Modern misconceptions about medieval warfare
warfantasy.wordpress.com
warfantasy.wordpress.com
People do not realize, that Carrhae was a special case. In normal circumstances horse archers would run out of arrows quickly and Roman infantry would simply wait them out in testudo formation.
Surena (Parthian general) had prepared well for this particular battle and for every horse archer he had 2-3 transport animals with spare arrows (that must had been a lot of arrows per archer) so his archers could keep pressure for a few days without running out of arrows, wearing Romans out. He could do that because Parthians had been operating close to home [so Surrena didn't have to worry about fodder for horse and transport animals] (and he had enough time to manufacture all those arrows ahead).
Also generally Roman infantry had been generally more rapid force in the field then any larger mounted force. Mounted Roman army required fodder transported by oxen carts - which made horsemen much slower over larger distance then marching infantry... So logistics matter...
> Crassus now hoped that his legionaries could hold out until the Parthians ran out of arrows.[28] However, Surena used thousands of camels to resupply his horse archers. Upon this realisation, Crassus dispatched his son Publius with 1,300 Gallic cavalry, 500 archers and eight cohorts of legionaries to drive off the horse archers. The horse archers feigned retreat and drew off Publius' force, which suffered heavy casualties from arrow fire.
“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…” – Sun Tzu
“My logisticians are a humorless lot… they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
"An army is a creature that marches on its stomach.”—Napoleon
...
I wonder what myths people will say about our current or recent times? - That soldiers would just shoot like there’s no tomorrow (bullets are heavy and reloading matters) - That fortifications didn’t matter (look at the success of T walls and hesco barriers) - that small units could be found just driving around the desert like Hurt Locker would lead you to believe (only the most specialized units would go without local and quick support forces, and they almost always had aerial support instead)
I could go on a long time about this stuff - look up videos posted by TRADOC or MCoE to see how complicated seemingly simple things can get: https://youtu.be/ZZ-sCT_maAQ?si=CFeSzzhobzzYIeDg
However I have to critique the author modern horses knowledge. We still breed some horses to be stout, not afraid of collisions and basically be terrors on a field. Maybe because he's from the west, he isn't aware. But our nomad/ex-nomad neighbors still practice kok buru, horseback wrestling, their horses are extremely aggressive to people they don't know, and their horses are everything a battle horse should be.
Also I'm not so sure about the point on horseback archers. They weren't just archers, at least in mongols armies. They were also either light or heavy cavalry, extremely well organized. The battle in Poland (maybe medieval Lithuania, I don't remember) where Christian armies met the Mongols for the first time was a typical example of how nomad horseback archers fought (or should fight). Harass to rile up the enemies, when a part of the army is separated (knights in the case), fix them with heavy cavalery and have the lighter cavalery divisions hit them in the back. If the point is about 'pure' horseback archers, I agree, but it's not how the majority of middle age horseback archers acted.
One thing that seems unexplored in historical writing to me is how we use the same concept to refer to activities that have changed dramatically over the millennia.
War, specifically, is a good example: war today is a certain kind of experience, filled with bombs and drones and driving around avoiding IEDs and artillery. War a thousand years ago was an entirely different thing, where you might be fighting another guy in direct close quarters combat.
Of course it was more complex than that and you had other things like widespread disease, or boiling fat thrown at you, but it seems plausible to me that it was much easier to feel “heroic” about war in the past than in our mechanized age.
Modern society sometimes still has that in limited form (mandatory military service), but it's very different, and time-limited.
That is the thing, however - they weren't, at least not in feudal system. Peasants would be present only as personal servants of nobility, but weren't actually expected to fight. "All men under arms" is only typical of tribal society, but in that case theywere basically defending their homes - and also hoping to profit.
The article brings some pretty decent arguments that suggest you are wrong:
> For common soldiers, it was an opportunity to get rich or at least gain some wealth.
> Masses of peasants willingly went to try and liberate the Holy Land – only to get slaughtered because they did not wait for backup by professional soldiers. Later, during the Ottoman Wars, peasants under John Capistrano played a major role in defense of Belgrade.
There was also the whole "children's crusade" episode.
And large castles were incredibly difficult to take. In fact, up until the appearance and widespread adoption of (relatively) modern gunpowder artillery (late 15th / early 16th century) it was more common for a castle to surrender because it ran out of food. And that could take months or even years, a period during which besieging army would suffer from disease, possibly food shortage, and was vulnerable to relief forces.
The issue is that an army MUST forage. An army will burn up all the food in an area very quickly--at which point it must move.
Now that you are moving, your back flank is vulnerable to the attackers which were in the castle. And you have a bunch of pissed off locals who hate you for eating all their food.
There was a reason why "quartering of troops" was explicitly written into the US Constitution.
So if a castle was garrisoned by a defending force of 2,000, you wanted at least 6,000 men as the besieging force to even stand a chance of winning the siege whether through killing or attrition.
And this quickly grows exponentially for the besiegers as the defending force becomes bigger: If the defenders numbered 5,000 men, you wanted 15,000 men as the besiegers.
So not only did the besiegers have a harder time fighting compared to the defenders, the logistical requirements and demands for the besiegers was significantly larger than anything the defenders had to deal with.
[1]: https://www.quora.com/How-large-of-an-army-unit-in-medieval-...
Vast majority of population were working farms. And they were taxed heavily enough that those owning the land had the year or two food stored.
It might go so far that perhaps the reason the area never saw major military campaigns is because of the defensibility of it's castles?
Stone Age people painted the animals they were going to hunt on rocks so that the pictures would entrap the animals' spirit and they would be easier to catch. This method of ensuring a good hunt was not effective so why did they do so many paintings?
Military technology has to prove itself in this life, not the next. That's a more stringent test.
Without the wall, raiding bands of any size could just slip through and cause havoc. Only large and well-organized forces had siege equipment to break through wherever they wanted. Similarly, traffic and migration of peoples could be controlled and tolls and customs could be enforced. It also acted as an infrastructure for fast transmission of messages. In those ways, like the Roman Limes and the European castle networks, it was mostly an infrastructure for peaceful times.
But even in war, it was preferred to bypass it or to capture a gateway fortress, otherwise these forces could cause enormous problems for the attackers. For example, only allying with the Ming garrison at Liaoning made it possible for the Manchus to crush the short-lived Shun dynasty and establish the Qing dynasty.
Getting across animals and heavy equipment is not easy.
Cause enough delay to send some more soldiers to deter them some more?
Pyramids were built for the after-life. Not as a way to extend their life on Earth. Nobody could verify if it actually worked, so it's mostly a question of faith.
> Stone Age people painted the animals they were going to hunt on rocks so that the pictures would entrap the animals' spirit
That's just speculation from historians. It may be that they are right, but there are also other theories. One other theory could be that it is a way of giving thanks to the animals, and a way to honor their loss. Personally I don't think there is a single reason why they painted animals. People have always had different motivations
You made the following statements:
1. Pyramids were built so kings could live forever
2. The Egyptians saw that this did not work, but continued to build pyramids.
The first statement is not true. The pyramids were built for the after-life. This invalidates the premise for your second statement, as the Egyptians could not verify that it worked in the after-life (or that there even is an after-life).
Now that you see my reply in a different context, your castle analogy is also not relevant.
This is pure speculation. The track record of speculations by archaeologists isn't very good.
Probably the silliest speculation ever was when two gourds connected by a string were hypothesized to be an ancient telephone.
I think most castles were built mainly as status symbols, and not the result of a regional or national defense strategy. Castles are imposing buildings in places that dominate the landscape, built by local leaders to project their power and influence. You see a few castles being built in the US in non-feudal times for similar reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_the_United_...
Afterwards the defensive purpose of these structures started to gave way to the more opulent side. Some manor houses featured defensive structures mainly for show, although they served the same purpose.
I said "project", not "protect". Meaning, one is a kin to peacocking, while the other is literally building moats and draw bridges to keep the enemy at bay.
To stop that from happening, one has to capture the castle or be friendly with the garrison. This creates problems for anyone passing through, be they farmers, merchants, unfriendly neighbors of the noble, or an army passing through.
Peacocking might have happened, but castles would be a useful form of peacocking. Be as that may, they were still mostly uncomfy money drains, barely earning back their running costs via tolls, and usually funded by major nobles who then sent their underlings to actually man the place. If at all possible, one would rather build two castle in useful locations than a single redundant one.
You could of course argue the newer structures weren't castles at all of course, even if they were called that.
I think you are mixing up more than 1000 years of architectural history in a few lines.
Medieval castles were very much defensive installations, which is clear from their a) layout, b) locations, c) the fact that medieval history of warfare is chock-full of castle sieges, while pitched battles like Crécy or Grunwald were spectacular, but rare.
Fancy 19th century castles (re-)built in opulent style were mostly conspicuous consumption, as you say. But by that time, nobility preferred chateaus/palaces anyway. Much more comfortable to live in.
Status castles have windows in the walls, and thin walls.
And food doesn't take that much space either. Consider how Age of Sail ships would spend months at sea without resupply, and how a castle has much more space available for storage. And even with medieval technology, you can make food that keeps long: salted, smoked or dried meat; dried fruit; marmelade; hardtack; and so on.
The word "soldier" ("soldato" in Italian) comes from the Latin solidus, a type of coin. This term used to refer to paid professionals, as opposed to conscripted peasants.
In modern colloquial Italian, "soldi" means money.
Well, that’s a weird argument: “oil was edible and not commonly used. There are recorded instances of animal fat being used instead”.
But yeah, bit of a weird wording.
Hence, articles like this matter.