Ancient army numbers

[Darth_Roach]

Let's tone it down a bit first. Second, why don't you propose Roman armies numbered in the millions? Or Greek ones?


Three years preparing for a campaign is not that much, really. Most likely the time it took to organize the army, build supply dumps for the navy and converge it all into a small frontier province. Logistically, the main grain producing areas of the empire were Mesopotamia, Egypt and India. Anatolia was quite decent but not enough to supply an army that would outnumber the populace of a small satrapy. The immense required supplies for a marching force need to constantly flow in, despite the fact that the army is not a fixed location. The pack animals and cavalry horses need grazing fields. There must be a constant supply of water. I don't think you realize how much 3 million liters is... Or how much 5 thousand tonnes of food is. Carriages filled with supplies were not a quick way of transport by any means - you aren't going to catch up with an army in Lydia if you're a cart filled to the brim with supplies from Babylon.


In the end, none of this really matters since only 30 thousand soldiers are recorded to have engaged at all.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Please read what I am actually saying...Peter. 8-)
Not the just army, but the army, the baggage train, the supply lines in Persia, Anatolia, Syria, the guardsa and garrisons at the key points.
From one end of the empire to the tip of the front line troops.
But I think there were a lot of toops in this whole shebang, and as they had plenty of time to hear about the army coming, all the figures could well have been added up to give inflated figures for one small part of the whole operation. It was a punitive expedition, and was a show of force not only to the Greeks, but to the whole empire.

I don't think I actually said there were 1 million troops.

You don't think I realise how much 3 million litres is...ok, I work in the oil industry.
Please do insult me some more, you are very good at it!

[Robert Vermaat]

Gents, mind the tone, read what the other guy writes. No need for insults or argument here.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Perhaps the good fortune of holding the multiple bread baskets of the ancient world at the very center of their empire for a lot longer than the Campaign of Alexander lasted??
Or the Romans?

[Robert Vermaat]

Perhaps the good fortune of holding the multiple bread baskets of the ancient world at the very center of their empire for a lot longer than the Campaign of Alexander lasted??
Or the Romans?

Are you starting to quote yourself Byron? :wink:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Seems to be the only way to point out what I have already said....
otherwise it gets passed over and repeated back at me as if I am arguing against what I am saying! :mrgreen: Just sayin' an' all! 8-)

[Macedon]

Without ever supporting that numbers are not inflated , as is my standard position in this discussion and only exploring the mechanics and capabilities of ancient logistics and the possibility (NOT certainty) that they COULD, IF THEY CHOSE TO, field really huge armies I will make a synopsis of how, in my knowledge, supplying an army worked.

1. Huge armies demanded huge manpower available to be mustered under a common banner. Thus, only huge unified political entities would be able in the first place to field huge armies. Persia was one, Rome was one, Greece certainly was not, not until much later, when certain empires were established that could potentially find the unified manpower.

Any state with a population of 20 mil+ could potentially muster 1 mil soldiers (10% of the total male population, some 15-25% of all male population of military age) to use in a single area IF IT CHOSE TO and IF all adequate provisions were made.

Ability to do so does not mean it was done.

2. In order to analyze supply capabilities we have to first establish if the campaign was :

A. landbound

B. coastal with maritime supply capability or along navigable rivers

Manners a force was supplied and efficiency thereof (as long as enough supplies were somehow gathered):

1. Beasts of burden can carry an unlimited volume of supplies BUT, they also have to consume some themselves, which makes supplies only last a limited amount of time. There is no maximum force size that can be supplied in this way, there is a maximum time that ANY force can be supplied. Some more time can be gained if the beasts themselves are consumed or allowed to perish, but that time is also limited. So, a force of 50 men, one of 50,000 or one of 500,000 can actually feed itself practically the same time if it is only fed through supplies carried by beasts of burden and carriages.

2. Ships were most efficient. They could carry a huge amount of supplies with practically no loss because of self-consumption. A single cargo ship could carry 50-150 tons of supplies, totally replacing the need of hundreds of carriages, beasts, drivers etc and even securing the ability to move the army at greater speeds.

3. Forage was also efficient although limited. The distance that forage parties would put between them and the main force was not unlimited. they still had to return and of course the further away they went, the more vulnerable they were to enemy attacks. Forage was very efficient not because they would only gather the produce of the land but because they would gather the stock of the unfortified settlements, which would hold provisions for their populations for several months. Thus, a village of 100 people that had provisions for only 6 months (beasts included) would provide 1 month supply for 600 men or a week's supply for 2,400 men. A territory that was inhabited by a mere 10,000 peasants that was thus raided, that was able to produce the numbers I mentioned above (quite conservative in my opinion), would feed 60,000 men for a month or 240,000 for a week. Foraging (when not caring about the population) was very effective and this is why scorched earth strategy was so efficient in such circumstances. This is how 13,000 Greeks for example found supplies abundant on the mountains of Armenia.

4. Markets

All the texts stress the importance of "markets" This was a controlled forage. In order for an army to not resort to raids, states would provide it with markets where it would obtain the resources it needed for a "just" price. A city with a population of 20,000 and a supporting peasantry of another 50,000 would be able to easily provide for an army of 42,000 men for a month if it only offered them a conservative 10% of its provisions to buy.

5. Being outright presented with gifts in exchange of a harmless march through one's territory. A small state or kingdom of just 200,000 inhabitants giving up a 10% of its provisions (again taking a very moderate stock of supplies that would only last for 6 months) would be able to support 120,000 men for a month.

6. Sacking cities

Sacking a city would work wonders in terms of supplies. A simple city of 30,000 men would procure huge quantities of supplies.

7. Beating the enemy in battle and sacking their camp

Self-explanatory.



So, big armies had to keep moving to feed themselves from the land (also attested in many sources) but of course, huge armies would require supply lines or proximity to great supply centers. There is no reason to believe that a huge army, regardless its size could not supply itself as long as it had a supply train large enough AND a supply center nearby (some days away) or if supply by the sea was available regardless of the distance to the supply center.

The next question is : "Could actually the ancient states amass a huge volume of supplies to feed a huge army?"

The provisions were available (the men would be supplied if they stayed home, so there were supplies). That leaves the question of whether there was a mechanism that would allow the provisions to be collected and stored. For me, the answer is again "yes". The sources are very clear that huge quantities of provisions were indeed collected by officials to :

A. store in cities that acted as supply centers for the army or the population
B. sell en mass to buyers, like the Greeks did from Sicily or the Black Sea. The Athenian food imports were not inferior to any supply mechanism that would have been used to cover the needs of a really huge army and was running for decades.
C. Send to states as parts of tribute or a "forced" sale, like the Egyptian grain was shipped to Italy for decades if not centuries.

This only serves as proof that there were official mechanisms that were able to collect and store huge amounts of supplies (able to feed huge armies for a substantial period of time - food enough to feed 200,000 people for 1 year is enough to feed 1,200,000 people for 2 months)

In conclusion, the mechanism to support a huge army existed. Whether huge armies were employed or not is open to debate. In my opinion they must have just because they could. Which of those attested were in reality huge armies is another question.

[Sean Manning]

Exactly. You can't move 4 million men through the hot gates in three days. See Delbruck's paragraphs on the lengths of marching columns.

Where is this figure mentioned anywhere? You have totally lost me there.
And while it has bee na long time since I read up on this, I seem to recal lthere being mention of the entire progress, which included the need to hold the route back, open.

The source for the size of the Persian army and navy at Thermopylae is Herodotus 7.184 and 185. I would paraphrase the Greek as “Of the foot there were one hundred and seventy myriads (ten thousands), of the horse eight myriads. I will add to these the Arabian camels and Libyan chariots, making two myriads in number. ... The strength of the infantry provided by the Thracians, Macedonians, etc. I consider to have been thirty myriads.” This makes 210 myriads of soldiers in the land army. He then suggests that if there was one noncombatant per soldier, the total would be twice as many, or 410 myriads (four million one hundred thousand men). He then adds another million men by first inflating the number of men in the longships, then doubling (!) it to allow for the other ships, to get a bit over 510 myriads of men, women, and children in the whole force. This is roughly equal to the whole population of Greece in 480 BCE.

Herodotus implies that he is guessing every number for the land army except the infantry and cavalry, and he doesn't give us any reason to trust his infantry and cavalry count such as a list of units or a Persian source. (Unless we believe the story at Herodotus 7.60 about packing the soldiers into pens at Doriscus, and that a Greek actually recorded the count taken there).

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Yes, I see that it was my own lack of understanding the meaning of Myriads years ago which allowed me to underestimate the numbers he was proposing.
I will concede that those are fantastic figures, which I have never supported.
Not a figure of 1 million combat troops.

Macedon does however explain quite clearly how it would be feasible for the
army to have been quite large, and the Persians capable of raising it and supplying it.
Which is what I am trying to say, given the time and posting constraints on me.

[Darth_Roach]

Well, let's look at the hypothetical possibility of it happening. What then? Why did none of the later and larger empires repeat this feat? Even Napoleon didn't have a million soldiers.

Not to mention the fact that the Achaemenid army was quasi-feudal in nature.

[Draconis]

The problem is there are so many things we don't know. If Xerxes' ministers who overlooked the drafting of soldiers and the logistics of supply, arming etc for the expedition had left behind records of their actions and figures for it all, it would be much simpler. But we don't know enough, everyone is guessing. Xerxes prepared for years before making his move. I'm wondering things like could they have had the ability to preserve and stockpile enough food for the army? How did they actually go about accomplishing it? As some assert, its a mistake to underestimate what they might have accomplished. It would seem that they had the population base for a very large army. If they could feel the millions of people in the empire, the food should be available to feed a small percentage of that population in an expedition. Lacking knowledge of just how they did it, we're guessing. As far as believing they couldn't compete with modern technology, consider the achievements of the Ancient Egyptians that modern technology has yet to match. They were ancient not stupid. If you can preserve meat indefinitely and grain, 4 years is a long time to stockpile. So maybe it was possible to supply a very large army. It would be funny if it were proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Herodatus was right or right-ish. But regardless, I'm thinking Xerxes was hoping for a quick campaign, wow the Greeks with shock and awe with a massive army, and the Greeks submit. It just didn't work out that way.

[Ghostmojo]

Whilst lacking the specific details you point out Tom, I'm pretty sure they would have set up supply bases at regular intervals. Nominally, or actually, controlling territory right up to the Thessalian borders - this shouldn't have been too difficult.

[Macedon]

Whilst lacking the specific details you point out Tom, I'm pretty sure they would have set up supply bases at regular intervals. Nominally, or actually, controlling territory right up to the Thessalian borders - this shouldn't have been too difficult.

Playing the devil's advocate, I would disagree here. I think that establishing supply bases in Europe would be very risky business for the Persians. There is no chance they would trust their "allies" with garrisoning and keeping the huge amounts of provisions stockpiled. Such an action would attract attacks and raids by the numerous hostile tribes and the willingness of the allies to put up resistance would be questionable. It would be easier for them to just compensate the allies for provisions given. I am sure that such depots would have been organized in Asia. I would here again remind of the importance of the cargo ships. I personally do not think that Xerxes was really worried of how to provide for his army if only he thought that his war-fleet was strong enough to keep the Greeks from being a major harassment and the campaign quick enough to not demand the supply lines to be maintained for too long (winter would also be a major problem for a huge army, since ships would not be able to safely make the trip).

[Nikanor]

Hi Tom, well yes you add some more points to it. My own idea was that the Persian Empire, a particularly well organised one despite its size - with a modern governance and logistics applied on well known pre-existing east-west traderoutes - had the feasibility to arrange in span of 1 year the mobility of several 100,000s of troops, let alone when it had the time to prepare for it over the span of more than 5 years.

Above I saw someone comparing Napoleontian armies to Persian implying the former were any vastly more advanced in logistic terms. Well that is far from being the case. The truth is (and ask any 19th warfare specialist) that the fastest moving land-based infantry western European army in 18th-19th century prior to the advent of railroad was that of Marlborough who mastered a very satisfying 25km per day. However even that is no close match to the casual 30-35km per day that Alexander's army would do, given that his father had already trained them to do even more if need arose. The mere physical conditions difference of the average ancient man to the average pre-industrial man are enormous. While in terms of ships there was constant evolution (still I do believe any pre-modern sail-ship equiped with cannons would struggle against Byzantine fire-galleys since fire destroys sails much faster than canons destroy oars & sails), in terms of land-based logistics, I cannot see any improvement. True that the employment of rifles made armies lighter but then Persians were not particularly heavy either. In terms of road networks I do not believe that early 19th century Napoleontian France was any better than Persia given that both used at best stone paved roads, their own feet and theirs animals. The newly discovered steam engines had not yet propagated into a wide use in transportation till later 19th century. In terms of food provisions there would be no difference - what is more funny is that in terms of warfare ancient armies would simply slaughter with particular ease the Napoleontian armies given that they only had to outrun the 150m distance (1 minute), lose by bullets say a 25-30% of their force and then enjoy the party slaughtering the totality of the opposing Napoleontian force in 4-5 minutes - but of course here our interest is logistics. So no, there is nothing particularly more evolved to logistics of Napoleontian era than that of the classical era - and one would note the absence of instant messaging via fire-signaling stations in mountains across Europe which was the case in Greece (and I guess most probably in Persia).

If Napoleon could get more than 500,000 men to travel to cold Moscow, Persians could send 3 times that number during summertime in Greece. A 400,000 minimum fighting force backed by 2-3 times this numbers in overall logistics (i.e. not just accompagning logistics but local-support logistics) should be seen as something very casual even if extraordinary in frequency and impressive to everyone. All it took was to have the financial support and the means and Persians had plenty of both, 10 times more than Napoleon.

As for the feasibility of supply lines - the mere paradigm of relatively small ships at 50tn carrying wheat whose every kilo more than suffices to cover the needs of 2 men for a day mean that it would suffice 1 ship arrival per day to bring in the daily allowance for 100,000 soldiers. Just 1 small ship per day!!! Persians had 100s of ships and they could arrange with sending 10 per day, i.e. they could arrange sending in daily food for 1 million people!!! Certainly they would not do it like that but rather in a step approach as well as armies carrying their own minimal stocks.

You can thus safely guess that the Persian king would not just bring their daily wheat portion but actually would bring even their favourite grandmothers' candies! Monday, Persian goat a la creme, Tuesday Median lentils with bacon, Wednesday Phrygian pizza with Ionian wine! Ok kidding but really do not think that supplying all that army was that difficult. Own minimal stocks, constant ship provisions, purchases from local allies, over-taxing from local vassals and common looting from conquered ones more than covered the needs without much anxiety - this as long as the army was on the winning momentum. On the other side, any losing army (losing safety of traderoutes and support of allies and vassals) would eventually face supply provisions. But Persians came in great numbers simply to avoid that possibility!

I guess that the largest part of the supplies came by ship and not by land or looting (Greeks did apply scorched earth tactics commonly afterall). Why on earth would anyone go to the extend of cutting a whole peninsula (at Chalkidiki)? Just out of personal idiocy following an earlier tragic event (as so many suggested in the past?). Of course not. This not only saved half-a-day voyage cutting throughput times but mostly enabled avoiding going to open sea where southern Greek navies could try to disrupt their lines. He would not spend time and ressources to cut it just to pass a military navy. The idea was to have a continuous supply line of many ships passing per day there throughout the year of the campaign. Notice how Persians moved for the most coastally. This was not done because they did not know how to sail but because they passed their cargo ships from own protected areas avoiding the risky open sea.

Complex yes. Extra-expensive yes. But totally feasible. Not just for 400,000 soldiers (+800,000 logistics) but for double that number though I would not jump to propose so - I guess 400,000 should be esteemed as enough for the task. Anything below 300,000 soldiers would be considered as very few given that even the 1/4th of Greeks could eventually amass more than 100,000 men. Persians had all the knowledge on roughly how many Greeks lived in Greece. They did seem to have knowledge how many ships are there and of course who is who.

While I would not also comment on the upper 5 million estimate, I do also believe that lower 1-2 million estimates among ancient writers and their inbetween numbers depends on the definition of who could be counted as part of the campaign and who was not. Personally i am surprised that 19th-early 20th century writers dismissed figures so easily, evidently out of their own preconceived ideas that as-if more modern armies like that of Napoleon were in better place to provide for food, for Napoleon this being for more than 500,000 soldiers walking all the way to cold distant Moscow rather than Persians who among every other advantage they had (border proximity, local vassals and allies, better roads, long established centralised Imperial logistics and planning) they had the added HUGE advantage of support by ships!

Nikos (Νικάνωρ)

[Robert Vermaat]

Macedon does however explain quite clearly how it would be feasible for the army to have been quite large, and the Persians capable of raising it and supplying it.

Indeed he does! But to me that's also where it ends - in pure theory.
Of course it could be possible, humanly speaking, if you had the time, the power, the means.
But that is my point in all this (and of Roach also, I suspect) is the lack of hard evidence. I mean, no-one takes Herodotus literally here, but if we follow this through, what do we have?

Preparation:
An operation of this size must have taken years to prepare. The logistics of it all must have been staggering. I mean, look at what was done before Normandy 1944! And that with only a tribal-based feudalist iron Age society, the pace with which such plans could have been implemented must have been a good deal slower than what the Allies needed – and that was months and months.

Next, where do you put all those men? And how do you control all of them?
Suppose the larger part of the army would assemble in one or two spots, perhaps more, and march in separate columns towards Europe (I keep thinking of Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions of Russia) to keep a grip on them. But even in 3 or 4 groups, the strain on the countryside (friendly countryside) must have been enormous.
So do we have any indication where this could have taken place? Camps for hundreds of thousands of men?

The same goes for the fleets, which would have been essential for transport and supplies while the army was in Greece – I think everybody will agree with me that supply lines over land would have been to long and would have needed too much transport to even contemplate them as feasible.
Where would these fleets assemble? Or would we have to think of a great number of smaller fleets, each commanded separately?

For both land and sea forces, the same problem would occur: how do you control them? Persia was a feudalist state, I doubt very much that they would have been able to control each army and fleet from a central point, and I just do not see how an operation like this could have relied on commanders operating independently.

Infrastructure

So I suppose that this was prepared in advance, by setting up storage facilities for food, water (especially water!), complete with live animals and their fodder.
Where are these facilities? There must have been dozens and dozens, each very large, for all the grain, non-perishable food, water, fodder and containment pens for the large herds of animals.

This is where many later armies failed. They could not get the supplies to the troops, even when organized far better than Xerxes. So how could he have managed where they all failed?

Is there any evidence for storage facilities where the fleets could have picked up their loads? I mean, this was so huge (and see my point on command) that it’s almost impossible to expect each city, island and region to act independently as a supply base.

Invasion

Next stop: Greece. Where did they put their supplies when in enemy territory? Even when we suppose that the ships dropped anchor on the coast and left their supplies there, what? How long was the column of this army, how were supplies distributed over so many men? How did the ships know where to head, as it would be impossible to communicate the advance of the troops to the fleets, apart from with a delay of days at best and probably weeks? The troops would have to starve or take all from the enemy.
Or, there would have been pre-arranged harbors that were set up after they were reached by the army? Same problem, but at least there would have been supplies coming in.
Essentially, the army would have been able to gather enough supplies from the enemy, in case the fleets did not come through (storms, enemy action, logistical mistakes being quite to be expected).
But then, if supplies by sea would have been so very difficult to organize, command and control, could Xerxes have even relied on that?

Concluding, it’s these practical problems that to me make this theory impossible to put into practice.