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Persian Invasion of 480 BC - articles
#46
Quote:What bothers me about the assertion that Alexander's army was larger than the Persian ones it fought, is that a conviction that our ancestors were inveterate exaggerators of numbers (which they may have been, although I don't personally believe it) has led you, Inaki, to ignore completely the fact that Persia was a great empire, fighting on its own territory, you let this theory blind you to the self-evident. As I have said before, if you minimise the achievements of the Greeks, you also minimise those of the Persians, who were demonstrably excellent organisers.
I am not here to minimise anything, but to ellucidate what is within logical parameters. To me, historians of the Classic World, including military historians, ignore logistics and put too much faith in unreliable sources when talking about numbers. About the Persian army being smaller is just a logical conclusion of logistics and the different nature of the armies, besides the more logical explanation for the Persian manouvers at Issus, for instance.
AKA Inaki
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#47
Ok, here's an important question. Throughout history, has it always been logistical problems that have limited the size of an army? I'm not convinced that providing logistical support for a large army is as difficult as we are imagining.

Medieval armies were small, but the warring states were also small, and the troops demanded pay in coin. Imagine if all the active fighting forces in medieval Europe, instead of fighting each other, were mobilized to fight for a single cause, the resulting army might be very large. All these forces are being logistically supported anyway, it is only their multiple causes that divide them in to smaller groups, not logistics.

If a large number of small states can support a small army each, why can't a large empire field a correspondingly large army?
Rich Marinaccio
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#48
Quote:Ok, here's an important question. Throughout history, has it always been logistical problems that have limited the size of an army? I'm not convinced that providing logistical support for a large army is as difficult as we are imagining.

Medieval armies were small, but the warring states were also small, and the troops demanded pay in coin. Imagine if all the active fighting forces in medieval Europe, instead of fighting each other, were mobilized to fight for a single cause, the resulting army might be very large. All these forces are being logistically supported anyway, it is only their multiple causes that divide them in to smaller groups, not logistics.

If a large number of small states can support a small army each, why can't a large empire field a correspondingly large army?
You may be confusing two different things, a global force and a field army, at least all my points have always been about the size of field armies. For a global force, the limit lies in the organizational and financial limits of the states, but for field armies logistics is the basic limit, id est, the whole of Medieval Europe for sure can raise a large army, say 150.00, but that would be a global force, no way that force could march together as a field army, it is not a matter of gold, but of logistics, there was no administrative structures, organizational skills, road networks, transport facilities etc to make that possible.
AKA Inaki
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#49
Quote: About the Persian army being smaller is just a logical conclusion of logistics and the different nature of the armies, besides the more logical explanation for the Persian manouvers at Issus, for instance.

Sorry, but I think your logic is based on faulty premises, particularly with regard to logistics.
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#50
Quote:[
Ok, I would like to hear what are your ideas on the subject, what do you think is a reasonable number for a field army based on logistics? and on what grounds?
AKA Inaki
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#51
Quote:Ok, here's an important question. Throughout history, has it always been logistical problems that have limited the size of an army? I'm not convinced that providing logistical support for a large army is as difficult as we are imagining.
Logistics have always limite the size of field armies of substantial states. The problem is worst for armies inland, because grain can only be hauled from a radius of a few dozen miles before your pack animals and bearers are eating most of their load carrying it to the troops. In an area with low-density agriculture and no decent roads an army can very quickly eat all the available supplies and be forced to move on or starve. (This may have been why Darius III advanced into Cilicia from western Syria before Issus). Water transport is 10 to 100 times cheaper, which is why great premodern cities are almost always on rivers, lakes, or the seacoast, and is why I think we cannot rule out Xerxes having invaded Greece with over 100,000 people (not all soldiers). However, the need to march out of camp in the morning through narrow gates, move through passes and over bridges, etc. also tends to limit the size of a practical field army. Engels' Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is the usual reference for these difficulties.
Nullis in verba

I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
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#52
Quote:
floofthegoof:mjsh8tpq Wrote:.
Water transport is 10 to 100 times cheaper, which is why great premodern cities are almost always on rivers, lakes, or the seacoast, and is why I think we cannot rule out Xerxes having invaded Greece with over 100,000 people (not all soldiers). .
Yes, that is sensible, Herodotus himself says "These things were being done by Xerxes thus; and meanwhile he caused ropes also to be prepared for the bridges, made of papyrus and of white flax,[26] appointing this to the Phenicians and Egyptians; and also he was making preparations to store provisions for his army on the way, that neither the army itself nor the baggage animals might suffer from scarcity, as they made their march against Hellas. Accordingly, when he had learnt by inquiry of the various places, he bade them make stores where it was most convenient, carrying supplies to different parts by merchant ships and ferry-boats from all the countries of Asia. So they conveyed the greater part of the corn[27] to the place which is called Leuke Acte in Thrace, while others conveyed stores to Tyrodiza of the Perinthians, others to Doriscos, others to Eïon on the Strymon, and others to Macedonia, the work being distributed between them". VII 25
but right after he says "the whole land-army had been assembled together and was marching with Xerxes to Sardis, setting forth from Critalla in Cappadokia; for there it had been ordered that the whole army should assemble, which was to go with Xerxes himself by the land" VII 26. So we have the whole Persian army marching by inland before taking on the coastal route. However if we are to discard completely Herodotus testimony and talk only about logistic possibilities, I think 100.000+ including non combatants is probably just within the top, and I personally suggested that number in the first thread discussing this topic. That give us around 50.000 combatants, still a very large army but not impossibly large.
AKA Inaki
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#53
Quote: The problem is worst for armies inland, because grain can only be hauled from a radius of a few dozen miles before your pack animals and bearers are eating most of their load carrying it to the troops.

I don't think this is true. I myself have hiked a dozen miles with just a small bag of snacks. A mule with a cart, or a man with a cart, could haul enough food to keep himself going for hundreds of miles, without any foraging at all. I'm not sure what the distance is before you've eaten your food, but the milage has to be much greater than a just a few dozen. Pioneers in the early United states could journey for thousands of miles in a covered wagon with no roads at all and very little knowledge of what they were up against. Not all of them made it alive, but many did. The logistics problems of a large army are just the current paradigm of thought, based on pure theory. I haven't seen evidence to convince me.

Also, we keep hearing about non-combatants. I find it very hard to believe that you can have half your army doing nothing while marching, and the other half doing nothing while the battle is raging. That cuts your logistical supply in half right there for no good reason. If you can hold a spear, you're a fighter. I have never read in any ancient source, about what happened to the supposed thousands of non-combatants in the enemy camp when a battle was won. "Um.. Hi. We're non-combatants, and um.. we'll just be going home now since we lost and all. Congrats on the victory." I have read many times in those sources of the need to keep soldiers busy to prevent various kinds of trouble from them. I think the average soldier could handle driving a mule cart. It sure beats marching!
Rich Marinaccio
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#54
Quote:[...]
Also, we keep hearing about non-combatants. I find it very hard to believe that you can have half your army doing nothing while marching, and the other half doing nothing while the battle is raging. That cuts your logistical supply in half right there for no good reason. If you can hold a spear, you're a fighter. I have never read in any ancient source, about what happened to the supposed thousands of non-combatants in the enemy camp when a battle was won. "Um.. Hi. We're non-combatants, and um.. we'll just be going home now since we lost and all. Congrats on the victory." I have read many times in those sources of the need to keep soldiers busy to prevent various kinds of trouble from them. I think the average soldier could handle driving a mule cart. It sure beats marching!
Sure, the soldiers could handle the mules on the march, but then who would handle them when the soldiers are off fighting? Modern armies, which have no slaves, servants or civilians accompanying them, have a very large percentage of support troops.
drsrob a.k.a. Rob Wolters
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#55
In response to two issues, Inaki's and Rich's:

The presence of noncombatants and soldiers not with the main field army needs to be considered, as just posted above. In Classical hoplite armies, each hoplite had a servant/slave to carry his panoply between battles; the minimum number of mouths is 2X the number of hoplites involved. Some of these other men may have fought as psiloi, but it is not certain that most or all of them did, and their importance in battle was not that great (as far as we can tell). Similarly, soldiers in garrisons, convoys, and scouting all had to be paid and fed, but may not be counted as part of a field army; cases have already been cited where the actual numbers in the main force is a fraction of the overall numbers involved. In some cases, like a chevauchee, the whole force is pretty much at hand, but any force which occupies territory (on offense or on defense) has some of its soldiers tied down away from the main force.
Felix Wang
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#56
Quote:
Sean Manning:1lcmpopb Wrote:The problem is worst for armies inland, because grain can only be hauled from a radius of a few dozen miles before your pack animals and bearers are eating most of their load carrying it to the troops.

I don't think this is true. I myself have hiked a dozen miles with just a small bag of snacks. A mule with a cart, or a man with a cart, could haul enough food to keep himself going for hundreds of miles, without any foraging at all. I'm not sure what the distance is before you've eaten your food, but the milage has to be much greater than a just a few dozen. Pioneers in the early United states could journey for thousands of miles in a covered wagon with no roads at all and very little knowledge of what they were up against. Not all of them made it alive, but many did. The logistics problems of a large army are just the current paradigm of thought, based on pure theory. I haven't seen evidence to convince me.
It is a scientific fact that a healthy man needs at least 3 lbs of wheat or the equivalent a day when doing heavy labour. If he gets less than this, than he slowly starves. Historical precedents support this. This was the weight of a ration in the American Civil War, for example, even though the Union could afford to include a significant amount of meat in the diet. I bet you were hiking for one (or at most a few) days, in mild weather, with modern shoes and lightweight gear of alloys and synthetics. Try it with 60-80 lbs of gear on your back, for weeks on end, and I suspect you'd want more to eat each day. It is a matter of historical fact that well-attested field armies don't rise over 100,000 people except in very unusual circumstances.

Noncombatants in the enemy camp were dealt with when looting it. The results were similar to, and just as ugly as, the sack of a town. See Xenophon's account of Cunaxa, where the Persians reached the Cyrian camp and were held off for a short time by a few camp followers who grabbed weapons, or the Alexander historians' accounts of the aftermath of Issus where Alexander protected the captured household of Darius III.
Nullis in verba

I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
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#57
Quote:[Ok, I would like to hear what are your ideas on the subject, what do you think is a reasonable number for a field army based on logistics? and on what grounds?

I think we tend to view all such questions through the dark glass of a modern mind. Even using medieval or earlier records as a starting point seems to me to be likely to produce distortions. I think slaves and servants in the Persian army would have made a contribution as combatants as well as bearers; I think ancient warriors were accustomed to minimal home comforts when they were at home and therefore were able to cope with great hardships on campaign; I think their generals were quite at ease with the idea that their men might be half-starved and exhausted by the end of a campaign, as this was only to be expected; I think they were also happy to send unfit men into battle, as they were great believers in the theory of the big battalions (i.e., that God is on their side); I think that they were also ruthless in exploiting the territory through which they marched; I think that their need to garrison conquered territory would be much reduced, given the fact that they took the conquered nation's manpower with them on their further march; I think they would have rested the sick and injured in garrison roles, as every army does; I think the shock troops would have been kept in peak fighting trim, with special rations, at the expense of the "dory-fodder"; I think the Persians planned long and carefully before committing their Empire to the campaign and they prepared long-range advance depots, as well as using their naval superiority to re-supply from the sea ( "10-100 times cheaper"). My reasoning is based on Herodotos, whom I do not perceive as totally discredited, although I would still not accept his figures as necessarily 100% accurate.

What figure would I put on the size of the Persian army, then? I can't put a figure on it without a lot more data; which is one of the reasons for my challenging the willingness of others to assert that it must have been a great deal smaller than claimed. You grudgingly concede that a top figure of 100, 000 might be possible, but then immediately slash the fighting force by half.

I think what people would like to know is; How many men fought for the Persians at Thermopylae? Every part of the Greek strategy was aimed at reducing this number to something they might conceivably cope with, so they may have hoped that the kind of problems you cite would have the effect you propose. However, being forced to let the largest area of top-quality farmland in all of Greece, fall into enemy hands, doesn't quite accord with this. So what conclusions do I draw? Xerxes could raise and move a huge army, given the resources available to him. An army in the rangeof 100,000 to 300,000 should not be ruled out. How many of these were combatants? Insufficient data for a conclusion. I do think that the defenders of Thermopylae may have been outnumbered at a rate of 16:1 and up to 50:1. Figures of up to 300,000 for the army have been regarded as acceptable by people who have gathered as much data as they can. It seems that we differ in that your top estimate, which allows for exaggeration by a multiple of [b]30[/b], is my bottom one.
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#58
Quote:It is a scientific fact that a healthy man needs at least 3 lbs of wheat or the equivalent a day when doing heavy labour. If he gets less than this, than he slowly starves. Historical precedents support this.

This makes sense, but the man is going to need most of this no matter how he might be employed. That's the thing. An empire has X amount of men and pack animals doing whatever it is they do, and I don't see how moving them to a concentrated location into foreign territory drastically increases their needs. I'm sure that food of various types was transported all over the vast Persian empire, making a trip to Greece cannot be a big deal transport wise. If you were marching across a wasteland, there would certainly be a limit to how far you could penetrate, but you're likely to find some nice grazing land and water on the way, which would extend your range by quite a lot. As your food load lightens, you can also get something back from eating the extra pack animals. That might seem kinda gross to eat a mule, but Xerxes men were eating grass and tree bark on the way back. Not fun.

If a few dozen miles was the extent that grain could be transported without eating it all, there could be no profitable land-based trade in grain, or any type of food, which I'm pretty sure there was... Am I wrong?
Rich Marinaccio
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#59
Quote:
Aryaman2:21ad9exk Wrote:[Ok, I would like to hear what are your ideas on the subject, what do you think is a reasonable number for a field army based on logistics? and on what grounds?

I think we tend to view all such questions through the dark glass of a modern mind. Even using medieval or earlier records as a starting point seems to me to be likely to produce distortions. I think slaves and servants in the Persian army would have made a contribution as combatants as well as bearers; I think ancient warriors were accustomed to minimal home comforts when they were at home and therefore were able to cope with great hardships on campaign; I think their generals were quite at ease with the idea that their men might be half-starved and exhausted by the end of a campaign, as this was only to be expected; I think they were also happy to send unfit men into battle, as they were great believers in the theory of the big battalions (i.e., that God is on their side); I think that they were also ruthless in exploiting the territory through which they marched; I think that their need to garrison conquered territory would be much reduced, given the fact that they took the conquered nation's manpower with them on their further march; I think they would have rested the sick and injured in garrison roles, as every army does; I think the shock troops would have been kept in peak fighting trim, with special rations, at the expense of the "dory-fodder"; I think the Persians planned long and carefully before committing their Empire to the campaign and they prepared long-range advance depots, as well as using their naval superiority to re-supply from the sea ( "10-100 times cheaper"). My reasoning is based on Herodotos, whom I do not perceive as totally discredited, although I would still not accept his figures as necessarily 100% accurate.

What figure would I put on the size of the Persian army, then? I can't put a figure on it without a lot more data; which is one of the reasons for my challenging the willingness of others to assert that it must have been a great deal smaller than claimed. You grudgingly concede that a top figure of 100, 000 might be possible, but then immediately slash the fighting force by half.

I think what people would like to know is; How many men fought for the Persians at Thermopylae? Every part of the Greek strategy was aimed at reducing this number to something they might conceivably cope with, so they may have hoped that the kind of problems you cite would have the effect you propose. However, being forced to let the largest area of top-quality farmland in all of Greece, fall into enemy hands, doesn't quite accord with this. So what conclusions do I draw? Xerxes could raise and move a huge army, given the resources available to him. An army in the rangeof 100,000 to 300,000 should not be ruled out. How many of these were combatants? Insufficient data for a conclusion. I do think that the defenders of Thermopylae may have been outnumbered at a rate of 16:1 and up to 50:1. Figures of up to 300,000 for the army have been regarded as acceptable by people who have gathered as much data as they can. It seems that we differ in that your top estimate, which allows for exaggeration by a multiple of [b]30[/b], is my bottom one.
1) I can´t share your opinion that ancient soldiers somehow were tougher than medieval or modern soldiers, the pains that French soldiers endured in Russia, for instance, have little parallels, and there were plenty of armies that starved to death
2) Figures lower than 100.000 combatants have been regarded as acceptable by many senior scholars
3) You accept 300.000, so you are willing to accept that Herodotus greatly inflated figures, why stop at 300.000 once Herodotus numbars are discarded?
AKA Inaki
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#60
Quote:[
1) I can´t share your opinion that ancient soldiers somehow were tougher than medieval or modern soldiers,

I have expressed no such opinion; rather, I said the ancients were more accustomed to privation.

Quote: the pains that French soldiers endured in Russia, for instance, have little parallels, and there were plenty of armies that starved to death

You appear to be agreeing with me.

Quote:2) Figures lower than 100.000 combatants have been regarded as acceptable by many senior scholars.

You made this point earlier. I then pointed out that figures above have also been seen as acceptable. What have you to say to that?

Quote:3) You accept 300.000,

No, I expressed the opinion that it is a possibility, backed up by historians with much greater authority than mine.

Quote:so you are willing to accept that Herodotus greatly inflated figures,

No, I'm not. I was just allowing for the fact that you believe it.

Quote: why stop at 300.000 once Herodotus numbars are discarded?

Why, indeed? But I don't discard his numbers.
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