Medieval Warfare: Logistics
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ส.ค. 2018
- Logistics in Medieval Warfare played a key role, although for a long time there was a view that there were no proper logistical system in the "Dark Ages", this has been largely debunked. Since large army operated for extended periods in enemy territory and we also have quite a paper trail in some cases. This video also covers the benefits and drawbacks of pack animals, carts and wagons. The difference between stall-feeding and grazing. The importance of militias and magnates. As well, as the basic differences to the Roman Empire and food requirements for men and beast.
Be sure to check out my other Medieval/Middle Ages videos here:
Medieval Castles - Functions & Characteristics (1000-1300) - • [Medieval] Castles - F...
Medieval Castles - Elements of Fortifications - • Medieval Castles - Ele...
Medieval Warfare - Warfare in the Middle Ages - • Warfare in the Middle ...
Trebuchet - • [Weapons 101] Trebuche...
Medieval Archer and Bow - Unit 101 - • [Unit 101] Archer and ...
Viking Warfare Debunked - Myths vs. Realities - • [Debunked] Viking Warf...
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Military History NOT Visualized is a support channel to Military History Visualized with a focus personal accounts, answering questions that arose on the main channel and showcasing events like visiting museums, using equipment or military hardware.
» SOURCES «
Bachrach, Bernard S.; Bachrach, David S.: Warfare in Medieval Europe c.400-c.1453. Routledge: New York, 2017.
Nicolle, David: Medieval Warfare Source Book: Volume I: Warfare in the Western Christendom. Arms and Armor Press: London, 1996.
France, John: Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300
Contamine, Philippe: War in the Middle Ages
Bradbury, Jim: The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare
Ohler, Norbert: Krieg & Frieden im Mittelalter
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The medieval style of gathering forces survived for a long time in Poland as "Pospolite ruszenie" and people participating in that (minor nobility called szlachta) usually could afford having their own wagons of supplies, which were in fact often loaded with quite luxurious goods, too allow for comfortable living during the campaign. Which in turn often caused trouble as szlachta was slow to gather, slow to move, reluctant to leave the wagons behind, not in a hurry to leave the camp especially at the start of the campaign and at times prone to panic if the wagons were threatened by the enemy (or in at least one case, if a rumour has spread that they were).
I'd like to chip in, as a long time draft animal enthusiast...
firstly, i'm very surprised that you didn't mention oxen. oxen were very important in the past for pulling carts and were much better than horses because of following:
1. their anatomy allows them a stronger pull, for their size
2. due to cloven feet they can drag loads through mud where horses - a steppe animal - gets stuck. in fact, oxen are still indispensable wherever roads are really, really bad.
3. they can also be eaten without ideological considerations
4. THEY DONT NEED EXTRA FODDER. oxen, being ruminants are much more efficient than horses in converting grass to energy, so especially smaller, hardier oxen can pull wagons during day and graze at night.
sure, oxen also have their drawbacks; they are slower, but on bad roads you're slow anyways, and they don't take heat very well (but it's Europe, so...)
secondly, on wagons and carts and whatnot, two remarks:
1. i dont think that the efficiency difference was that large. for example, a cart carrying 1 tonne has 1 tonne per axle, or wagon carrying 2 tonnes, again 1 tonne per axle - what's the difference, really? if anything, wagons tend to be lower than carts and therefore have a lower point of gravity. oh and also a single teamster can control up to 10 oxen in wagon, while for multiple carts you need multiple drivers.
2. on wheels.... some wheels get stuck in mud, some not as easily. solid wheels are not easily stuck because mud doesnt have to what to stick, whereas with spokes, mud sticks. so, when you see solid wheels, it's indication of muddy conditions more than a primitive design.
excellent comment
Thanks
@@dutchrjen With malice towards none: I just don't see where your argument is coming from or where it is going. It would seem that the more pertinent metric for what you are discussing would be the moment of inertia. In that case, for wheels of the same mass, a spoked wheel would likely have a higher moment of inertia than a solid wheel. Since moment of inertia can be taken as a metric of how hard it is to get a wheel to start turning, going from a spoked wheel to a solid wheel would allow one to slightly increase the mass of the wheel without making it harder to rotate.
That said, I think those would probably be fairly marginal differences. I am still not quite sure what you are thinking the main problem would be. I think the advantages the original poster suggested would far outweigh any considerations based on angular momentum, at least in this context of medieval wagons.
@@dutchrjen thanks for that insightful comment
You are one of the few people for which i get my notebook out because you have so much interesting information :)
A few counterarguments:
- Some types of horses can graze on pure grass, particularly the nomadic groups' light cavalry. Mongol horses were particularly renowned for being able to forage on their own. For many countries such as Eastern European nations, they would exploit nomadic light cavalry (often as mercenaries) precisely because they needed little logistical backup.
- Byzantium military doctrine actively noted that "Latins" (western Europeans) have inadequate logistics compared to their own or Islamic armies, and thus it was preferable to avoid pitched battles at first and harass supplies/foraging for tactical advantages.
I'm no expert regarding horses, but AFAIK, herbivores need to spend a lot of time eating, since grass has few calories and proteins. If you chase horses around a lot and give them little time to eat, they'll need something with higher nutritional value...
not 100 % sure, but I think I mentioned that ponies can be sustained with grass...
@MHV you did. But not all nomadic horses were small enough to be categorized as 'ponies'. We certainly don't think of mongol horses as 'mongol ponies'.
rather sure, that some source referred to them as ponies.
Come on, ALL horse graze on grass. It is a matter of how much time you can afford a horse to feed on its own. During the Han Dynasty, Chinese learnt from the Xiongniu to feed their horse with grain and grew them stronger. The story on Mongolia is not true. Mongolian also had heavy calvary, which meant their horse must also fed on grain instead of natural grass. Beside, Mongolian was known to ride non-stop day and night, absolutely no time for normal feeding.
AFAIK The University of Birmingham in the UK, some years ago, used agent-based modelling, focused on logistics of ancient battles, and the effect of logistics on the potential for victory. I don't have any links to papers, but it might be worth searching for. It's essentially automated wargaming, run many times with many slightly different parameters and some randomness to find a likely outcome. Of course it can depend on assumptions about the actual state of forces. But I call this the "Have they had their Weetabix?" theory of ancient warfare. Some is probably applicable to medieval warfare.
People at Creative Assembly need to watch this video.
Instructions unclear. Watches The Mummy and Braveheart instead.
Seriously though if you want something approaching historical there have been some good mods put out.
@@somethinglikethat2176 I really enjoy the mods that include supply lines and population. Feels better to manage your people that way than just magically producing doomstacks
Dark Ages? Like before the internet? Gnarly. ; )
The primary logistical mover of the Middle Ages, and all other ages, were ships. Edward I moved most of his supplies in ships up the English coast to nearby harbors. Everyone who had access to a river used boats and ships for supplies. Even hundreds of years later, General Grant picked the Eastern Virginia route because he could supply his vast army by ship. The recent Lend-Lease video showed the importance of using ships to haul vast quantities of materiel.
There is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to wagons and pack animals. They need close supply depots and magazines to function effectively, or they will use up most supplies just feeding animals and drivers. Every major army spent months building up supplies before going on campaign.
Horses were rarely used to pull carts and wagons. They were too expensive and hard to replace. Carts and wagons were usually pulled by oxen. These comments are just the tip of the iceberg.
It also never gets noted, but almost every Medieval army spent a considerable amount of time hungry and even starving. The quest for food was almost endless.
After realising how complicated warfare and logistics were back in Medieval times, I see why the Swiss decided to become neutral.
Nice joke and I am apologizing for having to make a comment BUT during medieval times the Swiss were involved in tons of conflicts and the neutrality as we know it today was only established during the congress of Vienna in 1815, so more than 300 years too late if they wanted to avoid medieval logistics.
Also I would assume that the logistics changed quite a bit during medieval times-remember we are talking about almost 1000 years here and as he mentioned those were not as Dark Ages as was thought for a long time so there were developments.
Think about different methods in administration, developments in metallurgy, tool making and agriculture which changes the amount of people that a certain amount of farmers could supply thus freeing other people to different tasks. Epidemics doing the opposite and strengthening the position of farmers in relation to their lords, developments in weaponry and war tactics which changes when and where you need your supplies and so on and so on.
Just comparing Roman to Medieval is a bit short and needs to be specified. It would be the same as say comparing Medieval logistics to Modern era logistics without saying if for Modern Era you are talking about the Swedish army during the 30 years war or the French Army during World War I or the FPR during the civil war in Rwanda.
Swiss neutrality is a modern development, after the battle of Morgarten in 1315 they were much sought after mercenaries.
All hail logistics!
We're not the spearhead, we're the shaft
The long hard shaft
AMEN
Hail! so that our men don't eat their own boots!
Amateurs talk tactics professionals talk logistics.
I heard this video might also be relevant to German WWII logistics.
Meow
999⁹99999999999999999999999
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized 😂😂😂😂 did not expect that from you
What were you thinking? You have horses! Say hello to Ford and General Motors!
"I haven't tried this" - I can't fathom why you haven't tried using bells to send large herds of animals in the proper direction. Does this create a void in your life? :-p
you know wikipedia's "citation needed" marks, well, for various stuff in my head I have "verification needed".
I just pictured you herding 2000 cows through vienna. "But officer, I was testing something for a video."
There _has_ to be somebody in the USA with land, animals, and enough of their brain on the spectrum to just dive right in on this.
I don't know, ask around on 4chan, you'll probably find somebody.
I'll volunteer that info: Yes it works BUT, you do need to train the first "followers" because livestock operate in group-think (aka herd mentality) so if you train the first ten animals the other hundred will follow.
I find it easier to "Pavlov Bell" them home when hay is being put out. No more open ranges out west anymore.
All Day. I think you can find some open ranges in Texas, Arizona and Idaho.
Great video! These are great points in historical warfare that I haven’t thought much about.
Do some detailed analysis into Mongol logistics. They didn’t just solve the issue of supply but also had an effective long range communications system that allowed the 13th century version of mobile warfare, permitting troops to disperse but reform for combat very quickly.
Totally Awesome video Sir. Never knew any of this stuff and it makes the middle ages make alot more sense. I am so happy to learn and understand more of our past and i am indebted to you for bringing me this joy!!! ♥️ 👍
13:12 - 13:30 Now I think I finally understand why Machiavelli pointed out how much easier it is to conquer an area with strong nobility compared to one with only central government. Not only could the local nobles turn their coat and give their troops and forts to the invader instead of the current ruler (which was the obvious asset). But more importantly, the lords could supply the invader and thus keep the campaign running long enough to achieve something.
Explains how England was able to rule large parts of France before Castillon. Also the "overmighty subject" problem during the Wars of the Roses.
Okay one problem I have With your assessment. When talking about horses you use a source that says that 50% of a horse's nutrition comes from grains and you make it sound like the horse is eating an equal amount of grain and grass. This is doubtful as grains are more nutritionally dense than grass. For example I have Percheron draft horses, each weighing about 1 ton (2000lbs) which are considerably larger than medieval horses, but they eat about 50 lbs of grass hay and only about 2 lbs of grain every day. This is an important distinction as grass can likely be found on the war path but grain had to be brought along
I guess it's a 50% on nutrition
He said that if a soldier was a horseman, he needed 450 kilos of foodstuff instead of the 250, so you can make the assumption that horses ate like 2 kilos of grain or something (probably some low nutrition garbage like oats or something).
Could you do a vid on late 14th to late 15th century usage (tactical and strategic implementation) of firearms? Touching on the designs used as well?
The number of armies that have been lost because the upper echelon plans revolved entirely around, "we'll use captured supplies to sustain our offensive" is truly staggering.
I read that the Ottoman army at the second Siege of Vienna had when they started out from Turkey around 400.000 men, just actual fighting soldiers. Only 170 thousand ended up before the city Vienna the rest was stationed, killed in other battles/sieges along the way or died for different reasons, probably also desertions. At the famous ending battle itself just 120 thousand were still alive.
It's actually pretty astonishing even from todays perspective but it's also no wonder the Ottoman empire bleed out because they lead such campaigns all the time.
I for one want to hear more about the paper trail that King Edward's campaigns created.
Even the earliest rulesets for D&D emphasized encumbrance and food for travel. Which was a pain and were increasingly ignored as the players morphed from the first hardcore wargamers to more casuals. But there are still OSG guys who play the older, more realistic way.
I had feeling that it wasn't just romans that had logistics, or were good at them. If you have an army of even just 100 people, you need logistics of some sort.
I quite agree with you, and I’ll go further.
The “fall” of the Western Roman Empire was a slow process. Although there was a significant breakdown in the empire’s government and a reduction in trade, Roman society didn’t disappear.
It’s important to note that in the centuries before the fall, Rome was already employing “barbarian” tribes in their armies, sometimes as discrete armies (large units) and sometimes as individual mercenaries. It’s hard to believe that the Germans and Gauls somehow forgot about logistics as Roman influence waned, while not forgetting about military engineering (as used in sieges and fortifications). The so-called barbarian tribes didn’t suddenly forget what they had learned from the Romans.
There is no doubt that following the political and economic breakdown, society became more primitive, more agrarian, less urban. Cities became depopulated, people moved to the countryside and engaged in subsistence farming. A new political/economic system arose from these changes. There was less material wealth to support learning and preservation of knowledge (but it did continue to a lesser degree), less wealth to support arts and other material aspects of an urban culture.
A minor detail. Richard 1 of England actually ruled the Western half of modern France which was his main base. I think he visited England once and that was to raise money for his Crusader escapades. Apparently transporting horses by ship was a nightmare. Consider their needs for water and fodder. Thank you for considering this matter. I find it interesting.
Logistics has always been an important thing that unfortunately most people ignored
Do you have any information about how the medieval fasts affected the logistics? Fish and especially whale fat (used instead of lard) seem like things that would be particularly hard to acquire through foraging. I've read somewhere (I think in Distant Mirror) that fast days sometimes comprised a third or even half of days in a year, so providing fast-appropriate foods for the troops seems like an important part of the puzzle. Taking into account the Battle of the Herrings clearly at least some effort was put into supplying that.
Sadly, no idea. I might forward this question to one of the authors.
I just remembered - the number of fast days in a year in a medieval period comes from "Salt: a World History" - an interesting book on it's own.
Is it possible that fast days were waived while on campaign?
Got an answer already:
"Religious facts take place during daylight hours. Thus, a predawn breakfast and a post dusk dinner means that a fast would omit lunch. Since the soldier might eat more breakfast and more dinner than on normal conditions any logistic impact would likely be rather small." (Prof. Bernard Bachrach)
A very interesting observation. That is a much different approach to fasting, in a way more alike to Ramadan than to modern catholic practice. This would also explain how people managed to cope with that many fast days.
I thought you would be mainly good at modern warfare but this has really help to understand medieval Warfare
There are certain constants that have remained over 1,000's of years of warfare, for instance how much men need to eat how much equipment they can carry the advantages of defence terrain and weather etc.
No we need a game which focuses on supply chain and the challenges of moving resources and supplying the moving armies, instead of just substracting it from your God's control panel.
Jared Diamond did some research on the logistics of pre-industrial warfare in _Guns germs and steel_ in particular the important role of the potato for its high protein to weight ratio, it enabled much longer campaigns.
To expand on Bernhard's point about plunder.
Plunder did work for the early phase of The Hundred Years War(s), but as time passed the depradations caused the various French factions to quickly fortify both the noble demesnes and the peasant villages (usually using the local church as a strongpoint). This explains why The Black Prince's chevauchée worked so well but Lancaster's much later one failed dismally.
A good book to read about pre-industrial Logistics is Donald W. Engels', 'Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army.' A first rate book that covers the advantages and disadvantages of differing transport systems and includes Daily food requirements for men and animals, maximum loads, care of animals, and a formula for calculating animals required for consumable supplies for a given sized army.
Thanks Jack!
Love your medieval videos. WW2 is fun to learn about but other periods are fun as well. Something maybe about ancient times? Greek phalanx? :D
unlikely
The level of organisation required both to assemble and sustain a medieval army was impressive. Most armies required large numbers of foragers as your provisions would not last long. There is very good information here. Hail Logistics!
Logystics of the renaissance are the origin of an interesting Spanish phrase: "las cuentas del Gran Capitán" (literally "the sumations of the Great Captain"). The background is that, during the 1st Italian war Spain sent an army led by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, a general nicknamed "Gran Capitán" (Great Captain), and it was really costly, so king Ferdinand requested his data to see if he was stealing them money. The data was a detail notebook on logystics, including the costs of camps, weapons, ammo (the army was 20% arquebusiers), food and all kinds of supplies...
It would be very nice if you could show the books longer. You can't see them properly at times.
The Bachrachs are actually Father an Son... but i think it's allready mentioned, for that i post my comment nearly 2 years after it was released. But thank you for all the videos and please keep also the medieval military history omn sight. it's also very interesting.
make me curious on how the parthians managed to defeat the romans in a rather dry area while depending mostly on horse mounted troops. did they have very large depos ?
Johnny Mellon The Parthians who defeated Crassus has wagons of arrows rolling up throughout the battle so their mounted archers could keep up the fire. They probably had other supplies steaming in too. Slaves and porters outnumbered warriors in ancient armies by a huge margin. Probably even more so in the East.
Wagons are also mentioned when used to make barricades in, what would appear to be, a desperate defense.
The french go: "Whaddaya mean logistics? Surely we can win this battle of Agincourt by simply spamming the english with our massive heavy cavalry! Who cares if our crossbowmen weren't able to bring their shields or make sure that their crossbow strings are dry and in functioning order. Our knights will surely win the day!"
Isn't that Crecy you're talking about?
I think that is more Crecy, but Agincourt likely had some overlap, as the French missile troops seemed to not really partake, even though they were there, so may have been logistical reasons why... or poor tactics.
Agincourt is also heavily mythologised.
For instance, it is unlikely that the 'French' (actually the Orleonist and Burgundian factions of France, there was about six major factions) never outnumbered the English at any time. The French were strung out along the river watching for the English crossing and outriders had to find and then summon the troops back to where the battle would take place. This probably meant they arrived over the course of the day and were immediately sent in to combat as they turned up. The third wave probably would have overcome the English but the English started to slaughter the prisoners taken for ransom, an unheard of medieval war crime and the 'French' pulled back to make them stop. SO, all in all it's not exactly the way it was portrayed in popular history.
Bit late but my only bit to add is we knew that people from the same towns/villages often grouped together for campaigns, like how brigades are often named after where the recruits are from, so wouldn't it make sense that the guys from say Bath, would pitch in to afford a wagon or cart, for their supplies and take turns looking after and managing the supplies.
collective grouping would make it cheaper for the individuals and would be much more beneficial than having to carry all that additional weight on long marches, it just seems logical that a hundred guys would put some money together to help ease the trip
Maybe the most senior or someone who has experience on previous campaigns was appointed to look after, monitor and distribute the supplies kinda like a early quartermaster
It would make sense if everything was compartmentalised into local groups, that functioned without much interference, if the guys from bath don't take care of proper rationing and their supplies, it only affects that group instead of the entire army.
The massive plundering is more a thing of the 30-year-war. Armies preferred to be in enemy territory because it was cheaper to "Live off the enemy". As a result the 17th century armies had large amounts of light cavalry in order to forage effectivly.
hey, thanks for the video!
one question about the cost of upkeeping Frank armies (more then half the revenue of abbots and bishops , 800-888, 9:32): may this be verified by the then culminating viking raids?
thanks angain : )
Chubby
you are welcome, from what I read it was throughout the "whole times" and everywhere, the one example cited was the noted exception, so there is not a single indicator that a sole factor influenced the cost.
Well done again, surprising not another Second World War video.
And now for something completely different:
*Hello from the future where cats are our supreme overlord, all hail the kitty*
Interesting and useful research. I trouble noting down the capacities and consumption rates for horse, carts and wagons. Can someone post those? The human figures could be included for completeness.
Term The Dark Ages originates from the fact that we have very few written documents from that period, not from the idea that things were particularly bad at that time.
There are many periods in history where we have few sources, we don't call all of them dark ages. Secondly, Dark Ages nowadays has a negative connotation to the general public so historians don't use the term.
Historians do call the other periods dark ages actually - like Greek Dark Ages (after Bronze Age Collapse before the rise of Classical Era). Early Middle Age is sometimes call dark ages for the same reason, but after Carolingian Renaissance we have plenty of written sources so the name shouldn't be used anymore, especially for High Middle Age
@Military History not Visualized didn't Hannibal sustain his army through foraging/raiding? and his army was like 50 000 at one point also to a lesser extent wasn't Alexander cut off from his supplies by the persian navy?
Many Roman cities were friendly and sided with Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Especially the southern cities which still detested Rome conquests of their lands.
Hi Bernhard!
I was wondering if you could provide clarification for me on the militia requirements, a.k.a the food for 3 months and equipment for 6 months. When you mention the 2kgs/day, how much of that is the food rations? English isn't my first language, and math is even less so, but wouldn't 2kgs per day be something like 180kgs for 3 months?
Just to be clear, I'm not saying your math is wrong, I'm asking what part of the puzzle I'm missing (probably got lost somethere in my translation hehehe). ;)
Great video, I've never thought about what logistics was like in those times, that was very interesting, thank you!
Didn't I say 180 kg? I know there is a typo on the page and one said 80 kg and one 180 kg, I actually informed the author on this, after doing the math and confirming it should be 180 kg, but maybe I made an error during the recording.
As I said, I might just be (not) hearing thing, but I'd bet you said 100kg at the 10:26 mark ;)
It seems you are missing the units designated to foraging and plundering (like light cavalry), they did provide a lot of food and there was no need to disperse the whole army.
Maybe, but so far the scholars agree on this one. So, what is your source?
does anyone know what would occur after medieval battles in regards to the dead and equipment? I have been trying to find info on what was done with stuff like all of the dead bodies, the valuable gear and equipment, anything and everything that was left on the ground after the fighting. I would really appreciate info or a link to info on the subject.
for example I imagine that there were concerns of plague and disease at some points as well as possible religious procedures in regards to burials, or perhaps the bodies were just burned?
I also would imagine that the weapons, armor, and other valuables werent just left on the battlefield as war economy seemed to always be a problem for every nation ever. Were the foot soldiers allowed to freely loot the dead as they collected bodies and wounded? Was all of the valuable equipment considered property of the army/king?
Also what happened to enemies that were found alive? taken as prisoners of war or just executed on the spot or even just left for dead? What happened to friendly wounded? I imagine medical knowledge was extremely primitive, was it even worth taking most wounded with the army or were they also left for dead as well?
Were there ever agreements between nations in regards to what was done with the battlefield and bodies after conflicts as seen in some Hollywood movies like troy?
Also what was done with properties and assets of deceased with no kin to adopt it. In medieval times I don't think anyone really owned their property so it would probably be redistributed by the kings officials, but what about every day items? Were they auctioned off, throw out, buried with the deceased?
If anyone knows where I can go to find some of this out please let me know, or feel free to respond with any information as well.
The dead would be stripped and buried as quickly as possible. Sometimes, this was not possible. After the battle of Visby in July, 1361, the dead were buried hurriedly without being stripped, possibly due to the heat. As a result a lot of armour and equipment, but few weapons, have been recovered by archaeologists. In the English army all loot was reported because each Captain had to be given a share and the King as well. Prisoners could be sold to to a lord for them to ransom as common soldiers did not have the resources to either care for them or negotiate the ransom. Enemy wounded would often be killed if they were hurt badly. Friendly wounded would be cared for by their comrades and by camp followers. Medical knowledge was actually quite advanced, but only the rich could afford it. When he was still a prince, Henry V was shot in the face by an arrow. The surgeon invented and then constructed a device to draw the arrow from his face and then kept the wound open to keep it clean and then slowly let it heal, from the inside out to prevent infection.
Hey have you heard about the artillery only meme? How do you think a real battle fought only with artilley guns would be? Has this ever happened in real life?
Ben Denis a lot of WW1 battles were decided by extended artillery duels before the infantry engagement.
Basically, Chinese WW2 logistics?
Chinese tech in WW2 = reinventing the wheel
Just 7 years later, alongside the North Koreans they fought the US and satellites to a standstill in Korea... Not to be mocked.
"Just 7 years"? WW2 lasted 6 years! 7 years is half of my life!
@@perfectlyfine1675 Kid, I could answer you but for a young man like you the most important thing is to learn how to inform himself. Google end of WW2 and entry of China into the Korean War. PS, WW2 lasted much longer than that for China (google Japanese takeover of Manchuria and Second Sino Japanese War).
Yeah, I know that, that's not the point. My point was that 7 years is a lot. Jesus Christ, you didn't understand the complexity of a comment written by a fucking 14 year-old, and that's tragic.
I mean the size of a medieval army was just a small portion of what the Romans had.
1 Legion existed out of ~5000 men and at many times a Roman commander had multiple Legions in their control, so battles could easily have pitted 20.000 men vs 20.000 men. In Medieval times armies usually didn't get larger than 10.000 men and if they did, it was a really big treat they were fighting.
In Roman times there were battles with over 100.000 men fighting armies or fleets of the same size.
With no doubt, Armies and Logisitcs in Roman Times were more advanced than in the Medieval period. Of course, they weren't stupid in the Medieval period, but much knowledge was lost and trade with other cities ground to a halt with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the burning of their libraries. Cities deurbanized and trade stopped. Central authority was lacking and no one was left to take care of the infrastructure that the Romans used for their logistics.
But yeah thinking that the Medieval people were stupid and didn't understand they had to take food, water and other supplies with them on the campaign, then you have to go back and study history and psychology. Cause, of course, they understood that they weren't stupid, they just forgot a lot of what the Romans and Greeks learned when they destroyed all that knowledge.
Plus their needs changed, power was decentralized and with that army, sizes shrunk, so with that, your choice of the logistical system would change too.
Also, don't forget that Romans used to supplement their own supplies with local goods, so to say that their system was perfect is also false, as without pillaging they themselves would have starved too. Just look up the campaign of Ceasar in Gaul and Ceasar also had to "steal" goods from the local population in order to feed his large army.
Also, I want to add that Horses can carry more / move faster when they pull the weight behind them, instead of on top.
Even the weight of a human is more straining when you ride a horse than a small cart. And yes I have personal experience riding horses, I did it for many years.
Generally i am only in the dark ages for 5-8 minutes before teching into feudal. that is of course unless you play on nomad, then it's much longer...
Hehe, guignol. ;)
Ok, logistics were really important and hard, got it. Offcurse the middle ages have big problems her as their governments generally had less direct control of the land. This leads to huge problems if you want to raise an army, as you have to figure out were you can get all the stuff you need.
Nice video on an unloved topic! Did they really have no understanding of water cleanliness/hygeine in the middle ages? I've read that the Romans used to have a hierarchy of water usage when stopping along rivers on campaign, furthest upstream the men would drink, then further down they would wash, then the horses would drink downstream of them, in order to minimise the risk of drinking contaminated water. And I believe that even on campaign they dug latrines rather than just take a dump in a field or river! Interesting fact: even today, in the British army, lorries and APCs are often referred to as "wagons"
I guess people drank alcohol because of the threats microorganisms and poison in the drinking water could cause. And drinking milk would have been unpractical for most people who weren't Mongols due to lactose intolerance.. and the warm climate in southern Europe would make the milk bad pretty fast.
Proffessor Nye says that most Europeans in the 15th 16th century drank beer - including small kids according to . th-cam.com/video/S0KnVb9D82g/w-d-xo.html
Every time he says animals it sounds like he is saying enemas. "So if you have lots of enemas"
I love logistics. They wouldn’t let me into OCS though on account of my narrow urethra.
Questions/potential counter-points...
1) Wouldn't the attention and systematic applications of logistics for a field army (not to mention its baggage train) be an ongoing development for the medieval period? From what I know of the First Crusade (late 11th century), some of the armies that traveled through Hungary suffered because they moved along the same route, which made local foraging difficult (you did touch on this a little bit toward the end). With that in mind, your reference to King Edward I of England would mean that there would be a couple of centuries to try developing solutions to the problems noticed on previous English campaigns and other, high profile, conflicts.
2) Wouldn't another major concern be the length of supply lines (again, referencing the crusades) and/or enemy territory (such as the English armies in France during the Hundred Years' Wars), both leading to a high risk of raiding, either by enemy forces or third party groups (pirates, brigands, etc)?
I agree.
And the same problems could also be seen in later wars such as the 30 years war and the Great Northern war in Poland where armies already had plundered towns and areas so there was no food left to feed an army. And having an army eating up all food before the enemy could arrive could be seen as a kind of a scorched earth tactic.
And most armies were relying on plunder since there existed no refridgerators, canned food, railways, trucks and such so there was always a great difficulty to transport enough food. The only relativly cheap way of transporting large amounts of supplies was by boat - but it you fight far from the ocean or rivers, then you get it much more difficult to supply your own men.
For example did the Historian Perry Anderson say *"The colossal importance of the sea for trade can be judged from the simple fact that it was cheaper in the epoch of Diocletian to ship wheat from Syria to Spain -one end of the Medierranean to the other - than to cart it 75 miles over land."*
So when it was too difficult and costly to get enough supplies, then armies had to resort to plunder. And most medieval armies could not rely entirely on their own supplies like the British and Dutch armies. So plunder was a must. And unmodern military campaigns are best undertood as big picknicks where armies only walk in those directions where they can find food.
And armies have to move faster across lands with little food to avoid starving, while in land with much food there is much less of a need to march an army 20 miles per day since you can get all the food you need on the spot for some days before you need to move to another area.
did anyone remember that all those animals create an impressive amount of solid and liquid waste, because of this fact an army cannot remain in one place for more than a few days. this fact would have a considerable impact on siege operations.
Three quarters of the dead in pre-industrial warfare died of disease. The French lost 22,000 men in the siege of Sevatopol from fighting, and 72,000 from disease. The British lost fewer men, but about the same ratio, mostly from Cholera.
As a hiker, I sympathize with the horses. Sure, I can live on ramen noodles. But not hiking with the full pack!
But once you have carts and wagons you then have to feed the animals that are pulling the carts, which are probably not interchangeable with the animals that you ride into battle
TIL what the cowbell was invented for
Thanks MH(n)V!
You look like Ragnar from Vikings the TV show.
While I do think that people in the dark ages weren't as primitive as we tend to think, I do think that their wars were far more restricted by the infrastructure than the armies of Antiquity. For one, you keep reading of giant battles 2000 years ago and when you compare it to the battles of the early middle ages, they are just skirmishes by comparison (and countries seemed to be much less capable of supporting large populations, especially big cities). Then how could it be that they lost all the Roman knowledge and Infrastructure? That's a question I kept asking myself a lot and it seems that most successors of the Roman Empire, didn't just invade and destroy everything that reminded them of the Empire (though Germanic tribes loved to destroy statues). It much rather seems that they kept aqueducts, bathhouses etc. running and often repaired them, but lost the specialists required for major repairs and lost Roman technology only over generations, rather than over night...
Well, smaller countries mean less resources and wealth to pull from to organize any major building projects.
And likely restricted flow of people and goods to some degree.
Well, I would say that you should not only start with Rome's successors when looking at the decline. If the decline did not start during Roman times, there would not even have been successors to it because it would still have had the strength to defend itself.
So yes, it sure as hell did not happen overnight.
Oh and also especially for Greek sources you should take the huge numbers with a lot of caution since they not only wrote most of the reports long time after the events but were also not reporting true numbers. Not only for propaganda reasons but also because it was just not considered as important and the borders between historical science and art were not drawn yet so exact numbers were not even expected.
I think a good deal of the perception of the medieval nobility being weak on logistics comes from the Crusades. The Crusaders were out of their element in the Holy Land, and many of the leaders were from the lesser nobility, the captains and colonels of their day, not generals.
Indeed, depending on which crusade we look at, the armies were mostly volunteers with much different goals than "normal" wars during the time. Often enough they did not really have a plan, they were really far away from home (which can even harm the supply lines of modern day armies) and not really unified with people coming from different areas (often enough not even being able to understand each other) and without a common leadership. Again, this can even be a real problem for modern day armies.
Considering those problems it is even a surprise that some were successful establishing kingdoms in the Levant but I have to admit that medieval times are not my preferred historical Era and thus my knowledge is very limited regarding how they were organized in detail and how coordinated they acted.
I mostly just heard horses don't get much hay per mile.
Unusual for you, but I think you are bit unprecise here, but in the details as usual I like your analysis.
You speak about the "Medieval" which would assume a timeframe roughly from 800 to 1400 and the average above Europe.
With the hypothesis that there was much more organization then widely expected (without "in some populations" or "when we come to the late High Middle Ages").
Yes, the Vikings were "organized" (800-1000 ac), but they were so successful berceuse the rest of Europa was so badly organized.
Yes, some of the crusades (1095 - 1300 ac) were well organized but the first one? The well documented looting threw southern Europe and the Byzantine empire by 5 (or so) ware bands would not suggest developed organization/logistics.
Yes, Edward I. had organization and logistics but he was born 1239 so England was a central state for some 200 years. The picture on the continent was still quite different.
I had a segment on the time-span, but cut it out. The timeframe was earlier in this case.
From what I read the Vikings were mostly successful since they could exploit the infrastructure, non-fortified rivers, etc. sounds like more they were just organized for raiding, whereas the rest was organized on a civil level and the military had just shitty reaction times.
The Bachrach's especially noted the first one with various treaties and arrangements.
Grains are just a type of grass seed.
Can't wait the day MHV will cover intergalactic logistics.....
there were actually ideas in 2016 to go down that route as well
Can I have imperial conversions for middle aged dummies in the US I know that my younger counterparts will scoff but man I still use pounds inch’s and the occasional rod to measure things
1 Kilogram = 2.2 lbs. 1 Liter = 1.05 US Quarts. 1 Kilometer = 0.62 Miles.
The stuff about fragility and the necessary diet of horses... Explain the Mongol cavalry logistics then...
Please do WW2 Logistics.
Me and the boys preparing for P.E.
At 4:15 or so you say a man can carry approximately 40 plus kilograms for 25 km a day. That seems far in excess of what normal men can carry. I don't remember the source but I recall the general World War II formula was roughly that an average infantry man could carry about a third of his body weight and after that performance dropped considerably. Personally, I have marched 30 km with a total of 25 kg, where our rucksack weighed 18 kg loaded, then our water, rifle, ammunition, and helmet. That was stretching it, and only for a day at a time.
The numbers of kg of food consumed by an army seem large in absolute terms but there's nothing to compare it to. Is it really such an impressive feat of organization to drag along a mule and a cart for every few men?
I'm sure there were supply lines required to sustain a besieging force, but in a mobile situation men probably just resupplied by pillaging as they moved. At that time an acre of land probably produced several hundred kilos. So at harvest time, if you stretch an army out along a road, the men can be fed just from the immediately adjacent fields. For the rest of the year, you make the local people bring you food. Towns were placed roughly 12 hours apart by foot distance so that peasants can make a round trip to the market in one day. So you send riders ahead, force the townspeople to gather up a day's worth of grain, and resupply each day as you walk through the town. A man can carry several days of food on his back in case you have to stop or cross an unpopulated area.
As the majority of the soldiers didn't own that much land, they wouldn't be able to afford a mule each during peace time. So where would it appear from in war time? (I don't think any noble family would have a few undred Mules just for supplying the troops, to costly)As he said the majority of footsoldiers were often in a Milita system, peasants... If you work at a small farm, and there are 2 oxen for plowing etc. you can't just take the animals from there, because the others still have to work the farm, and deliver the harves to their lord/owner etc. Wars wouldn't happen just at harvest time, and still if you had the luck to come across a field, you would risk offending the local Lords by stealing their crops. And it would considerably slow down the track and make you vulnerable for an attack. If, like he mentioned, you manage to convince the local "lords/peers" to sell you the food you maybe can make an ally on the way... I managed to find some maps from around the mid 17 hundrets of the area i live in, so way later. It was so scarcely populated, they would have had a hard time in gathering food on the way! May i ask where you got the statement about the "placement of towns" from? In old Europe towns weren't "placed" somewhere, most of them just emerged over time from smaller settlements to markets to towns. Most of the time because there was a River (with a natural possibility to easily load and unload boats) and road crossings, geographically favorable... Very very seldom did a ruler say: " this is a place our subjects can reach in a Day, here we are going to build a town."
The nobles who supplied the men probably would supply the draft animals. If a high lord supplied 5000 men then he actually would be wealthy enough to afford several hundred mules. Otherwise, he would have to pay large taxes to the lord who would buy the animals himself. The outcome would be the same, but the fundamental concept of feudalism is that local lords supplied military resources directly, rather than by paying taxes to the state.
Also, I realize that towns were not physically placed by giants or dropped from aircraft, but there is a natural spacing of towns which is based on how far a person can walk within a day. You can see this looking at town placement on google maps, and there is a Wendover Productions video on this topic if you are interested.
I just watched the video you mentioned, maybe you should watch beyond 4:30... In the beginning he describes the "placement" of cities/towns in the USA. (They aren't really cities/towns which emerged over time, they were kind of willingly founded by people settling in the area) I can't remember which medieval battles happend there... Oh and i didn't find the Google maps function where you can choose the year and see which settlements existed. Jokes aside, i wrote about the maps i found about the area i live in: They were made between 1760-1780, ordered by Joseph II of the HRE. So cities/towns which are on these maps may not have been there during the middle ages, (meaning fewer of them existed) but the 5 mile radius he describes is not what you see there. The distance between settlements who could provide food for an army is more like 20 - 30 km (12,5-19 miles) air line distance. Which is managable to march with soldiers equipment, but not pleasant, and depending on the terrain exhausting. (done it myself) If you happen to be ambushed at the end, welcome to loosing the battle/war.
Yea so they would carry some food and resupply every 10-20 miles instead of every 5 miles. The Marian Reforms demanded that each Roman Legionnaire must carry 15 days of rations on his back while on campaign. Also, you don't suffer a war-ending ambush every time you walk into a town. You send small detachments ahead and these will take losses over time, but this is an expected part of the attrition you take when moving across hostile country.
A lot involved in this, not stuff you think about routinely.
Was it just me or was the sound really bad for this one? It's worth mentioning that Medieval cavalry mounts were very large animals that required even more fodder.
Show. Me. The. Kilograms!
Your videos are awesome. Period. But: At least for me, the audio quality is very bad. It seems like there is bass that drowns everything out, the sound is not crisp at all. :-(
likely some issues with the mic position in combination with my voice being affected by the lung infection.
Gute Besserung!
One thing you forgot to mention (or i didn't paid enough attention and missed it): You said armies often marched along rivers. Which makes sense for the constant water supply. This makes also sense because settlements were (and are) often alongside or at least near rivers.
But this gives an army marching alongside the river the great opportunity to transport their supplies in boats. Not big ocean-fit ships, but small transport boats and rafts just like traders would use to bring stuff from one city to another. If going against the stream these rafts would be pulled by oxen or maybe other animals, if going along the stream its alot easier.
Dark ages in the 1400s? Notably, they still were not up to the level of Rome, at that point. It wouldn't be till the Napoleonic era that they'd get back to Roman levels of logistics and armies and nations. But that's hardly the dark ages. Dark ages is meant to span from about 400 AD to 800 AD. And in that period... logistics were really thin, or even nonexistent. That's when you had armies of a few thousand men relying heavily on foraging and hunting.
I think you or your sources wrongly assumed that contemporary beer and wine are as potent as modern beer and wine. They would almost certainly been weaker on the alcohol, and thus less caloric.
the author discussed on several pages the various caloric requirements, additionally, he addressed that animals had different sizes, etc. I doubt he would just take modern values, but at the same time, so what is your logic for assuming he just took modern values? (Interestingly enough, I am not sure if the process actually changed that much.)
Well you mention 800 calories per liter of wine, which is true of modern day red wine. At the same time we know from tales and plays that people drank multiple liters of wine (probably with water) throughout the day. It couldn't have been as strong as modern wine, if only due to the volume of consumption. Other limiting factors are the production - the amount of wine they produced with the amount of fields they had, without adding sugar, without fertilizers and modern modified breeds of wine, doesn't check out (this me citing a book on wine in Bulgarian I read, that wasn't historical, but a specialist winery book).
Just seems off to me, the caloric values of a liter of wine at the time must've been way less, and the kind of wine these people had access to must've additionally been watered down, and they'd water it down extra before drinking so they can have more liquid with cleansing alcohol killing germs.
Just an unscientific comment: i think whatever alcoholic beverage they drank (and ate, because the most common breakfast where i live a few centuries ago was "beer soup with bred") was as "hard" as today, because when i think of the torture apparatuses, witch hunts, "wonders" etc. they came up with, i have to think they were permanantly intoxicated for that. (from what i learned from 3 different brewery visits the process of brewing beer is still the same)
the fermentation of wine and beer is a complex, ancient and mastered process. i believe they produced beverages that varied widely in both alcohol content and caloric value (not necessarily correlated). see below, from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine#Wine_styles
_The term "wine" spanned a broad spectrum of wine-based beverages, the quality of which depended on the amount of pure grape juice used and how diluted the wine was when served. The finest wine was reserved for the upper classes of Rome. Below that was posca, a mixture of water and sour wine that had not yet turned into vinegar. Less acidic than vinegar, it still retained some of the aromas and texture of wine and was the preferred wine for the rations of Roman soldiers due to its low alcohol levels. Posca's use as soldiers' rations was codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis and amounted to around a liter per day. Still lower in quality was lora (modern-day piquette), which was made by soaking in water for a day the pomace of grape skins already pressed twice, and then pressing a third time. Cato and Varro recommended lora for their slaves. Both posca and lora were the most commonly available wine for the general Roman populace and probably would have been for the most part red wines, since white wine grapes would have been reserved for the upper class._
Edward I was NOT in the "dark ages". And I get that saying "dark ages" is passe, but the term does not mean that the sun never rose and no one at all could read, or that nothing good happened to anyone, as the people who argue against using the term want to set up as a straw man. The sizes of dark age armies was definitely limited by dark age logistics.
Why can't you feed horses pure grass?? since thats exactly what the mongols did I don't think they used agriculture like at all
not entirely sure anymore, but I think that is true with Mongol horses, but those are different in that regard. The heavier horses need also other stuff as well.
You forgot Cheese.
Wait, cattle was 2 times bigger than nowadays? wtf, seriously? what happened?
no, back then it was 2/3 of our cattle.
Oh, ok, that makes sense. You said cattle was 2.3 of the size of nowadays at 2:34 , which to me meant it was 2.3 times it's current size, I'm not a native speaker so I might be wrong in my interpretation.
wouldn't they just steal food from local civilians?
Anybody else hear "enemas" when he said "animals"?
Yes, I was trying not to visualize it.
You can turn a truck off and leave it for a month.
Iam sorry, but iam very unconvinced by this video. A lot of points are made about how very difficult it is to transport stuff. Not even the abysmal road conditions or the fact that no real maps existed was mentioned, but the problems are already showing. Then a lot of numbers are presented for masses needed per day. After that we make an extremly huge leap and suddenly plundering is a neglectable source of food (why? never really explained). But the staggerinly mistyfing thing is how this two facts translate into a postulated logistical chain. The question however is: If you can´t really transport stuff with real efficiency, then how do you get all this stuff (not only severall tons of grain per day, but also supplies like arrows) to your army? This may be possible if you have a battle right next to your border region (e.g. england invades scottland, where they can not only utilize the short distance to their hometerritory, but also use shipping quite easily), but not if we are talking about campaigns a few hundred kilometers away. The shipping and transport time could vary massivly, way to much to rely on it in a warsituation. If you are fighting, you can´t just stop because the shipments are delayed for a few weeks. This is not even taking into account the immense vulneribilaty of such supply lines. If an army is too "scared" to swarm out and plunder the surrounding countryside, then how is this army to protect its supply lines?
The ironic thing is, that even in this video an argument is made wherein armies had often to retreat if they encountered territory with not good infrastructure and a scorched earth technique. Okay so, if these army is falling back then it must be because they rely to some degree on plundering for food right? But why would they do that, if the normal thing is to get supplies from home and/or allies?
This goes hand in hand with the fact that it is told that an average "lordship" or church-guy you spent already up to half of your income on soldiers in peacetime (i assume those data was taken from peacetime accords), meaning this "only" covers food, equipment and a small salary per soldier. In war you would expect this to go up even further, especially if this lord is also responsible for feeding his men in enemy land (alone the transport costs would probably be quite a bit). But how would such a lord pay this? Not only leading a large number of expensive soldier, but also finance a rather sophisticated logistic net.
If you think this argument even further: What was the organization? Either it is, as described in the video, a decentralized militia, where everyone has their own methods, etc., which would lead to a logistic net divided into hundreds of smaller supply chains for every lord, therefore making it impossible to organize anything; OR we have a centralized logistic, for which historical evidence is pretty much lacking.
On the other hand we have a lot of accounts in which an army suffers hunger either during on march or during sieges, but especially in the latter it makes not much sense: If a medieval army relys on their logisitcal support from home, then why does the situation gets worse when stopping at a fixed location? In the classical way of thinking this is attributed to the fact, that after a while every village in the vicinity is plundered and then the soldiers get hungry. We have also accounts that the english army was not even able to supply their longbowmen with enough arrows, which often almost led to catastrophe, as those arrows where shipped from england but used in staggering ammounts in battle. But if they can´t even get their most valuable units the very thing they need to kill the enemy in sufficient quantities, then how were they transporting much bulkier and heavier sacks of grain to the front?
Tl, dr: Iam absolutly on board for a reevaluation of medieval logistics, but in this video it goes severall steps too far.
I did not at any point say: "you can´t really transport stuff with real efficiency". Is that you Cathy?
Nah its not^^ But you did say that you need even on a waggon, which will not properly work on a medieval "roads", especially if trampled over by an army, still need up to 1,5% of the carried weight as food. This adds up pretty fast, especially if considering that such a waggon is not especially fast.
There were extensive trade networks in medieval times. The roads may not have been up to the standards of the Romans but they were still good enough for trade wagons.
So? Peace-time trade is one thing, supplying an army an antirely different one.
I also mentioned markets, etc.
I am not really seeing what your issue is, logistics were and are hard. Pointing up problems and challenges doesn't mean it is impossible or something.
Would love if this was visualized.
We all know horses don't eat just grass, we learn that from MLP
Instead of just putting up a video of yourself, which doesn't relate to logistics at all, you should edit in some relevant pictures, so we know what you're talking about.
isnt this just common sense?? If youre going to war..dont forget the food,transport, ammo....beer.
Even medievil folk had brains. shocker....
Tactics suck logistics ♾