05-19-2005, 08:40 PM
The biggest mistake I think he is making concerns the number of army followers. This number is very suspicious. I think H. is assuming that the number of followers would scale up evenly with the number of troops. It would seem to me that any army, so long as it was large enough to cause a commotion, would attract the same number of followers from the lands it passed through as any other army. A 3000 man army might well attract 12,000 followers on it's march, but that in no way indicates that there are 4 million people in those same lands waiting around for a milion man army to come along. The amount of followers would seem to me to be completely dependent on the number of people who were actually watching when the army passed through their territory. I'm sure all the people who wanted to follow would do so, no matter the size of the army.
Rich Marinaccio
