*Note most numbers/ratios are taken from books and other sources, they are rounded off for easy calculating and could vary a bit depending on real life circumstances.
Hey there folks,
As you might have heard this game will feature a siege or pitched battle with a rather large army. Many Hollywood movies and video games seem to think or at least portray an army as magically appearing out of thin air or have an army of Knights, footman and crossbowmen pop into existence after sending a load villager to live in a barrack for 5 days.
We all know this isnāt the case in real life but I will not delve further in this topic right now. There is a lot of material on drilling an army or personally training a knight. Most Hollywood movies even spend some screen time on showing how the protagonist learns to fight, lead an army or juggle badgers.
After all this is done the army is ready to march into evil land, fight the pitched battle at evil rock overlook and lay siege to the fortress of doom. The interesting bit is the marching, in real life armies donāt travel 3 days before winning an all deciding battle. Humans arenāt mindless orcs or goblins either which with suicidal intent storm castle walls with ladders, most sieges lasted a fair bit longer. This brings us to the question of how to feed the soldiers fighting a war, the saying that an army marches on itās stomach is very much correct indeed because starving soldiers donāt put up much of a fight and most likely desert before dying.
For a long time historians considered logistics non existent in the middle ages, armies just plundered the land they traveled through and left a wide path of destruction in their wake. It is indeed true that armies plundered of purpose for cause economic damage for their enemy and gather food and loot for their own. It is however also dangerous since it spreads out your army making it vulnerable to piecemeal destruction, it slows you down considerable which allows enemy armies to catch you easier and if there is no food then you get to experience starvation. Other downsides are that if you eventually get your hands on the territory you just looted you basically gained nothing, simple plundering is also not enough to sustain month-long sieges we frequently see in the history records. Thankfully modern historians found papers listing the expenses of military campaigns and noticed an awful lot of preparation went into a military campaign.
To explain logistics in a relatable manner I will take a real world example.
The battle of Grunwald 1410 15th of July (possible an in-game occurrence)
Most people know this battle but fewer know that following the Polish and allied victory the main force went on to the main base of the Teutonic order in Malbork and laid siege to it
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The main force from the battle of Grunwald arrived at Malbork the 26th of July
From the battlefield to the castle was a distance of around 140 kilometers which the army traveled in 11 days. An average speed of 12 kilometers per day (possible lower) which is really a normal speed for an army of that day. They laid siege to the castle for 56 days until the 19th of September before calling it off an returning home. So all in all the army spend 67 days in the field from the battle of Grundwald onward.
The example above goes to show that an army spending 60 days in the field or besieging a castle isnāt all that unusual, many armies certainly where about longer than the 40 day period of feudal obligation.
Now from here on I am going to deviate a little from the actual siege of Malbork and make up a standard 20.000 strong medieval army. Itās smaller than the force involved in both the siege and the battle of Grunwald but by no means a small army of that day. The army is composed of 85% infantry and 15% cavalry, 17000 infantry and 3000 fighting on horseback.
A Medieval way of listing the entourage of a Knight would be called a lance, this is a highly variable recruiting unit so I am taking an early Burgundian lance as example. In this case a 1000 lances (of 3 persons each) consists 1000 Men-at-arms together with 1000 lighter armed squires/Coutilier and 1000 pages/valets. All three of them would be mounted and an extra warhorse is brought along for the Knight to use in combat. The pages/valets are mounted but do not fight.
Simply said it means that having 1000 lances of 3 persons each would bring 2000 cavalry ready for action but 4000 horses carried along on the march and 1000 non combat personal. Another 1000 cavalry are light cavalry with one horse (can be either hired mercenaries, poor nobles, or other type of light cavalry).
Now for cavalry we have 3000 cavalry units to be put in the field, on the march the total amount of men and horses would be
:4000 horses from the 1000 lances brought along plus another 1000 horses from the mercenaries = 5000 horses
:3000 men from the 1000 lances plus another 1000 mercenaries = 4000 men.
Now add to this our 17.000 infantry and suddenly our 20.000 fighting men find themselves. Marching with 5000 horses and 1000 non combat personal. To this we should add a small number of engineers/blacksmiths/cooks and all other non combat personal required to keep the army marching. I am taking a relatively modest number of 250 men.
Now this army of 21.250 men and 5000 horses has decided to go on a 60 day campaign, during this time they will travel to a castle and lay siege to it. The light cavalry plunders villages in the marching route without slowing the army down and during the siege their most generous commander sends for merchants to bring food to the besieging army. In the end they have to cart along 30 days of food for their own, the rest is supplied by means mentioned above.
Taking rations from ancient armies such as the Romans, food consumption by nobles and food given to the poor it seems to average amount of food a soldier needs is around 1000-1200 grams of solid foodstuff. A ratio of 50/50 salted pork to bread would yield around 2200-2640 calories. The medieval people or soldiers would also drink beer instead of water most of the time. The amount seems to be between 1 to 1.5 liter a day. This beer is supposed to be more nutritious than todays beer however using todays calorie rates the beer adds another 440-660 calories to the diet depending on the amount you drink. The daily caloric value would this be around 2600-3300 calories. Which is within the range of what a working man would use these days. Of course the diet did not exclusively consist of salted pork and bread, many types of meat were eaten and so were a number of vedgies that could be preserved (peas anyone?).
Now I am taking medium estimates for the ration and call it on 2500 grams of edibles (food and drink) per person a day. For 21.250 people eating 2.5 kgs a day for 30 days this would bring the total weight of the food to 21.250 x 2.5 x 30 = 159.3750 kgs of food and drink for the people. The 5000 horses brought along cannot just eat grass for the entire duration but need fodder to survive such as hay or oats. Horses can go on low fodder rations for some time but if you want it in working condition you need to feed it (I really need some horse people to help me on this one) The number seems to be around the 5 to 7 kg ratio per horse per day. Going by 6 kg to keep the horses relatively well fed this would result in 5000 x 6 x 30 = 90.0000 kgs of fodder.
In total the weight of food for animals and men would be; 90.0000 + 159.3750 = 249.3750 kgs of food for a months worth of eating. That is a big load they have to lug around and I am not even counting the additional material the army brings along such as pre build siege engines, lances, tents etc etc.
Now as you can imagine there is no way they can carry all that themselves. The most efficient way to transport all this weight is by ship in a river but most armies didnāt have the luxury of having a river straight to the place they wanted to go to. So weāll be bringing this along in horse wagons or carts.
I had a hard time finding one answer on how much two horses could carry in a medieval cart but the final number on which I settled is 1000 kgs (this however is open to debate and I would love to hear from people with experience).
The 249.3750 kgs worth of food being carted along would therefore require 2493 carts with two horses each to carry all the food. Of course these two horses per cart 2493 x 2 = 4986 horses also require 6 kgs of feed every day for 30 days which further increases the weight too 4986 x 6 x 30 = 897480 kgs of fodder or another 897 carts full of fodder to feed the horses which bring food and fodder. Now the number seems to figure alright compared to other armies. We know for example that Maurice of Nassau at one point left with an army the size of 24.000 and he brought along 3000 carts with food and such. The extremely high number we end up with if we factor in the food required for the horses who carry the carts with food leads me to believe that people in those days fed their horses a lot less than the 6 kgs of fodder a day I worked with. Iād really appreciate some knowledge from horse people for this variable.
Anyways that is it for now. A rather long post written to demonstrate that war can be a tricky problem when it comes to food and that armies moved slooooooow. A lot of armies of their day also had a wagon train following it that was easily as long as the main army marching. A lightning attack on such a baggage train could halt a campaign in itās tracks and break apart an army more easily than the best warriors could.
Again, this post is not yet finished and I would like some feedback to work this out further.
