Suddenly all those Hinterlands quests to go round up a random farmer’s druffalo don’t seem so silly.
Dragon Age Inquisition - doing something right.
(source)
#war in pre-industrial societies was *very different* from what many people imagine#i keep seeing calls for ‘realistic medieval huge military battles’ and im like#yon average feif could maybe afford like 10 guys tops
YES. This whole thread is the best thing and betterbemeta’s tags (above) are on point. I would love actual ‘realistic ancient battles’ where like ten actual fighters and whatever serfs they can persuade to accompany them posture and try to intimidate each other, or have an Official Scrum on a mutually beneficial day. That and just…cattle raiding.
I guess in post-collapse terms it’s theoretically different because your whole raider gang exists to nick other people’s shit so doesn’t need to cultivate or craft much except perhaps to make them more self-sufficient in weaponry, armaments, and other logistical things that’ll enable them to raid harder and more often. That’s exactly why, on the other side of things, as many citizen’s as possible in your vulnerable good-guy farming commune might need to be militia members to protect themselves from people who can dedicate their full-time everyday energy to Being Raiders.
I say in theory because, even if you’re nicking other people’s shit, why not treat that as a bonus? Why not look to history’s peoples who placed a particular import on raiding as a way of life, and notice that none of them were just straight-up predators. They had enough agricultural or pastoral or pescatoral (is that a word?) infrastructure to subsist, and then the luxury, the surplus, came from attacking other people part-time, very occasionally. Look at norse folks going viking; look at the invasive pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe. Just in terms of the caloric requirements and risks inherent in combat, you’re not gonna want to do that full-time. Training to do it well will take more calories and they need to come from somewhere. You pick your battles. You take without fighting at all where you can – so intimidation and making enemies surrender without having to fight is important here; c.f. pirates of the Golden Age – and you fight rarely and only when you know you can a) win, b) benefit hugely from it.
I’m no historic or economic expert so I could be wrong on several aspects but know this, a army is EXPENSIVE, and a standing professional one that most people tend to think of in fantasy settings or just at all is obscenely so.
Not only do you require a lot of hard currency to pay for these soldiers, you also need to pay for equipment, supplies, training, and so forth.
And this is without going into the fact you’re going to need a bureaucracy to help get this all in order with is ANOTHER whole mess to get into that is also gonna require it’s own funding and manpower and infrastructure to maintain and operate.
There’s a reason most medieval battles involved poorly trained random ass peasants being given some basic weaponry (if even that) who’s pay was basically “whatever you can loot off the dead and defeated.” because that was typically all the random lord or noble of the day could seriously afford.
Heck and when actual mercenaries were involved they tended to settle fights and battles by just negotiating certain terms and then calling it a day without firing a arrow or so much as lifting a weapon.
The Romans had more actual legit battles and war than the medieval period BECAUSE they had an advanced enough bureaucracy, infrastructure (IE roads aqueducts, forts etc.), government, and economy to be able to maintain and fund a standing professional army/military force.
It wasn’t until the early modern era (roughly 1700′s I think) when governments in europe had even centralized and advanced enough to be able to maintain a professional military.
tl/dr war and battles is expensive as shit
(via unpretty)
