"My quote was "off the top of my head" and was in the context of logistics required to support such things."
Your quote was in line with the views of other commentators on that thread, what would your "not off the top of your head" view be now? 50 miles seemed to be the consensus. As a pedestrian, a couple of weeks ago I did 15 miles in 4 hours, old, unfit, living a soft life and capable of further if it hadn't been school run time, in my youth I was capable of 40 miles in 10 hours, I have a certificate somewhere, but I'm not sure that would be admissable as evidence here.
"where would the "guys doing the damage" get all the horses from?"
By the time of a post Colchester mobile phase I would guess their own and any they could find in Norfolk, Suffolk and a big chunk of Essex. How many would they need 100? 1000? maybe no more than that. Seems viable to me, do you have a different view, is there something I'm missing about the presence of horses at the time?
"you cannot get away from is that wives and wagons were present at the final battle"
Sure, but it doesn't mean they were in the vanguard or that they were driven all the way from Norfolk or that the lead units had the patience to wait for them. How many waggons would it take to choke the approach to any of the candidate sites? 8 meters per wagon could fill the choke point at Church Stowe (325m) with 40 waggons, 20 waggons if there are 50% opennings which would certainly still impede a fleeing horde, we should be careful not to over egg the "convoy" size as a determinant of anything.
"almost vanishingly unlikely is that the raiding elements would have advanced 30 or 40 miles ahead of the main body"
Well that's your opinion, you have a "main body", which is again your opinion. It's vanishingly unlikely that there wouldn't be scouting group and independent booty hunters quite close to Roman columns/sites. So how big does a group of mounted raiders have to be to be viable, 5, 10, 20, 100, 1000, all viable if a final force of 250,000 or even 25,000 is the real number.
"What is far more likely is that the raiding parties would have remained in contact with the main body and returned to it each night with their spoils. The speed of a convoy is the speed of the slowest member, in this case the wagons."
A mixed confederation of pumped up 20 year olds looking for a fight and a reputation, going home for tea and waiting for granny in her waggon? I doubt this, too cautious by far in a country with 4 million or fewer inhabitants, loads of space to roam and raid away from the apparently lumbering Roman Army. I think you are using convoy assumptions that are wise now, or even then, in the case of the Romans, but a scratch horde is probably advancing and foraging at their own marching pace with little central organisation.
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Your quote was in line with the views of other commentators on that thread, what would your "not off the top of your head" view be now? 50 miles seemed to be the consensus. As a pedestrian, a couple of weeks ago I did 15 miles in 4 hours, old, unfit, living a soft life and capable of further if it hadn't been school run time, in my youth I was capable of 40 miles in 10 hours, I have a certificate somewhere, but I'm not sure that would be admissable as evidence here.
"where would the "guys doing the damage" get all the horses from?"
By the time of a post Colchester mobile phase I would guess their own and any they could find in Norfolk, Suffolk and a big chunk of Essex. How many would they need 100? 1000? maybe no more than that. Seems viable to me, do you have a different view, is there something I'm missing about the presence of horses at the time?
"you cannot get away from is that wives and wagons were present at the final battle"
Sure, but it doesn't mean they were in the vanguard or that they were driven all the way from Norfolk or that the lead units had the patience to wait for them. How many waggons would it take to choke the approach to any of the candidate sites? 8 meters per wagon could fill the choke point at Church Stowe (325m) with 40 waggons, 20 waggons if there are 50% opennings which would certainly still impede a fleeing horde, we should be careful not to over egg the "convoy" size as a determinant of anything.
"almost vanishingly unlikely is that the raiding elements would have advanced 30 or 40 miles ahead of the main body"
Well that's your opinion, you have a "main body", which is again your opinion. It's vanishingly unlikely that there wouldn't be scouting group and independent booty hunters quite close to Roman columns/sites. So how big does a group of mounted raiders have to be to be viable, 5, 10, 20, 100, 1000, all viable if a final force of 250,000 or even 25,000 is the real number.
"What is far more likely is that the raiding parties would have remained in contact with the main body and returned to it each night with their spoils. The speed of a convoy is the speed of the slowest member, in this case the wagons."
A mixed confederation of pumped up 20 year olds looking for a fight and a reputation, going home for tea and waiting for granny in her waggon? I doubt this, too cautious by far in a country with 4 million or fewer inhabitants, loads of space to roam and raid away from the apparently lumbering Roman Army. I think you are using convoy assumptions that are wise now, or even then, in the case of the Romans, but a scratch horde is probably advancing and foraging at their own marching pace with little central organisation.
78040
