10-26-2006, 08:49 AM
Quote:You think the ancients were better able to withstand privation than early modern peasants?
No, I think they were better able to withstand privation than modern soldiers. I hadn't considered early modern armies as a point of comparison. What exactly do you mean by the term?
Quote: Urban poor and landless peasants were the recruiting base for early modern armies, which never raised more than 50,000 to 100,000 men in a field army.
So, you're not including early nineteenth-century armies, like Napoleon's 500,000?
Quote: If ancient soldiers needed less food, they were weaker and could carry less. That 3 lbs of grain figure has a wide support as a basic diet across peasants in different cultures, if I recall some readings correctly.
I've heard it said that the burden of a soldier changes little over the ages, being usually around 60lbs. I don't agree that this would apply to all the troop types in Xerxes army. His light-armed troops would have had less to carry than his Immortals. It's also claimed that one factor in the Persians' failure was that they were more lightly armed and armoured, generally, than the Greeks, which conflicts with the 60lb rule.
[
I know. We're not concerned with the Greeks and elites are, by definition, minorities. Which begs the question; How big an army has an elite shock force of 10,000?
