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

[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:

Spoiler: Beckov, Slovakia

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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), 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) 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.

Spoiler: Compare Osaka and Malbork/Marienburg

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Three wall layers plus central keep, sightlines are wonky and kinda broken, especially once you get past first wall layer

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.

Spoiler: Compare Osaka and Malbork/Marienburg

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Three wall layers plus central keep, sightlines are wonky and kinda broken, especially once you get past first wall layer

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...

Spoiler: Nove Zamky fortress sketch

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[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.

Spoiler: Mongol Paizi

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Spoiler: Billog in Chronica Picta, 1350

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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).

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)

[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:

Spoiler: Has all land routes, but misses Red sea and Persian gulf

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Spoiler: No Steppe route

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Spoiler: Almost complete, but doesn't show China to India to sea route

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And those are the good ones!

Spoiler: You know how to use icons, but missed 2/3 of the thing

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Spoiler: Very, uh, ethnic, but shows Oasis route only, with some questionable end points

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Spoiler: Really?

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

Spoiler: Bonus points for including Spice Islands though, you rarely see that

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It also lacks a file format extension, so I have to link it

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/wikiped...t-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/wikiped...t-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? 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? 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? 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.