Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Conal

30 cows would get you the full kit and 18 all but a mail shirt. No saddlery is mentioned????

I’m not sure how valid that amount is. No saddle, no trappings, how about fodder and stables etc.? Also, I dare say that you need more than one horse for each cavalryman, plus a herd for breeding. Maybe you’d need 40 cows.

The population of GB at AD400 was approx 3 million ... at say one cow per 10 persons will buy you 10,000 fully armed nutters on horseback.

That, too is an assumption open to debate. I have seen number that vary between one and five million. Given the known depopulation in other western European areas I am inclined to say that one million might be a more realistic number. But that’s speculation of course.

So given a few decades I don't see why the armies of Arthurian Briton (made up of a few hundred at a time?) would not be fully kitted out as mail/scale armed cavalry. If this was not the case then I would suggest that cost was not the major factor.

As to cost, see above. Other reasons would be the civil wars which we lnow erupted from at least the mid-5th century, and the apparently growing influence of the Anglo-Saxon newcomers (although I’m not going to comment about what that would have meant in terms of armed conflict).

Another reason to doubt the existence of a large cavalry for in late 5th-c. Britain is that no source ever mentions it. See below.

Hi Ron,

Of course, an army--at least the mounted portion--need not have numbered so large.

True, but if you are talking about a standing professional army, you need to add costs for infantry, housing for men and animal, etc.

Geoffry Ashe has suggested (Quest for Arthur's Britain and entries in The New Arturian Encyclopedia) that "Arthur" may have had a small, highly-mobile mounted force to rush from crisis to crisis, depending on local levies (both mounted and foot) to fill out his ranks.

Indeed he did, but that opinion was, like that of his contemporaries John Morris and Leslie Alcock, influenced by the Medieval tales of King Arthur. Since the article by Collingwood & Myres we have all come to expect an Arthurian-style warlord with a force of (heavy) cavalry, even though the signs are not in favour of that ‘image’. We want to see Arthurian cavalry, indeed we need to see Arthurian cavalry. :roll:

In that case, the "national" force may have numbered a few hundred.

What ‘national force’ Ron? None of the sources that we have (prior to the Medieval ones at least) paint us an image of any such a ‘national’ army. Instead, we hear from Gildas onwards that civil wars were rife, with sometimes pauses. Never do we hear of a ‘unification’ against the Saxon invasions or any such developments. Only of warlords lording over ever decreasing areas who sometimes unite against the Saxons, or unite with the Saxons against other British polities. Fragmentation galore! :evil:

I mention a dozen because, by the eight century, Historia Brittonum (Nennius) lists twelve "famous" victories for Arthur's mounted forces.

That’s ninth century Ron. And the more one looks at that list, the more it looks like it was pinched from another hero, preferably a northern one. If Arthur was indeed such a northern hero, it would further limit the chances of a large cavalry forces due to the economical and geographical limits of that area.

Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to see evidence for a warlord with at least a force of two hundred cavalry, being active across Lowland Britain. But so far I have seen no evidence for that, only ‘reading into’ evidence, often indeed in the face of the evidence available.