,000 m (1,100 yd) using standard armour piercing, capped, ballistic capped (APCBC) ammunition. Armour piercing, discarding sabot (APDS) ammunition could penetrate some 256 mm of armour at 500 m and 233 mm at 1,000 m, which on paper could defeat the armour of almost every German armoured fighting vehicle at any likely range.[11] However, war production APDS rounds lacked accuracy, and the 50 mm penetrator was less destructive after it had penetrated enemy tank armour than the 76.2 mm APCBC shell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly

[Brother Oni]

This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.

Given the mechanics of a saboted shell (the outer casing falling off while in flight resulting in an unstabilised long rod flying through the air), it's not surprising that accuracy and precision are affected; as Gnoman said, the mechanical accuracy of the weapon system is low due to the poor aerodynamic qualities of the projectile.

It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart. :smallbiggrin:

[halfeye]

Given the mechanics of a saboted shell (the outer casing falling off while in flight resulting in an unstabilised long rod flying through the air), it's not surprising that accuracy and precision are affected; as Gnoman said, the mechanical accuracy of the weapon system is low due to the poor aerodynamic qualities of the projectile.

It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart. :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, I don't dispute that, I was just pointing out it's one example of the alleged rule not being true.

[snowblizz]

It's why they progressed to adding fins to the core, resulting in APFSDS which is basically a giant dart. :smallbiggrin:

If you ask me it was just an excuse for the British to turn tank-shooting into a pubgame.

[Pauly]

This is not always true. In the case of the WW2 british 17pounder anti-tank gun, the sabot round was faster, lighter, more likely to penetrate enemy armour if it hit, but less accurate.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly

Another problem was that the sights weren’t calibrated for the APDS shot initially, although that may have affected the 6pdr more as APDS was introduced on the 6pdr first. But as I said in my initial post on the subject “ There are some confounding variables such as stabilization (spin and/or fins), aiming devices and so on,”

If you take a level playing field of comparing 2 different APDS rounds fired from the same gun then, all other things bring equal, the one with higher velocity will be inherently more accurate.

[Martin Greywolf]

I'm interested in learning more about the relationship between distance and accuracy with ranged weapons. I'm particularly interested in bows, but anything relating to crossbows, spears, slings, etc would be similarly helpful. I've found a lot on the effective range of various historical weapons, but it tends to be presented as a fairly broad range. I'm wondering, within that range, what is the relationship between accuracy (ability to hit a human-sized target) and distance?

Well, it depends on weapon, ammunition and training a person has. You listed a vastly different amount of weapons there, so I'll address them in turn. I've at least used all of them for a bit.

Note that I'll be glossing over a lot of stuff. Entire libraries have been written on some of these weapons, after all.

Ye olde arc minutes

First, we must discuss arcminutes. It's how you measure accuracy after all.

Imagine a circle with a centre, and two points on it. If you draw a triangle consisting of those two points and the centre, the angle of the tip at the centre of circle will be some number. That number is represented by degrees, and it goes from 0 to 360 for the whoile circle, with 90 being quarter of a circle and 180 a half. Every one of those degrees can be subdivided into minutes and seconds.

So, that's what a minute is.

Now, as you are shooting, imagine yourself as the centre of said circle, the circle being horizontal. The two points are the left and right edges of the target. The angle at your position will be some number, usually pretty small, and therefore represented in arcminutes. If you can consistently land shots inside that target, then that number is your accuracy.

Another way of looking at it is to take your target, inscribe a circle that will have all your hits in it and make a cone with that circle as its base and yourself as the tip. The angle at the tip is your accuracy in arcminutes.

Bows

Are we talking modern or traditional, heavy or light arrows, and waht draw weight? A difference in single factor can throw you quite a lot, and if you combine them? There's a lot of room for error.

Modern hunters using modern bows, with high velocity but light arrows and low draw weights (but high mechanical efficiency) usually list 50 meters as ethical maximum range - that is, beyond that range, they don't want to shoot at an animal because they aren't sure they will kill it quickly and painlessly.

Maximum range of traditional bows is a hair over 500 meters, which was done with Ottoman recurve and flight arrows, and you do have people who can hit a man-sized target at 200 meters fairly consistently. Do keep in mind that at that distance, your first shot is unlikely to hit unless there is no wind, or if you are insanely skilled and can accurately estimate it. Standard archery practice with English warbows was to shoot from one butt to another, where butt is not a bodypart, but rather a small mound of dirt that ran alongside a field - this distance was 220 meters, and the traditional target was a pole of willow wood, ~2 meters high and ~60 cm wide. Assuming a 60cm group, that gets us a 9 arcminute accuracy, which is... pretty good actually, since this was a standard target, and more serious archers can exceed that.

Note that previous paragraph is talking about bows that are very heavy, in the 130+ lbs range, a hunting bow at 50 lbs will behave differently - but ranges may or may not be the same, since it will probably use lighter arrows.

Why not use lighter arrows? Because when it comes to target penetration (especially important with armor), the more of an object's momentum is made up of its mass, the better it penetrates. Meaning a heavier and slower arrow is better than lighter and faster, so long as their momentums are the same.

Even with heavy arrows, the effective range against heavy armor is at about ~100 meters, not because you can't penetrate it at that range, you usually can't penetrate it even point blank, but because it's extremely hard to aim for armor's weak spots on moving targets at that range, not the least because those weak spots keep moving, and flight time starts to be significant enough that you can't easily lead your shots.

Crossbows

I have no idea about modern ones, but traditional crossbows top out at approximately 200-300 meters at best, almost irregardless of whether they are direct draw lightweight 150 lbs, or heavy 1200 lbs cranequin. They fire heavier arrows than bows (usually), and seem to do either a little better or at least comparably to heaviest warbows when it comes to penetrating armor.

There is almost no limits to how accurate you can make one, but the costs of manufacture for the bolts will reflect that. It shoots a lot like a rifle, really, so practical accuracy is "yes" on a man-sized target. Being able to identify the target at that range, especially in heavy terrain, is another matter entirely.

It has the same effective range against heavy armor as the bow, for the same reasons.

Spears, javelins, franciscas and so on

The range on these is about 20 meters from the actual wartime accounts, albeit theoretical top is at about 50 meters. Current Olympic record is almost 100, but you are unlikely to find an Olympic level athlete, with that amount of specialized training and completely unencumbered on a battlefield. Not the least because that distance is well within bowshot, and the archers will be entirely too happy to give you surplus miniature spears they call "arrows".

At that range, provided you have a modicum of skill, you can hit a man easily, and a weak armor spot fairly easily. The reason they weren't popular weapon is 1) bulky ammunition and 2) that distance is not much when the enemy decides to charge you. Still, there were armies that could make use of these, most notably the Romans.

For a more spherically-adjecant objects, like rocks or throwing axes, well, a professional baseball pitcher can reach about a hundred meters consistently. From that we can conclude that effective range will be similar to spears (Olympic record also at about 100 meters), maybe slightly longer, so let's call it 25 meters.

Atl atl

I have absolutely no insights to offer, aside from the obvious "increases javelin range", since I never used it.

Sling

This is a surprising one. Period accounts tell us that it can reach out to 200 meters (according to Vegetius, it's 180 really, but 200 is easier to remember) with stones and 400 meters with lead shot. The 200 meters range is explicitly stated as for training against man-sized straw dummies, the 400 was against a unit of archers. Maximum range is at about 550 meters.

Unlike bows, it uses battlefield ammo for its maximum range shots, but it does have one fatal weakness. Armor.

Or rather, certain types of armor. Research on slings is so sparse it is almost non-existent, but we can say this with some certainty: chain mail of the Roman and early medieval time, worn over thicker tunic, doesn't protect you against slings sufficiently, if at all. Chain mail of high medieval era, with gambeson underneath, offers better protection, but to what degree is uncertain, probably significantly higher, but not perfect. A solid armor, lamellar or plate, on the other hand, damn near nullifies sling's effect entirely.

You can defeat armor with heavier sling ammo - the nubmers above are for 30-50 gram shot, and we know heavier shot of 100-150 grams was used even in antiquity, but your range will go down. Medieval period sees some stones that would clock in at 1-1.5 kg (that is, 1000-1500 grams), but an experiment has shown that your range will be at 40-60 meters at best with those.

There is, of course, the elephant on the room here. Slings are incredibly hard to aim. Seriously. I cannot overstate how much of a pain in the neck they are. I ran some numbers on it, and after 6 moths of rigorous slinging, one hour every bleeding day (680 hours of training), I'm at about 100 arcminutes (so, 1 degree and 40 minutes, really) of accuracy if I don't mess up the release, and I mess up the release about every third shot (which results in the shot going still in general direction of the enemy, but at 20 meters hitting the fourth guy to the left of what I was aiming at). The acceptable accuracy for handgun slef defence is usually given at about 17 arcminutes, with that getting you the effective range of 50 meters.

You can get good with a sling, really good. Balearic slinging competition has its highest range bullseye being a 60 cm circle at 60 meters, giving us a 34 arcminute accuracy, and Vegetius' range of 180 meters against a target about a meter wide at best gets us 18 arcminute accuracy that is historically attested. There's a reason why he says that the people should train doing that daily, though, and we know it wasn't done in practice, at least not on a legion-wide scale Vegetius wanted it to be.

Summary

In summary, all the weapons above can be trained in sufficiently enough that the real limitation becomes your eyesight and targets moving during flight time (for hitting armor gaps at 100+ meter ranges), or atmospheric conditions interfering (at long range shots). Or, in case of thrown weapons, are short range enough that none of it matters.

For practical accuracy, crossbow is like a rifle, you point (at or above the target) and shoot. Looking at accuracy of rifles with ironsights and accounting for slower projectile flight time will get you a good idea.

Bow is a tad harder. You can sight down an arrow just like with crossbow, but you can't do it in a relaxed state, or for too long. You can achieve comparable accuracy, but training for it takes longer, and fatigue will affect you more.

Thrown weapons have nothing to sight down, and are therefore significantly harder to aim, but compensate for it by means of short range.

A sling is literally the worst. Not only does it have nothing to sight down, like throwing weapons but without the mercy of short range, it also lacks the immediate tactile feedback of a thing you hold in hand. You can learn to compensate for it, but not easily, and definitely not quickly.

The feeling when you nail your steel helmet at 20 paces with a slung baseball and make it clang loudly is pretty great, though.


Even some anecdotal evidence from someone familiar with a weapon regarding whether it is a linear vs. exponential decrease in accuracy would be great!

As a ballpark, and very rough one at that, it's linear for every factor of: distance, target movement, wind (at greater ranges only). Your accuracy technically stays at N arcminutes, but all of these three affect where your point of aim must be.

[KineticDiplomat]

To build on Gnoman, for human aimed weapons with static man sized targets (a lot of caveats there, I know) the bulk of missing is over-under rather than side-to-side. A) humans are not very good at visualizing ballistics without lots of practice, and B) between breathing and the biomechanics of fighting gravity, it’s possible for a weapon to fluctuate several degrees up or down, even when aimed.

This dynamic creates three basic bands of ranges.

1. So close it doesn’t matter. Basically a combination of when the ballistics drop and the potential for a few degrees of vertical variance won’t change a hit to a miss. A 200 FPS crossbow drops less than two feet by 20 yards, and a couple degrees up or down will shift the vertical by another two feet or so…

At twenty yards, even a barely trained crossbow shooter is going to hit a static standing man so long as they take a moment to point the thing at him.

As you get into increasingly fast and low recoil modern weapons, the practical range for this goes up and is mostly limited by the human…the classic 5.56 and 7.62 rounds drop less by 300 yards than the crossbow does at 20…but as a rule of thumb for rifles, under 50m is almost impossible to miss from any position, while from a decent prone position anyone bothering to use the sights is going to hit at 150m and below.

2. Grazing fire. For a certain range based on the weapon, the trajectory is essentially one that if there is a human along the path, they’re going to get hit because the projectile is traveling in a manner where it it is basically striking the target head on.

—->T

As a result, you can still aim AT the target. If you under-over, it’s human error and not a result of some technical issue. This is where shooting starts to require some practice, but isn’t full on hard.

For our previous 200 FPS crossbow, out to 35 yards you have something of a grazing trajectory before it gets to the point where you have 4+ feet of drop and really can’t just aim AT the target anymore. So the difference between this and “point and shoot” isn’t that big. Modern hunters tend to estimate 40-60 yards being the practical effective range for a deer, and they frankly have much nicer crossbows than your happy medieval mercenary.

For modern rifles etc this covers most practical ranges out to 400-600 meters or so depending on the round/weapon. It really becomes a matter of how perfectly you can execute fundamentals by not having the barrel waver off target during the shot…being half a degree off obviously makes a much bigger difference at 500m than 200m.

3. Plunging fire. At a point the game becomes less one of hitting the target head on, and more one of dropping the projectile onto the target, creating a beaten zone where the final part of the trajectory crosses through a man height:

.\
.. T
… \
—————

This is generally speaking, much harder to do against a single man than a large formation of men or a simple desire to fill the ground with enough rounds from an automatic weapon that the law of large numbers works out for you.

This where “effective range” becomes very, very subjective. Yes, you can shoot a crossbow 350 yards, and with enough training reliably drop bolts into the “beaten zone” at the far end. And that is going to be a bad day for a block of men, or enough to make standing around the area for a single man seem dangerous (one will get him eventually), but it’s a far cry from the modern concept of “can reliably hit a point target with a single engagement”.

———

So for RPG purposes where the PC is usually shooting a single target, the apparently low ranges on most medieval weapons are pretty rational. The low ranges on things like assault rifles are definitely not

[rs2excelsior]

I have a (maybe oddly specific) question. Does anyone have any good sources for what Transylvanian, Wallachian, or Hungarian military forces would have looked like in terms of organization, equipment, and so on anywhere in the rough period of 1500-1650 (although moreso towards the end of that period - roughly around the 30 Years' War)? Doesn't need to be anything super in-depth, but preferably more detail than a short wikipedia article.

[Martin Greywolf]

My first question is, what relevant (Slovak, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, ...) languages do you speak? English sources that actually focus on sub-kingdom provinces in eastern Europe are pretty much non-existent, outside of small academical papers.

For a very general overview, with some mistakes in it, Osprey has Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe that ends in this period, as well as Armies of the Ottoman Turks (see firther on why this is relevant).

Also, youre time period is... very problematic. Battle of Mohacs happens in 1526, and after that Transylvania, Wallachia and what is modern Hungary are eiter parts of Ottoman empire, or satellites, so you'd find more on them in sources on Ottoman military, as local troops would be serving as auxiliaries, if that. Kingdom of Hungary is pretty much reduced to modern Slovakia's territory, and even that gets nibbled on, Ottomans advance up to Nove Zamky in 1662. The soldiers fighting for the Kingdom of Hungary are therefore more often than not troops from other Habsburg realms, and this reliance on foreign mercenaries is pretty widespread in the region.

What I'm getting at is that yourr question is a bit like asking for what soldiers defending Constantinople looked like and then giving a date range that has fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans right in the middle of it.

[snowblizz]

I spent some time last night trying to figure out if Osprey actually covers the period and place, and as Martin says it cuts out at about that time and in about that region. Cossacks, Polish-Lithuanians, Ottomans


The material they have on the Ottoman military focuses more on earlier times and/or more famous troops, predominantly the Janissaries. The armies of Ottomans 1300 - 1774 yielded no help either.
While they are alluded to there is no detail what forces the #rebel Hungarians" would have brought either.

Basically, they are the less interesting sidekicks to a bigger Ottoman - Habsburg fighting in most material.

For the absolute close of your period I would suggest armies would be similar in equipment, though not in dress, to Western and Ottoman forces.

To make things more annoying I know I watched some youtube vids of battles fought between Ottomans and the principalities in the region, but I can't find them anymore.

[Martin Greywolf]

To make things more annoying I know I watched some youtube vids of battles fought between Ottomans and the principalities in the region, but I can't find them anymore.

That's... probably for the best. This is a very, very nationalistically charged topic, so anything on YouTube is, well... suspect. Frankly, a lot of academic research is suspect as well, but at least they have to have some ground for their biases.

[snowblizz]

That's... probably for the best. This is a very, very nationalistically charged topic, so anything on YouTube is, well... suspect. Frankly, a lot of academic research is suspect as well, but at least they have to have some ground for their biases.

It was made in a historical vein and not that controversial.

Also it doesn't really matter what they say if they at least mention what weapons armies fought with...

[rs2excelsior]

My first question is, what relevant (Slovak, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, ...) languages do you speak? English sources that actually focus on sub-kingdom provinces in eastern Europe are pretty much non-existent, outside of small academical papers.

Unfortunately none. Well, German, but not great - I could get by with it but would prefer English sources. Which I realize for a lot of places outside of Western Europe means sources are quite sparse.


For a very general overview, with some mistakes in it, Osprey has Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe that ends in this period, as well as Armies of the Ottoman Turks (see firther on why this is relevant).

Should have known Osprey would be a decent place to look - they seem to have basic (if many times a bit flawed - which is fine, really, this is for an RPG setting that I'll probably be playing solo rather than an academic paper) overviews for a lot of periods.


Also, youre time period is... very problematic. Battle of Mohacs happens in 1526, and after that Transylvania, Wallachia and what is modern Hungary are eiter parts of Ottoman empire, or satellites, so you'd find more on them in sources on Ottoman military, as local troops would be serving as auxiliaries, if that. Kingdom of Hungary is pretty much reduced to modern Slovakia's territory, and even that gets nibbled on, Ottomans advance up to Nove Zamky in 1662. The soldiers fighting for the Kingdom of Hungary are therefore more often than not troops from other Habsburg realms, and this reliance on foreign mercenaries is pretty widespread in the region.

What I'm getting at is that yourr question is a bit like asking for what soldiers defending Constantinople looked like and then giving a date range that has fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans right in the middle of it.

Yep, I am aware that the time frame is one where the region was in flux. I am more interested in what the independent soldiers of those principalities/kingdoms would have looked like... but I don't know enough about eastern European history in the time frame to know how meaningful a question that is.

Regardless, thanks (to both of y'all) for the insight - I'll take a look at some of those places.

[Palanan]

I have a question on forge temperatures, in particular how hot a blacksmith’s forge would get using early 1800s technology.

I’ve just read a descriptive passage claiming that the forge “burned blue hot,” which doesn’t feel right to me. The only other information is that the blacksmith is using bellows and heating a long bar of iron. This is all in a purely historical context, with no magic and nothing else special about the forge.

So, what temperatures could a typical forge of that period reach, and would they be hot enough to generate a blue color?

[Gnoman]

Coal can reach around 3500 degrees (f), and bellows can deliver enough air to do it.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks. Is that hot enough to produce a blue flame?

[Kraynic]

Okay, thanks. Is that hot enough to produce a blue flame?

Is it possible they were forge welding and the flux was causing the blue color? As the son of a blacksmith that used coal in the forge, I haven't seen blue just from the coal itself. That was primarily bituminous coal from northeastern Ohio. That would be ranging from the deep reddish orange of the fire "at rest", to a very bright orange/white when running really hot. I don't know if anthracite or lignite produces different colors or not.

Keep in mind that temperature isn't the only factor for flame color. Propane (air mixture) is only supposed to be burning at about 2,000F, and I haven't seen a propane stove burner that didn't burn blue (if it doesn't something is wrong). Forge fires (of whatever fuel) have to be running above that to melt steel for welding (2,800F). The trace elements of what you are burning will have an effect on the flames.

[Palanan]

Thanks, I appreciate the extra information. This is historical fiction, mid-1800s, so no propane or exotic materials. The only other details are that the forge is using charcoal, so no actual coal either. Given this, I'm going to assume that the "blue hot" description is the author's mistake.

Also, very cool that you grew up watching your father work at the forge.

[Kraynic]

The only other details are that the forge is using charcoal, so no actual coal either. Given this, I'm going to assume that the "blue hot" description is the author's mistake.

Ok, that might make the difference. I have heard of forest fires burning so hot that there were purple flames from live trees. Charcoal might very well produce blue sometimes. My father did use charcoal (briquettes) at one point when he was out of coal for some reason. I don't remember the color of the flames. All I remember is that it produced a lot of sparks when the blower was being cranked for high heat. As the kid turning the crank on the blower, I was either avoiding sparks to the best of my ability or leaving as quickly as possible when not needed for that duty any longer!

[Palanan]

Hmm, okay. Sounds like this might be a question for someone who works as a reenactor at a period forge.

And sparks from the blower sounds like something you'd want to avoid, especially if there were a lot of dry leaves around.

[AdAstra]

Hmm, okay. Sounds like this might be a question for someone who works as a reenactor at a period forge.

And sparks from the blower sounds like something you'd want to avoid, especially if there were a lot of dry leaves around.

Coal/charcoal can absolutely burn blue, at least if grills and stoves are any indication. Wood, charcoal, coal, coke, whatever, can all be induced to burn with a bluish flame. CH, CO, C2, and methane will all burn quite blue and can be released from the charcoal in certain conditions.

[Martin Greywolf]

I second AdAstra here, I've seen some blue flames in forges over the years. Mind you, I don't think I ever saw a purely blue flame, but a lot of orange with a part of it blue. It could well be something specifically about forge-grade charcoal.

[Pauly]

Blue fire is usually an indicator that there is no soot.

Gas fires usually burn yellow->light blue—>deep blue
Solid fuel fires (coal/charcoal/wood) usually burn orange->yellow->white.

For a coal fire to burn blue it would have to be not producing soot. I Assume it is possible, but not common.

Also what is being burned can affect the color of the flame.

[Calthropstu]

Blue fire is usually an indicator that there is no soot.

Gas fires usually burn yellow->light blue—>deep blue
Solid fuel fires (coal/charcoal/wood) usually burn orange->yellow->white.

For a coal fire to burn blue it would have to be not producing soot. I Assume it is possible, but not common.

Also what is being burned can affect the color of the flame.

I have seen blue burning coal more than once. It is only a small portion of the flame, but it's there.

[SpoonR]

I have a question on forge temperatures, in particular how hot a blacksmith’s forge would get using early 1800s technology.

I’ve just read a descriptive passage claiming that the forge “burned blue hot,” which doesn’t feel right to me. The only other information is that the blacksmith is using bellows and heating a long bar of iron. This is all in a purely historical context, with no magic and nothing else special about the forge.

So, what temperatures could a typical forge of that period reach, and would they be hot enough to generate a blue color?

Obvious question first, just to check. Are they talking about the Forge getting blue-hot, or the iron bar?

On coal or charcoal forge fires, chemistry can color flames. Copper is the most well known for making a flame turn blue. So, impurities in the charcoal or in the bar could change the color until the impurities are gone. Just color from heat alone? Dunno, but pretty dependent on how much air is flowing through the coals.

Un-natural gas can burn blue. I just double checked on wiki, and the process to make coal gas was known by 1800. Wide use waited a couple decades, but it was a known thing. I assume that under the right conditions the coal could be relasing some gases that burn blue.

And I have my own question about this. Is blue-hot actually good for working iron? Iirc, if the bar gets too hot it loses its carbon impurities and becomes brittle and unsharpenable. An extrahot forge makes it more likely you get into that heat zone.

[Xuc Xac]

Things don't visibly glow blue when they're hot enough. To the human eye, heat radiation goes red -> orange -> yellow -> white.

Other colors are a result of the chemical reactions of the flame. The blue flame of a propane stove is a result of blue light being released by the reaction of CH radicals. If your gas stove was blue because it was radiating that much heat, your pots and pans would melt.

[Catullus64]

Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish asking, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.

What's so flipping important about castles?

I am conceptually aware that medieval warfare in Europe centered a lot around besieging or attacking castles, but I've never really gotten why a castle is so strategically valuable. I get why it's valuable as an administrative center, a status symbol, and a safeguard against domestic unrest, but I feel I don't fully understand the value of a castle as a defensive military asset.

Sure, a castle is very defensible, but what advantage does it actually confer in terms of defending territory? Most castles seem too small to house a very large number of troops or people, so even if it provides a place of safety, it doesn't allow you to offend against an enemy any more effectively. Unless the castle is positioned right near a natural chokepoint such as a river crossing or a mountain pass (which, I grant, many castles were, but just as many seem to have been built on hilltops or on open ground) the enemy isn't terribly impeded in moving about your country by the fact that you possess a castle. In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country. I feel there's something very fundamental about warfare, overland movement, or even just human psychology that I haven't grasped here. Any insights?

[Grim Portent]

One of the biggest advantages is that forces inside a castle can't easily be ignored, they can send out messengers or raiding parties to interfere with the advance of a hostile force that has decided to try and just move past the castle. A medieval army has a pretty big chain of non-combatants that follow it and take care of various things necessary for basic survival or for the army's morale. If you get forced into a fight near a castle the defenders can also sally out to join the defenders.

So you can't really leave the castle in enemy hands without guarding it, the enemies inside can sneak up behind you as you travel nearby and steal or destroy things. You also can't really leave a small force of guards to keep them trapped inside because they'll just get ambushed and killed by the defenders when the time is right.

This means you need to bring to bear enough forces for enough time to take the castle by force or by forcing them to negotiate. Castles are obviously really hard to attack, and a dozen people in the right castle can hold off hundreds or even thousands of people who lack the means to assault the particular castle they're facing effectively. Even once you capture it you have to leave people behind to hold it, which in turn means you have less people for the next fight.


If you try to drive deep into enemy territory without capturing the castles along the route you take you wind up getting harassed and harried and with no clear path of retreat if things go really badly, if you do capture the castles you have to commit resources to holding them. The defenders win either way.

[halfeye]

Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish answering, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.

What's so flipping important about castles?

I am conceptually aware that medieval warfare in Europe centered a lot around besieging or attacking castles, but I've never really gotten why a castle is so strategically valuable. I get why it's valuable as an administrative center, a status symbol, and a safeguard against domestic unrest, but I feel I don't fully understand the value of a castle as a defensive military asset.

Sure, a castle is very defensible, but what advantage does it actually confer in terms of defending territory? Most castles seem too small to house a very large number of troops or people, so even if it provides a place of safety, it doesn't allow you to offend against an enemy any more effectively. Unless the castle is positioned right near a natural chokepoint such as a river crossing or a mountain pass (which, I grant, many castles were, but just as many seem to have been built on hilltops or on open ground) the enemy isn't terribly impeded in moving about your country by the fact that you possess a castle. In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country. I feel there's something very fundamental about warfare, overland movement, or even just human psychology that I haven't grasped here. Any insights?

They were big. The outer walls would be up to hundreds of yards from the inner ones, inside that you'd have a small town, and inside that you'd have a keep which was independently fortified. Without siege weapons, which pretty much disappeared between the end of the roman occupation of Britain and the British civil war, they were pretty nearly invulnerable.

[Berenger]

@Catullus64: This article (https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/) from acoup.blog covers your question in some detail. Short version: enemy forces in your back make a mess of logistics. The castle garrison can ride out and engage vulnerable elements of the invading army (such as scouts, patrols, messengers or foraging parties), then retreat to the castle and do it again the next day.

[KineticDiplomat]

There’s also an operational-strategic reality to all of this: the ability to stand on a field is not the same thing as the ability to control a region,. You can raid, burn crops and huts, make yourself richer and leave, or just march right by on your way somewhere else, but if you wanted to take that land from lord Bob, well if he didn’t like his odds he just pulled back into the castle. His fighting force, some chunk of the local population (or not…), and for a medieval context the all important Lord Bob himself, are now behind walls.

Want to proclaim yourself lord and master? Go ahead. He can wait years in there. You leave, he’s back to governing the land. You say “well I’ll just sit here and govern” and you get the joyous task of trying to keep a force supplied in the field long enough for that to matter, all while keeping Bob penned in, and all while draining your coffers and most likely the capacity of the local area to feed you - all while wondering if some pro-Bob folks are going to come over the hill any month now, or if winter is going to destroy your core retinue, thereby removing one of the pillars of your own political authority. And if you let up and just leave him be, you get to fight a war of a thousand cuts while he sallies whenever he wants.

You can march by of course, and it’s not like you have “supply lines” in the modern sense, but if you lose a battle a week down the road you might not want to retreat this way…

[Pauly]

To go a little deeper on something touched on earlier. In addition to the military damage a garrison can do and the difficulty of controlling an area where you don’t control the local castle, castles were sited to interdict supply/communication lines.

Marching your army past the castle is pretty easy and happened a lot. But not when you need to run supplies down the road the castle overlooks. There were some pretty epic marches in medieval history where because of the chequered alliances you could march past castle A, meet your buddies in Town B, march past castle C then join up with Army D and attack enemy E. But those type of leapfrogging marches were the exception.


So if you could march past a castle and then keep doing your thing, armies did that. It’s just that that was generally an uncommon thing.

[snowblizz]

They were big. The outer walls would be up to hundreds of yards from the inner ones, inside that you'd have a small town, and inside that you'd have a keep which was independently fortified.
Most castles were never that large though. Dozens or some hundreds of troops was more likely.



In fact, a castle seems more advantageous to an attacker than a defender, since it provides a ready-made defensible foothold in hostile country.

And sometimes that was the whole point! The English kings' great castles in Wales lie around the coast. They don't seem great at controlling the Welsh hinterland standing at the edges of the sea. But they aren't meant to. They protect incursion points that the English would use to ferry in troops to invade against eventual Welsh rebellions. They can be supplied by sea regardless of the activities of a land based army. And you can therefore insert troops who can move out to attack the lands. So in a sense they do control the hinterland, as they provide a point where the English king can put in men and material at his leisure should you try and rebel. Sorry, I mean *when* you try to rebel.

[eru001]

Here's a question that I feel somewhat foolish answering, but it seems really important to understanding medieval warfare.

What's so flipping important about castles?


So, the point that a number of people have touched on, which I will also lead with, is the issue of Enemy Troops in your rear. This is a very bad no good thing. Even a small amount of determined, well equipped enemies can cause trouble completely out of proportion to their numbers if in your rear area. This makes bypassing a castle a bad idea. Also worth noting that in medieval Europe armies were generally much smaller than in both Antiquity and in later times. A castle garrison might not have a huge number of troops present by modern standards, but still be considered a noteworthy force by medieval standards.

If bypassing a castle isn't an option, the castle must be dealt with, either by taking it, or masking it. Taking a castle is either expensive financially, logistically, and in terms to time, or very expensive in terms of manpower. Masking a castle means detaching enough troops to keep the garrison from sallying out, which means significantly more than the size of the garrison. This masking force is now vulnerable to being destroyed by any enemy reinforcements that arrive once you have moved on, and significantly reduces the size of your useable army. A Castle serves as a force multiplier, allowing a relatively small number of troops to make themselves enough of a problem to an attacker that they have to be dealt with somehow, and making the dealing with of them very difficult.

The effect is even greater if the castle is placed at a strategic point, say, directly overlooking the main crossing point of a river, or in a position that dominates a mountain pass, as these natural choke points can allow a fortification to physically bar an army from entering a region without being taken first.

You also brought up the issue of prestige as if it was something to be discounted. It is important to understand, that if you wish to control a region for any substantial length of time, you do have to convince the people you are controlling, one way or another, that you are in charge. This can be by making them want you to be in charge, or by making them fully, (and bloodily) understand that you are in charge whether they want it or not. This is easier when you have a castle, both from the practical physical aspect of making it harder for them to kill you, but also from the psychological aspect of controlling the largest and most impressive man made object most of the peasents are ever likely to see in their lives. That's the kind of thing a ruler controls, and if the populace thinks of you as a ruler, thats most of the way towards getting you there. Morale is an important factor, no two ways about it.

[VonKaiserstein]

The primary advantage of an attacker is that they have the initiative. They have already concentrated their forces, armed them and know when they will strike. Balancing this, the defenders are more familiar with the territory, and generally have the support of the local civilian population.

If you march past the castle... you just left the fighting forces of the region in your rear, fully supplied, on their home territory. When they strike, and they will, they may attack your field army, or they may go off and invade your homelands knowing that your forces are over here. They may even just start marching between you and the castle, threatening battle, and retreating into their safe zone when they need to. They now have the initiative, and because every man at arms will have heard about the invasion and rallied to the very obvious castle, they have had time to concentrate their force. They also can leave an extremely small force in the castle, because it can be held with a massive imbalance of forces.

It's a deterrent, a fortress, and poses many problems for the invader that all have to be dealt with, which reduces their available forces- even before the battle is joined.

Also- never underestimate the psychological aspect of it. Ok, you've decided to march past the castle. Your men now know you don't think you can take the castle. They know what it can do to them, and they look up at it and see certain defeat that they are avoiding, if not running from.

[KineticDiplomat]

There’s a bit too much focus on “Front” and “Rear” here to be accurate for the time period. These are actually comparatively modern concepts.

Simply put for much of history, there was no assumption that you would have a large and fairly politically unified strategic interior feeding men and materiel up to a line of contact, on one side of which (partisans not withstanding) you could expect to realistically exercise governance and move men and supplies fairly risk free, while on the other was the enemy who’s extended presence along the line safeguarded his own operational and strategic depths full of useful political and economic objectives.

So modern in fact, that in the 1920s and 30s military theorists are still writing about it as a problem that had to be solved. While what we would think of as linear strategy starts evolving before that - Schlieffen writes “Cannae” about it - but it becomes increasingly “strategy of the point” as you go back in history. Which is to say operational art (such as it were) primarily concerned itself with maneuvering forces on a comparatively open canvas to arrive at a single point where it would seek either the destruction of an enemy force or seizure of a singular point of importance, and away from that point notions of “front” and “rear” lose most of their meaning.

Take the Crecy campaign as a single example, useful because it contrasts so well with the allied advance of WW2. The English land in Normandy, sack Caen, raid Rouen, and eventually march all the way to Calais which they besiege for just short of a year, but not before the famous battle. During that time they leave multitudes of castles in their “rear” to no great detriment, because they are supplied predominantly by the land they are on, not lines of supply. When they are trapped short of food, it’s because the French removed it all prior to their arrival near the Somme. Rather than return to the “rear” back to Normandy, the English break through to the NE, or “front” - forcing the French to pursue, the French who it must be noted spend a decent portion of the campaign with the English in their “rear”.

In the interim, it is not as if everything to the “rear” of the English army was now English…it was still French, with a multitude of castles and towns untaken. And when they fight Crecy even though “enemy territory” is to their “front” on the way to Calais, that is considered a good line of retreat to the coast.

In all that time, one, perhaps two, major field actions are fought at specific points, the rest of the time spent either with armies assembling, marching around, or besieging things.

———

With that in mind the castle is really more about preservation of governance, wealth, your own skin, and of course the forces that make you a lord, not some intricate series of forts meant to force a threat to an enemy “rear” or allow for sudden decisive operational strokes (your adversaries after all also have castles…it’s not like your garrison gets bypassed and now you have a shot at the capital!)

[Gnoman]

Most castles were never that large though. Dozens or some hundreds of troops was more likely.


Even the tiny castles in the Germanies would support hundreds, and those castles were tiny because the Germanies were home to huge numbers of tiny lords who operated on a scale where hundreds were a pretty significant force.

[Martin Greywolf]

First, let's address some errors people have already made here. Well, okay, one error, but it's an important one.

Castles don't let you raid enemy supply lines all that well

Yeah, sure, in theory they do, provided an enemy has them. But if your army is 30 000 or less, and some rare exceptions pump that number all the way up to 100 000 soldiers, you don't necessarily need supply lines for war. 100 years war and Mongol conquests demonstrated this point pretty clearly, as did the Hussites and really, any sort of a border region dispute. There were Hungarian cities 100 to 150 km deep into Hungary that Hussites besieged and conquered, while taking few if any castles.

The problem lies in what happens AFTER the war. Unless you have, in fact, conquered all those castles, or they have been ceded to you in the peace treaties, your newly conquered territories will be isolated islands that will have their economy absolutely destroyed, whether by raiding, or simply by hitting them with the kind of taxes that would give Emperor Palpatine chills.

That means a rational leader would instead arrange to cede territories that would be so isolated in exchange for some other concessions in the treaties - which is all well and good, but may or may not be the goal of your campaign.

(That said, seeing what an army like, say, ancient Roman would do when faced with a castle strategy would be interesting. The closest we came to that are probably Mongol campaigns (plundering, not conquest, though) and Ottoman wars (outside even renaissance for large part).)

On to more general points.

There is no castle

There are many types of castles. Even if we zoom onto high medieval period, you still get at least:

Representational castles - serve as seat of a family
Fortress castles - guard a particular chokepoint (mountain pass, river crossing), usually so well you can't move past them without conquering or supressing them
Fortified manor houses - not as large, but are made of stone and do house a few dozen people... and there is a lot of them
Refuge castles - meant to temporarily house a significant chunk of total population in times of need
Town citadels - meant as a central point of a city


All of the above can function as fortresses, obviously, but their strategic roles are different. Representational castles and town citadels serve organizational roles, fortified manor houses are there to prevent an invading army's foraging efforts (well, mitagate them, now you need a froaging party of a hundred instead of a dozen), refuge castles make sure you can't enslave or extort the population and so on.

What's worse is that a single castle can have more than just one role, and they frequently do, which complicates the picture further.

Terrain then and now

This is best described in a picture. Behold, a refuge/representational/fortress/town castle:

https://www.planetslovakia.sk/images/pamiatky/hrad-beckov/160520-19-45-P1180003-hrad-beckov.jpg

That photo is taken from hills that are right next to castle, looking over a flat expanse of fields with a river in the middle of it, and hills again on the opposite side. The distance between these two foothills is about 20 km.

At first glance, there are things in that picture that are not medieval - the power lines and highway, for a start. But it goes deeper than that.

That wasily traversable flat plain of fields 20 km wide wasn't there in medieval times. WHat was there instead was the river, and it had an ever-changing network of small channels in that region. The castle is built in a place that had a river crossing, but even that river crossing kept changing, to a point where the castle's name, Beckov, comes from latin Castrum Blundix, the Maze Castle.

Long story short, before the river here was stabilized, any army that tried to cross it here would have to take the castle, because it was standing on top of an exit of a very treacherous ford. And because that castle is a refuge castle, any invading army would have a hell of a time finding some local to tell them where the ford is on this particular day, because all the locals would hopefully be inside.

What you should take from all this is that a lot of strategic details about a given castle is now lost because of our terraforming efforts. I'd like to point you to some good books on this point, but I don't think there are any - I picked that specific castle because it's one whose history I'm very familiar with.

Defense in depth

While you can't execute one with castles (there is little option of retreating from one if it is besieged), a castle will slow down an approaching army to a point where it will buy you time. This, of course, highly depends on the willingness of the castle crew to fight a hopeless fight, or wait for relief in really bad conditions, and that's a reason why it wasn't always used.

That said, if religious or cultural differences were present between the two sides, stands to the last man did happen. Fall of Acre in IIRC 1297 is one example.

[Brother Oni]

That said, if religious or cultural differences were present between the two sides, stands to the last man did happen. Fall of Acre in IIRC 1297 is one example.

As an example, stands to the last man were the norm in Sengoku era Japanese warfare, with the defenders often sallying out in a final suicidal attack as their supplies failed while their commanders committed seppuku.

This isn't as unusual as it sounds, as normally, captured defenders would be ordered to commit suicide, or if they were especially hated by the besiegers, executed.

Example: The Siege of Takamatsu (1582) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Takamatsu), where the besiegers flooded the the castle by damming and diverting all the local rivers. The garrison commander, Shimizu Muneharu, committed seppuku on a boat in the middle of the artificial lake, in return for the rest of defenders being spared.

That said, more than one siege ended with mass casualties of all the defenders; Hachioji Castle (1590) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachi%C5%8Dji_Castle) fell in a single day, resulting in the death of all the defenders (male and female), many by suicide.

[Martin Greywolf]

Sengoku era Japanese warfare

As much as we call those fortified buildings castles, and Japan feudal, the overall situation is very different to Europe. What I'm trying to say is that while we can sort of call high and renaissance European warfare and Sengoku Jidai Japanese warfare something like Castle-centric Strategies, they are really two different approaches to two different problems.

A large part of why we can't talk about, because it is rooted in religion, culture or politics.

Small part of it is rooted in practicality as well, since Japanese castles in general are a touch easier to conquer than European ones, and sengoku jidai happens in an era where cannons are fairly widespread in Japan (interestingly enough, casements for said cannons in castles are not), meaning the castles as a concept are less effective. That means the attackers have somewhat less incentive to allow the defenders an option of surrender instead of storming the castle, especially in a time where betrayals are frequent.

https://i.redd.it/woa49l2zqzbz.jpg
Three wall layers plus central keep, sightlines are wonky and kinda broken, especially once you get past first wall layer
https://medievalheritage.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Malbork-rekonstrukcja-17.jpg
Four layers (five from some directions), cleaner sightlines and all of those four layers have doubled up walls

I'd even go so far as to argue that Sengoku Jidai is less medieval era tech and more of a late renaissance pike-and-shot era tech, at which point even the most impressive of European castles loose some importance. But that's probably a discussion for another day.

[Pauly]

As much as we call those fortified buildings castles, and Japan feudal, the overall situation is very different to Europe. What I'm trying to say is that while we can sort of call high and renaissance European warfare and Sengoku Jidai Japanese warfare something like Castle-centric Strategies, they are really two different approaches to two different problems.

A large part of why we can't talk about, because it is rooted in religion, culture or politics.

Small part of it is rooted in practicality as well, since Japanese castles in general are a touch easier to conquer than European ones, and sengoku jidai happens in an era where cannons are fairly widespread in Japan (interestingly enough, casements for said cannons in castles are not), meaning the castles as a concept are less effective. That means the attackers have somewhat less incentive to allow the defenders an option of surrender instead of storming the castle, especially in a time where betrayals are frequent.

https://i.redd.it/woa49l2zqzbz.jpg
Three wall layers plus central keep, sightlines are wonky and kinda broken, especially once you get past first wall layer
https://medievalheritage.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Malbork-rekonstrukcja-17.jpg
Four layers (five from some directions), cleaner sightlines and all of those four layers have doubled up walls

I'd even go so far as to argue that Sengoku Jidai is less medieval era tech and more of a late renaissance pike-and-shot era tech, at which point even the most impressive of European castles loose some importance. But that's probably a discussion for another day.

I live about 80 minutes from Osaka-jō and walked over it many times. There’s nothing wonky about the sightlines. What may appear wonky on the drawing are pretty clear once you have the elevation, By the way the hill Osaka-jō sited on is the only significant rocky hill in the Kansai plain, which mean some of the decisions are forced on it by geography, not lack of skill of the builders. Osaka-jō also had an outer ring of walls not shown in that drawing.
Japanese castles have some problems that result from the inclination of walls to withstand earthquakes.

I’m not saying Japanese castles were as sophisticated or well built as European castles. Plainly they’re not. There’s lots of reasons for this, including the short history of castle building in Japan and the fact that castle building started after the invention of cannons.

If you want non-European stone fortifications that rival/surpass European designs you need to look at places like Pisaq and Ollantaytambo in Peru, but that’s getting away from what a castle is.

[Martin Greywolf]

If you want non-European stone fortifications that rival/surpass European designs you need to look at places like Pisaq and Ollantaytambo in Peru, but that’s getting away from what a castle is.

We should really add Chinese and Roman fortified cities to that list - high skill, sofistication and organization, definitely not a castle.

Coming to think of it, these are good examples of another factor that makes castle strategies fail, bringing overwhelming force. A Roman or Chinese army on campaign is actually large enough to detach forces to besiege several smaller castles and storm them one by one in a matter of days or weeks. It will still be stopped by the largest of the enemy fortifications, be it Chinese sieges of largest cities or Romans at Alesia.

You could probably get a PhD paper out of in-depth comparision of land control and denial thereof by pre-gunpowder cultures, but for now, I think we can add "somewhat poor logistics" to a list of things you need for a successful castle defense strategy.

There is also an interesting caveat to early gunpowder era where castles or star forts actually work a bit - while the Hungarians at Vienna or Nove Zamky/Ujvar couldn't really defeat the Ottoman army, they could wait until reinforcements bailed them out. Which happened at Vienna, while Nove Zamky were forced to capitulate (after making the Ottomans use almost 200 tons of gunpowder against them). This is probably where we see the Japanese inexperience with anti-gunpowder forts the most, Nove Zamky fall in 1663 (fotress was built in 1546, but it's not like we have a full list of revisions), Sengoku Jiadai ends in 1615. And, well...

https://www.novezamky.sk/Cn/2002/2002-39s/obr9-1.JPG

[PhoenixPhyre]

Question about demographics (and related question about mercenaries), assuming a late-medieval, vaguely European context. Note: the time and space window is pretty broad, just absolutely pre-industrial and before the significant use of gunpowder (so no pike-and-shot era).

1) What percentage (roughly) of the able-bodied population would be generally "available for hire" (ie economically surplus, not part of a long-term occupation) and "trained at arms" (not necessarily with combat experience, but can hold a pike/spear and be expected to not break and run at the first sign of trouble), ie what percentage of the population could in principle be hired as guards/mercenaries/armed adventuring support[2]?

2) How did merchants/guilds (especially those involved in trade via land, but also those with workshops/etc) protect their property? Could they hire "private"[1] caravan/warehouse guards? Did they have to get them from the local rulers? I understand that most of the smaller towns didn't have much in the way of standing police forces (although I might be wrong).

[1] ie not directly maintained/hired/equipped by the local legal authorities.
[2] in a world where that would make more sense, not necessarily in the real world where "adventuring" meant something quite a bit different than delving through ancient ruins looking for treasures/fighting monsters.

[Martin Greywolf]

1) What percentage (roughly) of the able-bodied population would be generally "available for hire" (ie economically surplus, not part of a long-term occupation) and "trained at arms" (not necessarily with combat experience, but can hold a pike/spear and be expected to not break and run at the first sign of trouble), ie what percentage of the population could in principle be hired as guards/mercenaries/armed adventuring support[2]?

Long term, anything with medieval logistics will get you 10 000 soldiers per million people - this roughly checks out with HRE, France and Hungary for hig medieval period, although you can't get more than about 30 000 soldiers to a single battle (see France at Agincourt, where they have ~30k soldiers despite total French armed forces being at about 150-200k). That includes standing armies, mercenaries and so on - do note that medieval armies are as often as not composed primarily of mercenaries on long-term contracts.

This seems incredibly low, what with it being 1%, the issue is that in pre-modern societies, you can only devote about 5% of people towards non-production occupations (careful, merchants are production occupation, since they handle the supply chains). That means that 5% has to cover entertainment, religion, art and so on and so forth, as well as soldiers. If you have a erally, really prosperous kingdom with Galadriel pouring magic into the soil, you may be able to pump those numbers up to about twice that, but probably not more - your farmers are farming more, but still aren't combine harvesters.

That said, this is long term standing armies. If you have citizen militias, you can theoretically get the number of semi-trained combatants to 50% (if male only) or even all of the people. You did have societies that functioned like this, mostly of the nomadic types - both Mongols and Cumans had women in their armies and only real non-combatants were people old or young enough to not be able to ride a horse. For a more sedentary example, look at England with their archery training, that got you a lot of rural population with some sort of military training,

Whether or not these people will run is another matter entirely. Morale and a ton of other factors come into play, and even an untrained farmer may well hold his ground in some circumstances.

That said. This large pool of potential soldiers must be accessed with utmost care, because you must adhere to those 5% numbers. You could to a Landsknecht system and seasonally hire them, but then your military campaigns will be limited by time.


2) How did merchants/guilds (especially those involved in trade via land, but also those with workshops/etc) protect their property? Could they hire "private"[1] caravan/warehouse guards? Did they have to get them from the local rulers? I understand that most of the smaller towns didn't have much in the way of standing police forces (although I might be wrong).

Well, for smaller towns, they didn't have merchant guilds to start with. A necessary pre-requisite for a guild is that you must have a city large enough to support several craftsmen of a given trade, who will then band together. A small town with three merchants, each of whom trades is something different, will not have a guild of its own.

Now, as for protection. The first layer of protection is the nobles keeping the peace in their realms - it is always in their interest to keep the trade flowing, so they will fight off bandits and even stop other nobles from exploiting tolls. There is a fascinating history around tolls and fradulent tolls that I won't get into for fear of inadvertantly writing a book.

That layer of protection can fail, however, if there is crisis or war in a kingdom. If that happens, the seoncd layer of protection are often guilds or free cities. These have a vested interest in keeping order in their territories and will deploy their guards (usually mercenaries on long term contracts) to see to it.

Finally, there's hiring personal guards. This is always a good idea - it gives you a bit of prestige, makes your business partners at ease knowing you can protect your wares and so on, even outside of direct protection. That said, not everyone will be able to hire a lot of guards, and smaller merchants especially will have trouble. These will likely join some other group of people travelling in a given direction, maybe even a larger caravan, for mutual protection.

Outside of that, travelling merchants will always be armed themselves. Maybe not in full plate, but a discreet arming doublet, a sword, a buckler and a crossbow is a sound investment. Also remember that a merchant will have several people along with him to take care of the animals, help with transport and so on, so even without mercenaries, a small merchant wagon is maybe five people, all of them armed with crossbows. Band together with three or four other groups, and you are suddenly not quite so easy a target.

Finally, if you have a martial burgher culture - like the one in HRE's free cities - that merchant may well be trained in swordfighting by one of the fencing masters of the day.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thanks. One clarification--I wasn't talking as much about armies (ie raised by the sovereign or lords), but people who might be available for hire as mercenaries by private individuals of wealth. But an overall "men at arms" rate of ~1% fits my mental model well enough, and I'm not concerned with more precision than that (since the world I'm working on is not truly medieval, nor is it Europe).

And it seems the answer to the second question is "they don't, at least not in an organized fashion", mostly relying on the local lord to handle security or handling it themselves at the guild/city level (which is government by another name, especially since it happens mostly when the "formal" government isn't handling the job due to crisis/etc). That works.
Related question--would that still hold true for the longer-distance caravans (such as the Silk Road[1])?

[1] Yes, I understand that the Silk Road didn't usually involve a single caravan going the entire distance, it was a series of shorter hops/"convection cells" between trading points/cities and only the goods made the whole trip, and did so in stages. But my naive impression is that a good chunk of those hops were still many days/weeks, often in relatively[2] unsettled territory once you got into Central Asia. But I could be wrong.

[2] compared to the much more densely settled areas of Western Europe or the river valleys of China proper.

[Martin Greywolf]

Thanks. One clarification--I wasn't talking as much about armies (ie raised by the sovereign or lords), but people who might be available for hire as mercenaries by private individuals of wealth. But an overall "men at arms" rate of ~1% fits my mental model well enough, and I'm not concerned with more precision than that (since the world I'm working on is not truly medieval, nor is it Europe).

We roughly see this figure hold outside of medieval Europe - it is based on necessary manpower for farming output, after all. If you look at China circa Three Kingdoms, you'll see some very similar numbers, with total Chinese population at 56 million via official census (real population is higher), and battle of Red Cliff where all of China came to get a good kicking (and there was emergency conscription as a result) at about 300 000 combatants, with other troops serving as garrissons in other places.

The long and short of it is that you can afford 1% of population as combatants comfortably, and up to 5% if you want to risk torpedoing your art, science and entertainment. Any more than that and you risk serious famine problems.


And it seems the answer to the second question is "they don't, at least not in an organized fashion", mostly relying on the local lord to handle security or handling it themselves at the guild/city level (which is government by another name, especially since it happens mostly when the "formal" government isn't handling the job due to crisis/etc). That works.
Related question--would that still hold true for the longer-distance caravans (such as the Silk Road[1])?

Silk road, huh?


Yes, I understand that the Silk Road didn't usually involve a single caravan going the entire distance

As a consequence, every subsection of this journey is handled by someone different, using the local systems, or lack thereof. A Silk Road merchant in Black Sea region will operate differently than one in Tibet.

The one common thread is relying on state protection to a degree where available, but as I mentioned above, the rich and more powerful merchants will likely hire at least some security. Once the state authority breaks down, most prominently when you enter the steppe, the local nomads are hired. Which yes, does mean they are fighting themselves as bandits and guards rather often, and you'll probably see some tribes gravitating towards one role, but that can change. Knowing local customs and names and tribes of important chiefs is crucial.

In some cases, even in the steppes, you can get a letter of introduction. They were called paizi (chinese) or gerege (mongolian) (or billog in Magyar, but if you find anything on them, drop me a note, all I have are two articles), and were letters of free passage. If you had one of those in times of strong local authority, you were pretty much left alone.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Paizi.jpg/564px-Paizi.jpg

https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/313369855/original/941f53af8a/1622438834?v=1
Nomads on top right wear it around their necks

All of this also means that Silk Road is mutable. If it went through the Chwarezmian empire, and said empire just entered a civil war, it will get rerouted north into the steppes, because while the Khagans up there aren't as reliable as Chwarezmian's state organization, it's still better than trying to merchant your way through a civil war.

That said, from what fragmentary remarks we have, it seems the steppes region of Silk Road was more stable than you'd think. Yeah, sure, it was definitely more volatile than Chinese or French heartlands when at peace, but the local chieftains were perfectly happy to let the caravan go through their, often large, territory if given appropriate amount of gifts. Which is not really that different from taxes and tolls you'd get hit with as soon as you entered the Rus city states, Byzantium or Hungary.

Even if the chiefs changed, the customs seemed to remain relatively stable, since their successors were well aware of how lucrative this kind of trade was - there is a relatively recent paper published on grave of a Cuman chief that contained grave goods containing herbs from China and Europe, Byzantine silks and all sort of assorted loot from the two continents.

And then, you can bypass the entire Silk Road, but I don't think Red Sea-to-India trade is relevant to your interests.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm discovering that my true mental blind spot here is in underestimating how widespread "government control" and "civilization/density" was back then. I basically have this (probably wrong) mental model of the political map of Central Asia[1] being mostly blank with scattered "here's a nation or a tribe" regions, rather than having mostly touching actual borders. So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks between the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.

[1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to Europe, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I know that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.

[Brother Oni]

I'm discovering that my true mental blind spot here is in underestimating how widespread "government control" and "civilization/density" was back then. I basically have this (probably wrong) mental model of the political map of Central Asia[1] being mostly blank with scattered "here's a nation or a tribe" regions, rather than having mostly touching actual borders. So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks between the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.

[1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to Europe, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I know that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.

It's important to remember that if you're off the the main trade routes, you could potentially accidentally travel through a nomadic tribe's territory and think it's just unclaimed land, if their main camp is elsewhere or their scouts don't think it's worth the trouble to challenge you, or you somehow miss their scouts.

A major trade route like the Silk Road would most definitely be monitored as often as possible, as they were an easy source of 'free' gifts and tributes as Martin Greywolf mentioned.

What also might be a bit of a blind spot is how early these trade routes sprung up; the Silk Road was in full flow during the late 1st Century, and if some accounts are true, even Julius Caesar had silk curtains brought all the way from China (JSTOR link (https://www.jstor.org/stable/642389)).

Tacitus reports that in ~14CE, there was an attempted ban on silk clothing for men (the first of many attempts), as it was seen as feminising due to its sheer and almost translucent nature (Book 2, XXXIII (https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/AnnalsBookII-33to54.php))

[Martin Greywolf]

So in my mental map, the caravans would go days/weeks between the territory of tribes/nations/groups large enough to really enforce their will, much like ships at sea that are basically nations unto themselves once they're out of sight of land, with bandits playing the role of pirates.

[1] Heck, I have to resist the urge to apply that to Europe, thinking of "tracts of wilderness where you could travel for days without seeing the hand of man", even though I know that's absurdly wrong. I guess it's partly to due with having spent most of my life in the western US, which is pretty empty at "wagon and horse" speeds even now.

This is not entirely inaccurate. From a certain point of view.

The entire mid-Eurasian region is made up of areas {Scrubbed}, a lot of these civilizations, especially the nomadic ones, didn't have a system of writing, so all you have is archaeological research. {Scrubbed}. And Soviet bloc had this weird... apathy, I suppose, towards any research on nomads. I don't think there were ever any official or semi-official bans, but the Soviet bloc rarely mentions them, with a few exceptions.

What's worse, many archives that had traveller's journals in them were bombed to hell in World Wars, so we mostly use {Scrubbed} Byzantine sources when dealing with these. There has been some cross-referencing with Chinese sources in recent years, but again, politics get in the way here.

So, your mental map is kind of what our historical map of the area looks like, a lot of empty space with occassional blotches of references or archaeological finds, the rest of it is extraploation.

Finally, there's the difference between different branches of Silk road:

Sea route

Start at Chinese ports and coast-hop all the way to Red Sea and Egypt, or Persian gulf. There will be no nomads there, obviously, but there will be a metric ton of piracy. The tolls at ports will be steep.

Indian sea route

China to Tibet to India and get on the ship there, with end points at Persian Gulf and Red Sea. All of this land route is more or less within areas strongly controlled by some central authority. You will get taxed and taxed often, though.

Oasis route

China to Sinkiang to Afghanistan and Iran, potentially using Caspian sea routes. End points are either through Baghdad to the Outremer coast and Egypt or through Black sea coast or naval route to Constantinople.

While most of this route is inside kingdoms, they are kingdoms on steppe borders, so raids are a very real threat, and you do get a stretch right after you leave Sinkiang where you are practically at the southern steppe borders. That stretch especially will need more protection.

You will get many tax breaks here, even more than on the Sea and Indian to sea routes, but! Not only do you avoid having to use ships in pirate-rich areas and visit some cities those routes don't, and therefore tap untapped markets, you can also avoid Muslim sultanates, and therefore arrive to Constantinople with cheaper silks when compared to southern routes.

Steppe route

Starts in Mongolia and avoids most of the large kingdoms, going through steppes proper, through Kazakhstan and to Rus, Byzantium or Ukraine. This is the route closest to what you're imagining, going through a lot of steppe areas, and usually "gifting" local chiefs for free passage. It is the least taxed route, because if the local chief doesn't find you, you may avoid taxes entirely (not really an option in e.g. Persia), but also the riskiest, because all it takes is some outlaws getting you for you to loose it all.

Why do you not know this?

Well, because no one teaches it properly. Seriously, look at all these Silk roads:

https://www.orexca.com/img/silk_road.jpg

https://www.worldhistory.org/img/c/p/1200x627/8327.jpg

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frederic-Andres/publication/221964694/figure/fig1/AS:670017465110533@1536756020126/1-MAP-of-the-Silk-Road-Routes.png

And those are the good ones!

https://www.amazing-iran.com/wp-content/uploads/silk-road.jpg

https://www.beltandroad.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/02840920934802.jpg

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2BDX9FT/a-map-showing-the-main-route-of-the-silk-road-which-connected-east-and-west-between-the-2nd-century-bce-and-the-18th-century-the-silk-road-derives-its-name-from-the-lucrative-trade-in-silk-carried-out-along-its-length-2BDX9FT.jpg

All in all, I have found one (1) good map, and even that one is missing the Rus endpoints of the Silk Road:

It also lacks a file format extension, so I have to link it (https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*8PcTkJhlwlQtnWLn)

The common thread in all of them is balance of risk and reward: you have to pay tolls, pay for mercenaries to protect you and pay for expenses. You are at risk of bandits or local political uphevals. Balance it just right, and you make unbelievable amounts of cash. Balance it wrong, and you get robbed. And while merchants themselves operate locally, the big picture is potentially profitable enough for government action - Venice and Genoa established an outposts at Crimea pretty much just to siphon off these profits before the Byzantines could get to them.

[Pauly]

This is not entirely inaccurate. From a certain point of view.

The entire mid-Eurasian region is made up of areas that {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} and to top it off, a lot of these civilizations, especially the nomadic ones, didn't have a system of writing, so all you have is archaeological research. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}And Soviet bloc had this weird... apathy, I suppose, towards any research on nomads. I don't think there were ever any official or semi-official bans, but the Soviet bloc rarely mentions them, with a few exceptions.[/I]
.

{Scrubbed}

[Brother Oni]

And while merchants themselves operate locally, the big picture is potentially profitable enough for government action - Venice and Genoa established an outposts at Crimea pretty much just to siphon off these profits before the Byzantines could get to them.

Going the other way, the Chinese envoy Gan Ying made it all the way to the Persian Gulf in AD 97; he wanted to reach the Roman Empire, but the Parthians falsely told him that the journey would take another two years as they didn't want to lose control of the trade route, so he gathered what information he could from sailors in ports and headed back to China.


It should be remembered that the Silk Road lasted for a very long time, and both Martin and myself are talking about different periods of the Silk Road.

[Martin Greywolf]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Uh, well, I know a bit about this, but unless a mod comes here and explicitly states that discussing Soviet Union historical research policies and narratives is in line with forum rules, I won't comment on it. It falls a touch too close to "no real world politics" clause of forum rules.

[Pauly]

Uh, well, I know a bit about this, but unless a mod comes here and explicitly states that discussing Soviet Union historical research policies and narratives is in line with forum rules, I won't comment on it. It falls a touch too close to "no real world politics" clause of forum rules.

Yeah, I got sent to the naughty corner for that. I didn’t realize Soviet history/policies was off limits.

[Vinyadan]

And those are the good ones!



How do you feel about this one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/One-belt-one-road.svg It's actually a map of the proposed belt and road initiative, but it seems to overlap with the historical ones you mentioned.

[KineticDiplomat]

Well, geography doesn’t change too quickly…though the modern one also has the implicit desire to ease/vary hydrocarbon delivery to the PRC to reduce strategic vulnerability.

[Berenger]

Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes:

1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night?

2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?

[Martin Greywolf]

How do you feel about this one? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/One-belt-one-road.svg It's actually a map of the proposed belt and road initiative, but it seems to overlap with the historical ones you mentioned.

It shows the outlines of major routes, so that's good. It also shows a modern China as if it was pretending historical China was of that size and unity, which is definitely not good. I mean sure, overlay the routes over modern borders for the people to have better idea of where they are, but don't highlight a modern nation that didn't exist in period and use it as the starting point.


Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes:

1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night?

Some did, some did not, and it's really easy to tell which is which: does the galley/nation in question use slaves/convicts as oarsmen? If yes, oarsmen are chained to oars or whatever their rest aeas are, and will super drown if the ship is sunk.

If they are free men, they will have some sort of weapon on hand. Not armor, mind you, because even a helmet is far more than you're willing to wear when you are at the oars (remember - a helmet is like strapping a two liter coke bottle to your head), but they will have some sort of weapons on them or more likely lying somewhere nearby. Probably in some sort of a holder, Royal Navy cutlasses style. Hell, maybe they will also have some easy to put on armor there, most likely helmets.


2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?

Assuming a 40 ton trireme, assigning a third of that to rowers, a third to ship itself, other crew and stationery and so on, we're left with a cargo of 13 tons. This trireme also has a crew of 170 rowers, 20 marines and 10 other.

The highest weight of naval diet comes from Danish navy at some 1.7 kg of food per day per person, but this is likely to include some reserve in their rations. Since most of the crew are rowers, let's assume 1 kg to make the calculations neater.

Water is much worse, at 5 liters per person per day, with as much as triple that if doing sweaty work in hot weather. Let's take best case scenario at 5 liters, and therefore 5 kg.

So, we need 200 kg of supplies to feed the crew per day, plus 1 ton of water, putting us at 1.2 tons of supplies per day. With our 13 ton capacity, we can have supplies for 10 days.

And that's why triremes aren't used to haul cargo, they are meant to be fast and agile warships and therefore make sacrifices to do so.

However, 5/6 of that weight is water. If you are sailing along the coastline - as if you were in the Med - you can get six times that amount of time out of your rations if you only take water from the shore, getting you to 65 days. That is pretty dangerous though (three days of bad luck and your crew dies of thirst), and you'd see some ratio of less water in days that you refill whenever you can. What that ratio is depends on the captain and his officers, the voyage, the weather and so on.

Also note that, if you have something that is not a warship, you also need to consider that the supplies tonnage eats up your cargo tonnage, and therefore profit. A warship will happily fill all of those 13 tons with supplies, a merchant ship may have twice the tonnage and no willingness to use even as much as a warship.

tl;dr An oar-powered warship will have something like 10-20 days of rations on board, and will need to make stops for water fairly often.

[GeoffWatson]

Some did, some did not, and it's really easy to tell which is which: does the galley/nation in question use slaves/convicts as oarsmen? If yes, oarsmen are chained to oars or whatever their rest aeas are, and will super drown if the ship is sunk.


The ancient Greeks didn't use slaves as oarsmen, that's an early modern thing (1500s). They wanted trained, motivated rowers.

[fusilier]

Hello, two quick questions about greek triremes:

1. Did oarsmen carry any weapons or even armor to repel boarders or perform guard duty while beached at night?

2. How many days of water supply and rations can be plausibly stored on board in case daily resupply on shore is impossible?

I'll have to go over my sources, but I believe John F. Guilmartin (Gunpowder and Galleys) considered water to be the limiting factor, and I believe estimated about two to three weeks or so of water (this amount decreased as ships became larger and had more oarsmen).* However, he was referring to much later ships (16th century). Nevertheless, descriptions of travel on a cargo galley in the 15th century indicate that they put to shore every night if they could. So the need to carry a lot of water wasn't really necessary in the Mediterranean . . . usually. If pushing into enemy territory, then it may have been different. As noted before, however, the oarsmen did need a lot of water, and the Medieval and Renaissance galleys had the entire rowing crew on the top deck, exposed to the sun.

*There's a Spanish paper that challenges Guilmartin's calculations, based upon a description of an army being transported from Spain to northern Italy in the early 17th century (? I think). However, I'm a little unconvinced as the account merely mentioned taking 2 or 3 months of supplies, which may have just been biscuit, and not water (certainly the amount of time at sea shouldn't have been any where near that long, and it was mostly along a friendly coast).

I am going from memory, I will try to double check my sources when I get the chance. I'll also see if I can find anything specific to Greek triremes.

[Martin Greywolf]

The ancient Greeks didn't use slaves as oarsmen, that's an early modern thing (1500s). They wanted trained, motivated rowers.

Not entirely true. Ancient Greek, Rome and Carthage didn't use slaves as oarsmen as part of their standing army (sailing navy?), but did resort to them when they had manpower shortages - sometimes with the provision that the slaves will earn their freedom, which means you could actually get enslaved oarsmen that would be given weapons.

With Greeks especially, this claim is even weaker, since there was no Ancient Greece, but rather a collection of city states. Most of written sources are from modern Greece area, but there were Greek outposts as far as Poland's present day souther border. Kolchis was probably somewhere around Crimea. And we don't know much about those - most of the evidence from them is material culture that is the same as Greece proper. Without any central authority enforcing policies, well.

Then there's the matter of Egypt, or rather the several dozen individual kingdoms that were in Egypt at various times, and their navies. I honestly don't know enough about the subject to tell you which Egyptian kingdom did or did not use slave rowers.

Finally, above applies to the state navy, not the private merchants, who, in societies with slavery, could do as they pleased, especially since they were less concerned with arming the oarsmen. A military ship can make good use of extra 300 light infantry, a merchant ship, probably not quite so much.

[Lord Torath]

What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow)? If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?

Edit: Or should I ask this question in the Mad Science and Grumpy Technology board?

[Gnoman]

None of the fundamental elements are all that complicated. The biggest problem would be materials - compound bows are built of advanced polymers, and I'm not sure how big a deal the physical properties of those play into the functionality. I'm sure that the pulleys use bearings as well, which would be a Problem.

The basic design could be copied in almost any era, but I don't know if they'd be any better until the materials became available in the mid-20th century

[Pauly]

What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow)? If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?

Edit: Or should I ask this question in the Mad Science and Grumpy Technology board?

Compound bows made of wood, bone and sinew have been a thing for a very long time, at least 1500 years. Although wikipedia seems to refer to them as recurve bows.

For a modern style with pulleys et al, the Victorian era is the earliest for precision machining, at least from a factory production pov. If you’re talking a master craftsman hand fitting single items then you can arguably go back to at least the Greeks and the antikythera mechanism. Any civilization that had things like a windlass crossbow, oxybeles or ballista arguably has the knowhow to design a modern pulley compound bow.

The problem is going to be materials. I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on that. But the fact it wasn’t used historically suggests that it requires modern technology.

Historically the ballista with torsion springs replaced the oxybeles with a winch. It would be possible in theory to use an oxybeles with a winch and pulley as pulleys had been invented at least 1,000 years before the oxybeles, but I am unaware of this being done.

[Max_Killjoy]

Was there ever a time when composite and/or recurve bows were commonly referred to as "compound"?


(I've come across so much bad usage of the terms that I was totally confused about composite vs recurve for a long time...)

[Brother Oni]

What is the minimum technology level required to make a compound bow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow)? If you went back in time with the knowledge of how they were made, at what point would we have the materials and precision machining to make one?

Compound bows are always under tension, so without the aid of modern polymers, they would have to be made of steel, at which point, you essentially have half a crossbow or an Indian steel bow.

The problem is, steel is inferior to wood for the purposes required of a bow; the belly has to be resistant to compression, the back has to be resistant to stretching, etc. Crossbows get around the issues by having massive poundage, while the Indian bows were in response to their environment (wooden bows, especially composites, don't last long in the Indian heat and humidity) as they had no other choice.

So assuming you could bring back the design, the limitation is the metallurgy for the cams, which would put it about late medieval era. However that raises the question of why bother with compound bows in a European setting, when the longbow was more powerful and people already had crossbows?


Compound bows made of wood, bone and sinew have been a thing for a very long time, at least 1500 years. Although wikipedia seems to refer to them as recurve bows.

As Max said, you're confusing composite bows (bows made out of more than one material) with compound bows (a bow type with machined parts and cams) and recurve bows (a bow type classified based on their shape, specifically the reverse curve of the bow's limbs away from the archer, ie why they're called recurves in the first place).

All compound bows are composite bows and you can get both composite recurves and self recurves (recurve bows made from a single piece of wood).
I've not heard of steel bows being referred to as either self or composite, just steel.


The problem is going to be materials. I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on that. But the fact it wasn’t used historically suggests that it requires modern technology.

The fact that it wasn't used historically was that by the time they had developed the design technology to make compound bows, bows as a weapon system had already been superseded centuries previously by gunpowder weapons.

[Berenger]

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for the answers about the triremes, much appreciated.

[Lord Torath]

I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign. The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.

Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows. It has pulleys and winches. Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?

This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.

I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign. The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.

Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows. It has pulleys and winches. Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?

This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.

I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.


I don't think Athas has what it takes for that to be a thing.

It would be entirely rool of kewl.

Even then, I don't think D&D has the granularity to represent the benefits.

[Pauly]

I've got a player who wants their Int:9 half-giant with the bowyer/fletcher proficiency to invent one (a compound bow) in a Dark Sun pick-up-game campaign. The player says they want to have their half-giant hire some engineers to do the actual design work.

Dark Sun has catapults, ballistae, and crossbows. It has pulleys and winches. Could you get away with brass bushings instead of precision bearings in the cams and pulleys?

This thing will already be super expensive (I'm thinking 1000s of gold pieces on Athas, which is like 100,000s of gold pieces anywhere else), and I'm not clear on what benefits the player wants it to provide relative to more standard bows.

I'm not the senior DM on the server (if I were, we wouldn't be using the Revised Dark Sun rules), so this won't be entirely my decision.

I’d offer the player an oxybeles (the precursor to the ballista) with some pulley and lever mechanism with the winch to allow faster loading. A half giant should be big and strong enough to operate it, and it doesn't break the technology of the world.

[TheStranger]

I don't think Athas has what it takes for that to be a thing.

It would be entirely rool of kewl.

Even then, I don't think D&D has the granularity to represent the benefits.

I think this is the right answer, in terms of both the tech level to create and the effects under D&D rules. That said, rule of cool isn’t inherently bad in a D&D game. IMO the way to handle it as a DM is to find out why the player wants it and what stats they think it should have. If this is a variant of how new players say they stab somebody in the neck expecting that means their dagger will do more than 1d4 damage, you may need to have a talk about how D&D works (doesn’t mean they can’t have it, though). If they’re an archery enthusiast and think compound bows are cool regardless of the stats, you might want to think about fitting it into the game. If they’re trying to munchkin their way to some mechanical advantage, that’s another issue.

If you do decide to allow a compound bow in the game, I’d treat it as an extraordinary feat of craftsmanship by a legendary bowyer, not something that could readily be replicated without substantial advances in metallurgy and precision machining that would fundamentally change the setting. Essentially it would be a refluffed magic bow (but mundane for purposes of DR or in an AMF), not an invention that’s introduced to the world.

[Martin Greywolf]

I'll speak only on the practical and historical bits of this, what you do with in-game stuff is up to you.

Can you make a compound bow with medieval tech? Yes, and it's not going to be that difficult, any jeweller will be able to make the necessary pulleys and the limbs will go to crossbow maker.

While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage. You'd also likely see similar methods of limb construction, mening wood, layered horn and sinew or metal. This would make the bow limbs quite chunky, making it look like vertical crossbow, but it would work.

So, why did no one do that?

Because there was no point. The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw. It doesn't necessarily shoot lighter arrows faster because of it, though, since there is a limit on how fast the limbs can move, no matter what they are shooting, but it does mean you could fire heavier arrows.

Thing is, only use for something like that is armor penetration, and you don't hit the limits of selfbows and composite bows when it comes to that until late medieval period, and by that point, you see serpentines around and flintlocks aren't that far off.

Which means that there is no reason to invest vast amounts of money into compounds before late medieval armor, and once late medieval armor comes around, compound bows have to compete with easy to make, easy to use arquebuses that also have comparably much cheaper ammunition.

If we didn't discover gunpowder, for some weird reason, we would probably see compound bows in military use, albeit in limited numbers. It's still far more expensive and harder to repair and maintain than self bows, or even composites.

As for crossbows, bows and crossbows have fundamentally different roles. A bow is a fast-firing weapon, a crossbow is a slow-firing poke-from-behind-cover weapon. While they can be pressed into each other's role, they aren't in direct competition, as evidenced by both bows and crossbows being used alongside one another.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'll speak only on the practical and historical bits of this, what you do with in-game stuff is up to you.

Can you make a compound bow with medieval tech? Yes, and it's not going to be that difficult, any jeweller will be able to make the necessary pulleys and the limbs will go to crossbow maker.

While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage. You'd also likely see similar methods of limb construction, mening wood, layered horn and sinew or metal. This would make the bow limbs quite chunky, making it look like vertical crossbow, but it would work.

So, why did no one do that?

Because there was no point. The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw. It doesn't necessarily shoot lighter arrows faster because of it, though, since there is a limit on how fast the limbs can move, no matter what they are shooting, but it does mean you could fire heavier arrows.

Thing is, only use for something like that is armor penetration, and you don't hit the limits of selfbows and composite bows when it comes to that until late medieval period, and by that point, you see serpentines around and flintlocks aren't that far off.

Which means that there is no reason to invest vast amounts of money into compounds before late medieval armor, and once late medieval armor comes around, compound bows have to compete with easy to make, easy to use arquebuses that also have comparably much cheaper ammunition.

If we didn't discover gunpowder, for some weird reason, we would probably see compound bows in military use, albeit in limited numbers. It's still far more expensive and harder to repair and maintain than self bows, or even composites.

As for crossbows, bows and crossbows have fundamentally different roles. A bow is a fast-firing weapon, a crossbow is a slow-firing poke-from-behind-cover weapon. While they can be pressed into each other's role, they aren't in direct competition, as evidenced by both bows and crossbows being used alongside one another.

I thought an advantage of the compound bow is that it can be held at full draw without straining, potentially improving accuracy.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Completely random, disconnected question--

I've been watching a bit more wuxia (and related) clips, and one recurring theme (with that and with the Dynasty Warrior games) is that chinese spears often have a "tassel" or tuft of colorful things or other cloth-like decoration near the tip (usually attached to the shaft just before the tip).

Wikipedia says this:



Common features of the Chinese spear are the leaf-shaped blade and red horse-hair tassel lashed just below. The tassel shows elite troop status. It also serves a tactical purpose. When the spear is moving quickly, the addition of the tassel aids in blurring the vision of the opponent so that it is more difficult for them to grab the shaft of spear behind the head or tip. The tassel also served another purpose, to stop the flow of blood from the blade getting to the wooden shaft (the blood would make it slippery, or sticky when dried).


Is that correct? Are there other meanings there? Is there a reason that you don't see western spears depicted that same way as much?

[Brother Oni]

While compound bow is under tension all the time, the same goes for the crossbow, and the method of their use would likely be the same - span them when on campaign, unspan them for long term storage.

Depends on the compound bow design. The older ones can be unstrung much like a recurve, but any vaguely modern compound requires a bow press and specialised gear. Meanwhile a medieval crossbow just needs a bastard string and whatever spanning mechanism it uses normally.


The compound bow has only one major advantage when compared to standard bow - it's easier to draw.

The compound bow's major advantage is that you can hold it at full draw with comparatively little effort, due to the way the cams have altered the force/draw curve. The permits longer time aiming, thus greater accuracy.
Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.


On a separate note, the limbs of a compound bow are very short, much like a horsebow. This means you're probably only going to manage a a two finger draw at most as the string angle will be too acute for a full draw, which limits the amount of power you can put it in (as you have less points of contact to draw the bow). Typically you'd get around the issue with a release aid, so that's another fiddly mechanism to add to the compound bow.

As Max said, D&D doesn't have the granularity to properly model the differences between bows in general, let alone a compound and a recurve (force/draw curves, being able to hold at full draw for longer, shorter bow lengths, string angles, etc) beyond giving it Masterwork status and a +1 to hit.

[Martin Greywolf]

I thought an advantage of the compound bow is that it can be held at full draw without straining, potentially improving accuracy.


Depends on the compound bow design. The older ones can be unstrung much like a recurve, but any vaguely modern compound requires a bow press and specialised gear. Meanwhile a medieval crossbow just needs a bastard string and whatever spanning mechanism it uses normally.

The compound bow's major advantage is that you can hold it at full draw with comparatively little effort, due to the way the cams have altered the force/draw curve. The permits longer time aiming, thus greater accuracy.
Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.

I wouldn't call it a major advantage, especially not in warfare. There are precious few places where the ability to hold your draw and aim slightly better would be useful, and in most of these (ambushes and shooting from behind cover or at people in cover), crossbow does better because you don't need to expose a lot of your body to use it.

I guess it gives you edge over other bows, but you aren't competing with just bows, you are up against all ranged weapons in use at the time.

The easier draw (as in, force expended by the human vs initial velocity), on the other hand, lets you get elite draw weight archery with people who aren't physically at that level, but the cost is... prohibitive.


Other common compound bow accessories like release aids, allows for much greater consistency.

I mean, yeah. And they have optical sights, red dots and all maner of fancy things, some of which are transferable to other bow types, some of which aren't. But all of those make the situation even worse in the "how expensive is this thing going to be" department, especially in age without mass manufacture.


Completely random, disconnected question--

I've been watching a bit more wuxia (and related) clips, and one recurring theme (with that and with the Dynasty Warrior games) is that chinese spears often have a "tassel" or tuft of colorful things or other cloth-like decoration near the tip (usually attached to the shaft just before the tip).

Wikipedia says this:

Common features of the Chinese spear are the leaf-shaped blade and red horse-hair tassel lashed just below. The tassel shows elite troop status. It also serves a tactical purpose. When the spear is moving quickly, the addition of the tassel aids in blurring the vision of the opponent so that it is more difficult for them to grab the shaft of spear behind the head or tip. The tassel also served another purpose, to stop the flow of blood from the blade getting to the wooden shaft (the blood would make it slippery, or sticky when dried).

Is that correct? Are there other meanings there? Is there a reason that you don't see western spears depicted that same way as much?

Yeah, all of that is pretty much a myth. I do a lot of spear fighting, and let me assure you, no amount of tassels is going to make me not watch where the shiny stabby bit is pointing. I guess someone without much training may make that mistake? And as for grabbing the spear, that's about as likely as being able to parry a sword with a dagger. Can you do it? Yeah, especially against a weaker opponent. But it's extremely hard to do and not that hard to defend against.

Also, a tassel will, if anything, make it easier to grab.

Also, it's not just chinese spears.

https://www.ashokaarts.com/img/product_images/image/detail/german-polearm-swiss-guards-halberd-2-3625.jpg
link (https://www.ashokaarts.com/shop/european-german-ceremonial-spear-with-pierced-blade)

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod-newel/images/inventory/044583C/arms_armor_spear_English_Renaissance_044583C-02.jpg

Also, while it's not a tassell per se:

http://ica.themorgan.org/icaimages/8/m884.1a.jpg

Does it stop blood then?

No. I mean, first of all, there won't be all that much blood on it that won't drip off, and more importantly, what makes you think someone won't get impaled enough to go past the tassel? Or someone gets impaled and then your friend stabs him in the neck and now blood is all over the place. And you. And your friend.

There is, however, at least one credible reference to a tassel being meant to stop a liquid:


I will onelie say thus much more touching the pike∣man, that he ought to haue his Pyke at the point and middest trimmed with handsome tassels, and a handle, not so much for ornament as to de∣fend the Souldiers bodie from water, which in raine doth runne downe alongst the wood.

- William Garrard, 1591

What is the tassel for?

The number one use is decoration. Be it as rank/unit insignia, as a talisman or just to look nicer. Sometimes you even see the entire spear shaft painted, and there is no limit on how fancy the ceremonial spears can get.

As for practical uses, the rainwater stopper is mentioned above, although I wonder how effective it would be in heavy rain - not much, I imagine. Another use is reinforcing the wood, the tassel has some sort of binding under it, and that helps protect the wood a bit from splintering, whether as a result of blows landing on that bit of the shaft, or from general use. It's not a very big improvement, but it does help a bit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What is the tassel for?

The number one use is decoration. Be it as rank/unit insignia, as a talisman or just to look nicer. Sometimes you even see the entire spear shaft painted, and there is no limit on how fancy the ceremonial spears can get.

As for practical uses, the rainwater stopper is mentioned above, although I wonder how effective it would be in heavy rain - not much, I imagine. Another use is reinforcing the wood, the tassel has some sort of binding under it, and that helps protect the wood a bit from splintering, whether as a result of blows landing on that bit of the shaft, or from general use. It's not a very big improvement, but it does help a bit.

Interesting. So I guess the big difference between chinese media depictions of spears and western media depictions of spears is the media culture, not the actual spears.

I mean, I've seen lances with pennants in western movies, and I've seen flagbearers, but the average "dude with spear" (who in western modern media seems be typecast as "faceless grunt who will die") generally doesn't. Or maybe I just didn't see them.

[Vinyadan]

In illuminations, lances of knights with pennants are very common. There also are spearmen with them, although they are a bit harder to find on Google. In particular, I found this one -- a fac simile from the early XIX century of a now lost manuscript, the Hortus deliciarum, from the XII century. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9400936h/f7.item See the bottom. Also the Varangian Guard in a contemporary representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard#/media/File:The_body_of_Leo_V_is_dragged_to_the_Hippodrom e_through_the_Skyla_Gate.jpg

They seem to be limited in the Bayeux tapestry, where however they are present for very important knights and occasions, like when Conan gives up the keys of St. Michael by passing them over with a lance to another lance, both with pennants. The weapons given to Harold by William also have a pennant.

By the way, there is something I find interesting about the tapestry: in it, the Normans are referred to as "Franci".

[Brother Oni]

I wouldn't call it a major advantage, especially not in warfare. There are precious few places where the ability to hold your draw and aim slightly better would be useful, and in most of these (ambushes and shooting from behind cover or at people in cover), crossbow does better because you don't need to expose a lot of your body to use it.

We weren't talking about warfare but the advantages of a compound bow over a longbow.

You would be able to get a second shot off much quicker than a crossbow, plus the arrow shelf makes the compound bow innately more accurate and precise; if you look at the scores in target archery federations, longbow has the lowest average scores of the main three categories (longbow, recurve and compound).

The main circumstances where you'd find being able to hold at full draw for longer (or partially let down and rest) being a major advantage is during hunting, especially when stalking. I agree that in medieval times, they would have used a different solution; for hunting, the alternate solution would have been to use a crossbow instead.


Yeah, all of that is pretty much a myth. I do a lot of spear fighting, and let me assure you, no amount of tassels is going to make me not watch where the shiny stabby bit is pointing.

Do you fight with a HEMA/Western style or a Chinese/Eastern style? There are clear differences between how the spear is used, which the favours the use of a tassel (e.g. Eastern uses slashes and is much quicker in the 'pool cue' style strikes, at least on comparison with HEMA spear sparring videos versus qiang long spear (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvGMHS5HYU) and short spear (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjLAARgkskE) sparring videos).

[Martin Greywolf]

In illuminations, lances of knights with pennants are very common. There also are spearmen with them, although they are a bit harder to find on Google. In particular, I found this one -- a fac simile from the early XIX century of a now lost manuscript, the Hortus deliciarum, from the XII century. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9400936h/f7.item See the bottom. Also the Varangian Guard in a contemporary representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard#/media/File:The_body_of_Leo_V_is_dragged_to_the_Hippodrom e_through_the_Skyla_Gate.jpg

They seem to be limited in the Bayeux tapestry, where however they are present for very important knights and occasions, like when Conan gives up the keys of St. Michael by passing them over with a lance to another lance, both with pennants. The weapons given to Harold by William also have a pennant.

Yeah, there is a fierce debate about how common they were, with the bottom line once again being "we don't really know". It may well be they were used as rank insignia in some cases at least, but these are the details that aren't really elaborated on in medieval sources.


Do you fight with a HEMA/Western style or a Chinese/Eastern style? There are clear differences between how the spear is used, which the favours the use of a tassel (e.g. Eastern uses slashes and is much quicker in the 'pool cue' style strikes, at least on comparison with HEMA spear sparring videos versus qiang long spear (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvGMHS5HYU) and short spear (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjLAARgkskE) sparring videos).

I did both, though I mostly stick to European these days. My favourite spear guard is stolen straight from Tai Chi, though.

Eastern issues

The katas, forms, whatever of eastern style of teaching MAs are meant to be a technique syllabus. You go through the sequence once and have all the things your style says you should be able to do with that weapon.

What they aren't is representative of the application. Just because you have a 50/50 ratio of stabs and strikes in spear form doesn't mean you will ahve that ratio in application. A lot of the techniques in the forms are meant to be used in specific cases only, if you see an opening, not as a general thing.

A good way to think about this is to imagine Fiore's blade grabs - if you had a form with all of his giocco largo techniques, you'd have ~20 techniques in total, two of which use blade grabs (and several more for stepping on blade and grabbing opposing hilt). That gives you a ratio of 1 in 10 for grabbing the blade, even though we only rarely see it done in practice.

Finally, tassel doesn't help you. It just... doesn't distract at all. If you are fighting someone, especially with a polearm, you watch him as a whole, you can't tunnel vision onto just the tip of his spears. Where his arms and legs are is just as important. And a spear is a rather large and visible object in the first place.

Western issues

You can't learn a European spear style by looking up a spear chapter in a treatise and study that. To take Fiore as an example, by the time he gets to the spear, he already went through grappling, dagger, sword in one and two hands, sword in armor and pollaxe in armor - and the techniques from previous steps are to be used where applicable. He explicitly tells us so several times.


We are three masters using spear guards that are closely related to the sword guards.
- Fiore on spear guards, ~1400

He then gives you a handful of examples, but the meaning is clear - look at what is in sword section and apply it where you can. More than that, sword section guards are also used in pollaxe section, so you need to look at that as well.

As for slashes/strikes and pool-cuing, well, let's listen to the first thing Fiore tells us about how to fight with a spear:



The extended lance which is used in hand;
The more it is extended, the less it deceives.

This literally tells you to use pool-cuing and switch up the targets so that your opponent can't defend easily.



Six Masters stand in guard with it,
And with a step and a beat, they suddenly strike,
Both from the right side and from the left (for certain):
The beat is made to the side and not up;
And the beat wants to be one arm's length on the lance,
And whoever goes against it will make such a failure.

This is a bit more arcane, but we know from the past usage that when Fiore says "strike", he means both a cut and a thrust, whatever is applicable in your position. "With a step and a beat", on the other hand, means you should cut into the opposing weapon to defend yourself.

Slashes aren't directly addressed by Fiore, not even with swords. The most likely explanation is that he considers them mostly interchangable with cuts.

This comes a bit later, and explicitly tells us to use a strike offensively:


Guards from the left side can also cover and beat aside, but these will wound with a strike, because they cannot effectively place a thrust.

This isn't specific to Fiore either, if you want, for example, Lichtenauer tradition spear fighting, you need to look at Meyer's staff and go from there.

https://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/b/b6/Meyer_1570_Staff_A.png/800px-Meyer_1570_Staff_A.png

Couple this with a lot of disinterest in spear fighting in HEMA, the fact that you cannot do it safely in tournaments and, well, most people just don't get that deep into it. The situation is better with people who do armored fighting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrqxV80EqIU), but that is a tiny subsection of WMA in general due to cost of entry, so...

As for me, I do enjoy all sorts of causing damage to opponent's organs, including occassional lancing in battle.

http://galahad.sk/img_loader.php?img=wfwqmayYDMZdxbqlSfnjXYslSKhtGdq jGKgU3bzh2YhW2cgU3brNncvhxdgMHIrNnLvfHIoNxerNxYqqX LytGIzVmczNFItAkbqfXfEl1MWAJMvMXfnFxbjlSYqjXfsF2fv UmbyVGdu92a

Eastern vs Western differences

Ultimately, not that many. Eastern spear forms tend to have fancier footwork and more outright twirling of the spear and of the self, but that is true for Eastern forms in general, and probably not indicative of actual battlefield use. Unfortunately, there are very few historical Eastern sources translated, and usually only partially at that. I'd really like to know what Qi Jiguang had to say about spears...

Eastern forms also seem to lack the armored fighting syllabus, which is the most prevalent in Europe, but that could very well be lack of any instructions telling us what is supposed to be used against armor in the first place.

[Pauly]

Tassels on spears are not a uniquely Chinese thing.

They were widely used in cultures that had no direct or indirect contact with the Chinese. Incas in the Americas and in Sub Saharan Africa in many different cultures.

What that tells you is that the tassels had a real battlefield use. As far as it being stopping rain, the Peruvian Altiplano receives very little rain, yet tasseled spears were ubiquitous in Incan armies. Whilst it may be a consideration for the English on their damp little island it doesn’t explain tassels being common in dry areas.

As for the distraction/blurring if vision that’s something that sounds to me like a post facto rationalization. Quite simply if it were a thing it would only be applicable in duels, so there’d be no point going to the expense and bother of putting a tassel on tens of thousands of spears for an army.

My thought is that it’s most likely use is some form of fields sign. Denoting which side of a battle you are on. It’s possible to be a unit designation, but considering how many different units there were and then if the enemy is doing the sane thing that it’s a recipe for disastrous miscommunications.

As for stopping blood, others have discussed the reasons why it’s impractical in reality. The other issue is that if you want something to tie around the end of your soear to stop blood running down it, there are other cheaper and easier options that a horse hair tassel.

[Martin Greywolf]

Tassels on spears are not a uniquely Chinese thing.

They were widely used in cultures that had no direct or indirect contact with the Chinese. Incas in the Americas and in Sub Saharan Africa in many different cultures.

What that tells you is that the tassels had a real battlefield use.

It really doesn't. You see plenty of various items across the cultures that appear without any practical use whatsoever. The best example is probably carving reliefs into stone - sure, sometimes they are there to tell a story, but most often, they serve as a status symbol or a simple decoration.

Warfare is no different - give a soldier a partially wooden weapon, and he will soon carve stuff into the wood.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/84/b6/9f/84b69f22587155524b908928c73f22e4.jpg

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Screen-shot-2014-12-17-at-12.17.07-AM.png

Rank insignia is a possibility, but placing that on the business end of a spear has its problems, and Occam's razor says we should lean towards the simplest explanation - soldiers wanted to make their stabby stick look nice. And that sometimes makes you do wildly impractical things:

http://d3vjn2zm46gms2.cloudfront.net/blogs/2018/08/08123657/83mr184_opening_1600.jpg

[fusilier]

I don't think I've seen this mentioned (maybe I just missed it), but I think I've heard it claimed that the pennant at the end of a lance would help prevent the lance from being driven too far into the target. Most military lances don't seem to have crossbars as far as I can tell (like a boar spear might), and I could see a light lance going pretty far into unarmored target if hit in a soft spot. But I'm skeptical myself -- it's just another reason I think I heard.

Checking my "Gunnery and Ordnance" textbook from 1862, it describes the lance as having a pennon "which serves as an ornament, and to frighten the enemy's horses."

[Martin Greywolf]

I don't think I've seen this mentioned (maybe I just missed it), but I think I've heard it claimed that the pennant at the end of a lance would help prevent the lance from being driven too far into the target. Most military lances don't seem to have crossbars as far as I can tell (like a boar spear might), and I could see a light lance going pretty far into unarmored target if hit in a soft spot. But I'm skeptical myself -- it's just another reason I think I heard.

Penants don't stop overpenetration even on blunt spears in one hand on foot, let alone on mounted lance charge. We'd see a whole lot more pennants and a whole lot less winged or boar spears if they worked.

More importantly than that, stopping overpenetration this way isn't something you want on a mounted lance - on foot sure, but put it on a lance and the shock you will get from impact will be even worse, able to push you back more, or in a weird direction. Or whatever bar you have on that pennant (and you will need one to do anything) will simply break.

If you do want to prevent the lance from overpenetrating and getting stuck, make it breakable. The really long lances that are 5-6 meters will need to be hollow to be carried anyway.


Checking my "Gunnery and Ordnance" textbook from 1862, it describes the lance as having a pennon "which serves as an ornament, and to frighten the enemy's horses."

I've read something similar about Polish hussar lances, with pennants that were ~4.5 meters long on 6 meter lances (lance length tops out at about 6.5 meters, pennants are described as going to the horse's ears when held vertical). It bears mentioning that this isn't something that will work reliably, the horses may or may not spook at the noise, and definitely won't spook if they belong to people who fought the pennant users regularly, since they will be used to it.

It also bears mentioning how large these things are.

https://www.griffin-brady.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/winged-hussar-hopia_JPG.jpg

This is all wrong, as that is at best the demilance, not an actual lance.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/94/c6/5f94c63bc171d222d01f7a1099a7571e.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/38/27/da/3827da71f5cbd456f38b42b6cf8bf18d.jpg

Even this depiction has penants that aren't long enough, though.

Something this large will be considerably louder that the pennants of a more sane size we're more familiar with.

[fusilier]

I've read something similar about Polish hussar lances, with pennants that were ~4.5 meters long on 6 meter lances (lance length tops out at about 6.5 meters, pennants are described as going to the horse's ears when held vertical).
. . .
It also bears mentioning how large these things are.


I don't know if it was the noise, or fluttering it in the eyes of the enemy horse that was the intention of the smaller pennants, but either way, I suspect some training might be possible to help. (EDIT -- I'll also note, not sure if it is significant, but in the 1862 textbook the "frightening" the enemy horses purpose is mentioned *after* the "ornamentation" purpose). Anyway . . .

Wow! Those Polish lances were very long. Based on the imagery, is it 16th/17th century? The 19th century lances are described as 8.5 to 10 feet (~2.5 - 3 meters).

[Martin Greywolf]

I don't know if it was the noise, or fluttering it in the eyes of the enemy horse that was the intention of the smaller pennants, but either way, I suspect some training might be possible to help.

I read an account from napoleonic wars that claimed that horses who were in their first battle were scared of cannon fire, yet that one battle was enough to get them used to it. Same thing goes for horses these days that hang around stuntmen or reenactors. The traiing in question might not even be deliberate.


Wow! Those Polish lances were very long. Based on the imagery, is it 16th/17th century?

It tended to change. First problem is Polish, you have three words that could be translated as lance: lanca, kopija and pika. Lanca and kopija are obviously not Polish, but rather loan words, and stabby sticks were called kopija in Polish, as in most Slavic languages, without distinction between lances, spears and sometimes javelins.

The hussars were using two lengths of kopija, really, the extreme 6.5 meter ones and shorter lance that was about 3-4 meters. Polish word for the latter is kopijka, which is diminutive of kopija, and is translated as "little spear", albeit the diminutives are not necessarily related to size. A more accurate translation will usually call them short lances or demilances.

So, if you find a latin, english or whatever text talking about winged hussars, it is often not possible to tell whether the pokey stick is kopija or kopijka, and even Polish sources may not specify.

As best as I can tell, the kopija was used against western troops and kopijka against eastern - these are secondary sources claims, mind you, I don't specialize in this period to a point where I go down hunting specific ordinances. This was dictated by weapons used at the time, western armies used pike squares and long couched lances, so the idea was persumably to outrange them (especially in a flanking charge, a pike square can turn some of its people to fend it off surprisingly quick). Eastern troops had a different tactical doctrines in play (and at this time, especially after Mehmet II reforms, we can actually talk about state doctrines), and didn't use spears of that length, so using them against them was not that great of an idea.

Remember, the kopija is 6 meters, needs to be hollowed out and is one use only, making it a pretty expensive weapon. The hussars only carried a few of them (well, when I say hussars, I mean their retainers), the most often quoted number is three.

Also keep in mind that eastern vs western split in use is meant in general, a specific battle may well see the commander order a switch to the longer weapon, and there are a few accounts of battles against Ottomans or other nomads that mention a single lance impaling three or four mounted people at once - not very likely with a kopijka. And that's not even going into the possibility of an army simply running out of lances.

As the time goes on and pikes disappear from battlefield, lances shrink in size as well, since there is no point in making them that big. And since most of the really popular depictions of battle of Vienna - you know the one, the Sobieski one, the Sabaton one - were painted in 18-19th centuries, they tend to use lances that are about 4-5 meters, or right in between kopija and kopijka. As for what they really used here, I'm not sure.


The 19th century lances are described as 8.5 to 10 feet (~2.5 - 3 meters).

Well, the Winged Hussars proper were disbanded in 1770s. Your lances are probably for the light cavalry kind of hussars, or maybe for dedicated lancers that survived until WW1, albeit not in great numbers. And since we have no pikes around at this time, I'd say that length is about right for the period.

A note on outreaching

Since this will inevitably come up.

You can't outreach a pike with a lance in the sense that you can charge into a prepared pike square. If length of a pike is 6 meters and you point it 1.5 meters above the ground, and it is braced into the ground as was the procedure, Pytagoras gives you 5.8 meters of reach, minus ~1.5 meters, because you're standing like this:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fqqH-Kj7WJc/WRTAkpgAdgI/AAAAAAAAJRg/XvBeq2pWElMIAGfOjEWgO1bFuApLN9hUwCLcB/s1600/pike_vs_lance_1689.jpg

So, 4.3 meter reach.

Sure, that hussar 6.5 meter pike can reach you, but 6.5 meter pike length doesn't mean 6.5 meters reach. From the pictures, you get 5.5 meters tops from your face and only 4-4.5 meters from head of your horse. That's not a lot of meters to work with. In fact, it's less than one, meaning a charge will cross that distance in about 150-200 ms, meaning that even if the braced pike begins falling at the moment of impact, it will move only 20 cm (s = 1/2*g*t^2).

A direct charge into a pike formation will, if the pikes don't rout, get you a mutual slaughter at best, and cavalry will come off worse in this exchange as they are the more expensive soldier type.

However, take your average Landsknecht halberd:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/56/dd/c1/56ddc107f4b6c4ff14cd9846dc95cb18.jpg

That one is between 2 and 4 meters long, and used to guard the corners and sometimes flanks of pike formations. Brace it same as pike, and you get 1.3 meter reach to 3.7 meter reach (with a 3m halberd giving 2.6). Now, for that 1.3 meter reach (which is analogous to musket with bayonet on), you don't really need the 6 meter lance and its 4 meter reach. But it will let you outreach the long halberds to a point where a flanking charge will disrupt the braced halberds enough that, once you and your horse get to them, they will most likely not be braced much.

To put numbers on it, you have 4.5 meter lance reach vs 3.7 halberd reach, meaning four to five times as much time for falling, meaning the freefalling halberd will drop 80 cm to a full meter.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aALeg9DIySI/hqdefault.jpg

http://www.vhu.cz/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Halapartna-%C5%A1avlov%C3%A1-Bavorsko-kolem-1630.jpg
link to czech description (http://www.vhu.cz/exhibit/halapartna-savlova-bavorsko-kolem-1630/)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg/431px-Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg/257px-Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg

Edit: added a few more numbers to the latter part of this

[snowblizz]

A direct charge into a pike formation will, if the pikes don't rout, get you a mutual slaughter at best, and cavalry will come off worse in this exchange as they are the more expensive soldier type.
And most importantly if the formation hasn't broken, the musketeers and cannon will shoot you or your horse to death long before.

This is why you have musketeers and why pikemen do not fight alone. Pike and shot, neither works alone for very good reasons.

[Calthropstu]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg/431px-Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg/257px-Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg

Edit: added a few more numbers to the latter part of this

Maybe those wer just really short soldiers?

[Brother Oni]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg/431px-Rom%2C_Vatikan%2C_Soldat_der_Schweizer_Garde_3.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg/257px-Archive-ugent-be-79D46426-CC9D-11E3-B56B-4FBAD43445F2_DS-263_%28cropped%29.jpg


Maybe those wer just really short soldiers?

Using back of an envelope calculation, in the top image, the pike is about 21 cm long on my screen, with the soldier being about 16.5 cm.

Being generous and assuming that the pike's 1.8m long, the makes the soldier 1.41m tall or just under 4'8" in freedom units.

Surprisingly, the bottom image gives me almost identical values with the same pike length of 1.8m (9cm for pike, 7 cm for soldier) of 1.4m and just over 4'7".

I guess length of sharp pointy sticks is something that's conserved over the centuries. :smalltongue:

[Myth27]

How far away can a regular handgun be heard normally? And with a suppressor?

Ideally give me 5 distances for a DC:0, 5, 10, 15, 20 listening checks

[Gnoman]

Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. To put into perspective, a Manowar concert set a volume record at 139 decibels, resulting in the Guiness Book of World Records deleting their "loudest band" record for future editions. An unsuppressed 9mm Parabellum shot is 160.

I'd put it at DC 0 for any practical range, and DC -10 within a mile or two.

[Calthropstu]

Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. To put into perspective, a Manowar concert set a volume record at 139 decibels, resulting in the Guiness Book of World Records deleting their "loudest band" record for future editions. An unsuppressed 9mm Parabellum shot is 160.

I'd put it at DC 0 for any practical range, and DC -10 within a mile or two.

I don't think miles. Otherwise I'd hear a lot mor gunshots. I'd say maybe a mile on an open plain with little sound between.
Less if say a large number of insects or other noises were between them.

Adjust for buildings in the way.

[Gnoman]

If you're in a city, buildings attenuate a lot of sounds. That's something that is much to complex to really factor in. In more open country, I've heard gunshots that I know were several miles away quite clearly.


The important point is that you'll almost certainly not hear it at all before it becomes quieter than "people talking" (DC0).

[Telok]

I don't think miles. Otherwise I'd hear a lot mor gunshots. I'd say maybe a mile on an open plain with little sound between.
Less if say a large number of insects or other noises were between them.

Adjust for buildings in the way.

I did research into vision & hearing for a game with "perception" but no rules or examples. You can check the Other Games forum, I have a DtD49k7e thread and the stuff is in the book 1 download, or you can wait until later when the 2 year old child is out of the house and I can use the computer without a hairless howler monkey jumping on me. The handgun in a suburb is addressed.

OK, snagged time. Hearing stuff is in the spoiler.

The system is a roll & keep using d10s from 2010. The DC/TN chart is exactly the same as the D&D 5e DC chart (and about as useful), but normal people in stressful situations have 2k2 (roll 2d10, keep the best 2) or 1k1 if they're completely untrained in something that needs training. That puts normal untrained perception 50% success at DC 11, DC 5 @ 93% and DC 15 @ 27%. You're basic competent PC is at 4k3 for DC 15 @ 85%, DC 20 @ 57%, DC 25 @ 30%. Maximum is generally 10k5 who 50%s at 43.



Locating the source and understanding the content of a sound (like making out what someone said, identifying a motor as a 2-cylinder as opposed to a 4-cylinder, or figuring the direction of a safety switching off in the dark) happens at about 1/4th or 1/5th the detection range, or about 1/10th the detection range if you're unprepared or facing the other way.

To notice the sound: at TN 10, TN 20, TN 30, TN 40
whisper, library, laser shot: 5m, 10m, 20m, 40m
running tap/shower, office or forest: 10m, 20m, 40m, 80m
conversation, busy restaurant: 20m, 40m, 80m, 160m
noisy household appliance, passing automobile: 40m, 80m, 160m, 320m
alarm clock, crying baby: 80m, 160m, 320m, 640m
lawnmower, shouting: 250m, 500m, 1km, 2km
circular saw, busy highway: 500m, 1km, 2km, 4km
disco, light rioting, las cannon: 1km, 2km, 4km, 8km
rock concert, gunpowder pistols: 2km, 4km, 8km, 16km
jet engines, gunpowder longarm: 5km, 10km, 20km, 40km
grenades, rockets, collapsing towers: 10km, 20km, 40km, 80km
artillery, thunderbolts: 50km, 100km, 200km, 400km

Silencers on guns move the distance down by an amount equal to their quality level with poor quality silencers moving pistol shots down to 'light rioting' distances and best quality silencers moving it down to 'baby crying' distances.

Apply in order:

x2 TN for each:
intervening wall (without large openings)
-> background noise of a higher level, per level <-
layer of hearing protection or sound-proofing

Distance modifier:
-1k1 or +10 TN per doubling of the distance (a crying baby at 160m is TN 20)
-10 TN for each halving of the distance (a crying baby at 40m is automatic)

+5 TN for each:
intervening chunk of forest, hill, or neighborhood (outdoors)
intervening light interior door or open room (indoors)
-> background noise of the same level <-
sound absorbing features of the environment

Note: Once the TN goes over 65 go back to adding +5 to the TN instead of doubling the TN.

Examples: Someone shoots a silenced hand cannon. The gunshot is TN 10 at 2km, reduced to TN 10 at 500m for the silencer and 120m to discern that it's a hand cannon instead of an autopistol or revolver. Inside a house a kilometer away would be TN 30 (10, x2 for the exterior wall, +10 for distance) to hear it and identifying it a TN 60 (10, x2 for the wall, and 4x10 for distance). A crying baby in the next room would double those TNs (10, x2 for a wall, -20 since it's less than 20m away, and TN 0 is less than TN 30 so the baby is louder at that range). Without the silencer but still a kilometer away and inside would be a TN 10 to hear it and TN 30 to identify it. Remember, this is out in the open. In a suburb or city you would add +5 or more to the TN from intervening houses and trees, and with another doubling of the base TN if there is a busy highway within 250m or cars passing within 20m.


Bibliography

Bibliography (just in case you really want to replicate some of this for yourself)

AD-753 600 TARGET DETECTION AND RANGE ESTIMATION
James A. Caviness, et al
Office of the Chief of Research and Development (Army), November 1972

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM, MOONLIGHT AND NIGHT VISIF1LITY
Thomas F. Nichols and Theodore R. Powers
USAIHRU, January 1964
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0438001.pdf

Jungle Vision IL: Effects of Distance, Horizontal Placement, and Site on Personnel Detection in an Evergreen Rain forest
Dobbins, D.A. et al.
U.S. Army Tropic Test Center, Fort Clayton, Canal Zone, March 1965.

The Effects of Observer Location and Viewing Method on Target Detection with the 18-inch Tank-Mounted Searchlight, HumRRO Technical Report 91,
Louis, Nicholas B.
June 1964.

Report Bibliography on Target Detection and Range Estimation
ASTIA
Humans, Armed Forces Technical Information Agency, Arlington, Virginia, November 19 60.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Predictions of Sighting Range Based Upon Measurements of Target and Environmental Properties
Jacqueline I. Gordon.
http://misclab.umeoce.maine.edu/education/VisibilityLab/reports/SIO_63-23.pdf

Google searches: target detection through visual recognition

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjB3rv74NvtAhWIr54KHdNNBdUQFjACegQIDhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rand.org%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fr and%2Fpubs%2Fresearch_memoranda%2F2007%2FRM6158.1. pdf&usg=AOvVaw1iljBk7T55T--bKi8JZffc

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjB3rv74NvtAhWIr54KHdNNBdUQFjADegQICRAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rand.org%2Fpubs%2Fresearch_m emoranda%2FRM6158z1.html&usg=AOvVaw2jgb88446nWRcf5Pnw4z3D

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj3h5WE8tvtAhVIrp4KHeC-AVMQFjACegQIAhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.dtic.mil%2Fdtic%2Ftr%2Ffull text%2Fu2%2F619275.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3Z-pQwcxCZ5RKl3lLOzVQD

Detection of random low-altitude jet aircraft by ground observers (Tech. Memo. 7-60; AD 238 341)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwik1pON2t3tAhVYvJ4KHXQVCtIQFjABegQIAxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.dtic.mil%2Fdtic%2Ftr%2Ffull text%2Fu2%2F758875.pdf&usg=AOvVaw23swFWgdT02A3PZuTP8LlX



I amazes me, world militaries really care about this sorts of stuff but no RPG ever seems to make any effort to check previous research to fridge logic their see & hear rules.

[KineticDiplomat]

These guys make acoustic sensors for police support in major US cities:

https://www.shotspotter.com/

They say a mile is about right for a handgun. Two major caveats.

The first is that with range and wave variables you might have a very hard time telling it actually was a gunshot at that distance as opposed to a different sound closer.

The second is that your own surroundings matter a great deal, both in the raw decibel sense of when is the sound actually capable of overcoming sounds around you, and of the mental ability to pick out a noise as a gunshot. It helps that for modern firearms humans tend to fire in consistent patterns of shots which allows an initial identification of the noise, categorizing as “yes, gunshots”, followed by extra mental effort and focus on determine location.

So on a still night in an open field where you’re listening hard for a gunshot and being quiet yourself, and someone empties half a magazine, well at a mile it might still be DC 10.

In the middle of a day as you walk past a construction site paying attention mostly to your Uber pick up time, and someone fires a single shot a mile away in a city might be a Natural 20 Only.

[fusilier]

Handguns are loud. Very loud. I'd put it in the miles range. . . .

I've heard fifes and drums playing from a couple of miles away -- when the acoustics were just right. And these were the same fifes and drums I stood next to, with no hearing loss. ;-) There are also "acoustic shadows" which resulted in people many (sometimes dozens) of miles away hearing cannon fire from a battle, but the army's commander, only a mile or two away, didn't hear a thing. There's a good number of those stories from the American Civil War but they were reported in other wars too.

I strongly suspect it comes down to local conditions and topography.

[Pauly]

Aside from the environmental factors affecting the hearer there are gun/ammunition factors at play.
1) subsonic -v- supersonic ammo. The De Lisle carbine was famously quiet because of the use of subsonic ammo and a large suppressor
2) the mechanical noise of the action. Manually operated guns have significantly less noise than auto and semi auto actions. Allegedly the suppressed Sten gun had more mechanical noise than bullet noise.
3) the amount of charge in the round. More gunpowder = more noise
4) caliber. Large caliber guns tend to have a lower note (more ‘boom’ than ‘crack’). Lower notes travel further than higher notes, but higher notes are more noticeable.
5) the type of powder, although this should just be broadly delineated as black powder -v- smokeless powder. Faster burning powder makes a louder higher pitched noise.
6) the size/condition of the suppressor.

[Martin Greywolf]

And most importantly if the formation hasn't broken, the musketeers and cannon will shoot you or your horse to death long before.

This is why you have musketeers and why pikemen do not fight alone. Pike and shot, neither works alone for very good reasons.

That's not a very useful argument to make, really. The problem we're trying to solver here is "is countering pikes with long lances a good idea", the fact that there are supporting troops is immaterial, because you're not trying to figure out how to beat them.

If the answer was "yeah, absolutely charge hussars into the pikes", then we'd see a host of tactics aimed at suppressing the elements of the pike square that would defeat this (suddenly pike-slaying) charge.


Maybe those were just really short soldiers?

Sad thing is, every historian with a pet theory on this planet has used this exact argument.


Using back of an envelope calculation, in the top image, the pike is about 21 cm long on my screen, with the soldier being about 16.5 cm.

Being generous and assuming that the pike's 1.8m long, the makes the soldier 1.41m tall or just under 4'8" in freedom units.

Surprisingly, the bottom image gives me almost identical values with the same pike length of 1.8m (9cm for pike, 7 cm for soldier) of 1.4m and just over 4'7".

I guess length of sharp pointy sticks is something that's conserved over the centuries. :smalltongue:

There definitely seems to be. I don't think anyone did a large study on a variety of weapons, but if you take e.g. katana lengths and rescale them proportionally to height, you start to see numbers that are very similar to longswords. Now I'm wondering about yari lengths in realtion to this.


How far away can a regular handgun be heard normally? And with a suppressor?

Ideally give me 5 distances for a DC:0, 5, 10, 15, 20 listening checks

There were several good asnwers, so I'll just pitch in in pointing out thet there are three diferent questions in this one:

Did I hear a gunshot?
Did I hear a gunshot and recognize it as such?
Do I know where that gunshot came from?


Your DCs and distances will depend on which one you're asking.

[halfeye]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silencer_(firearms)#Effectiveness


even low-power, unsuppressed .22 LR handguns produce gunshots over 160 decibels.[54] A recent study of various suppressors reported peak sound pressure level reductions between 17 dB and 24 dB.

...

Comparatively, ear protection commonly used while shooting provides 18 to 32 dB of sound reduction at the ear.[60] Further, chainsaws, rock concerts, rocket engines, pneumatic drills, small firecrackers, and ambulance sirens are rated at 100 to 140 dB.[61]

...

Decibel testing measures only the peak sound pressure noise, not duration or frequency. Limitations of dB testing become apparent in a comparison of sound between a .308 caliber rifle and a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle. The dB meter will show that both rifles produce the same decibel level of noise. Upon firing these rifles, however, it is clear that the .300 Winchester Magnum sounds much louder. What a dB meter does not show is that, although both rifles produce the same peak sound pressure level (SPL), the .300 Winchester Magnum holds its peak duration longer—meaning that the .300 Winchester Magnum sound remains at full value longer, while the .308 peaks and falls off more quickly. Decibel meters fail in this and other regards when being used as the principal means to determine silencer capability. Described mathematically, dB meters take a short-time average or root mean square (RMS), intensity of a sonic signal or impulse over a specified period of time (sampling rate), and do not take into account the rate of increase of the sound wave packet (first derivative of packet envelope), which would in practice provide a better sense of the human perception of sound

So, 160 DB goes to maybe 136 DB with suppression. It's not what you see in most movies that feature "silenced" guns.

Bigger guns are louder, and the suppression only brings them down a bit, not below the smaller unsuppressed guns.

[Calthropstu]

Sad thing is, every historian with a pet theory on this planet has used this exact argument.

Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...

[Brother Oni]

There definitely seems to be. I don't think anyone did a large study on a variety of weapons, but if you take e.g. katana lengths and rescale them proportionally to height, you start to see numbers that are very similar to longswords. Now I'm wondering about yari lengths in realtion to this.

I'll have a look at my sources later and see what I can dig up.

Edit: according to late Sendoku Jidai sources, most clan armies used nagae-yari up to 3 ken (4.8m) long, but Oda armies were renown for their longer yari of 3.5 ken (5.6m).
Bear in mind that ashigaru spear fighting was very different and consisted of repeatedly raising the spear high up in the air and bringing it down on the heads/shoulders of the enemy.


Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...

Depends on the time period - any period where you had to stab your opponent rather than let gunpowder do the work for you, would favour a higher minimum level of strength and hence a larger body size.

During the Napoleonic Wars, grenadiers were chosen due to their greater size and strength. These days, most special forces tend to have small wiry physiques although US SOF have a tendency to look like they eat barbells for breakfast.

[Martin Greywolf]

Come to think of it, wouldn't smaller soldiers be preferrable? Harder to hit, able to go into narrow spaces etc...

In a fight? Possibly, if it's not melee.

Overall, not so much. There are many other factors, far more important than size, that will tie into this.

For general armed forces, you want people who want to be there and are willing to play ball with the rules. Having 500 guys with spears is better than having 300 big guys with spears, because more stabbings will beat fewer stabbings no matter how hard you stab. As a consequence, basic recruitment selection will always be mostly based on goals and personalities, with some minimal requirements. Those requirements may well be physical (run a mile without wiping out), but can often be social (gentlemen only for officers) or even based off of wealth (bring your own weapons and armor and get paid more).

Once we get to elite units, like Napoleon gendarmes and grenadiers, or Swiss guard, you dou sometimes start to see size requirements. But that usually happens only for units that are in the public eye - how big and menacing they are is very much a factor there.

Most often, you see physical exams, especially today, and what those are will determine what body types will dominate, statistically speaking. Put emphasis on lifting heavy objects and big guys will get in. Put emphasis on endurance marching and wiry guys will have it better.

Even then, though, you will see very capable veteran soldiers who maybe couldn't quite make Spec Ops entrance exams, but are still scarier on account of greater experience. And because there's more of them.

Finally, being a smaller target only helps you in some forms of warfare. Medieval era, it helps in skirmishes only - large battles have you standing in a tight formation anyway, and sieges have cover. Modern era, it almost never matters, if you are using cover and concealment, then it's only a fraction of your total body mass exposed, and wheter that fraction is 10cm or 15 cm won't come into play too often. Especially not if they decide to use mortars.

[KineticDiplomat]

Re short soldiers. Assuming you mean the modern age by the context provided, this is one of those entirely opinionated and mostly irrelevant factors. While you might make any number of arguments for why being slightly taller, shorter, bigger, smaller is preferable in a given situation, it mostly balances barring severe physical capacity differences in terms of strength/endurance.

The one factor I can think of is that some equipment designs placed an institutional limit on soldier size - soviet tanks were designed to be very low, with the idea (not always followed) you would crew them with smaller men, US pilots have an acceptable height range to make sure the human engineering for $100M aircraft wasn’t offset by a 4’9” pilot…

But for most general purpose forces, the name of the game is “what’s the minimum acceptable standard to get a body into a uniform”. There’s a Surgeon General report on WWII body standards with an entire chapter dedicated to “Higher Manpower Requirements - Lower Entrance Standards”. The US Army, which had the luxury of being very choosey about manpower in WW2, had a standard where soldiers intended for general service should be between 60-78 inches…so barely above legally recognized stunted growth to six and a half feet. Clearly the issue was not considered that important.

[Mike_G]

Re short soldiers. Assuming you mean the modern age by the context provided, this is one of those entirely opinionated and mostly irrelevant factors. While you might make any number of arguments for why being slightly taller, shorter, bigger, smaller is preferable in a given situation, it mostly balances barring severe physical capacity differences in terms of strength/endurance.

The one factor I can think of is that some equipment designs placed an institutional limit on soldier size - soviet tanks were designed to be very low, with the idea (not always followed) you would crew them with smaller men, US pilots have an acceptable height range to make sure the human engineering for $100M aircraft wasn’t offset by a 4’9” pilot…

But for most general purpose forces, the name of the game is “what’s the minimum acceptable standard to get a body into a uniform”. There’s a Surgeon General report on WWII body standards with an entire chapter dedicated to “Higher Manpower Requirements - Lower Entrance Standards”. The US Army, which had the luxury of being very choosey about manpower in WW2, had a standard where soldiers intended for general service should be between 60-78 inches…so barely above legally recognized stunted growth to six and a half feet. Clearly the issue was not considered that important.

Five foot two.

Qualified for Marine Corps Infantry.

Never had any issues.

[KineticDiplomat]

You’d still make it. Their pre-waiver accessions range is now 4’8” to 6’10”.

[Vinyadan]

Depends on the time period - any period where you had to stab your opponent rather than let gunpowder do the work for you, would favour a higher minimum level of strength and hence a larger body size.

During the Napoleonic Wars, grenadiers were chosen due to their greater size and strength. These days, most special forces tend to have small wiry physiques although US SOF have a tendency to look like they eat barbells for breakfast.

Napoleon also had the voltigeurs, who were the best shots in the army and didn't have the size requirements of the grenadiers.

In the case of the images, however, the Swiss Guard has very clear size requirements, with a minimum if 174 cm. :smallbiggrin: So they actually make for decent comparison for the size of the halberds.

[Brother Oni]

In the case of the images, however, the Swiss Guard has very clear size requirements, with a minimum if 174 cm. :smallbiggrin: So they actually make for decent comparison for the size of the halberds.

Calibrating against the soldier in the modern picture as 174cm gives a halberd length of 221.5 cm. :smallbiggrin:

[Pauly]

The only units I know of where smallness was considered an advantage were mining units. Smaller soldiers meant more efficient mining and better combat ability if they ran into enemy miners underground.

There were some specific equipment were smallness was a requirement, such as the ball turret gunner on a B-17.

In WW1 the British recruited “Bantam” regiments where the height maximum was 5’ 3” (roughly 1.6m). I believe this was to encourage more volunteers as the small fellers thought they wouldn’t be useful soldiers. In any event these regiments did end up having pretty good war records, although that may be due to self selection leading to a belief that they were superior and hence higher motivation.

[Brother Oni]

The only units I know of where smallness was considered an advantage were mining units. Smaller soldiers meant more efficient mining and better combat ability if they ran into enemy miners underground.

There were some specific equipment were smallness was a requirement, such as the ball turret gunner on a B-17.

There were the American tunnel rats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_rat) in Vietnam whose job was to go into VC mud tunnels armed with nothing more than a flashlight, a pistol and maybe a bayonet.

Generally all the soldiers were no bigger than 5'5" (165cm).

[Pauly]

There were the American tunnel rats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_rat) in Vietnam whose job was to go into VC mud tunnels armed with nothing more than a flashlight, a pistol and maybe a bayonet.

Generally all the soldiers were no bigger than 5'5" (165cm).

The Aussies also sent in ex-miners down those tunnels. Same thing little guys with a pustol.

[Mr Beer]

Soviet tankers were all 5'4" or less apparently.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TxwY7lwh4_UC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=soviet+tank+crew+height&source=bl&ots=gRbJa1mnCy&sig=j0ISEsQuphBSGZ69KdcrAC_bdMc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zI7mUa31IMWp4AO6gIGgCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=soviet%20tank%20crew%20height&f=false

[AdAstra]

Pilots in the US Air Force at least have height ranges, due to the need of a pilot to fit within their seat, operate all controls, have a good field of view over the dashboard, etc. Currently it's "a standing height of 5 feet, 4 inches to 6 feet, 5 inches and a sitting height of 34-40 inches".

However, as mentioned previously, they care about this to the extent that it affects your ability to operate the controls of your aircraft and fit in them. Therefore, these requirements by themselves are only a rough guideline. They have other, more precise measurements that better reflect your ability to perform the above tasks, and meeting those requirements will typically result in receiving a waiver that will let you sign up anyway. The smallest height mentioned to receive a waiver was 4'11". Thus the practical requirements are extremely broad.

It's also not just the Soviets that have a height limit for tankers. Currently to receive an M1 MBT MOS from the US Army, you can't be taller than 6'1". NATO tanks are roomier, but very much still limited in space.

[Pauly]

Soviet tankers were all 5'4" or less apparently.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TxwY7lwh4_UC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=soviet+tank+crew+height&source=bl&ots=gRbJa1mnCy&sig=j0ISEsQuphBSGZ69KdcrAC_bdMc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zI7mUa31IMWp4AO6gIGgCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=soviet%20tank%20crew%20height&f=false

But that wasn’t because smallness was an advantage. It was because smallness was a requirement to operate the machinery. It’s not just tanks. I was at the Kyoto Railway Museum the other day, and I don’t fit through the door to get into the driver’s compartment of the first series Shinkansen, let alone sit in the driver’s seat (I’m 183 cm and 100 kg).

[AdAstra]

But that wasn’t because smallness was an advantage. It was because smallness was a requirement to operate the machinery. It’s not just tanks. I was at the Kyoto Railway Museum the other day, and I don’t fit through the door to get into the driver’s compartment of the first series Shinkansen, let alone sit in the driver’s seat (I’m 183 cm and 100 kg).

I mean, I would definitely consider "able to do the job" to be an advantage over the alternative.

Also, those height requirements are themselves, to an extent, an advantage to the tank. If you believe you can source an adequate number and quality of tank crewmembers of X maximum height, you can build the tank with that in mind. A tank with less internal volume taken up by crew space requires less material to armor, lowering weight and cost, which requires a smaller engine and smaller track area to provide a given speed/terrain crossing ability, again lowering weight and cost. You end up with smaller vehicles that weigh less, cost less, and are somewhat easier to conceal for a given performance level, and the Soviets decided these advantages were sufficient to justify limiting their selection pool for recruitment. So I would definitely say that smaller tankers have the advantage of being able to operate smaller tanks, the same way being able to wield a longer pike or draw a more powerful bow would be an advantage.

[Gnoman]

Crew height was rarely a planned factor in tank design. You crammed the engine, gun, and armor you wanted into the chassis and put the crew in whatever was left. The number of crewmen was taken into account, but the amount of space each crewman got was mostly determined by the other design factors.

[Martin Greywolf]

So I would definitely say that smaller tankers have the advantage of being able to operate smaller tanks, the same way being able to wield a longer pike or draw a more powerful bow would be an advantage.

You're not comparing like with like here.

When someone asks question like this, they mean "if we took two people, scaled their equipment appropriately for their physical dimensions and had them fight it out, would one of them have a meaningful advantage over the other?" Now, with medieval era, this is pretty much what you see out in the field as well, equipment is sourced individually, and there are few regulations about modifying it, and the few we see come at the tail end of the era.

Once we're talking about indistrialized nations, the equipment procurement is standardized, and the question we want to know the asnwer to is no longer the question that is asked in real life. Limiting your pool of recruits by 5 percent because of height will likely not even register to a national army, simply because the individual skill isn't that relevant. A brilliant tank commander (as in, commands a single tank, not a tank batallion) will not be able to tip the scales of a modern war, no matter how good he is. It's just not relevant.

And since you have standardization, because that's how industry works, you arbitrarily pick some size, based on averages (or sometimes, gut feeling) and call it a day. And various nations will have those arbitrarily chosen standards at different levels.

So no, we can't say being smaller is an advantage for a tank crew member, because if you take that too big Soviet guy and move him to UK or USA, he will do just as well in the tank as anyone else. Meanwhile, smaller swordsman will always be at a slight disadvantage no matter where he emigrates.

[halfeye]

I remember, but can't find online references to, mention of Japanese post WW2 tanks being slightly smaller due to their crews being slightly smaller.

I think ship crews and tank crews, are a case where being smaller probably is generally more of an asset than a hindrance, but otherwise the stronger the better.

[Pauly]

I

Also, those height requirements are themselves, to an extent, an advantage to the tank..

If you look at fighter pilots. According to theory a smaller individual is better able to operate the controls and is a better candidate than a larger one. However reflexes, positional awareness, keen eyesight, ability to think in 3 dimensions, knowledge of the performance capabilities of your aircraft are more important than physical size.

For example Stan Dallas of the RNS was 6’2” and weighed 16 Stones, which put him at the limit of being able to fit into a WW1 cockpit, yet he was credited with 47 kills. There are plenty of examples of Successful tall fighter pilots where the supposition that smallness is an advantage is shown to be an irrelevance. Or at the least such a minor advantage that it isn’t worth the time and effort to seek it out.

[KineticDiplomat]

The issue, of course, is rendered almost entirely academic by the continuously wide ranges actually employed by the people responsible for manning their armies. Whatever nigh on negligible benefit or draw back there is to size within most of the human adult range is pretty much ignored in favor of “yes, we would like to have another soldier, and we’d far rather spend our analytical resources on real disqualifying medical, fitness, and social issues and where to set that bar rather than spend effort deliberately sorting, ruling, creating the governance structure for, and actually implementing some system for the virtually non-issue of most adult human height”

[AdAstra]

You're not comparing like with like here.

When someone asks question like this, they mean "if we took two people, scaled their equipment appropriately for their physical dimensions and had them fight it out, would one of them have a meaningful advantage over the other?" Now, with medieval era, this is pretty much what you see out in the field as well, equipment is sourced individually, and there are few regulations about modifying it, and the few we see come at the tail end of the era.

Once we're talking about indistrialized nations, the equipment procurement is standardized, and the question we want to know the asnwer to is no longer the question that is asked in real life. Limiting your pool of recruits by 5 percent because of height will likely not even register to a national army, simply because the individual skill isn't that relevant. A brilliant tank commander (as in, commands a single tank, not a tank batallion) will not be able to tip the scales of a modern war, no matter how good he is. It's just not relevant.

And since you have standardization, because that's how industry works, you arbitrarily pick some size, based on averages (or sometimes, gut feeling) and call it a day. And various nations will have those arbitrarily chosen standards at different levels.

So no, we can't say being smaller is an advantage for a tank crew member, because if you take that too big Soviet guy and move him to UK or USA, he will do just as well in the tank as anyone else. Meanwhile, smaller swordsman will always be at a slight disadvantage no matter where he emigrates.

These are not arbitrary standards, though. The amount of space allotted to crew in a tank matters a lot. More space offers all kinds of soft factors in terms of ergonomics, readiness, and comfort, while expanding the number of people who can comfortably operate the vehicle. Less space, on the other hand, results in smaller, lighter, cheaper vehicles for a given performance standard (gun, armor thickness, terrain crossing ability and speed). Neither of these are small advantages.

Both sides of the Cold War made an informed decision regarding the crew space they were willing to build around. The US and NATO were willing to accept heavier, bigger tanks, and thus built with more space and people in mind. The Soviets considered the benefits of smaller tanks to be worth the more stringent requirements and worse ergonomics. It was not arbitrary any more than the armor or engine, and countries took the choice seriously. No one was playing eenie meenie miney mo on a height chart.

For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.

Just because equipment isn't custom tailored to the soldier anymore doesn't mean that individual traits of soldiers don't matter. The way that they matter just changes to a more demographic/design issue.

[Pauly]

These are not arbitrary standards, though. The amount of space allotted to crew in a tank matters a lot. More space offers all kinds of soft factors in terms of ergonomics, readiness, and comfort, while expanding the number of people who can comfortably operate the vehicle. Less space, on the other hand, results in smaller, lighter, cheaper vehicles for a given performance standard (gun, armor thickness, terrain crossing ability and speed). Neither of these are small advantages.

Both sides of the Cold War made an informed decision regarding the crew space they were willing to build around. The US and NATO were willing to accept heavier, bigger tanks, and thus built with more space and people in mind. The Soviets considered the benefits of smaller tanks to be worth the more stringent requirements and worse ergonomics. It was not arbitrary any more than the armor or engine, and countries took the choice seriously. No one was playing eenie meenie miney mo on a height chart.

For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.

Just because equipment isn't custom tailored to the soldier anymore doesn't mean that individual traits of soldiers don't matter. The way that they matter just changes to a more demographic/design issue.

But the thing is we’ve already seen how the compromised crew designed Soviet tanks fared against NATO designs in the various Arab-Israeli wars. The side with the less limited crew selection and the best ergonomics won. Convincingly.

[Max_Killjoy]

But the thing is we’ve already seen how the compromised crew designed Soviet tanks fared against NATO designs in the various Arab-Israeli wars. The side with the less limited crew selection and the best ergonomics won. Convincingly.

That... had to do with a lot more than the crew considerations.

[Vinyadan]

I think ISIS stole some NATO tanks. I wonder if there was any engagement against Iranian or Russian tanks.

[Metastachydium]

That... had to do with a lot more than the crew considerations.

Indeed. To illustrate some of the issues, I'd point out thet the Yemeni civil war saw dozens of Abrams tanks taken out and that is not widely read as proof that Cold War era black market junk is superior to up-to-date NATO ware.

[Martin Greywolf]

For example, let's say you built an Abrams tank according to factory specifications. Then let's say that you built a tank otherwise identical to the Abrams, but with the internal volume scaled to a person who was 5'4" and unable to really support a crew bigger than that. If you kept the engine, the gun, and the armor thicknesses the same (along with the myriad other factors that are still very important), the resulting tank would be lighter, have a smaller profile, and a higher power to weight ratio, which has significant implications for mobility. Alternatively, you could make the armor thicker for a same weight, with the attendant advantages, or really do a number of things. Accepting the smaller crew requirement in the design, independent of other factors, will generally result in a superior tank.

Except that it won't. Because while said tank is superior in theory the margins you've gained are so insignificant next to literally any other factor they may as well not be there. Whether or not the crew's favourite football team won a match before they climb into the tank will have more of an impact than the minute advantage in weight, even in a one on one fight.

If that wasn't the case, we would see pretty much everyone selecting their tank crews based on size, because why wouldn't you? When we did see military roles that had a genuine advantage thanks to the size of people in those roles, that's exactly what happened, and we got colonial grenadiers, Napoleon's cuirassiers, Winged Hussars (not sure about the men, but the horses had a size requirement) and so on.

I'm also pretty sure there are several studies on this done by the tank-building nations, and I'm even more sure we will not be able to even know about them for quite a while. We're just now getting to a point where some of the WW2 stuff is getting declassified, after all.

[Max_Killjoy]

On tank crews, I've been told by friends who crewed tanks (including in combat) that having a four-man crew of "full size people" is very nice once things go wrong and you're trying to do something like replace a broken track by brute force.

[KineticDiplomat]

In the (late) NATO vs Soviet tank design argument here, it seems we’re losing track of the forest for the trees…or the twigs of specific branches as it relates to height…

Soviet doctrine saw the tank as an operational weapon that had tactical characteristics. The ability to conduct fast, violent, continuous deep operations with an acceptable logistical tail was the purpose of the soviet tank. While there was some tactical rationale about lower profiles and some theoretical declarations that a lot of combat would happen at sub 500m and thereby render a lot of “big tank” advantages irrelevant, that was more cart than horse.

First and foremost they wanted tanks that could be employed en masse throughout the operational depths and have operational and strategic mobility requirements minimized in order to facilitate maximum continuous exertion and affect a deep breakthrough followed by exploitation. Being able to cross a river on the lightest bridges (as an example) was more important than being the “very best” tank. This all created a school of “small” tank design that would last until the deeply troubled Armata, where the Russian mil-industrial system had troubles significantly scaling up in AFV size anyhow…

And all of which rather accidentally ended up forcing a preference for smaller men due to cramping, but certainly not based on any primary concept of it making a better fighting platform.

NATO’s last modernization rush, driven by the US Big 5 programs, went the other direction. By then there was uneasy acceptance that societies were at about as big an army as they could sustain politically in peace time and that early nuclear offsets were not good for the alliance. Leaders literally went to congress hat in hand and said they needed a tank that could kill
six soviet tanks for everyone it lost, and that this combined with MLRS, Apache, the Bradley and a set of new aircraft for the USAF would solve the math problem of there being more Soviets by virtue of killing them in great numbers…

Doctrinally suspect, but it sold well to the legislature. So the Abrams got designed as a monster. Massive armoring requirements, high maintenance and fuel consuming jet engine, the fuel storage for that engine, crew survivability options, all the latest electronics with ample power options and space for upgrades, room for scads of ammunition, the best and optics and thermals money could buy even if it cranked up turret bulk, a human loader for crew redundancy, expandable breach option for the planned gun upgrade…you name it, if it could make a tank big, it went in to it.

And as a result it could fit bigger people. But that was kind of a side effect…

[Martin Greywolf]

We have a new and very interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iBWI7Q7LVI) from Tod of Tod's Stuff, fellow pointy things enthusiasts.

It's interesting to see that medium infantry could be fairly well protected as long as it steered a bit clear of the elite archers even without any plate. They won't be that useful in storming of the front line, but the tactical value of being able to somewhat effectively threaten flanks or deny ground at relatively low cost is not to be underestimated - especially since arrows are a limited resource and the archers may well decide not to shoot at targets that far.

[Max_Killjoy]

We have a new and very interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iBWI7Q7LVI) from Tod of Tod's Stuff, fellow pointy things enthusiasts.

It's interesting to see that medium infantry could be fairly well protected as long as it steered a bit clear of the elite archers even without any plate. They won't be that useful in storming of the front line, but the tactical value of being able to somewhat effectively threaten flanks or deny ground at relatively low cost is not to be underestimated - especially since arrows are a limited resource and the archers may well decide not to shoot at targets that far.

That's very interesting. Another example of how the "all or nothing" / "pass-fail" view of armor elides a lot of utility in armor that's situational -- if mail over gambeson works at 75 or 100 meters to save the wearer's life, it's still useful in a battle context that features archers, even if it wouldn't hold up to direct hits at 25 meters or less.

Also, I have one of the knives like the one he wacks the gambeson sample with in the conclusion, so that was a moment.

[Martin Greywolf]

Another video of note (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVCS_iatpXw), stealth in armor!

Nothing too surprising to me, and looking at DnD5 disadvantage at stealth:


Padded - how the hell does this one have disadvantage?
Leather - fine
Studded leather - this should not exist in the first place
Hide - fine, and this is what Padded should be, whether you use plants or animal skin for padding
Chain shirt - fine
Scale mail - has disadvantage, is borderline and depends on type of scale fastening
Breastplate - fine
Half-plate - fine
Ring mail - this should not exist
Chain mail - has disadvantage, and is borderline, depending on what kind of mail, something that has short sleeves or sleeves tied to the arms is pretty silent
Splint - lamellar armor is almost entirely silent, but I guess you could say it's the chain mail sleeves that get you disadvantage
Plate - fine
Shield - it should give you disadvantage unless you are dedicating a hand to using it or making sure it doesn't bounce as you wear it

[Catullus64]

Anybody know much of anything about chariotry?

I'm writing something in a setting where horse-breeding has not advanced to the point where horses can be ridden, at least not in war. That's a product of other setting details and elements that don't need getting into. Chariotry is therefore the primary military occupation of the aristocracy in this setting.

I thought about asking a specific question about chariots, but why narrow the field of contributions? I'll ask a bunch of 'em. The period for chariot use is a bit narrower than cavalry (I think?), so hopefully these questions aren't too broad to be useful.


How well can chariots operate in any terrain more difficult than a perfectly flat plain?
How do you fight from a chariot (this is a big one)?
How would chariots be organized for usage in war? Were they grouped into units? How many chariots can effectively operate in concert?
What are some key features which set chariots apart (for good or ill) from cavalry on the battlefield?
One horse, two horse, red horse, blue horse I mean, how many horses were typical for war chariots? Similar question about the number of occupants.
How might the values of a chariot-based warrior aristocracy differ from those of a cavalry-based system?
Is there historical record for what I'll call the "Homeric" style of chariot fighting, where chariots seem to essentially serve as a delivery system for warriors fighting on foot?
In societies where chariot fighters were high-status individuals (which I understand to have been mostly the case) what would the status of drivers be? Slightly-lower status? Slaves or commoners? Older, younger?


As usual, links to good primary sources are the greatest gift you can give, but I'm greedy for inspiration. Secondary sources, or even works of fiction that represent it really well are nice.

[Martin Greywolf]

As usual, links to good primary sources are the greatest gift you can give, but I'm greedy for inspiration. Secondary sources, or even works of fiction that represent it really well are nice.

Unless you can read ancient Egyptian, Greek or some such, you'll definitely want secondary sources.

Osprey:
The World of Celtic Warrior
New Kingdom of Egypt
Bronze Age War Chariots
Hittite Warrior
Ancient Chinese Armies (specifically the chapter on Chou)


For translated primary sources, there is Illiad, but that one has combat by champion almost exclusively, even if they do use chariots.


How well can chariots operate in any terrain more difficult than a perfectly flat plain?


Very, very poorly. The chariots as taxis, where you dismount before the battle, is somewhat more viable, but in an attacking formation... The issue is that rough terrain forces you to pick your path in a chariot, so it funnels all your formation into predictable, narrow paths they can't turn away from - and if one of them gets mobility-killed in them, you have a crash and a traffic jam on your hands. What's worse, if you are in a climate that looks like most of Europe, you will also have relatively soft soil do deal with - one chariot may make it, but a dozen in the same track will have a problem.

Also remember that you cannot stop in range of the enemy, or their archers will shoot you to pieces.


How would chariots be organized for usage in war? Were they grouped into units? How many chariots can effectively operate in concert?


The advantage of chariots is speed, so anything that can't keep up is right out. That limits you to chariot only units, or chariot and cavalry mix (Persians come to mind, with using their scythed chariots to break up enemy formation, with cavalry for follow-up). Well, provided there are enough chariots, otherwise you use them as mobile command platform.

As for how many, well, how many do yo have? Ancient Egypt reports armies with about a thousand chariots per side being fairly common, and battle of Kadesh saw as many as 2 000-10 000, depending on who's counting.


One horse, two horse, red horse, blue horse I mean, how many horses were typical for war chariots? Similar question about the number of occupants.


Horses can number from one to ten, with one or two being the norm - and they were armored as often as not.

Occupants number from one to three, with one handling the reins. If there are two, as is the most typical, then the other person has a bow, a spear or both, if there are three, the third guy usually has a large shield.


Is there historical record for what I'll call the "Homeric" style of chariot fighting, where chariots seem to essentially serve as a delivery system for warriors fighting on foot?


You kind of answered your own question there: Illiad. Aside from that, there are Celtic war chiefs who fought this way, and frankly, any chariot will do this in bad enough terrain.


In societies where chariot fighters were high-status individuals (which I understand to have been mostly the case) what would the status of drivers be? Slightly-lower status? Slaves or commoners? Older, younger?


This is pretty much all societies - chariots are even more expensive to use and maintain per unit (and sometimes per man) than cavalry.

As for the actual question, I can't really answer it without doing several hours of crawling through sources. Egyptian charioteers seemed to have been fairly equal in status between driver and fighter, but this will vary depending on time and place - Celtic war chiefs were, well, war chiefs, so all other crew of their chariot were less in statu


How might the values of a chariot-based warrior aristocracy differ from those of a cavalry-based system?


The only major thing I can think of is more emphasis on cooperation - you have two people per chariot, they need to work together even more than two cavalrymen. Going into fantasy land, wife and husband teams are possible, as well as some sort of shared families, stemming from this only.


What are some key features which set chariots apart (for good or ill) from cavalry on the battlefield?


It's mostly bad, not gonna lie. Less agile, about as fast, unable to cope with rough terrain, chariot isn't a great vehicle. It's also unbelievably expensive, just about the only cavalry type that can cost more is the superheavy cavalry (thing all-plate armor on horse and rider, or Cataphracts), and even that is probably slightly cheaper than heavy chariots.

The sole advantage of chariots is that the riders are harder to hit - they are in cover, provided by their horses, and even if you shoot the horse, it will not usually fall straight down and crash the thing, it will start to slow down and die.


How do you fight from a chariot (this is a big one)?


Depends on the chariot. The number one method is archery and throwing spears into the enemy flanks and rear while they engage your infantry. The enemy infantry know this is a death sentence, so they will often simply run from you should you beat their chariots. Failing that, you ride alongside whatever you don't like and poke at it with spear (be prepared to let go of it, lest you be clotheslined if it gets stuck) or use your scythes to damage it.

Running straight into formations is not exaclty recommended. You will trample down most infantry, but are liable to take losses - and something like a phalanx will just chew you up. Running straight into another chariot will kill all of you, running into a cavalryman will maybe not kill all of you, but will definitely damage you enough to take you out of a fight.

Your worst enemy is, aside from other chariots, archers - if they have enough time, they will shoot your horses down and mobility-kill you, if nothing else. On the other hand, you know this and go fast, so you will do your best to eliminate them first thing after dealing with enemy chariots - and archers are unlikely to hold ground against you, so this is one place where you can actually just trample them.

Edit: I really screwed up the formatting on this one.

[Catullus64]

Thanks for the detailed responses, MartinGreywolf.

Will definitely give some of those books a look. If it matters, I can read Attic Greek (albeit slowly and needing to look up every tenth word), so if there are untranslated primary sources in that language I'd love to hear it. I hadn't thought about Celtic peoples as a source of inspiration, my eye was mainly turned eastward, but perhaps that's a very good line to pursue if I want to see chariots dealing with more rugged country.

I think you're right that a chariot-culture might place more emphasis on teams. I can see great houses fostering out their sons and junior relatives to be chariot-drivers, and chariot teams forming a social and political bond that extends beyond the battlefield; it could even be an acceptable context for male-to-male romantic relationships in a society that would otherwise discourage them. There could be political and religious institutions that clearly borrow their structure from the three-man chariot team (Driver, Archer, Shield-bearer).

As to a lot of the limitations mentioned, that's really good for the purposes of the military action of the story. Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot. If chariots tend to be funneled by geography into a small number of viable pathways, it makes it easier for me, an amateur, to figure out the tactics of the battles as I write them.

I'll also probably create differentiation between smaller, lighter chariots with two occupants, and heavier ones with three. I can imagine a lot of interesting sequences that could play out from that.

As for the expense, that's something that's going to have to be added to my ongoing series of tweaks to make the demographics feel historically plausible. Right now I have it such that the focal aristocratic house, who owns a rich but modestly-sized estate and collects tolls from a major river crossing, can maintain and field six two-horse, three-man chariots, with spare horses, and two of the men in full armor ("full" in this context meaning helmet, mail, and greaves). Maybe the sources will give me an idea of whether that's a high or low figure.

[Brother Oni]

As to a lot of the limitations mentioned, that's really good for the purposes of the military action of the story. Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot. If chariots tend to be funneled by geography into a small number of viable pathways, it makes it easier for me, an amateur, to figure out the tactics of the battles as I write them.

More often than not, mounted infantry were the primary scouting force (ie they use horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight).

For a movie depiction of how chariots were used in battle, the first coliseum battle in Gladiator is a good show case of both the advantages and the disadvantages, particularly the 'drive by' nature of their combat against enemy infantry and how loose formation soldiers really didn't want to be in the middle of a chariot charge (even if you kill the horse, that's still several tons of horses, chariot and riders coming at you).

[Pauly]

For the chariot as a battle taxi delivering elite warriors to weak spots in the enemy lines (roughly akin to helicoptering in special forces in modern warfare) a good source is the Cû Chulainn saga from Irish epics. There is a lot of that tome devoted to chariot operations.

One minor point is that in Celtic sources there is a lot of emphasis on the named warrior doing acrobatics on the chariot pole and yoke. I assume this has a lot to do with lighter arms and armor compared to say Homeric Greeks.

One disadvantage of chariots compared to cavalry is the numbers game. A chariot generally has 2 horses, 1 driver and 1 fighter, and if you out any one out of action the chariot can no longer fight. Cavalry can put in the field 2 horses with 2 fighters for similar resources, and even if you put one element out of action you still have 1 cavalryman still fighting.

Once true cavalry developed (Lindy Beige has a good video explaining why this took such a long time to occur) chariots were almost instantly relegated to either psychological weapons (Persian/Hellenistic scythed chariots) or mobile command post (Chinese General”s chariots with huge parasols).

[Martin Greywolf]

Since chariots can't go over rough ground, and cavalry is out, it emphasizes light infantry as the premier scouting force, and I always like telling stories that involve a lot of traversal on foot.

Sort of - moving from realms of actual history to what would I do, combine chariots with light infantry for an even faster scouting force. Use chariots as helicopters to drop off light infantrymen along the roads, and have those go forth, scout and return.

You could create some Vietnam-like scenes of fighting retreat to the pickup as the enemy draws near.


Right now I have it such that the focal aristocratic house, who owns a rich but modestly-sized estate and collects tolls from a major river crossing

That major river crossing probably carries the income there, they were insanely profitable to a point where there were few almost-civil-wars over controlling them.


More often than not, mounted infantry were the primary scouting force (ie they use horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight).

Can't do that if your horses aren't big enough to go cavalry. Even then, you need a fair amount of horse breeding to make them good enough to do long-distance scouting, since they will be outpaced by humans when it comes to speed over several hours.


One disadvantage of chariots compared to cavalry is the numbers game. A chariot generally has 2 horses, 1 driver and 1 fighter, and if you out any one out of action the chariot can no longer fight. Cavalry can put in the field 2 horses with 2 fighters for similar resources, and even if you put one element out of action you still have 1 cavalryman still fighting.

Not really. If you kill a horse in a chariot, you still have a mobile chariot if the crew can remove the dead horse, albeit a slower one. A kill on a cavalryman's horse is more often than not a kill on the rider as well - the fall is nasty enough, the fall at speed even worse (I was pretty shook after falling off a galloping horse, able to walk away and cognizant, but I don't think I could fight for the next 5 minutes), and you're very likely to end up under other cavalryman's hoofs.

Light chariots are significantly more expensive than light cavalry, you have 2 people and 2 horses in both cases, plus the chariot for the charioteers. Heavy cavalry is only somewhat more expensive, simply because once you start to armor up men and horses, chariot represents a lesser fraction of overall cost.


Once true cavalry developed (Lindy Beige has a good video explaining why this took such a long time to occur) chariots were almost instantly relegated to either psychological weapons (Persian/Hellenistic scythed chariots) or mobile command post (Chinese General”s chariots with huge parasols).

This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.

[Catullus64]

Sort of - moving from realms of actual history to what would I do, combine chariots with light infantry for an even faster scouting force. Use chariots as helicopters to drop off light infantrymen along the roads, and have those go forth, scout and return.

You could create some Vietnam-like scenes of fighting retreat to the pickup as the enemy draws near.

Good idea, will consider; in terms of drama, it's a great way to emphasize both cooperation and tension between the aristocratic and non-aristocratic characters. I can see it as a desperate innovation by the protagonists, which catches the enemy off-guard because they assume the charioteers would never consent to being a ferry for lowborn skirmishers.


That major river crossing probably carries the income there, they were insanely profitable to a point where there were few almost-civil-wars over controlling them.

That's what I thought, which is why the main action of the story is at the tail-end of that almost.


This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.

When I finish this thing and think about writing a sequel, it could be a great threat escalation to suddenly drop an outside invader who has put together the first true cavalry. Sounds terrifying.

[Clistenes]

This isn't because of their cost, it's because cavalry could do everything the chariots could, plus some more, and weren't as limited by the terrain. A good modern analogue is airplanes and helicopters against zeppelins.

The advantage of chariots was that one guy could focus on driving it while other or two mere focused on fighting... learning how to shoot a bow while riding a horse with a primitive saddle and not stirrups took some time to achieve...

[Martin Greywolf]

The advantage of chariots was that one guy could focus on driving it while other or two mere focused on fighting... learning how to shoot a bow while riding a horse with a primitive saddle and not stirrups took some time to achieve...

This is something that got way, way overblown. I rode a horse bareback on my second horse riding lesson, and to quote the instructor: "We're doing this so that you know it's not that hard, the saddle is there more to protect the horse rather than make you able to ride it." The whole problem started when historians who were never near the saddle started to make stuff up wholesale, people believed then and it then took forever to quash the misinformation - stirrups being necessary for couched lance charge is a favourite example.

Let's look at archery specifically. The mere act of shooting a bow is pretty much the same on foot, on chariot and on horseback, so no problems there.

The accuracy will suffer if chariot or horse move, because, well, they move. You need to learn to compensat for it no matter what vehicle you use, so the difficulty remains the same - except it doesn't. Because a horse is an animal, it tries to keep itself more or less level, a horse won't suddenly jump if it encounters a rock, it will go over it. That makes it easier to achieve a steady aim from a horse than from a chariot.

Staying on your platform of choice - well, there's nuance. On one hand, you just kind of stand in teh chariot, no skills necessary. On the other hand, you may well need to grab the chariot with one hand to stay in it if it maneuvers too much or if the terrain is rough, a problem which, on a horse, you solve with your thighs.

As for moving and shooting at the same time, yeah, horse archer is at a disadvantage and has to learn it, it takes some getting used to. It especially took a while to figure it out because you need to train your horse to respond to leg commands only, but once you do that, even a schmuck like me, on second horseriding lesson, can control the horse in such a way. That said, said training is enough of a hassle that it wasn't always done.

[Catullus64]

This is something that got way, way overblown. I rode a horse bareback on my second horse riding lesson, and to quote the instructor: "We're doing this so that you know it's not that hard, the saddle is there more to protect the horse rather than make you able to ride it." The whole problem started when historians who were never near the saddle started to make stuff up wholesale, people believed then and it then took forever to quash the misinformation - stirrups being necessary for couched lance charge is a favourite example.

Let's look at archery specifically. The mere act of shooting a bow is pretty much the same on foot, on chariot and on horseback, so no problems there.

The accuracy will suffer if chariot or horse move, because, well, they move. You need to learn to compensat for it no matter what vehicle you use, so the difficulty remains the same - except it doesn't. Because a horse is an animal, it tries to keep itself more or less level, a horse won't suddenly jump if it encounters a rock, it will go over it. That makes it easier to achieve a steady aim from a horse than from a chariot.

Staying on your platform of choice - well, there's nuance. On one hand, you just kind of stand in teh chariot, no skills necessary. On the other hand, you may well need to grab the chariot with one hand to stay in it if it maneuvers too much or if the terrain is rough, a problem which, on a horse, you solve with your thighs.

As for moving and shooting at the same time, yeah, horse archer is at a disadvantage and has to learn it, it takes some getting used to. It especially took a while to figure it out because you need to train your horse to respond to leg commands only, but once you do that, even a schmuck like me, on second horseriding lesson, can control the horse in such a way. That said, said training is enough of a hassle that it wasn't always done.

Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.

[halfeye]

Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.

I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.

[Max_Killjoy]

I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.

I think the myth of centaurs might be a bit older than the Mongolians...

[halfeye]

I think the myth of centaurs might be a bit older than the Mongolians...

If that's a quibble about the name of the people who were then living in the region we now call Mongolia, I don't much care. If you are saying there were no people living there at the times of the ancient greeks that's a different matter, and it would be relevant in my eyes/

[Pauly]

I was once told that the basis for the idea of the centaur was mongolian mounted archers who were that good.

The Greeks were adjacent to the Scyths, who were the first recorded horse archers in European history.
The CHinese were adjacent to the Hsuing-Nu (spelling?) who were the first recorded horse archers in Chinese history.

Both arose at around the same time

There is some debate as to whether they were the same cultural group or separate groups who developed similar systems due to similar pressures and resources.

[Brother Oni]

The CHinese were adjacent to the Hsuing-Nu (spelling?) who were the first recorded horse archers in Chinese history.

The Hsiung-nu are now better known as the Xiongnu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu); the former is the Wade-Giles transliteration and the latter is Pinyin.

[Max_Killjoy]

If that's a quibble about the name of the people who were then living in the region we now call Mongolia, I don't much care. If you are saying there were no people living there at the times of the ancient greeks that's a different matter, and it would be relevant in my eyes/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols#Definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians

The article on the Mongolians mentions them being linked to the Scythians, but this is a medieval notion that archaeological evidence blows to smithereens AFAIK.

What I'm not finding is how old the centaur myth actually is, at least not directly, but I know where to ask.

[Martin Greywolf]

Now here's something where I can bring real experience to bear, as someone with many hours' experience missing targets with bows and failing to control horses. I never figured that shooting from horseback was, itself, a distinctly difficult skill. Archery is hard, especially archery with high-poundage war bows. Horsemanship is hard, especially if you're using very skittish early modern horses, and are trying to ride them in the stressful events of battle. Horse archery doesn't need to be any harder than Horsemanship + Archery to be an incredibly demanding amount of training that needs to be invested in one warrior.

Compared to what? The guy with a spear that had 30 minutes of instructions, sure. Compared to a samurai, knight, Landsknecht, charioteer or any other soldierly caste? Not really, especially not if they use horse as well, since horse training can be the real bottleneck. Samurai are actually an interesting case, since they trained as heavy cavalry, heavy infantry and horse archers before the Sengoku Jidai.

This exact argument of "it requires a ton of training and then you are a supersoldier for the time period" has been used time and again for: knightly shock cavalry, English warbows, double-bladed viking swords, bolt-action rifles and many, many more. The only weapon where I've seen it hold moderately true is the sling, which requires stupidly huge amounts of training and then enables you to slightly outmach bows under 150 lbs draw weight.

[Pauly]

The only weapon where I've seen it hold moderately true is the sling, which requires stupidly huge amounts of training and then enables you to slightly outmach bows under 150 lbs draw weight.

The thing with slingers and the original steppe horse archers is that the stupid amounts of training time were developed in boyhood/young adulthood through hunting. They weren’t proficient in their weapons as a result of explicit military training, more the military application was an outgrowth of the proficiency needed for survival.

In the Inca Empire for example all boys aged between 8 and 14 were sent into the fields with slings to keep birds off the crops. As a result the Inca army was full of expert slingers. There are Spanish reports of Inca soldiers being able to hit raised swords with sling stones from long distance.

[Martin Greywolf]

The thing with slingers and the original steppe horse archers is that the stupid amounts of training time were developed in boyhood/young adulthood through hunting. They weren’t proficient in their weapons as a result of explicit military training, more the military application was an outgrowth of the proficiency needed for survival.

In the Inca Empire for example all boys aged between 8 and 14 were sent into the fields with slings to keep birds off the crops. As a result the Inca army was full of expert slingers. There are Spanish reports of Inca soldiers being able to hit raised swords with sling stones from long distance.

These are two different issues, though. How much training you need to be skilled at a thing, versus how much a given culture trained in a thing. We can probably see this the best in ancient Greece with Sparta and Athens. Athens put in enough times to have a good phalanx, Spartans went to the extreme of wrapping their entire society around having the best possible phalanx. No one will argue that Spartans weren't better at phalanx on a one on one basis, but no one will claim the Athenians weren't effective phalanxers either.

This nuance is important for comparing the effectiveness of troop types relative to one another. Is horse archer a superior soldier compared to a knight, given the same amount of training and comparable resources put into gearing up (remember, knightly training started just as young as the nomadic one)? And, well, the asnwer is no, they are about on par and the famous horse archer victories are rooted in tactics and logistics, rather than individual martial prowess, as are the famous knight victories.

Looping back to chariots, the training of a single horse and a single man is about on par or slightly under that of a horse archer, resources are somewhat higher (because you need to pay for their share of chariot) and terrain capabilities are much worse for the charioteers. Which means that chariots are actually worse than the horse archers, because they can at best achieve rough parity while being slightly more costly, given the right terrain - and be much worse to unusable in other terrains.

[Clistenes]

People were fighting on chariots before they managed to breed horses big enough to be of use as battle mounts (even more if the rider wore armor) so they got how to fight on chariots figured long before they even thought about riding horses to battle.

So the warrior classes were trained in chariot fighting before horse archery even existed... Somebody had to create it from the scratch, and the warrior class probably were like "why should we learn to do that when we can already fight on chariots?"

[Max_Killjoy]

People were fighting on chariots before they managed to breed horses big enough to be of use as battle mounts (even more if the rider wore armor) so they got how to fight on chariots figured long before they even thought about riding horses to battle.

So the warrior classes were trained in chariot fighting before horse archery even existed... Somebody had to create it from the scratch, and the warrior class probably were like "why should we learn to do that when we can already fight on chariots?"


Plus the chariot, having a chariot, being a chariot warrior, was often a sign of prestige and status, so many of them were not going to just give that up.

[Max_Killjoy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongols#Definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians

The article on the Mongolians mentions them being linked to the Scythians, but this is a medieval notion that archaeological evidence blows to smithereens AFAIK.

What I'm not finding is how old the centaur myth actually is, at least not directly, but I know where to ask.

I did some digging and some asking, and it turns out that the "horse nomad" theory is probably one of those "just so story" explanations, with no empirical basis. For starters, legends of centaurs and similar beings are probably older than widespread use of horses for riding.

[Clistenes]

I did some digging and some asking, and it turns out that the "horse nomad" theory is probably one of those "just so story" explanations, with no empirical basis. For starters, legends of centaurs and similar beings are probably older than widespread use of horses for riding.

Centaurs were originally portrayed as having horse ears, tail and two horse hindlegs. The later version with four horse legs may have been inspired by horse riders, but not necessarily by nomad raiders...

[Vinyadan]

Classical centaurs also didn't use arrows. The image of the bow-wielding centaur is due to its association with the Sagittarius constellation; but the image of the Sagittarius was really derived from a different beastman of Mesopotamian origin wielding bow and arrow, whose complex design (a winged horse-man-panther with multiple heads and tails) was streamlined into a centaur with a satyr tail in the West.

[Clistenes]

Centaurs as archers may have been inspired by Chiron, who trained several famous archers like Heracles, Acteon and Odysseus.

[Vinyadan]

Centaurs as archers may have been inspired by Chiron, who trained several famous archers like Heracles, Acteon and Odysseus.

I don't think it's likely. The iconography of an archer centaur independent from the Zodiac only comes up in the IX century AD and only explodes in the XII. Before that, it's always the Sagittarius, as far as I'm aware.

Some ancient authors did say that Chiron knew how to hunt, because he had been grown up by Apollon and Artemis. But there are no episodes in which he uses an arrow, except for when he picks up one of Herakles's to immediately drop it on his own foot, causing the famous wound. Plus, even where he is mentioned as a teacher of hunting, he works with dogs, javelins, and darts, and there is no mention of a bow. Finally, Hyginus quotes some unspecified authors saying explicitly that "no centaur ever used arrows" while discussing the oddities of the Sagittarius.

[Lapak]

The sole advantage of chariots is that the riders are harder to hit - they are in cover, provided by their horses, and even if you shoot the horse, it will not usually fall straight down and crash the thing, it will start to slow down and die.You and others (including the one asking the question) have touched on the other advantage, which is worth calling out explicitly - you can do charioteering with animals that are not functional as cavalry mounts. Early horses which are too small to ride, fantasy animals that are anatomically inappropriate or dangerous to ride, etc. Attaching a vehicle broadens the animal-powered-mobility-in-warfare possibilities by quite a lot.

(Not to say that the advantage of cover is negligible either - while it's not a chariot, we can take the Hussite war wagons of the 1400s for an example at the other end of the pre-modern tech tree that focuses more on the cover angle you're mentioning. :smallwink:)

[Clistenes]

Some ancient authors did say that Chiron knew how to hunt, because he had been grown up by Apollon and Artemis. But there are no episodes in which he uses an arrow, except for when he picks up one of Herakles's to immediately drop it on his own foot, causing the famous wound. Plus, even where he is mentioned as a teacher of hunting, he works with dogs, javelins, and darts, and there is no mention of a bow. Finally, Hyginus quotes some unspecified authors saying explicitly that "no centaur ever used arrows" while discussing the oddities of the Sagittarius.

But, did the people who started to portray Centaurs as archers during the Middle Ages know that? For many people with basic knowledge of the Classics, if Chiron was taught by Apollo, and taught Herakles and Odysseus in turn, and explicitly taught hunting and warfare, archery must have come to mind very naturally...

[Vinyadan]

But, did the people who started to portray Centaurs as archers during the Middle Ages know that? For many people with basic knowledge of the Classics, if Chiron was taught by Apollo, and taught Herakles and Odysseus in turn, and explicitly taught hunting and warfare, archery must have come to mind very naturally...

The problem here, from my point of view, is how pervasive the Zodiac is, and how medieval artists didn't generally represent classical centaurs in the environment of the ancient myths. The centaurs were one of those wonderous animals or beasts or people you found in bestiaries and encyclopaedias, which if required could also be seen as religiously meaningful figures or employed as decorations in churches (church decorations themselves could have an encyclopedic or figurative purpose). So, for example, in the XII century AD Otranto mosaic there are two centaurs: one is the Sagittarius, and is part of the representation of the month of December; the other one is a hunting centaur killing a deer with an arrow, represented among other monsters and beasts, and possibly part of a representation of allegories of sins and virtues.

However, it's also true that someone like Dante, who chooses centaurs as the archers who keep watch on tyrants and violent souls, would have been perfectly aware of the the available Latin texts (to the point that his centaurs are the same named centaurs from the myth, Chiron, Nessus, and so on, with the right behaviour for each). At the same time, all his life he had seen a centaur with a bow as the Sagittarius on the floors of the Florence Baptistery and of the Abbey of San Miniato al Monte.

It is also true that there is a very lucky subset of Chiron's iconography that shows him teaching Achilles how to hunt, and, while in ancient works Chiron is empty-handed or holds a javelin, there are two Greek manuscripts from the XI century AD that show him with a bow, while he carries Achilles on his back, also holding a bow. Before Italy took off, Eastern Roman artists undeniably had a huge influence on Western art. So this particular image could have had a certain influence.

By the way, the general idea that centaurs were inspired by Thessalian horsemen is already to be found in Isidore's Origines.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ok, question for the sages:

Assume you have a pair of fortresses/keeps/fortified structures in a large, completely passive city, separated by ~1/4 mile of water (in a large bay). One keep has most of the armed forces, while the other is effectively a fortified temple with staff but only minimal guards. Both are not at any kind of alert status. Technology level is late-medieval, except that they have the equivalent of radios (so instantaneous communications as long as a hub/transmitter remains in operation). The hub is located in the temple.

Most of the forces are lightly armored (effectively pirate-style raiders operating off of small skiffs in the broad gulf beyond the city), but some are the equivalent of heavy infantry. No flying mounts. The very elite are spell-casters, with many of those being in the temple, but most of the temple staff and guards have other duties they are attending to (ie not on patrol).

What's a reasonable set of times from "enemy detected on approach" for the following events (assuming that an assault force is coming very fast via air at the temple):
* General alarm sounded
* Temple at full readiness
* Fort ready to put to sea
* Fort troops arrive at temple

As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.

[Pauly]

If they are not at alert and are unaware that a flying attack could be imminent, then a solid 2 or 3 hours at a minimum to get an organized force into fighting positions.
- The guards on duty will defend normally but be overwhelmed.
- Assuming a non combat ready environment a large portion of the soldiery will be in barracks resting or training, another large portion will be on furlough, smaller portions will be out on patrol somewhere. So to get a significant force under arms and roughly organized you’re probably looking at 1 hour minimum. Arms and armor are usually kept under lick and key so there will be some delays associated with accessing the fighting gear.
- Then you have to need to march around the bay where chaos and confusion will be running free. Once you’ve marched around the bay you then have to take up positions.
- While all this is happening the leaders have to get intel on enemy forces, intentions, capabilities and locations.

You may get some parties of first responders running to the temple, but they’ll probably end up establishing a perimeter rather than going into the melee.

If the city is completely unaware it may take even longer. If the city is on alert for threats generally, but not this specific threat then the time may come down.

The best analogy I can think of is the response times to Viking raids.

[Brother Oni]

What's a reasonable set of times from "enemy detected on approach" for the following events (assuming that an assault force is coming very fast via air at the temple):

As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.

Could you define 'very fast' please? Very fast by the Viking age standard mentioned by Pauly, would be between 15-17 knots for a warship.

Let's say there's a guard on a watchtower overlooking the sea and he's 50 ft above sea level (30 ft wall plus 20 ft above the coast).
That makes the distance to horizon ~8.7 miles*, so under clear conditions, from time of detection to having boots on the ground would be approx 27 minutes. Under your assured detection radius, it would be a little over 6 minutes from detection to boots on the ground; if your fortress can't get a general alarm sounded within a couple minutes of the enemies' detection, then it deserves to fall.

Note that while flying forces would cover the distance faster, they would also be detected from further out unless special evasion methods are taken (flying very high, using night/cloud cover, flying very close to the ocean surface, using the terrain as cover, etc).

*technically it's further as longships sit a far distance above the water, but the maths get complicated.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Note: the people from the other fortress could come by ship (and in fact would have to, since both fortresses are on islands). The entire armed force model is
* Go out and catch ships that are passing by but get caught in the nasty reefs, currents, etc outside. Enslave the crews (with mind magic) and bring them back.
* Keep a minimal guard force on land outside the city to prevent any unconquered locals (which are minimal at this point) from raiding.
* Have forces patrolling in the city proper, but mostly to keep them busy (since the conquered people are controlled by mental conditioning).
* Anyone who uses exotic means of access (such as teleporting/shadow walking) will get detected and the patrols will get vectored to them. But the patrols are confined to land and spread hither and yon in penny packets (basically squad-level).


Could you define 'very fast' please? Very fast by the Viking age standard mentioned by Pauly, would be between 15-17 knots for a warship.

Let's say there's a guard on a watchtower overlooking the sea and he's 50 ft above sea level (30 ft wall plus 20 ft above the coast).
That makes the distance to horizon ~8.7 miles*, so under clear conditions, from time of detection to having boots on the ground would be approx 27 minutes. Under your assured detection radius, it would be a little over 6 minutes from detection to boots on the ground; if your fortress can't get a general alarm sounded within a couple minutes of the enemies' detection, then it deserves to fall.

Note that while flying forces would cover the distance faster, they would also be detected from further out unless special evasion methods are taken (flying very high, using night/cloud cover, flying very close to the ocean surface, using the terrain as cover, etc).

*technically it's further as longships sit a far distance above the water, but the maths get complicated.

In this case, they're moving at ~9 mi/hr (80 ft/6 seconds, with bursts up to 160ft/6 seconds) on the backs of griffons, roughly 1.5-2 miles in the air. And the detection radius is entirely telepathic--the chances of detection via other means is minimal, and even if they were seen, the communications has a critical flaw--the hub must contact people, they can't communicate back out of turn except more conventionally. Due to (specifics that shouldn't be relevant and might be spoilers if any of my players read this), the city is entirely reliant on this, with only minimal people actually looking at the sky or land. Their entire threat model is...well...more of a threat to others. They have lookouts quite a bit further out to sea, but the attack isn't coming in over the sea at all (flying over land) and those lookouts are looking for sails, not up at high angles. The attackers will be coming out of the rising sun (as is traditional), which further complicates visual detection.

So that means the fortresses have ~10 minutes between detection and enemy landing (which will be at the top of the temple tower). I'm assuming that a general alarm will be sounded within a minute or so (confirming that these aren't just flying by but are approaching). The main question is how long will the party have to assault the temple before the other fortress can feasibly respond in force. Minutes? Tens of minutes? Hours? I will note that there are only 4 attackers, but the attackers are individually and collectively much more powerful than any individual defender[1]. Escape isn't so much of a concern--they can teleport out. They couldn't teleport in, because none of them had seen it or had a good enough description before hand.

[1] as I am the DM, and this is the high(er)-level party attacking an enemy, mind-flayer-controlled temple/citadel.

[Telwar]

In this case, you might have some local forces show up every so often from any local patrols in the "hey, there are explosions from the temple" sense. Say a guard patrol every 2d6 rounds feels right.

But a fully organized, strong response? As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning. Like, divinations.


(Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

In this case, you might have some local forces show up every so often from any local patrols in the "hey, there are explosions from the temple" sense. Say a guard patrol every 2d6 rounds feels right.

But a fully organized, strong response? As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning. Like, divinations.


(Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)

Yeah, that latter bit is what I'm trying to avoid. I'm thinking that the response time from the patrols will be slower, since they actually have to get across the bay (both temple and fortress are on islands, with only boat access).

Current plan is that if they're not past the ground floor (which is where the non-mindflayer guards can get[0]) before they stop for a short rest, there will be at least one big chunk of extra guards on hand (one large boat worth, which is many). And "soon" (within an hour, possibly very soon), mind flayers will levitate up the sides of the temple to attack the griffons they left behind, unless they order them[1] to leave the area entirely.

[0] Operational secrecy requires that access to the upper and basement floors requires levitation (or ropes)--there are no stairs. While they do have conditioning-based control over most of the zealot guards, that's not absolute, and they'd rather not risk anyone breaking conditioning due to seeing the horrors they're committing and breaking important things.

[1] Due to circumstances, they have a talking cat who stays behind and can command the griffons to move. If they think to leave communications (like a sending stone) with the cat. Otherwise she'll act on her own best judgement once she sees incoming mind flayers. Either way, they're unlikely to have the griffons to get back and will have to teleport...if the mind flayers or the <spoilers> don't take active countermeasures on that side.

[Martin Greywolf]

As a note about detection ranges--the enemies WILL be detected at 2 miles, but they don't immediately know their target. All they know is "X number of creatures entered a 2-mile bubble at location XYZ" and then effectively continuous position updates. Since this detection is magical/psionic, it's not affected by stealth. The detection apparatus is also the communications hub.

I'm assuming that the X number of creatures is bad enought that the people involved would immediately know something bad is up, and it's not just a lost trader returning to city.



* General alarm sounded


Seconds. If their magical detection is reliable and the people doing it know it's reliable, there have been enough incidents in WW2 of radar spotting a thing and people in command ignoring it. Even actual medieval cities could start a general alarm in seconds to a few minutes by ringing the town bells - seconds if the rope went all the way down, minutes if you had to run up the stairs.



* Temple at full readiness


Minutes, if they have some semblance of emergency situation drilled into them. There will be no need to run around to figure out what the orders are, since you have radios, so the limiting factor is what tasks you need to do and how quickly people can run. Frankly, the limiting factor is probably putting on heavy armor for the troops that have it and don't currently wear it, which takes at most 10 minutes for plate (KnyghtErrant on YT, without trying to hurry, did it in just above 10).

Let's put that time to 30 minutes at most, with light and medium infantry being able to deploy at 10 minutes, and some forces being able to go right then.



* Fort ready to put to sea


Late medieval means pretty much still galley technology. Fortunately, distance is small enough that you don't have to worry about supplies, so assuming you, or anyone you can take it from, has a ship, you're good to go. If the fort is close to the sea, it will take about as long as it took temple to get ready, because again, your main factor is putting on plate armor.



* Fort troops arrive at temple


A galley has the top speed of 10-20 knots when we're considering short bursts only (the absolute best long-term was ~9 knots sustained for a day), so let's call it 15 knots/27 kmh, needed to cross 400 meters.

That will take 52 seconds at full speed all the way, with galleys being able to reach that in about 30 secons. So, no matter what you do, it will take less than 2 minutes.

The problem is that you need to do that with a lot of ships that can get in each others' way, and then you need to keep some cohesion of forces on landing. An ideally-drilled force where nothing goes wrong will be able to do it with minimal time losses. Realistically? Expect quite some chaos and delays.

Frankly, there is no limit on how long this will take - amphibious assaults are notoriously tricky to do well even today. A good number is 25 minutes, taken from D-day's Gold beach. This is the time between landing craft starting their support fire and the first actual landing of troops.



But a fully organized, strong response? As mentioned above, hours for a proper response unless they had significantly more warning. Like, divinations.


Not really. Hungarian local troops managed to do this in minutes to hours in real life, with no magic and mountainous terrain, against surprise Ottoman raiding parties. What will take you a few hours is getting all the villagers inside the city walls and mustering conscript forces, but even that was shockingly quick in areas that were used to raids.

If you want to gather a royal army that belongs to a kingdom, well, that will take you days to weeks at least. Months, if it is an offensive campaign you want to stock up for.

One of the fastest actions in this regard was Battle of Domazlice, where the Hussites managed to gather a response force to crusading armies crossing over the border and march and engage the crusaders while they were besieging Domazlice in 16 days, with the actual muster at Beroun taking 8 days, and march lasting another 8.

Compared to response of Hungary against Mongol invasion, which took about a month (12 march to 11 april) and still wasn't done when the battle happened, that is pretty damn quick.

[snowblizz]

(Unless you're one of my DMs, who had hobgoblins go from asleep to armored on tacked wargs in the space of 12 seconds... I'm still bitter about that.)

Obviously the Hobgoblins slept fully armoured (they are hobgoblins, doesn't seem off) and using the warg as a pillow. And IMO no self-respecting hobgoblin rides anything but bare-backed.

[fusilier]

A galley has the top speed of 10-20 knots when we're considering short bursts only (the absolute best long-term was ~9 knots sustained for a day), so let's call it 15 knots/27 kmh, needed to cross 400 meters.

10-20 knots? You might want to double check your source for that. I think steam powered, purpose-built blockade runners of the Civil War could maybe do 20 knots. I don't even think the olympic sculling boats get near 20 knots(?). My recollection is that "dash" speed is reckoned at around 7-9 knots for a galley. (Perhaps you meant 10-20 kilometers per hour?)

Also, the amount of time spent embarking and disembarking troops is probably going to be another potentially limiting factor. Combined with the time spent readying the galleys, getting their crews in place (although perhaps the troops can be the rowers). If I had to deal with this issue, I would be looking to build a bridge (a draw bridge section would still allow navigation of ships in and out of the harbor), and just have the troops march over.

[Brother Oni]

In this case, they're moving at ~9 mi/hr (80 ft/6 seconds, with bursts up to 160ft/6 seconds) on the backs of griffons, roughly 1.5-2 miles in the air. And the detection radius is entirely telepathic--the chances of detection via other means is minimal, and even if they were seen, the communications has a critical flaw--the hub must contact people, they can't communicate back out of turn except more conventionally. Due to (specifics that shouldn't be relevant and might be spoilers if any of my players read this), the city is entirely reliant on this, with only minimal people actually looking at the sky or land. Their entire threat model is...well...more of a threat to others. They have lookouts quite a bit further out to sea, but the attack isn't coming in over the sea at all (flying over land) and those lookouts are looking for sails, not up at high angles. The attackers will be coming out of the rising sun (as is traditional), which further complicates visual detection.

If they're coming that altitude during a clear day, then a Mk1 eyeball would resolve them as a distance of about 6 miles (assumption of human sized objects are resolvable at ~2 miles and a griffon is ~3 times the size of a human with outstretched wings). That's ~27 minutes of them flying in, hoping that nobody bothers to look up, before they trip the automatic detection zone.

Once they've entered that zone (it's closer to 13 minutes, but I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes for D&D timings), by the time they've landed, lightly armoured troops will be ready to deploy, although they won't know where to deploy. If there are set protocols to get troops across to the temple in case of attack, then probably ~15 minutes to embark them, ship them across, then disembark them. After that they need to make it to the temple.

If they don't know that the troops are needed at the temple, then that 15 minute timer starts from when the distress call comes from the temple.

There'd be another boatload of the heavily armoured troops landing maybe 10 minutes after the first boatload - if your party members are savvy, someone with AOE attacks could intercept the troops while they're landing at the temple, delaying them even further.

[Martin Greywolf]

10-20 knots? You might want to double check your source for that. I think steam powered, purpose-built blockade runners of the Civil War could maybe do 20 knots. I don't even think the olympic sculling boats get near 20 knots(?). My recollection is that "dash" speed is reckoned at around 7-9 knots for a galley. (Perhaps you meant 10-20 kilometers per hour?)

You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.

I'm not saying you'd be able to maintain those 15 knots over any length of time, it's the ship's equivalent of a sprint, and you'd probably only see it used just before a ram. In this specific situation, where you have only a very narrow channel to get through, though?

As an aside, Olympic rowing reaches about 12 knots, which is weird, but I suspect there is some sort of hydrodynamic effect for larger vessels that isn't present for rowers, meaning you can scale upwards relatively well, especially since we see longships routinely at that top speed. I can't even begin to guess what it is, though.


Also, the amount of time spent embarking and disembarking troops is probably going to be another potentially limiting factor. Combined with the time spent readying the galleys, getting their crews in place (although perhaps the troops can be the rowers). If I had to deal with this issue, I would be looking to build a bridge (a draw bridge section would still allow navigation of ships in and out of the harbor), and just have the troops march over.

With this being an alarm beign sounded, you won't get an entire crew marching up to the ship at once, you'll get rowers arriving first, lightly armored troops second and the heavies last. And the ships are docked, with planks ready to lower, plus no need to load anything but the troops. Those 10 minutes you need to put on plate are still probably the main limiting factor, and while you're doing that, those ~200 crewmen that a trireme has can get on easy enough.

And if you have larger ships than that, well... a few Syracusias could probably serve as an actual bridge?

[Max_Killjoy]

I can't find WHY it works this way right now, and I have forgotten... but there's a known positive relationship between length of the waterline, and speed.

That is, longer boats have a higher max speed.

[fusilier]

You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.

John F. Guilmartin (2003), Gunpowder and Galleys, pg 217:

"This brings us back to our starting point: the galley's maximum dash speed of about 7 knots. . . . By driving the ciurma very close to the limit, a cruising speed of some 3 to 4 knots could be maintained for about eight hours."

The Olympias achieved a max speed of 9 knots (I see no evidence that it maintained this speed for "hours" at a time), although in his other work on the subject ([I]Galleons and Galleys) Guilmartin acknowledges that the design of triremes would allow a higher top speed under oars than early modern galleys.

Online you can find references to replica longships traveling at around 15-20 knots, but they're under sail (and ideal conditions), not being rowed (something which is not made obvious by the claims floating around the internet). For rowing, 8 knots is considered the "technical max speed" for this longship:
http://vikingship.se/oldviking/roddE.html

However, it achieves that max speed somewhat quickly, and galleys of all sorts were known for good acceleration. In the scenario given, the ship will be loaded down with many heavily armed/armored soldiers, and that will affect both top speed and acceleration.

if you have sources that claim such ships could be rowed at up to 20 knots, please share them, I would be interested in reading them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll say that either way, it seems that actual travel time is not the limiting factor in this specific scenario. Getting people out of their bunks (etc), equipped, organized, loaded aboard, and then unloaded are the dominant times.

For ease of play, I'm going to say that these people are on the slower end for various reasons. Such that if they push through to the ground floor (where the "regular" troops can get) without taking a break or major delays (30+ minutes), then only the on-site troops will be there to greet them (there being non-regular troops in the rest of the building). If they take a break or delay a lot, then they'll have swarms of troops and will probably have to retreat. If they decide to deviate from a "drop straight out of the sky" policy and swing by and fireball the boats at the fortress side on their way in, they'll risk getting shot out of the sky by archers but potentially put a major crimp in the response.

[fusilier]

You may want to check yours. 6 knots is cruising speed, Olympias reconstruction achieved 9 knots with green crew in 1990. These are all speeds that are maintained over hours at a time. Longship reconstructions peak at about 17 knots, again with green, modern crews, and there is enough historical evidence for occassional 20-25 knots, although that was... probably extremely rare, since modern sailboats can reach about that speed.

A report on the reconstruction of the Sea Stallion (EDIT - a replica viking longship) can be downloaded here:
https://www.saxonship.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SHSC020-SeaStallionEtcV1.0.docx
[Note this is a link to a word document]

On Page 5, they note that the maximum speed achieved while rowing was 5 knots, and that was only possible for short distance:

It was discovered during the trial voyages on Roskilde Fjord and the journey to Dublin, that under good conditions, the Sea Stallion is capable of reaching speeds of up to 17 knots under sail, and 5 knots by rowing with a full crew, although it is only possible to row this quickly for short distances (Bill et al 2007:63; Johansen 2009:62). It would appear that the average speed however is roughly 6-8 knots when under sail, and 2-3 knots rowing with the mast lowered (Information Panel 2015).


I believe this may have been in the open ocean, and in a harbor I would expect the conditions would generally be a bit calmer, and probably allow a higher top speed under oars. But still no where near 15-20 knots.

While it is fair to assume that the modern rowers aren't as conditioned to rowing (or rowing in this particular style), many also make the assumption that the historical oarsmen weren't as well fed and strong as their modern counterparts -- I don't necessarily think that is a fair assumption (we do know that the modern descendants of the vikings are considerable taller). Even giving the benefit of the doubt to the historical oarsmen, we're probably talking about another knot or two in top speed, not doubling, or tripling, maximum speed under oars.

------------
In case anybody wants to check it up, the references in the above quote are:

Bill, J., Nielsen, S., Andersen, E. and Damgård-Sørensen. 2007. Welcome on Board! The Sea Stallion from Glendalough- A Viking Longship Recreated. The Viking Ship Museum: Roskilde.

Information Panel. 2015. Information Panel next to the berth of the Sea Stallion. Viking Ship Museum: Roskilde

Johansen, R. 2009. ‘The Viking Ships of Skuldelev’. In Bennett, J. (ed.) 2009. Sailing into The Past: Learning From Replica Ships. Naval Institute Press: Maryland. P52-69.

[DrewID]

I can't find WHY it works this way right now, and I have forgotten... but there's a known positive relationship between length of the waterline, and speed.

That is, longer boats have a higher max speed.

ISTR from an article in Dragon Magazine long, long ago that it is Froude's Law. Based on the fact that when you move over the water, you create waves. The distance from wave peak to wave peak (wavelength) is proportional to your speed. The maximum efficient speed is when your bow and your stern are both at a wave peak. When you exceed that speed, the wavelength exceeds the length of your ship, and your stern slips down into the trough. At that point, you are effectively sailing uphill. Something like that.

Looks like it was "The Hull Truth About Speed" from Dragon #70. Which was in 1983. Which officially qualifies as "long, long ago".

DrewID

[Saint-Just]

I want to sort of "pre-register" my question given the constraints of this forum.

Should I try to carefully formulate a question pertaining to laws of war, Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868, Hague Conventions and usage of non-solid projectiles or this is impossible task?

(I am not asking for dispensation; I know that if I screw up it's still on me no matter what).

[Brother Oni]

I want to sort of "pre-register" my question given the constraints of this forum.

Should I try to carefully formulate a question pertaining to laws of war, Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868, Hague Conventions and usage of non-solid projectiles or this is impossible task?

(I am not asking for dispensation; I know that if I screw up it's still on me no matter what).

If you were asking about the effects of non-solid projectiles, technology and damage potential thereof, that would be fine.

If you were asking about the results of that damage and any appearance of 'undue suffering' that might impact social and political factors resulting in the legality of the munitions usage, that would be off limits. This would include historical comparison to existing or former legislation/laws on similar munitions.

If you're not sure, then I would advise not asking it here - Reddit might be a better place in the right sub-Reddit.

[KineticDiplomat]

Leaving an answer to that question as vague as possible, there was a longitudinal study conducted a few years back about the compliance of warring parties with established codes and laws, and the general conclusion was that the sweet spot for actually following those laws is major and reasonably centralized powers fighting over issues that are not of existential importance and don't involve large portions of the population.

So, generally speaking, the further you go away from limited wars on behalf of nation states and the occasional tribal ceremonial war, the less likely the specifics of the legal code itself are going to matter beyond whatever the tacit agreements are within the warring parties. I think Van Creveld points out that on top wars between differing cultures tend to get nasty because it's a rare legal code seen as universally legitimate , and each sides brand of morality/ethics will diverge far enough that the space for implicit "good" behavior shrinks. Cue each side thinking the other is being a savage fighting outside unwritten laws of war, and reacting accordingly...

All of which is a very long way to say that in most RPG settings (big honking war between big nations for big important things OR rebellion and insurrectjon) the details of non solid projectiles are probably going to be honored mostly in the breach, ignored, judged merely as an additional detail by the victor or adhered to largely as a result of existing manufacturing more than an attempt at legal compliance.

[Saint-Just]

I was not going to ask "what ifs".

A question I think is safe to ask here is: is Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868 considered to be in force today? I know it's not the part of the international laws of war and only binding on signatories but those signatories are important states.

And the other non-question would be: I am under impression that interpretation of some international laws of war as embodied in the weapons systems and doctrine has significantly changed between 1900 and 2000, but I cant find any discussion of changing interpretations, only seemingly contradictory facts (in year X Country N thinks it's illegal; In year Y country N thinks it's legal; relevant international laws are the same AFAIK). Where would you recommend me to ask the question about that?

[Martin Greywolf]

Where would you recommend me to ask the question about that?

This is pretty much modern international law issue, so anywhere where lawyers that deal with it congregate. I suspect there's a reddit for that. Or email a law history professor, if you want to go the extra mile.

[KineticDiplomat]

The Hague conventions of 1899 formally expand on the St Petersburg declaration, but only applies to its signatories.

The Geneva Conventions (1949) and their additional protocols (1977) declare against unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury, but do not specify small caliber munitions.

The ICRC maintains that they are banned by "customary law" even if not specified, but there are large and influential nation states who maintain that a doctrine of military nessecity can authorize special small caliber munitions. Since those same states are the signatories and primary contractors to the Geneva conventions, you roll your law dice and take your chances.

The ICC has ruled things like frangible bullets to be illegal outside of armed conflict (2008), but despite the name the ICCs Rome Statute does not actually extend de jure to 2x permanent members of the UN security council, and de facto lacks the authority and means to enforce means and methods law within the bounds of most sovereign nations.

[Catullus64]

What can people tell me about the practices of looting and scavenging in the ancient and medieval worlds?

I'm considering a story about a band of scavengers who follow armies around in order to loot the battlefields & camps. How practical do you think this sort of occupation might have been? My guess is that if such "professional looters" existed, they're not the sort of people who tend to be well represented in literary sources.

If such people existed, do you think they're likely to be regarded as criminals, or merely disreputable tradesmen? Would a battlefield even be ripe for looting, or would the actual victorious army mostly pick it clean? Would they need to evade the notice of the armies in question, or could they openly follow them?

I know this is a lot like asking "What color did people wear in the past?", where just about every answer under the sun is true in some time and place. Nevertheless I appreciate any good examples to draw upon, or educated guesses rendered.

[Berenger]

This is only a guess, but I'd think that the best stuff (with either a very favourable weight-to-value ratio or immediate military use, such as money or good weapons) would be looted by the soldiers of the winning side after the battle unless they are prevented from this by direct orders (for example to retreat or pursue the fleeing enemy). I imagine that in more professional armies these spoils would be put on a big pile and distributed by some acknowledged system, to prevent grudges and infighting among the soldiers.

The next best stuff that the soldiers can't or won't take would be looted by the persons in the baggage train of the army, which may contain traders specialized in such "second hand" stuff. These are often children or spouses of the soldiers and might do this on their behalf.

If the army buries the dead before moving on, everything not taken would be buried with them. In this case, your hypothetical looters would be graverobbers and not tolerated in most cultures, so they would have to work in secret for scant pickings while risking hefty punishments if caught.

If the army doesn't bury the dead, they (and the leftover loot) will be left to rot unless they are buried (and likely robbed of the last useable things) by the local populace. During this time, I think they could be looted with relatively few repercussions.

In conclusion, maybe make your people part of the baggage train or (semi-)official camp followers, not independents?

[Pauly]

Looting of the the highest value items was done by soldiers. It was well known for soldiers to stop fighting and loot the enemy’s baggage train if given the opportunity.

After the soldiers came their camp followers and the local peasants who were more through than the soldiers.

Any organized and armed looters would have to fight off the camp followers and peasants. I suspect that professional battlefield scavenger would be a highly dangerous occupation as any organized military would mark them for extermination, as there are many accounts of soldiers reacting badly to peasants looting dead soldiers.

[Vinyadan]

Pretty much all references to looting I have read of in the ancient world referred to the fighters or the polity they belonged to. A big example are the Greeks looting the Persian camp after Plataea, or the Germani taking Roman eagles and sacrificing soldiers (people were booty). And there's that famous poem by Archilochus: "A warrior of the Saians now adorns himself with my costly shield..."

In Homeric epic, there is clearly an expectation that all loot will be collected after the battle and then divided among the fighters, based on their worth and power. In Roman times, some loot would be put on display: rostra, the extremely valuable bronze rams found on enemy ships, were salvaged and placed near the stage from which politicians addressed the people.

I think that the presence of many helpers meant that not much would be left for others. For example, a Spartan soldier had 7 Helot servants following him during the campaign. Roman legionaries were more autonomous, so who knows. But I think that locals preferred if an army just plundered the enemy camp and got all the cattle and horses held in there, compared to having to forage on the territory, so there were good reasons not to be

[KineticDiplomat]

As it relates to "follow and loot", Armies in antiquity- and indeed, well in to the black powder era - would often have a trail of camp followers. These could be anything from wives other family (or those offering the service at a price) to merchants, smith's, and other useful artisans, to thieves, conmen, and soothsayers. How many, what degree of discipline, and their role within the army could vary wildly even within forces of the same side and time period. One commander might be fairly permissive, another might decide they slowed the army down or made the men soft and have any he deemed excess or less useful driven off.

For most of the time period you're talking, arms and armor would be sufficiently precious that the idea of some sort of fighter not claiming them seems unlikely. When a chain mail shirt or a bronze curiassis the mark of a rich man and increases you're likelihood of living greatly, you don't leave it there for a random barber-surgeon to snatch up. Lesser valuables like clothes and boots, you might pick those over - I think there's a Napoleonic account of a field of literally naked bodies after some battle where the soldiers and camp followers had literally picked the corpses (and in some cases the still wounded) clean.

On top of which, big battles were not the norm for thr period of muscled powered warfare. Lots of marching, disease, bad food, and maybe smaller raids and skirmishes, but big decisive fights leaving enough dead and wounded on the ground indiscriminately enough to loot as a camp followers would be uncommon.

So, limited opportunities to take second Crack at whatever the warriors left behind. Not great odds for the professional looter.

However, separating soldiers from their pay and loot after the fact is a time honored tradition...

[HeadlessMermaid]

The late 15th c. English word riffraff (https://www.etymonline.com/word/riffraff#etymonline_v_15061) (and the Old French rif et raf that it derives from), meaning "persons of disreputable character or low degree", originally referred to scavengers in battlefields, and specifically those who plundered "every little thing". High value loot was normally claimed by the victors, so these people picked the leftovers after all the soldiers had gone. The sources treat these scavengers with great contempt, considering them nothing short of human refuse picking up refuse, and the word was derogatory from the start.

But they were just trying to scrape (literally!) a living in war-torn lands. Remember that wherever armies passed, they "lived off the land", i.e. plundered the locals for food and resources. For the civilian population, that was often the worst part of war, as it could get very brutal and/or destroy their livelihood. Taking a little something from the dead seems to me less of a transgression in comparison, especially if the scavengers were locals, who were just taking a little something back.

Sometimes they weren't locals, though, they were camp-followers. From what I understand, scavenging was not their primary occupation, it was complementary to doing errands for the army, or whatever else sustained camp-followers normally. [EDIT: as KineticDiplomat describes above.] Another class of scavengers is vagrants, especially after the Black Death. War, disease, famine, and enclosures uprooted many many people, and on the road options were limited: you could beg, do odd jobs, steal, or scavenge, and if you had the opportunity to do any of that, you would. How else would you survive?

I'm not sure we could call any of these people "professional" looters. Usually it was opportunistic. And I don't think anyone put too much energy in stopping them from scavenging: again, they weren't taking valuable loot, they were only picking leftovers, belts and shoes and anything that got overlooked.

If you want to write about a believable band of professional looters, I can think of two suggestions:

1) Have them operate in a limited geographic region, which happens to be ravaged by war in a prolonged conflict. This gives them lots of battlefields to plunder, lots of reasons to resort to plundering, and you can choose to make them as sympathetic or unsympathetic as you please.

2) Make them almost bandits. Give them arms and horses, and have them raid battlefields immediately post-battle, during the (official) plundering stage. This will allow them to take stuff more valuable than belts and shoes, but also now they're an enemy that the army would keep an eye out for, and fight. This isn't historical, AFAIK, but I wouldn't have any trouble suspending my disbelief for it. Bandits were everywhere, opportunistic raiders were everywhere, official armies operated much like bandits and opportunistic raiders themselves, so you're just mixing the timing here, it's fine.

(My source for the exact origin of the word "riffraff" is The History of English Podcast, I can try and find the exact episode if you want.)