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Guys, could you make some military history videos about medieval Lithuania, the success in that was insane for almost three centuries. Or in general, the northern crusades it is such an underrated topic. It was the Grand Duchy that crushed the Golden Horde, there is a lot of information about this, but I am inquisitive about military tactics, which are underrepresented at best even in the home country.
Love your content. Still waiting on the US Civil War battle breakdown 1861 to 1865 you promised years ago 😪 I know it's but done by others, want to hear you do it though.
You are right, those were important factors, for me however the most crucial was feudalism, kings and nobles didn't want large groups of peasants trained for war, much less with battle experience, too much risk of rebelion and lost of workers who once being soldiers probably wont want to go back to serfdom
Not sure about the smaller population tho, before the plague the populations and the ressources had a huge boom in terms of fertlity troughout Europe, so yea i think its much more linked to political reasons like decentralisations of states, the armies were not smaller they were just not united under one banner you can see it in kingdom of France for example who began to centralise itself much faster than other kingdoms (Phillippe Augustus,Louis IX , Phillippe IV etc....) wich is the reason why france despite being a fully feodal state like everyone in Europe was able to levy much more men under their royal banner.
I think their smaller size is mostly attributed to the decentralised and relatively autonomous nature of nobles at the time. How much a king could field was directly influenced by how popular he was. There was no standardised conscription and no obligation to send men to fight for your king. Sure the smaller kingdom sizes had some influence but that still doesn't explain how many similar sized realms outside of medieval europe could still field more men.
Pretty much. Feudalism basically weakens the country’s ability to field larger armies at a consistent rate. The King or Emperor is dependent on his vassals to provide troops. If the vassals dislikes their liege, the amount of troops provided during war time will be fewer. Would also explain why the Kings of France at times during the High and later Middle Ages is as or even more powerful than the Holy Roman Emperor since the King has more personal domains acquired through birthright and family connections.
@@stcolreplover If your neighbour can do it and you can't it tends to be a bad thing for your independence in the long run. Not to mention if your nobles have a sizeable force of their own at their command it's often quite difficult to have them follow policy. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the policy, but it has definitely screwed over a fair few nations all the same.
@@hoonshiming99 "Feudalism weakens the country (...)" Actually, the political structures of feudalism are a way to deal with one's inability to exert power. It's not that feudalism weakens a country, it's more that feudalism is what you do when you don't have the apparatuses of a State to exert control over the population and are then obligated to resort to interpersonal agreement. And this is why "feudalism" was not at thing to many medievists (historians), as is it as state of things more defined by its numerous exceptions than its very few actual rules.
I guess this is probably one of the main reasons the ottomans were so successful. They're standing army and massive conscription really put them ahead of much of the medieval levies
But you should remember at their early stage when they were growing from just another tribe....they used to fight on equal or lower numbers against the Byzantines. Bayezid was able to muster 40k at most....The golden era came in the era of Suleman the magnificent their power was frightening at that time with the unimaginable numbers
I've always had this question in the back of my mind! Looking at it now, smaller states and de-centralization make sense for small armies in the Middle Ages. Also, are you considering covering battles/wars in Chinese history, like the Warring States Period or the rise of the Qing?
Oh boy, I have been looking for a thorough explanation around chinese ancient warfare. I just can't wrap my head around how they could organize such a large mass of people and how exactly they ever got that much manpower in the first place
@@pipebomber04 I guess when you get almost most of the working men hooked on opium, they are less likely to fight against it. Not to mention the Qing ruling dynasty was an ethnic minority which makes people less likely to obey.
@@unholyknightwhowanttowield5522 look at the levee en masse during napoleonic wars. And going back in the past, the Roman republic fielding 20+ legions ( more or less 80,000)(also note that every legion are accompanied by a similar number of allies) and hundreds of warships in 2nd punic wars with only a few million population despite staggering losses in the early years of the war. So the answer is, the societies mentioned as well as china necessitates everyone to fight(conscription) for the state(rather than the lord) so they were able to raise large armies.
@@pipebomber04 One explanation is that the Taiping Rebellion (20-30 million deaths) was concurrent to the 2nd Opium War which the Qing court considered an existential crisis vs. the Opium wars where the damage & threat was mostly economical. The final siege of Nanjing, the Taiping capital, involved Qing forces 500k+ strong against 370k+ defenders en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Battle_of_Nanking
I'd say that another factor that limited the army numbers in middle ages in comparison with the classical era, was the feudal system. The lords could provide a king mostly knights, while the past empires ruled by totalitarian central autorities, could enlist as many men they wanted on their own
Not entirely true - the lords *were* the knights, for one thing, and the totalitarian nature of the Roman Republic is, frankly, not a thing (the Empire, yes, certainly from the DOminate onwards). I do note that ancient armies had actual property requirements for service, since those armies were still Bring Your Own Gear. It's only Rome, in the Marian reforms, that opens service to the poor, and saddles the state with paying ofr and issuing equipment (and then immediately complains about the taxes needed to do this, but c'est la vie). I will aslo note that North Africa was a major source of grain for Rome. A lot of that went into the annona, but a goodly chuck fed the legions. Cut that off, it gets a lot harder to maintain that large army. Surplus in subsistence agriculture simply isn't very large; 5 to 10 percent, as a ballpark. Means that a village of 100 agriworkers can support 5 to 10 people not engaged in agriculture, but that must include other productive trades, like mining, smelting, charcoaling, smithing, and so forth.
@@jochentram9301lmao the Roman Republic, especially the late period was extremely totalitarian. Most of our sources for the time are from Roman historians in the first place so they’ll usually paint it in a good light regardless. None of Rome’s leaders were nice people and events such as proscription proves that. But for the guy’s original point. The feudal system definitely diminished the capacity to fight of every kingdom in Europe. Lords were much harder to replace than a governor of Hispania let’s say for example. So if that lord hated his monarch as well he could come up with all kinds of excuses to not be able to send significant numbers of his troops to aid in battle. Pair that with the previous point and you basically get whatever the king can throw together in this stupid battle with his own lords to even help each other. A decentralized state will always be the main enemy for people trying to field and supply large armies and it was the case for most of history until now and Feudalism is one of the most decentralized forms of governance you can have in the first place.
Kings could rally a peasant army through conscription, give any fool a spear and they can fight a war. Even a knight in full plate was no match for 5 peasants with spears. The standing armies were small, but the potential force of a kingdom was still significant as kings had the authority to conscript any able bodied man to fight for them.
@@SekiberiusWelkesh Kings couldn't just conscript peasants at will. Feudal kings were not absolute rulers. What a king could or couldn't do was very heavily regulated by laws and customs. Feudalism is all about social contracts. Whether a peasant could be conscripted depends heavily on the time and place, as well as on the exact class of the peasant in question and the nature of his contract. Often there were regulations as to for how long someone could be asked to serve and for how frequently they could be called up, as well as to how much they had to be compensated for their service. Also, in many places, such as feudal England, peasants couldn't be forced to serve at all. After all, it was the feudal duty of the king and the noble warrior class to fight, not of the peasantry. If the king called up a levy, the men who showed up would be volunteers, not conscripts. Peasants could only be conscripted under extreme circumstances (like when there is an imminent attack that threatens the town/village). In practice, medieval rulers relied mostly on professional soldiers (knights, retainers and mercenaries) and the wealthier landowning classes (like yeomen), to fill the ranks of their armies rather than on peasants.
Currently reading A Distant Mirror from Barbara W. Tuchman and wondered why those armies were that small. Also, once England or France were taking a "break" the soldiers would make "compagnie" and continue to pillage the land since there were not paid anymore, adding to the issue for common peoples. Then came the Jacquerie!
For those you dont know Barbara W. Tuchman she an Americian Historian and her book are soo well written that you read those like a novel. Guns of August is also one i recommande and The March to Folly.
Armies were supposed to be this small. There was no way to field and feed armies in the number of 100s of thousands, using ancient and primitive Roman logistics. You see similar findings in ancient China, where there could be 100k-500K on either side deployed in major campaigns during the before-Christ years. As it went to the Medivals times in China, numbers dropped to 10k-50k for most major campaigns, rarely would it exceed 100k. Remember this also includes times when China was not fractured and could mobilize the whole nation for its campaigns. Overall I would just say the ancient Greek and the Chinese historians did not learn their math well. Or it could be they were purposefully exaggerating and spewing lies. People living in that period weren't educated enough to point out their mistakes anyway.
Fun fact, in the historical record of many battles of the middle ages many times the historians didn't even care to include how many soldiers (not armoured infantry or archers) there were but only the Knights. A Knight was similar to a tank of today in a battlefield, a machine of death trained since its birth to kill, and also well fed with meat, compared to the peasants of the time.
there are actually interesting theory that chronicless didn't mentioned troops other than knights.. because they wasn't really there)) I mean, SOME battles has infantry/archers (mostly militia or mercenaries) mentioned, particularly when they was really relevant. And, usually when infantry was present, and wasn't instantly smashed by cavalry, it was shock for everybody involved. Thats why some historians theorise that medieval armies in reality was even more cavalry heavy than it seems. And even smaller if noncombatant excluded.
Meat is not "well fed". Fruits and vegetables is the base of a good diet, and on top of that you add whole grain rice, whole grain bread, and lentils and beans and at the top of the food pyramid you can add some eggs of free range chickens, some cheese of goat, and small amounts of fish and meat from those free-range animals (maybe once per week).
@@georgiosdoumas2446 buddy, these were medieval peasants and knights. They don’t care if it’s whole grain or whatever, they would be lucky to get beef in a year
Peasants had more meat than you think but had neutritional difficiencies in other areas. Famously, medieval people were usually only a bit shorter than we are, but their bones were in bad bad shape.
@@specialnewb9821 “peasants” in all reality weren’t as dumb or as primitive as we believe. It’s just that regular access to information was so hard because literally no one could read
Another thing to note - army size is an arms race. It's immensely expensive to field 50,000 soldiers - to the point where you wouldn't even think to do it if your enemy is bringing 10,000 and you remember that in the last war, both armies had 10,000. But if your enemy is fielding 100,000 you're going to strain your country to the limit to try to get at least 70,000 to defend your land (and your entire mentality around war, strategy, logistics, etc has to adapt). This is the sort of thing you see in the Napoleonic wars and the World Wars.
During the medieval period, leaders lacked centralized finances, infrastructure, and logistical systems to properly provide for their armies. K&G always does great jobs on all of their videos!
No this one was a swing and a miss. These were called the Dark Ages before the PC cry babies took over for a reason. It was literally dark, and cold, it was a mini ice age, plus they had the plague. This was one of the hardest times to ever be a live, people were starving to death, no one had the resources to muster an army. Once people got resistance to the plague and the ice age ended armies and empires grew again. Decentralization was a symptom of the VERY hard times.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 Go look up the Medieval Warm Period, sweetheart. The Little Ice Age tends to be dated as beginning in the 15th century. That ain't the Middle Ages, that's the beginning of the Renaissance. And Dark Ages are called that *by historians* necause we have few to no sources illuminating them, not because they lacked gas or electric lighting. By that standard, London was as dark in 1800 as it had been in 800, or, for that matter, at the height of Rome's power in Britain. The Black Death can be pretty precisely dated. 1346-1353 CE, after which Y. pestis remains endemic in Europe. Also, it's not like the ancient world did not have pandemics: the Plague of Justinian, the Crisis of the 3rd Century is partially pandemic-related, Athens gets hit by some kind of pandemic near the end of the Peloponnesian War. Incidentally, varoius epidemics are a major driver of mortalitiy around the 30 Years War (1618-1648), and remain a recurring issue until vaccination and public hygiene largely eliminate them. Were those hard times by modern standards? Yes, absolutely, for the vast majority of people, 85+% of whom did backbreaking farming labour. But that remains true for that large a share of people until the Industrial Revolution, and increasing mechanisation of farming. And medicine, specifically, does not enter anything I'd class as "modernity" until well into the 19th century. Look up Semmelweis, and where he ended up, if you doubt me.
If anyone is wondering WTH is "Schinesghe" that appears on the map at 6:44 (and again letter in the video) - that's technically the earliest recorded name of the early Polish state. However, it appears only once in a copy of a Latin document from around 991, known as "Dagome iudex" (we don't have the original). So, no one really knows what the word was supposed to be.
I always knew it from the Russian sources as "Gnezno", "Gneznonskoe knyajestvo", but I think this is now considered anachronistic, especially the "princedom" part.
@@KingsandGenerals why did it take so long for another conquerer after Charlemagne and the ceasars for most of europe to be conquered (Napolean 1000 years later!) Bc that was probably why europe couldn’t field such armies
@@saratmodugu2721 In addition to what Kings and Generals said, the minute that one European state or polity would threaten such a thing, most of the others would quickly band up form alliances against that state/polity. The old "balance of power" game. No one nation was ever strong enough to break this cycle. Napoleon had an advantage - France had mass conscription while (at the outset at least) his enemies did not.
Another factor that I would guess leads to the changing of army sizes would be the focus of warfare changes to more on sieging of cities/castles where you only "need" enough troops to hold the enemy in a castle and keep them from getting supplies.
Medieval warfare was less about siege that people often think. Medieval warfare was often a war of ambushs, raids and skirmish, even guerilla. Siege or big battle were often something that a good commander tried to avoid until he had no other option, because it was seen as very hasardous. And sieges need a lot of soldiers and the besiegers are very vulnerable to counter-attack during the process, because they basically have the same problems than the besieged (supplies, dissent, epidemy), but are not behind defensive structure most of the time. Even today, it is a really difficult form of warfare, still at the adventage of the besieged if they are properly prepared.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 It all depends on the time period in question and the forces and technology involved. There are plenty of instances of the besieged winning. And even more of attackers not even bothering to attempt a siege. The English Chevauchees in the Hundred Years War are prime examples of the latter. Glorified raids that did not stop to lay siege to well fortified places. Another example are the Burghs that Wessex created throughout England. These certainly affected the Viking raids. During the Middle Ages, the defenders tended to have all of the advantages, especially early on and if in a stone structure. The attackers had a limited time to get into a defended fort before things like their troop enlistment time ran out. This could be as short as 3 months or less. And the attackers had to supply themselves. Logistics was not all that well developed. Troops tended to live off of the land, and if they remained stationary for too long, they pretty much consumed everything within reach. Shipping food and supplies in would be extremely expensive and hazardous. Very easy to interdict. What swung the balance back to the attackers was the development of heavy artillery. And the appropriate procurement and supply mechanisms for that.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 After my knowledge in the east wasnt so much big Castles where the Mongols where ! Most likely Europe where rescued by the castles !
Thank you answering a history question I've always wondered about! And massive shout out to the art team, the images in this episode were majestic to look at!
I wonder why a city-state like Athens could field armies and navies with tens of thousands of personnel while say, the French Kingdom and even the HRE could barely field that much. Could it be because of feudalism vs the citizen levy model of army recruitment? Could it be that feudal army pool is limited to the small military class and ill-trained peasantry, while citizen levies of ancient city states like Rome and Athens could draw out more troops as they have more landed and propertied people available?
What are you talking about? The Kingdom of France had a big army in the 7th Crusade. The Holy Roman Empire had Emperor Barbarossa with a huge army in the 3rd Crusade.
The video mentions 20000 armed saddled men for the Ottonian realm, so you'd probably have to add a couple times that in levies during a defensive war for example.
Athens was at the time one of the largest cities in the already heavily urbanised Mediterranean, not to mention it had a large countryside population and could draw on its subjects for manpower. Not to mention at that period there were a lot of unemployed men flipping between cities from the Black Sea to Magna Graecia who would sign on to navies or become mercenaries.
Another point on the governments of medieval Europe: A King had access directly only to his own levies and his own knights. Some of his knights were also Dukes and counts who were beneath him. Each of those dukes had their own counts and each of those counts had their own barons. Each of these ranks were "Knights" and there were also other knights who didn't have authority in the royal court but who sought their own positions and to further obtain more land. Levies were average people like you and I who were called up by their lords to serve as soldiers, often coming to war with simple spears or if lucky a shield and spear they might have had from their father's time or in extremely rare cases, a sword. It was up to the lord what sort of equipment they provided to their levies and this could enhance their effectiveness greatly, but in many instances people came to a battlefield with something basic and gambeson coats, with armour being worn exclusively by the nobility. For every King, he had to wager if he could risk his entire population of men fit for combat in a war against a neighboring state. IF he lost all of his men, then his nobles who certainly would not risk all of their own soldiers for their liege could usurp him and take the throne so long as they had a blood link somewhere in the past (Which was common among nobility). Further, a count could start getting ideas with the other counts beneath a Duke who lost his own soldiers in battle or in the worst case scenario, his only heir. Because of this and the fact that levies were in general much more valuable on the farm and producing the goods the nobles relied on for both income and for their own tables, nobles RARELY risked their entire power out of fear it would remove their family from that position or worse see the nobility or crown take their land. Nobles also fought one another all the time, a Duke would fight another Duke and a count another count over land disputes and insults or marriage betrothals. Compared to the centralized states of antiquity, if the Emperor says to raise another 30,000 men for the legion, you damn well do it no questions asked. You demand your nobility to raise another 30,000 men in 1123 and your nobles laugh and declare war to put the Duke of Kent on the throne instead of you or your younger brother who has promised to not be so demanding.
In Asia it was a different story, the wars that raged in modern day Central Asia and the Caucuses they would field armies in the tens of thousands. In India and China they were even bigger. At Agincourt King Henry's and the Valois armies together were over 30,000; more modest estimates put them at less than 20,000. Compare that to the Battle of Ankara in Anatolia that happened a decade earlier between Bayezid and Timur, both their armies separately numbering over 100,000.
One thing I think needs to be noted about losing 50 knights as being a major setback may be more of a political and administration issue rather than a military one. Since knights were basically warriors and administrators rolled into one, losing that many at once would be as if a country lost 50 towns worth of mayors, judges, and sheriffs in one day.
Very interesting video about a topic, I wondered often in the past, so thank you. One thing to add: The struggle in the HRE was between the families of Welf and Hohenstaufen not between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Those were the faction in imperial Italy at the time, with the Ghibellines being generally loyal to the emperor, while the Guelphs were in opposition to him, cooperating often with the pope. They were named after the Welfs and Waiblingen (the origion of the family of Hohenstaufen) but the reason for Otto IVs low support in Germany were not his actions in Italy but him being the only member of the Welf family on the imperial throne who was opposed by Hohenstaufen-loyalists
"Guelph" is Italian for Welf, "Ghibelline" is Italian for "Waiblingen", the family seat of the Hohenstaufer family. Kinda like how Deutsch is a loan word from Italian Tedesci, in turn a loan word/corruption of thiutisk ;p
The First Bulgarian Empire at it's height could field more than 20k. (when including the mercs) According to Arab scholars, at the battle at Achelous 917 the numbers were quite bigger
@Kings And Generals I have to correct you on one thing you actually said in this video. Actually it was Edward III of England who led the siege of Calais of 1346-1347 and not Henry III of England since he died in 1272 because Henry didn't live that longer. In practice Edward III actually had around 30,000 troops before the Black Death had reached the shores of his kingdom.
Finally someone mentions the black death, this video didn't touch on the actual cause, just the symptoms of the ice age and black death. One of the hardest times to ever be alive caused small armies and small nations. It's hard to raise an army for war when everyone is starving to death and dying of the plague.
During the First Bulgarian Empire some Tsars fielded armies above 30 000 from which sometimes 1/3 we cavalry. Also during Tsar Simeon's reign he gathered 60 000 soldiers but that was a one time thing.
But that was the peak of the Bulgarian Empire when it was actually stronger and dominated in relations with Eastern Roman Empire. So relatively short period.
@@teovu5557 Modern historiography disputes the turkic origin of the Bulgars and even traditional historiography has always been uncertain on the etymology.
Before watching the video, my guess is lack of centralization, hence leads lack of coordination and organization, especially in terms of logistic, that force armies to be small
That idea makes no sense, all throughout history empires have been consolidated in a lifetime to amass large armies. The problem here was an ice age leading to tons of famine and the PLAGUE.
Well during the 1071 battle of Manzikert the Seljuks had around 30,000-50,000 men while e.g. during the battle of Crecy the French fielded around 20,000-30,000 men. So definitely larger armies then the average European state, around the levels of Byzantine Empire, but not as much as e.g. the average Mongol army.
@@DeliYuzbashi are you denying that most of the leaders of the ghaznavids during the time of Sultan Mahmud were ethnic Afghans, including the ministers, generals and footsoldiers?
I have been discussing this with my friend some time ago, and my main point was that medieval kingdoms lacked huge cities. Cities mean commerce and craftsmanship on large scale which is needed in you are about to equip thousand of people in the same manner like roman legionaries. What you think?
Mmmmh i have to sort of disagree with you, Paris just before the plague was more populated than ancient Athens, places like Milan, Venice or Naples had people in the houndreds of thousands too, although it is true that there was no Rome sized place there were many big cities all over Europe, perhaps more (in number not in size) than in Antiquity as places like Germany and the Baltic began to urbanize
@@ramiromen6595 Plague and an ice age which decimated crop yields and created tons of famine. It's really hard to raise an army for empire building when everyone is barely surviving. The Romans built during an easy age then suffered along with everyone else during the Dark Ages. The Ottomans fared better because of their location, they didn't like Europe because it was "cold and dark". I think this video was way off.
I always think of that movie Ironclad about the siege of Rochester castle and in the movie it's like 150 guys (mostly Scandinavian mercenaries) vs maybe 20 people defending a small fort. And the strange thing is that's not entirely unrealistic despite being scaled down to fit a middle-budget film. Probably more battles fought on that scale in feudal Europe than can ever be counted.
the sound balance in this episode was rather off with the background sounds often starting to drown out the narrator or at least starting to challenge them due to their volume.
I think the dominance of knights on the battlefield while their feudal castles built on every hill of the land is the answer to this question. In the ancient world, they could not allow nor construct them. Siegewarfare as well as metallurgy were two things that evolved rather than stagnated during the dark ages compared to that of the ancients. On the other hand a consequence of this made medieval kingdoms very hard to rule and develop economically because their nobles locked the land with minifortresses. As soon as the medieval castle as well as the heavy knight lost their importance because of cannon and musqet, the armies grew in size and centralized governments grew in importance with increased trade and larger cities.
I think this factor is so massively underlooked. A small army of medieval nights would have WRECKED a peasant levy army of much larger size, so you bud no choice but to focus on the elite troops. That simply made large armies impossible. It also made logistics really hard, which further incentivized the complex network of small, local feudal polities. Once you’re in a situation where it’s all self interested local feudal lords, nobody has the capability to start co querying each other on scale enough to rebuild a large empire that makes centralized administration possible. It’s downstream of the knights.
Absolutely love and appreciate all your incredible information filled amazing content and everyone who is part of its creation behind the scenes. Yall truely do an unbelievably amazing job 💯% of the time
Personal Suggestions For Future Videos. 1) How Did Gunpowder change the course of warfare & history? 2) The Rise of the first holy emperor and father of Europe, Charlemagne. 3) American War for Independence. 4) The Punic Wars. 5) The Northern Crusades.
Warfare changed with introduction of stirrups and feudalism. Heavy cavalary dominanted battlefields from 5th to 15th century. But you cant have huge number of them. Second issue were all forts which had to be besieged. You have to feed those troops.
Just to inform you, mongolian army was around 100,000 men. The number of soldiers roman could just lose at sea because of storms. But they were well led, well fed and all had 2-3 horses.
Thank god gypsies focused on stealing horses instead of mastering them. The power of a nomadic tribe on pregunpowder era was inmense since it greatly eliminated the logistic aspec that hindered their counterparts as they could live off their livestock and foresting.
@@QWERTY-gp8fd bro, nomadic people of steppe werent just crapping out manpower. There were no long rivers or easy to access coasts to make trade and get wealthy. We are talking about empty cold grasslands with close to no water. Population of nomads couldnt afford to build an army more than a few hundred thousand.
@@youryoutubeyoda mongolia was fighting europe , china , middle east at the same time. these are the estimated army during the mongke khan reign. there was 150k mongols in the siege of baghdad. at the same time 30k mongols were fighting in vietnam , 30k mongols were fighting in poland , 20k mongols at korea, 2/3 of all mongol army were battling at sichuan. there was 300k mongols in berke hulagu civil war while mongolia was fighting song china. u really underestimate how numerous the mongol army was.
We went from demigod kings to giant empires to warlords calling themselves kings. That's why the numbers went up in antiquity and dipped after the age of empires ended
And it was better for everyone. Also there was the concept of just war within Europe and most wars happened outside cities/villages so common peoples didn't died or the buildings don't get destroyed.
One of the main reasons was centralization of power, most power was at the capital, Europe at this period was not, kings didn’t actually hold that much legitimacy, they were basically the largest lords of their kingdom, anyone that became larger could challenge their rule.
@@nenenindonu and yet the Mongols and the Caliphates couldn't conquer western Europe The Mongols beat small eastern European countries They conquered China and destroyed Baghdad but never reached western Europe or Britain It's the same with all the Asian armies who expanded west They could take eastern Europe and western Asia but none of them could take countries in western Europe The holy Roman empire was their the whole time Through the Arab Caliphates the ottomans and the Mongols and they were untouched and outlasted them all.
@@IrishCinnsealachBecause Genghis had died and the generals had to be recalled to select an heir-only to have the empire break up over land and inheritance squabbles anyway.
@@IrishCinnsealach Excluding the Caliphates, it's cause much of their (Ottomans & Mongols) power was already drained at the time they had reached Western Europe. If the Mongol empire's base wasn't a faraway region like Mongolia but somewhere in modern Ukraine they surely would've conquered all of Europe, still could have if it wasn't for Ögedei's death
It's actually a wonder how so many larger armies got raised when you were dependent on a feudal economy to equip and feed a fighting force, and as well find enough fodder for the horses that carried the core of your professional part of the army back then.
I think its worth mentioning had England sent more troops to France in the hundred years war they would have been in danger of being invaded by the Scottish kingdom so they definitely had to keep part of their total forces on the home island for the purpose of defending just incase of an invasion
I would love to see a video on what types of troops made up a typical medieval army and what parts of society did they really come from? Like did peasants really fight in armies or is that a myth? Did militia come from the large cities or from the country side? How were soldiers recruited? Etc.
Not doable for all of Europe and all of "the Middle Ages". There are some few constants, but it turns out it is hard to generalise 1,000 years of history concerning an entire subcontinent. One constant is that all free men above a certain level of wealth were liable for military service. They were generally required to acquire and maintain "arms" (in those days, that included armour) in keeping with their wealth. In a true emergency *all* men are so liable, but the general agreement then and now was that such forces were basically worthless. Cities maintained defences (walls, etc.) and generally required citizens to serve in a military capacity. What exactly that entailed differed from city to city; please understand that "city" in that day included a goodly chunk of land simply in order ti feed the city itself. Military obligations by the city towards feudal overlords . . . good heavens, that's a subject for multiple books' worth of study, not a 20-minute video.
Peasants would fight in times of emergency, like a miltiia. You typically dont levy peseants because theyre busy supporting your domestic economy, food, logistics. You could field a thousand peseants with pikes or spears. British peasants may train in the longbow as its a relatively cheap piece of equipment. But peasants wouldn't stand afield against knights or mounted units. Edit: Soldier classes were generally generational. Fmailies owned equipment that was passed down. Certain towns/cities/lords would have enough resources to maintain a small well-trained professional army. Preperations for war were done with training. Plan for a war, field 5,000 soldiers from your kingdom, train and supply them, etc. Then the war ends and those soldiers go back to their daily life. Another war and you have those generational soldiers.
@@SP_A_C_E_D I'd like to know how you propose to train men who will only be there for as long as their feudal obligation requires. Which, typically, is something between 40 to 60 days per year. Also, "British peasants" do not train with the longbow. English and Welsh yeomanry, i. e. freemen farmers, okay. But "Britain" only becomes a thing with the 1701 Act of Union.
They heavy cavalier was actually quite potent. European forces in the crusades were often significantly out numbered, yet often won. The classical period armies were vast light troops and light cavalry. It was definitely a superior military power, but it isn't a 1 to 1. I also think the rise of fortified cities and castles also reduced the effectiveness of massive armies. You couldn't just blitz right over your opponent and would be stuck in prolonged sieges and struggling to feed your large fielded army. I think we saw this with the Mongols and how they were ultimately defeated in Eastern Europe. Heavy cavalry and fortified cities and castles.
When considering the numbers for armies of antiquity I wish you would have looked at the armies fielded for example by Rome and Carthage in their wars, as those two states were much closer in land mass to say England and France. Would have given much better perspective imo.
The estimate for Cannae is 80,000 Romans and Socii versus ca. 50,000 Crathaginians (and allies). Notably, Rome *lost* most of that army (about 60k KIA), but simply turned around and raised another army about the same size. Notably, Cannae, *follows* Roman defeats at Trebia (20K dead Romans/Socii) and Lake Trasimene (25K dead Romans/Socii). I can't be arsed to look up all of Hannibal's minor victories, but those three battles alone inflict 100k military deaths.
@@jochentram9301 I think the First Punic War is even more insane when it comes to Roman losses. They held less land than they did during the Second Punic War yet lost so many more, especially in naval 'battles' (with the weather).
@@sirjoey3137 Casualty-wise, I don't think the First Punic War was quite as bad, but again, Roman and Socii casualties rather exceeded 100,000. One should, however, note that the ancient world is much, much more urbanised. Rome-the-city already had a population well in excess of a quarter million in those years, although only a fraction of those qualified for the dilectio. For those who need the term translated, that's the Roman form of conscription-by-lot, which presupposed a certain minimum wealth. Roman armies in all three Punic Wars are still BYOG; the state only provided rations for soldiers on campaign and IIRC a minimal stipend
When you had to have ten kids to make sure that you'd get two or three that didn't die of smallpox and cholera, there's only going to be so many soldiers to go around.
I would argue that there's an additional reason (which is however part of logistics and finances mentioned in the video): The rise of the heavy cavalry, as in, knights. Most ancient armies were totally dominated by infantry, especially heavy infantry like the Hoplites and Legionaries. Cavalry played a pretty small role, was lightly armed and armored and were mostly used to pursue and cut off retreats. A force of heavy cavalry is much more expensive to maintain than heavy infantry, thus strongly reducing the number of troops on the same budget.
It's IMHO less the money cost, it's the logistics strain. Cavalry horses eat a lot, and you do need to feed them grain. It's hard enough to supply 10,000 people, overland. If you need to also feed 30,000 horses (minimal for a force of knights) . . . yeah, not happening.
There's also the matter of nul usage of slaves in medieval kingdoms that came with Christianisation. Kingdoms and all are more dependable on their own population for the production of materials, goods and hell food, hence reducing both the amount of troops you can muster and upkeep since you earn less overall money.
@@Dimitris_Half Serfs and slaves are not the same and even if, there is a difference between importing foreign slaves and making slaves out of your own population.
4:49 The fact that tiny France during that time managed to raise as many 20 000 Men is incredible. France during that time was just a fraction the size of what Rome was
Tiny France ? France was the most populated country of Europe during the high Middle Ages (about a quarter of Europe's population lived within the borders of what is now considered metropolitan France). As for the comparison with Rome, it isn't very relevant. The population of roman Gaul in the first century was of seven to eight millions; in the 1200's that number had gone up to about sixteen million (more than double), yet the Roman Empire routinely mustered more soldiers from Gaul than the french king did from his territory. The issue isn't that of population, but of centralisation and money.
I think a large part of this is accounted for by feudalism. Ancient civilizations of Europe and Southwest Asia didn't have huge numbers of peasants that were essentially chained to plots of land. Therefore, ancient civilizations were more apt to recruit and train common folk for their armies, since lords weren't on the hook if/when their common soldiers' homes went into ruin from neglect while being on a military campaign. But if nobles took their peasants on a military campaign, it might ruin the nobles' entire estate, since he needed his peasants to keep the estates profitable. Also, medieval arms were more potent and therefore made a lightly armed peasantry extremely vulnerable. And since most nobles didn't want to outfit their own peasants with adequate arms, it was probably less risky (from the nobles' perspective) to just take a much smaller, yet professional army of knights with them on campaign.
@@nooneatall8072 yeah, that’s a huge part of it, too. Even if a noble did have absolutely loyal peasants to take on campaign with him, it was extremely expensive to properly arm them.
This is not entirely true. Feudalism is pretty much and evolved form of Germanic culture were only a particular group of men were expected and allowed to fight. Whereas the ancient Greeks and the Romans heavily relied on peasants during the medieval times only a highly trained professional warrior class fought in wars. They weren’t peasants their trade was to fight and they had a lot of expensive equipment.
@@nooneatall8072yes and this caused some people to become professional warriors. A stupid farmer with a spear and a wooden shield isn’t going to do shit against mercenary men at arms with mail armour and polearms. It’s far more economical to let the farmer farm and let professional warriors do the fighting.
There is another big big factor: plagues and famines, they where a lot more common compared with ancient times, because the diseases where more widespread and the sanitation was poor, also the great plague killed about half the population, also the climate was colder and unstable so food shortages where common and that means famines, it seems that the population was larger in ancient times compared with medieval times so of course that means a smaller pool for recruitment.
Its fascinating how empires like ancient Rome were able to form a large yet diverse empire who's army sizes couldn't be matched for over a millennium until the early 19th century. At least in Europe I mean.
18th century* War of Austrian succession and 7 years war saw battles with hundred thousand participants. Napoleonic wars/19th century armies were much larger than what antiquity could produce.
Another exception of rule has been for the Mongols: raising the staggering amount of troops that bascially outshined all medieval armies in existences. At least, the ones in Europe, of course.
Well for example during grunwald batle betwen poland, lithuania and teutonic order depending on the sources there was around 15k to 20k on polish lithunian side and 10k to 15k on teutonic side but most of woriors participating were cavarlymen, knigts mostly. What it means is that even if those numbers were not that big compared to ancient battles cost of training and equiping such a worrior was propably higher.
Castles and knights strengthened local, regional powers over grand empires. Castles were so hard to penetrate and capture that kings found it hard to compel Lords to fight for them, leading to much smaller areas of political influence.
This, during the medieval period kingdoms were much less decentralised than during the Roman empire. The King of France for example that subjects that were actively fighting him and each other. War was less common and on a much smaller scale which led to a higher life expectancy and higher populations.
Logistics. All the food, hay for horses, etc made for a long supply train, vulnerable to attack, so keep it small, mobile and trained, easier to train 1,000 than 4,000.
What people often don't realize is how massive an army of 5.000 men really is. You've likely been part of a large mob of people, that numbered less than 1000, but still felt very large. Imagine an army marching together to the battlefield more than 5x that. With modern populations, we often lose sense for how big these armies would be. Similarily a city of 30.000 people is quite big when travelling on foot amd seeing many peasants from the countryside gatner for market day or a festival
People who watch sports in venue should have a very good idea of what a crowd of a certain number should look like. Chicago Bulls’ stadium has a capacity of 21,000 for example.
@@caelestigladii You're right, but I feel like the organized seating and being bunched up distorts the numbers a bit, compared to a mob of people in a field.
There are a lot of stadiums that do hold specifically 5000 people. And its a huge number. and if we are talking some armys did have around 80,000 people. Some football stadiums hold that many people as well. With that being said, I always imagined medieval dights to be chaotic. With that many people.
But i'm an asia where battle have less than 10k total didnt even call a war 😢.For example a conquest from medium size country like Dai Viet to Lan Na (small size) in XV have about 180k troop include logistics.
@@attien879 Those numbers are highly exaggirated, like almost all ancient and medieval sources on army numbers are. Some contemporary chroniclers claimed Barbarossa amassed an army of 600.000 men for the 3rd crusade, and some old historians had the Frankish army at the Battle of Tours as 75.000 facing up to 400.000 Umayyad soldiers. These figures are of course not true. While army numbers in Eastern Asia tended to be higher than in Europe during the Middle ages, it wasn't that big of a difference, and anything above 5.000 men will require sufficient logistics.
One other difference I ve noticed is that war in Medieval Europe tended to be between Royals only. During the roman period and the similar era in China, there were many cases of armies that emerged from the common people. Some eventually became so successful that their commoner leader became the next King or Emperor. Am i mistaken to think this way?
Professional armies were not too much larger . Mostly less than 3-5,% of the population , there were probably much less soldiers in china compared to Europeans
Ancient China lied about the size of their armies,the issue is that we can't get easy access to debunk their lies like we can with western groups,due to language barriers,lack of research history(heh) and the CCP manipulating what it can for propaganda purposes.Their accounts of million man armies are as reliable as those of Herodotus
People dont realise how advanced to Roman Empire was in its day (and even compared to many areas of the world today). 1million inhabitants in Rome wasnt surpassed again in europe until london in 1810. Also no one else had professional armies in europe after rome until the french in 1430. Eurooe genuinely went backwards by a couple of centuries once rome fell.
The ambient noise in some parts of the video are way too loud, am I the only one who is bothered by that? Either way great video as always, best content on YT
Another example on ancient wars having more soldiers would be the Marcomannic wars. The romans under Marcus Aurelius had deployed around 390 000 men(unless the auxiliary cohorts were auxilia where it would be 429 000)whilst the germanic-iranic confederation around 977,000 men. The wikipedia page even has a separate page just listing all the roman military units in this war.
It's because it was an ice age and they had the plague. Humanity in Europe was barely hanging on, they didn't have the resources to raise large armies.
I think you’ve also got to factor in the tech of the armour in the Middle Ages, a knight was like a walking tank back then, arrows would only injure them with lucky shots or de horse them, if they was mounted. Compared with back then when you would still be effective being poor equipped, also religious and cultural advances tamed alot of the everyday folk, most didn’t fight on a daily basis or even train to. So for the average person going to war was just a death wish, with little or no reward compared to there easy lives at home, making it costly to hire people. Also you have to factor in the control the churches had then, it wasn’t in there favour to have large wars within the Christian domains, it would have hurt there finances to much, there’s a reason the crusades ect happed to divert war away from the lands they had power over, and create more lands they could tax.
One thing you could also blame when comparing it to antiquity is the lack of cities and larger towns. Cities and towns add to the population as they grow and with that comes a population for recruitment. Rome had access to the cities of Italy granting vast reserves for mobilization. Alongside that, you could also add the fact that warfare had changed over time from set-pitch battles to raiding as a result of the post Empire material conditions.
Oh man, how could you not mention one important aspect: the armies of the medieval were primarily cavalry. The cost and number of horses and riders available made the armies much smaller
What?Aint no way Western European armies were mostly cavalry,in every medieval K&G video I remember armies had at least 2-3X more infantry than cavalry. Maybe its true for the Mongols and turkic peoples but definetly not in Europe.
Very cool Video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Please make a video about the history of the barbarian kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards, Merovingians (Franconian), Burgundians, Alemanians, Saxons and Avars
That was because of the smaller global population, disease spreading and armors, shields and swords were expensive, also there was more sieges with smaller numbers needed.
Smaller global population ? The population continued to grow during the Middle Ages, it only significantly dipped during the 1350's because of the black death, only to grow significantly higher in the centuries afterwards. The loss of centralisation that resulted from the fall of the WRE led to a mass exodus of people from cities into rural areas, not to a sudden mass extinction.
I think its important to mention that smaller armies dont necessarily mean worse armies, nor that the population was small. im pretty sure the population of france was often around 20 million before the black death while feilding armies of only 20,000. partialy because the general population was much more spread out rather than the ancient civilized trend of large concentrated population centers And mentioning this, it seems like “barbarian” groups that ancients fought that had much less economic resources then most equivalent medieval states often still fought in the tens of thousands as well. Gauls, goths, huns, etc. I think there is a process of conscious “quality not quantity” intent in medieval warfare, especially with the domination of heavy cavalry on the battlefeild. I think there is an implication that these armies are somehow “lesser” then ancient armies when I dont think that is necessarily the case. The feudal system was very particular and was effective enough to become very popular in its time.
8In addition to the reasons given in the video, it's important to remember that postclassical Europe was functionally a backwater (or at best a peripheral region to the central powers of Eurasia) that we have better records for than earlier regions that functioned in a similar matter. If we had texts from the pre-migration Germanic tribes or the Hittite border tribes, or the Amorite neighbors of the Ancient Middle East we'd likely see similar numbers and systems of raising armies. In that light events like the numbered crusades can be seen as a similar phenomenon to the significant raids/invasions of such "civilized" polities by their "barbarian" neighbors. There are other climactic etc. reasons as well but we don't see the same shrinking of army sizes in other parts of Eurasia except during periods of significant internal strife
Put simply, logistics. It is easier to maintain a few great troops, over a lot of good troops. A 100 knights might cost as much as 10K soldiers (in terms of land rights, pay, loot, etc), but moving, feeding, and organizing 100 knights is a hell of a lot easier than supporting a standard army. Europe being extremely fragmented during the middle ages didn't have the logistics to support full size armies.
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Guys, could you make some military history videos about medieval Lithuania, the success in that was insane for almost three centuries. Or in general, the northern crusades it is such an underrated topic. It was the Grand Duchy that crushed the Golden Horde, there is a lot of information about this, but I am inquisitive about military tactics, which are underrepresented at best even in the home country.
"Efficient Bureaucracy" .............ok
Thank you for this video.
L
Love your content. Still waiting on the US Civil War battle breakdown 1861 to 1865 you promised years ago 😪
I know it's but done by others, want to hear you do it though.
1. Smaller more numerous kingdoms/states = fewer group resources
2. Smaller populations
3. Development of armoured knights/heavy cavalry
You are right, those were important factors, for me however the most crucial was feudalism, kings and nobles didn't want large groups of peasants trained for war, much less with battle experience, too much risk of rebelion and lost of workers who once being soldiers probably wont want to go back to serfdom
@@cesaravegah3787 i think it depends !
Not sure about the smaller population tho, before the plague the populations and the ressources had a huge boom in terms of fertlity troughout Europe, so yea i think its much more linked to political reasons like decentralisations of states, the armies were not smaller they were just not united under one banner you can see it in kingdom of France for example who began to centralise itself much faster than other kingdoms (Phillippe Augustus,Louis IX , Phillippe IV etc....) wich is the reason why france despite being a fully feodal state like everyone in Europe was able to levy much more men under their royal banner.
@@ForeskinWillis - agreed, Medieval Warm Period = much pop. growth
Before Rome expanded out of Italy they still were fielding 100,000 men look at first Punic war
I think their smaller size is mostly attributed to the decentralised and relatively autonomous nature of nobles at the time. How much a king could field was directly influenced by how popular he was. There was no standardised conscription and no obligation to send men to fight for your king. Sure the smaller kingdom sizes had some influence but that still doesn't explain how many similar sized realms outside of medieval europe could still field more men.
Pretty much. Feudalism basically weakens the country’s ability to field larger armies at a consistent rate. The King or Emperor is dependent on his vassals to provide troops. If the vassals dislikes their liege, the amount of troops provided during war time will be fewer. Would also explain why the Kings of France at times during the High and later Middle Ages is as or even more powerful than the Holy Roman Emperor since the King has more personal domains acquired through birthright and family connections.
You say this like it’s a bad thing, I’m not sure fielding large massive armies is a good thing.
@@stcolreplover He didn't, read again.
@@stcolreplover If your neighbour can do it and you can't it tends to be a bad thing for your independence in the long run. Not to mention if your nobles have a sizeable force of their own at their command it's often quite difficult to have them follow policy. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the policy, but it has definitely screwed over a fair few nations all the same.
@@hoonshiming99 "Feudalism weakens the country (...)" Actually, the political structures of feudalism are a way to deal with one's inability to exert power. It's not that feudalism weakens a country, it's more that feudalism is what you do when you don't have the apparatuses of a State to exert control over the population and are then obligated to resort to interpersonal agreement.
And this is why "feudalism" was not at thing to many medievists (historians), as is it as state of things more defined by its numerous exceptions than its very few actual rules.
I guess this is probably one of the main reasons the ottomans were so successful.
They're standing army and massive conscription really put them ahead of much of the medieval levies
Excellent point there
They were also very centralised, that helped them as well
But you should remember at their early stage when they were growing from just another tribe....they used to fight on equal or lower numbers against the Byzantines.
Bayezid was able to muster 40k at most....The golden era came in the era of Suleman the magnificent their power was frightening at that time with the unimaginable numbers
Suleiman the Magneficient👑👑👑
Also thanks to their centralised power instead of feudalism, they were able to have much more control on conscription combined with the timar system.
I've always had this question in the back of my mind! Looking at it now, smaller states and de-centralization make sense for small armies in the Middle Ages. Also, are you considering covering battles/wars in Chinese history, like the Warring States Period or the rise of the Qing?
Me too!
Oh boy, I have been looking for a thorough explanation around chinese ancient warfare. I just can't wrap my head around how they could organize such a large mass of people and how exactly they ever got that much manpower in the first place
@@pipebomber04 I guess when you get almost most of the working men hooked on opium, they are less likely to fight against it. Not to mention the Qing ruling dynasty was an ethnic minority which makes people less likely to obey.
@@unholyknightwhowanttowield5522 look at the levee en masse during napoleonic wars. And going back in the past, the Roman republic fielding 20+ legions ( more or less 80,000)(also note that every legion are accompanied by a similar number of allies) and hundreds of warships in 2nd punic wars with only a few million population despite staggering losses in the early years of the war.
So the answer is, the societies mentioned as well as china necessitates everyone to fight(conscription) for the state(rather than the lord) so they were able to raise large armies.
@@pipebomber04 One explanation is that the Taiping Rebellion (20-30 million deaths) was concurrent to the 2nd Opium War which the Qing court considered an existential crisis vs. the Opium wars where the damage & threat was mostly economical. The final siege of Nanjing, the Taiping capital, involved Qing forces 500k+ strong against 370k+ defenders en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Battle_of_Nanking
I'd say that another factor that limited the army numbers in middle ages in comparison with the classical era, was the feudal system. The lords could provide a king mostly knights, while the past empires ruled by totalitarian central autorities, could enlist as many men they wanted on their own
Not entirely true - the lords *were* the knights, for one thing, and the totalitarian nature of the Roman Republic is, frankly, not a thing (the Empire, yes, certainly from the DOminate onwards). I do note that ancient armies had actual property requirements for service, since those armies were still Bring Your Own Gear.
It's only Rome, in the Marian reforms, that opens service to the poor, and saddles the state with paying ofr and issuing equipment (and then immediately complains about the taxes needed to do this, but c'est la vie).
I will aslo note that North Africa was a major source of grain for Rome. A lot of that went into the annona, but a goodly chuck fed the legions. Cut that off, it gets a lot harder to maintain that large army. Surplus in subsistence agriculture simply isn't very large; 5 to 10 percent, as a ballpark. Means that a village of 100 agriworkers can support 5 to 10 people not engaged in agriculture, but that must include other productive trades, like mining, smelting, charcoaling, smithing, and so forth.
@@jochentram9301lmao the Roman Republic, especially the late period was extremely totalitarian. Most of our sources for the time are from Roman historians in the first place so they’ll usually paint it in a good light regardless. None of Rome’s leaders were nice people and events such as proscription proves that. But for the guy’s original point. The feudal system definitely diminished the capacity to fight of every kingdom in Europe. Lords were much harder to replace than a governor of Hispania let’s say for example. So if that lord hated his monarch as well he could come up with all kinds of excuses to not be able to send significant numbers of his troops to aid in battle. Pair that with the previous point and you basically get whatever the king can throw together in this stupid battle with his own lords to even help each other. A decentralized state will always be the main enemy for people trying to field and supply large armies and it was the case for most of history until now and Feudalism is one of the most decentralized forms of governance you can have in the first place.
Kings could rally a peasant army through conscription, give any fool a spear and they can fight a war. Even a knight in full plate was no match for 5 peasants with spears.
The standing armies were small, but the potential force of a kingdom was still significant as kings had the authority to conscript any able bodied man to fight for them.
@@SekiberiusWelkesh Kings couldn't just conscript peasants at will. Feudal kings were not absolute rulers. What a king could or couldn't do was very heavily regulated by laws and customs. Feudalism is all about social contracts. Whether a peasant could be conscripted depends heavily on the time and place, as well as on the exact class of the peasant in question and the nature of his contract. Often there were regulations as to for how long someone could be asked to serve and for how frequently they could be called up, as well as to how much they had to be compensated for their service. Also, in many places, such as feudal England, peasants couldn't be forced to serve at all. After all, it was the feudal duty of the king and the noble warrior class to fight, not of the peasantry. If the king called up a levy, the men who showed up would be volunteers, not conscripts. Peasants could only be conscripted under extreme circumstances (like when there is an imminent attack that threatens the town/village).
In practice, medieval rulers relied mostly on professional soldiers (knights, retainers and mercenaries) and the wealthier landowning classes (like yeomen), to fill the ranks of their armies rather than on peasants.
Currently reading A Distant Mirror from Barbara W. Tuchman and wondered why those armies were that small. Also, once England or France were taking a "break" the soldiers would make "compagnie" and continue to pillage the land since there were not paid anymore, adding to the issue for common peoples.
Then came the Jacquerie!
The book is so good, the suffering of the french population was nefarious.
A superb choice for the study of 14th-century European history - as you doubtless already know!
For those you dont know Barbara W. Tuchman she an Americian Historian and her book are soo well written that you read those like a novel.
Guns of August is also one i recommande and The March to Folly.
Armies were supposed to be this small. There was no way to field and feed armies in the number of 100s of thousands, using ancient and primitive Roman logistics. You see similar findings in ancient China, where there could be 100k-500K on either side deployed in major campaigns during the before-Christ years. As it went to the Medivals times in China, numbers dropped to 10k-50k for most major campaigns, rarely would it exceed 100k. Remember this also includes times when China was not fractured and could mobilize the whole nation for its campaigns.
Overall I would just say the ancient Greek and the Chinese historians did not learn their math well. Or it could be they were purposefully exaggerating and spewing lies. People living in that period weren't educated enough to point out their mistakes anyway.
Also I am not sure, but didn’t they also have servants and workers.
Someone had to do logistics.
In that time all the money used to go to armour😅
Money went where it was thought to be most useful, just like during any period of History.
And the cost of raising war horses
The Russians have better explanation
Is that a joke, cuz money also went to construction, trade just buying food and materials
Also randsom for the armored knights and Elites who got captured in the battlefield
Fun fact, in the historical record of many battles of the middle ages many times the historians didn't even care to include how many soldiers (not armoured infantry or archers) there were but only the Knights. A Knight was similar to a tank of today in a battlefield, a machine of death trained since its birth to kill, and also well fed with meat, compared to the peasants of the time.
there are actually interesting theory that chronicless didn't mentioned troops other than knights.. because they wasn't really there)) I mean, SOME battles has infantry/archers (mostly militia or mercenaries) mentioned, particularly when they was really relevant. And, usually when infantry was present, and wasn't instantly smashed by cavalry, it was shock for everybody involved.
Thats why some historians theorise that medieval armies in reality was even more cavalry heavy than it seems. And even smaller if noncombatant excluded.
Meat is not "well fed". Fruits and vegetables is the base of a good diet, and on top of that you add whole grain rice, whole grain bread, and lentils and beans and at the top of the food pyramid you can add some eggs of free range chickens, some cheese of goat, and small amounts of fish and meat from those free-range animals (maybe once per week).
@@georgiosdoumas2446 buddy, these were medieval peasants and knights. They don’t care if it’s whole grain or whatever, they would be lucky to get beef in a year
Peasants had more meat than you think but had neutritional difficiencies in other areas. Famously, medieval people were usually only a bit shorter than we are, but their bones were in bad bad shape.
@@specialnewb9821 “peasants” in all reality weren’t as dumb or as primitive as we believe. It’s just that regular access to information was so hard because literally no one could read
Another thing to note - army size is an arms race. It's immensely expensive to field 50,000 soldiers - to the point where you wouldn't even think to do it if your enemy is bringing 10,000 and you remember that in the last war, both armies had 10,000. But if your enemy is fielding 100,000 you're going to strain your country to the limit to try to get at least 70,000 to defend your land (and your entire mentality around war, strategy, logistics, etc has to adapt). This is the sort of thing you see in the Napoleonic wars and the World Wars.
During the medieval period, leaders lacked centralized finances, infrastructure, and logistical systems to properly provide for their armies. K&G always does great jobs on all of their videos!
No this one was a swing and a miss. These were called the Dark Ages before the PC cry babies took over for a reason. It was literally dark, and cold, it was a mini ice age, plus they had the plague. This was one of the hardest times to ever be a live, people were starving to death, no one had the resources to muster an army. Once people got resistance to the plague and the ice age ended armies and empires grew again. Decentralization was a symptom of the VERY hard times.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 lol
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 wrong lol
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 Go look up the Medieval Warm Period, sweetheart. The Little Ice Age tends to be dated as beginning in the 15th century. That ain't the Middle Ages, that's the beginning of the Renaissance.
And Dark Ages are called that *by historians* necause we have few to no sources illuminating them, not because they lacked gas or electric lighting. By that standard, London was as dark in 1800 as it had been in 800, or, for that matter, at the height of Rome's power in Britain.
The Black Death can be pretty precisely dated. 1346-1353 CE, after which Y. pestis remains endemic in Europe. Also, it's not like the ancient world did not have pandemics: the Plague of Justinian, the Crisis of the 3rd Century is partially pandemic-related, Athens gets hit by some kind of pandemic near the end of the Peloponnesian War. Incidentally, varoius epidemics are a major driver of mortalitiy around the 30 Years War (1618-1648), and remain a recurring issue until vaccination and public hygiene largely eliminate them.
Were those hard times by modern standards? Yes, absolutely, for the vast majority of people, 85+% of whom did backbreaking farming labour. But that remains true for that large a share of people until the Industrial Revolution, and increasing mechanisation of farming. And medicine, specifically, does not enter anything I'd class as "modernity" until well into the 19th century. Look up Semmelweis, and where he ended up, if you doubt me.
@@jochentram9301the early 15th century are the Middle Ages 🤦♂️.
Middle Ages armies are smaller to reduce lag and to prioritize frame rates. This is common knowledge.
If anyone is wondering WTH is "Schinesghe" that appears on the map at 6:44 (and again letter in the video) - that's technically the earliest recorded name of the early Polish state. However, it appears only once in a copy of a Latin document from around 991, known as "Dagome iudex" (we don't have the original). So, no one really knows what the word was supposed to be.
I always knew it from the Russian sources as "Gnezno", "Gneznonskoe knyajestvo", but I think this is now considered anachronistic, especially the "princedom" part.
Your should consider name Piast kingdom or Piast realm. In Slovakia we calling it this way.
@@KingsandGenerals why did it take so long for another conquerer after Charlemagne and the ceasars for most of europe to be conquered (Napolean 1000 years later!)
Bc that was probably why europe couldn’t field such armies
@@saratmodugu2721 Charlemagne and his inheritance laws made this basically impossible
@@saratmodugu2721 In addition to what Kings and Generals said, the minute that one European state or polity would threaten such a thing, most of the others would quickly band up form alliances against that state/polity. The old "balance of power" game. No one nation was ever strong enough to break this cycle. Napoleon had an advantage - France had mass conscription while (at the outset at least) his enemies did not.
Another factor that I would guess leads to the changing of army sizes would be the focus of warfare changes to more on sieging of cities/castles where you only "need" enough troops to hold the enemy in a castle and keep them from getting supplies.
Pretty sure if a king could muster more armies to siege not just 1 castle but 4 at the same time he would've done it if could.
Medieval warfare was less about siege that people often think.
Medieval warfare was often a war of ambushs, raids and skirmish, even guerilla. Siege or big battle were often something that a good commander tried to avoid until he had no other option, because it was seen as very hasardous.
And sieges need a lot of soldiers and the besiegers are very vulnerable to counter-attack during the process, because they basically have the same problems than the besieged (supplies, dissent, epidemy), but are not behind defensive structure most of the time. Even today, it is a really difficult form of warfare, still at the adventage of the besieged if they are properly prepared.
@@namrandlemelisk2933 I don't think the besieged were at an advantage in history, they seem to lose every time, especially once the Mongols show up.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 It all depends on the time period in question and the forces and technology involved. There are plenty of instances of the besieged winning. And even more of attackers not even bothering to attempt a siege. The English Chevauchees in the Hundred Years War are prime examples of the latter. Glorified raids that did not stop to lay siege to well fortified places. Another example are the Burghs that Wessex created throughout England. These certainly affected the Viking raids.
During the Middle Ages, the defenders tended to have all of the advantages, especially early on and if in a stone structure. The attackers had a limited time to get into a defended fort before things like their troop enlistment time ran out. This could be as short as 3 months or less. And the attackers had to supply themselves. Logistics was not all that well developed. Troops tended to live off of the land, and if they remained stationary for too long, they pretty much consumed everything within reach. Shipping food and supplies in would be extremely expensive and hazardous. Very easy to interdict.
What swung the balance back to the attackers was the development of heavy artillery. And the appropriate procurement and supply mechanisms for that.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 After my knowledge in the east wasnt so much big Castles where the Mongols where !
Most likely Europe where rescued by the castles !
Thank you answering a history question I've always wondered about!
And massive shout out to the art team, the images in this episode were majestic to look at!
I wish I had a history teacher like Kings and Generals. It's truly an art to create such quality videos and you have mastered it !
I wonder why a city-state like Athens could field armies and navies with tens of thousands of personnel while say, the French Kingdom and even the HRE could barely field that much.
Could it be because of feudalism vs the citizen levy model of army recruitment?
Could it be that feudal army pool is limited to the small military class and ill-trained peasantry, while citizen levies of ancient city states like Rome and Athens could draw out more troops as they have more landed and propertied people available?
Centralized power+money+well run bureaucracy= capability to organize & maintain large bodies of men.
What are you talking about?
The Kingdom of France had a big army in the 7th Crusade.
The Holy Roman Empire had Emperor Barbarossa with a huge army in the 3rd Crusade.
The video mentions 20000 armed saddled men for the Ottonian realm, so you'd probably have to add a couple times that in levies during a defensive war for example.
Athens was at the time one of the largest cities in the already heavily urbanised Mediterranean, not to mention it had a large countryside population and could draw on its subjects for manpower. Not to mention at that period there were a lot of unemployed men flipping between cities from the Black Sea to Magna Graecia who would sign on to navies or become mercenaries.
Carrying capacity of the land was much lower during the dark ages vs the ancient world
Another point on the governments of medieval Europe:
A King had access directly only to his own levies and his own knights. Some of his knights were also Dukes and counts who were beneath him. Each of those dukes had their own counts and each of those counts had their own barons.
Each of these ranks were "Knights" and there were also other knights who didn't have authority in the royal court but who sought their own positions and to further obtain more land.
Levies were average people like you and I who were called up by their lords to serve as soldiers, often coming to war with simple spears or if lucky a shield and spear they might have had from their father's time or in extremely rare cases, a sword. It was up to the lord what sort of equipment they provided to their levies and this could enhance their effectiveness greatly, but in many instances people came to a battlefield with something basic and gambeson coats, with armour being worn exclusively by the nobility.
For every King, he had to wager if he could risk his entire population of men fit for combat in a war against a neighboring state. IF he lost all of his men, then his nobles who certainly would not risk all of their own soldiers for their liege could usurp him and take the throne so long as they had a blood link somewhere in the past (Which was common among nobility).
Further, a count could start getting ideas with the other counts beneath a Duke who lost his own soldiers in battle or in the worst case scenario, his only heir.
Because of this and the fact that levies were in general much more valuable on the farm and producing the goods the nobles relied on for both income and for their own tables, nobles RARELY risked their entire power out of fear it would remove their family from that position or worse see the nobility or crown take their land.
Nobles also fought one another all the time, a Duke would fight another Duke and a count another count over land disputes and insults or marriage betrothals.
Compared to the centralized states of antiquity, if the Emperor says to raise another 30,000 men for the legion, you damn well do it no questions asked.
You demand your nobility to raise another 30,000 men in 1123 and your nobles laugh and declare war to put the Duke of Kent on the throne instead of you or your younger brother who has promised to not be so demanding.
In Asia it was a different story, the wars that raged in modern day Central Asia and the Caucuses they would field armies in the tens of thousands. In India and China they were even bigger. At Agincourt King Henry's and the Valois armies together were over 30,000; more modest estimates put them at less than 20,000. Compare that to the Battle of Ankara in Anatolia that happened a decade earlier between Bayezid and Timur, both their armies separately numbering over 100,000.
Barbarossa had 100.000 aswell
Before watching this video I think the reasons were that:
1. Pop cap limit reached (aoe2)
2. They forgot to do quantity ideas (eu4)
Didn't research standing armies - ck3
They required more Vespene Gas (StarCraft)
One thing I think needs to be noted about losing 50 knights as being a major setback may be more of a political and administration issue rather than a military one.
Since knights were basically warriors and administrators rolled into one, losing that many at once would be as if a country lost 50 towns worth of mayors, judges, and sheriffs in one day.
Even today losing 50 heavy tanks is pretty bad
Mayors were elected by the peasants
Very interesting video about a topic, I wondered often in the past, so thank you.
One thing to add: The struggle in the HRE was between the families of Welf and Hohenstaufen not between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Those were the faction in imperial Italy at the time, with the Ghibellines being generally loyal to the emperor, while the Guelphs were in opposition to him, cooperating often with the pope. They were named after the Welfs and Waiblingen (the origion of the family of Hohenstaufen) but the reason for Otto IVs low support in Germany were not his actions in Italy but him being the only member of the Welf family on the imperial throne who was opposed by Hohenstaufen-loyalists
"Guelph" is Italian for Welf, "Ghibelline" is Italian for "Waiblingen", the family seat of the Hohenstaufer family.
Kinda like how Deutsch is a loan word from Italian Tedesci, in turn a loan word/corruption of thiutisk ;p
The First Bulgarian Empire at it's height could field more than 20k. (when including the mercs) According to Arab scholars, at the battle at Achelous 917 the numbers were quite bigger
@Kings And Generals I have to correct you on one thing you actually said in this video. Actually it was Edward III of England who led the siege of Calais of 1346-1347 and not Henry III of England since he died in 1272 because Henry didn't live that longer. In practice Edward III actually had around 30,000 troops before the Black Death had reached the shores of his kingdom.
Finally someone mentions the black death, this video didn't touch on the actual cause, just the symptoms of the ice age and black death. One of the hardest times to ever be alive caused small armies and small nations. It's hard to raise an army for war when everyone is starving to death and dying of the plague.
During the First Bulgarian Empire some Tsars fielded armies above 30 000 from which sometimes 1/3 we cavalry. Also during Tsar Simeon's reign he gathered 60 000 soldiers but that was a one time thing.
But that was the peak of the Bulgarian Empire when it was actually stronger and dominated in relations with Eastern Roman Empire. So relatively short period.
bulgars had a huge mixed population to pull from then. Bulgar does mean mixed men in turkic from Bulgha(mixed) and Ar(men/people)
@@teovu5557They were bulgarian by the time of simeon
@@teovu5557 Modern historiography disputes the turkic origin of the Bulgars and even traditional historiography has always been uncertain on the etymology.
@@its_dey_mate Don't confuse a field of study with an individual.
Before watching the video, my guess is lack of centralization, hence leads lack of coordination and organization, especially in terms of logistic, that force armies to be small
'Before watching'...Ok then.
That idea makes no sense, all throughout history empires have been consolidated in a lifetime to amass large armies. The problem here was an ice age leading to tons of famine and the PLAGUE.
How about medieval Turkic armies like Ghaznavid and Seljuk army? They were probably bigger than most European armies at that time.
Well during the 1071 battle of Manzikert the Seljuks had around 30,000-50,000 men while e.g. during the battle of Crecy the French fielded around 20,000-30,000 men. So definitely larger armies then the average European state, around the levels of Byzantine Empire, but not as much as e.g. the average Mongol army.
ghaznavids were 80%Afghans. only the leader was Turkic but his ministers and generals were all Afghans.
@@akiogood4712 Khalaj, Oghuz, Karluk, Chigil, Kipchak etc. Were all part of Ghaznavid army who were Turkic peoples
@@akiogood4712 80%🤓
@@DeliYuzbashi are you denying that most of the leaders of the ghaznavids during the time of Sultan Mahmud were ethnic Afghans, including the ministers, generals and footsoldiers?
I have been discussing this with my friend some time ago, and my main point was that medieval kingdoms lacked huge cities. Cities mean commerce and craftsmanship on large scale which is needed in you are about to equip thousand of people in the same manner like roman legionaries. What you think?
Take battle of Marathon as an example. Athenians were able to muster 10.000 hoplites, so more than some medieval kings from their entire realm.
Mmmmh i have to sort of disagree with you, Paris just before the plague was more populated than ancient Athens, places like Milan, Venice or Naples had people in the houndreds of thousands too, although it is true that there was no Rome sized place there were many big cities all over Europe, perhaps more (in number not in size) than in Antiquity as places like Germany and the Baltic began to urbanize
@@ramiromen6595 Plague and an ice age which decimated crop yields and created tons of famine. It's really hard to raise an army for empire building when everyone is barely surviving. The Romans built during an easy age then suffered along with everyone else during the Dark Ages. The Ottomans fared better because of their location, they didn't like Europe because it was "cold and dark". I think this video was way off.
Yes...kind of...but a lot of the ancient countries lacked huge cities too
I always think of that movie Ironclad about the siege of Rochester castle and in the movie it's like 150 guys (mostly Scandinavian mercenaries) vs maybe 20 people defending a small fort.
And the strange thing is that's not entirely unrealistic despite being scaled down to fit a middle-budget film. Probably more battles fought on that scale in feudal Europe than can ever be counted.
the sound balance in this episode was rather off with the background sounds often starting to drown out the narrator or at least starting to challenge them due to their volume.
I think the dominance of knights on the battlefield while their feudal castles built on every hill of the land is the answer to this question. In the ancient world, they could not allow nor construct them. Siegewarfare as well as metallurgy were two things that evolved rather than stagnated during the dark ages compared to that of the ancients. On the other hand a consequence of this made medieval kingdoms very hard to rule and develop economically because their nobles locked the land with minifortresses. As soon as the medieval castle as well as the heavy knight lost their importance because of cannon and musqet, the armies grew in size and centralized governments grew in importance with increased trade and larger cities.
I think this factor is so massively underlooked. A small army of medieval nights would have WRECKED a peasant levy army of much larger size, so you bud no choice but to focus on the elite troops. That simply made large armies impossible. It also made logistics really hard, which further incentivized the complex network of small, local feudal polities. Once you’re in a situation where it’s all self interested local feudal lords, nobody has the capability to start co querying each other on scale enough to rebuild a large empire that makes centralized administration possible.
It’s downstream of the knights.
Absolutely love and appreciate all your incredible information filled amazing content and everyone who is part of its creation behind the scenes. Yall truely do an unbelievably amazing job 💯% of the time
Personal Suggestions For Future Videos.
1) How Did Gunpowder change the course of warfare & history?
2) The Rise of the first holy emperor and father of Europe, Charlemagne.
3) American War for Independence.
4) The Punic Wars.
5) The Northern Crusades.
Warfare changed with introduction of stirrups and feudalism.
Heavy cavalary dominanted battlefields from 5th to 15th century.
But you cant have huge number of them.
Second issue were all forts which had to be besieged. You have to feed those troops.
Just to inform you, mongolian army was around 100,000 men. The number of soldiers roman could just lose at sea because of storms. But they were well led, well fed and all had 2-3 horses.
Thank god gypsies focused on stealing horses instead of mastering them. The power of a nomadic tribe on pregunpowder era was inmense since it greatly eliminated the logistic aspec that hindered their counterparts as they could live off their livestock and foresting.
@@carlosdelsol76 lmao
mongolian army was more than that but it was spread out. there were 600k men in chinese front, 100k in europe, 50k in middle east.
@@QWERTY-gp8fd bro, nomadic people of steppe werent just crapping out manpower. There were no long rivers or easy to access coasts to make trade and get wealthy. We are talking about empty cold grasslands with close to no water. Population of nomads couldnt afford to build an army more than a few hundred thousand.
@@youryoutubeyoda mongolia was fighting europe , china , middle east at the same time.
these are the estimated army during the mongke khan reign.
there was 150k mongols in the siege of baghdad. at the same time 30k mongols were fighting in vietnam , 30k mongols were fighting in poland , 20k mongols at korea, 2/3 of all mongol army were battling at sichuan.
there was 300k mongols in berke hulagu civil war while mongolia was fighting song china. u really underestimate how numerous the mongol army was.
We went from demigod kings to giant empires to warlords calling themselves kings. That's why the numbers went up in antiquity and dipped after the age of empires ended
And it was better for everyone. Also there was the concept of just war within Europe and most wars happened outside cities/villages so common peoples didn't died or the buildings don't get destroyed.
The only good thing Rome did is creating a stage for the Middle Ages
@@MedievalAngryDude based
Thankfully that happened going from a millon enslaved and another millon killed in each war to a few thousand must have been seen as a godsend
Warlords with more man power to warlords with less man power. You call the former demigods and the latter king pretenders.
I think we need to make a distinction between Medieval Europe and Asia because the army sizes in Asia were much larger in this time period.
Exactly numerous Medieval Asian polities like Timurids, Seljuks, Mongols, Tibet, China, Caliphates, Khwarezmians,... could gather armies numbering hundred thousand/s
One of the main reasons was centralization of power, most power was at the capital, Europe at this period was not, kings didn’t actually hold that much legitimacy, they were basically the largest lords of their kingdom, anyone that became larger could challenge their rule.
@@nenenindonu and yet the Mongols and the Caliphates couldn't conquer western Europe
The Mongols beat small eastern European countries
They conquered China and destroyed Baghdad but never reached western Europe or Britain
It's the same with all the Asian armies who expanded west
They could take eastern Europe and western Asia but none of them could take countries in western Europe
The holy Roman empire was their the whole time
Through the Arab Caliphates the ottomans and the Mongols and they were untouched and outlasted them all.
@@IrishCinnsealachBecause Genghis had died and the generals had to be recalled to select an heir-only to have the empire break up over land and inheritance squabbles anyway.
@@IrishCinnsealach Excluding the Caliphates, it's cause much of their (Ottomans & Mongols) power was already drained at the time they had reached Western Europe. If the Mongol empire's base wasn't a faraway region like Mongolia but somewhere in modern Ukraine they surely would've conquered all of Europe, still could have if it wasn't for Ögedei's death
It's actually a wonder how so many larger armies got raised when you were dependent on a feudal economy to equip and feed a fighting force, and as well find enough fodder for the horses that carried the core of your professional part of the army back then.
I think its worth mentioning had England sent more troops to France in the hundred years war they would have been in danger of being invaded by the Scottish kingdom so they definitely had to keep part of their total forces on the home island for the purpose of defending just incase of an invasion
I would love to see a video on what types of troops made up a typical medieval army and what parts of society did they really come from?
Like did peasants really fight in armies or is that a myth? Did militia come from the large cities or from the country side? How were soldiers recruited? Etc.
Not doable for all of Europe and all of "the Middle Ages". There are some few constants, but it turns out it is hard to generalise 1,000 years of history concerning an entire subcontinent.
One constant is that all free men above a certain level of wealth were liable for military service. They were generally required to acquire and maintain "arms" (in those days, that included armour) in keeping with their wealth. In a true emergency *all* men are so liable, but the general agreement then and now was that such forces were basically worthless.
Cities maintained defences (walls, etc.) and generally required citizens to serve in a military capacity. What exactly that entailed differed from city to city; please understand that "city" in that day included a goodly chunk of land simply in order ti feed the city itself. Military obligations by the city towards feudal overlords . . . good heavens, that's a subject for multiple books' worth of study, not a 20-minute video.
Peasants would fight in times of emergency, like a miltiia. You typically dont levy peseants because theyre busy supporting your domestic economy, food, logistics. You could field a thousand peseants with pikes or spears. British peasants may train in the longbow as its a relatively cheap piece of equipment. But peasants wouldn't stand afield against knights or mounted units.
Edit: Soldier classes were generally generational. Fmailies owned equipment that was passed down. Certain towns/cities/lords would have enough resources to maintain a small well-trained professional army. Preperations for war were done with training. Plan for a war, field 5,000 soldiers from your kingdom, train and supply them, etc. Then the war ends and those soldiers go back to their daily life. Another war and you have those generational soldiers.
@@SP_A_C_E_D I'd like to know how you propose to train men who will only be there for as long as their feudal obligation requires. Which, typically, is something between 40 to 60 days per year.
Also, "British peasants" do not train with the longbow. English and Welsh yeomanry, i. e. freemen farmers, okay. But "Britain" only becomes a thing with the 1701 Act of Union.
They heavy cavalier was actually quite potent. European forces in the crusades were often significantly out numbered, yet often won. The classical period armies were vast light troops and light cavalry. It was definitely a superior military power, but it isn't a 1 to 1. I also think the rise of fortified cities and castles also reduced the effectiveness of massive armies. You couldn't just blitz right over your opponent and would be stuck in prolonged sieges and struggling to feed your large fielded army. I think we saw this with the Mongols and how they were ultimately defeated in Eastern Europe. Heavy cavalry and fortified cities and castles.
I'll always enjoy learning more about the Medieval period! Another excellent video!
12:51 Im pretty sure I've seen the guy on the right patrolling Novigrad, and saying "for Redania!" Lol
When considering the numbers for armies of antiquity I wish you would have looked at the armies fielded for example by Rome and Carthage in their wars, as those two states were much closer in land mass to say England and France. Would have given much better perspective imo.
The estimate for Cannae is 80,000 Romans and Socii versus ca. 50,000 Crathaginians (and allies). Notably, Rome *lost* most of that army (about 60k KIA), but simply turned around and raised another army about the same size. Notably, Cannae, *follows* Roman defeats at Trebia (20K dead Romans/Socii) and Lake Trasimene (25K dead Romans/Socii). I can't be arsed to look up all of Hannibal's minor victories, but those three battles alone inflict 100k military deaths.
@@jochentram9301 I think the First Punic War is even more insane when it comes to Roman losses. They held less land than they did during the Second Punic War yet lost so many more, especially in naval 'battles' (with the weather).
@@sirjoey3137 Casualty-wise, I don't think the First Punic War was quite as bad, but again, Roman and Socii casualties rather exceeded 100,000.
One should, however, note that the ancient world is much, much more urbanised. Rome-the-city already had a population well in excess of a quarter million in those years, although only a fraction of those qualified for the dilectio.
For those who need the term translated, that's the Roman form of conscription-by-lot, which presupposed a certain minimum wealth. Roman armies in all three Punic Wars are still BYOG; the state only provided rations for soldiers on campaign and IIRC a minimal stipend
The rain falling onto the map is a nice touch.
When you had to have ten kids to make sure that you'd get two or three that didn't die of smallpox and cholera, there's only going to be so many soldiers to go around.
Terrific video. It was a remarkable fall in a lot of ways, going from the ancient world to the middle ages.
I would argue that there's an additional reason (which is however part of logistics and finances mentioned in the video): The rise of the heavy cavalry, as in, knights.
Most ancient armies were totally dominated by infantry, especially heavy infantry like the Hoplites and Legionaries. Cavalry played a pretty small role, was lightly armed and armored and were mostly used to pursue and cut off retreats. A force of heavy cavalry is much more expensive to maintain than heavy infantry, thus strongly reducing the number of troops on the same budget.
It's IMHO less the money cost, it's the logistics strain. Cavalry horses eat a lot, and you do need to feed them grain. It's hard enough to supply 10,000 people, overland. If you need to also feed 30,000 horses (minimal for a force of knights) . . . yeah, not happening.
There's also the matter of nul usage of slaves in medieval kingdoms that came with Christianisation. Kingdoms and all are more dependable on their own population for the production of materials, goods and hell food, hence reducing both the amount of troops you can muster and upkeep since you earn less overall money.
@@Dimitris_Half Serfs and slaves are not the same and even if, there is a difference between importing foreign slaves and making slaves out of your own population.
4:49 The fact that tiny France during that time managed to raise as many 20 000 Men is incredible. France during that time was just a fraction the size of what Rome was
Tiny France ?
France was the most populated country of Europe during the high Middle Ages (about a quarter of Europe's population lived within the borders of what is now considered metropolitan France).
As for the comparison with Rome, it isn't very relevant.
The population of roman Gaul in the first century was of seven to eight millions; in the 1200's that number had gone up to about sixteen million (more than double), yet the Roman Empire routinely mustered more soldiers from Gaul than the french king did from his territory.
The issue isn't that of population, but of centralisation and money.
The sound balance on the marching horses sound effect seems a little loud.
I think a large part of this is accounted for by feudalism. Ancient civilizations of Europe and Southwest Asia didn't have huge numbers of peasants that were essentially chained to plots of land. Therefore, ancient civilizations were more apt to recruit and train common folk for their armies, since lords weren't on the hook if/when their common soldiers' homes went into ruin from neglect while being on a military campaign. But if nobles took their peasants on a military campaign, it might ruin the nobles' entire estate, since he needed his peasants to keep the estates profitable.
Also, medieval arms were more potent and therefore made a lightly armed peasantry extremely vulnerable. And since most nobles didn't want to outfit their own peasants with adequate arms, it was probably less risky (from the nobles' perspective) to just take a much smaller, yet professional army of knights with them on campaign.
Medieval arms were also expensive, so the nobles could only afford a small number of "professional" troops.
@@nooneatall8072 yeah, that’s a huge part of it, too. Even if a noble did have absolutely loyal peasants to take on campaign with him, it was extremely expensive to properly arm them.
This is not entirely true. Feudalism is pretty much and evolved form of Germanic culture were only a particular group of men were expected and allowed to fight. Whereas the ancient Greeks and the Romans heavily relied on peasants during the medieval times only a highly trained professional warrior class fought in wars. They weren’t peasants their trade was to fight and they had a lot of expensive equipment.
@@nooneatall8072yes and this caused some people to become professional warriors. A stupid farmer with a spear and a wooden shield isn’t going to do shit against mercenary men at arms with mail armour and polearms. It’s far more economical to let the farmer farm and let professional warriors do the fighting.
@@fij715 huh?
There is another big big factor: plagues and famines, they where a lot more common compared with ancient times, because the diseases where more widespread and the sanitation was poor, also the great plague killed about half the population, also the climate was colder and unstable so food shortages where common and that means famines, it seems that the population was larger in ancient times compared with medieval times so of course that means a smaller pool for recruitment.
Its fascinating how empires like ancient Rome were able to form a large yet diverse empire who's army sizes couldn't be matched for over a millennium until the early 19th century. At least in Europe I mean.
18th century*
War of Austrian succession and 7 years war saw battles with hundred thousand participants. Napoleonic wars/19th century armies were much larger than what antiquity could produce.
@@linming5610 Really 16th century. The Spanish Empire could field an army of 300,000 men
"Large yet diverse" the larger the empire the more diverse it is.
The armies in the 30 years Wars already have the same size of the armies in classic period
@@linming5610 The Gauls supposedly assembled a relief force of 250,000 at Alesia in addition to the garrison of 80,000. And that's just Gauls.
Another exception of rule has been for the Mongols: raising the staggering amount of troops that bascially outshined all medieval armies in existences. At least, the ones in Europe, of course.
Quality content as always!
Well for example during grunwald batle betwen poland, lithuania and teutonic order depending on the sources there was around 15k to 20k on polish lithunian side and 10k to 15k on teutonic side but most of woriors participating were cavarlymen, knigts mostly. What it means is that even if those numbers were not that big compared to ancient battles cost of training and equiping such a worrior was propably higher.
Meanwhile JIN DYNASTY casually spamming 1 million strong army
And still lost to Mongols who were just around 10k.. The 1 MN army were all peasants.
The 10k Mongols profession was........... Ahoo ahoo
Those numbers were likely HIGHLY inflated.
I didn't realize how accurate A Song of Ice and Fire is
Castles and knights strengthened local, regional powers over grand empires. Castles were so hard to penetrate and capture that kings found it hard to compel Lords to fight for them, leading to much smaller areas of political influence.
This, during the medieval period kingdoms were much less decentralised than during the Roman empire. The King of France for example that subjects that were actively fighting him and each other. War was less common and on a much smaller scale which led to a higher life expectancy and higher populations.
Logistics. All the food, hay for horses, etc made for a long supply train, vulnerable to attack, so keep it small, mobile and trained, easier to train 1,000 than 4,000.
What people often don't realize is how massive an army of 5.000 men really is. You've likely been part of a large mob of people, that numbered less than 1000, but still felt very large. Imagine an army marching together to the battlefield more than 5x that.
With modern populations, we often lose sense for how big these armies would be. Similarily a city of 30.000 people is quite big when travelling on foot amd seeing many peasants from the countryside gatner for market day or a festival
People who watch sports in venue should have a very good idea of what a crowd of a certain number should look like. Chicago Bulls’ stadium has a capacity of 21,000 for example.
@@caelestigladii You're right, but I feel like the organized seating and being bunched up distorts the numbers a bit, compared to a mob of people in a field.
There are a lot of stadiums that do hold specifically 5000 people.
And its a huge number. and if we are talking some armys did have around 80,000 people. Some football stadiums hold that many people as well. With that being said, I always imagined medieval dights to be chaotic. With that many people.
But i'm an asia where battle have less than 10k total didnt even call a war 😢.For example a conquest from medium size country like Dai Viet to Lan Na (small size) in XV have about 180k troop include logistics.
@@attien879 Those numbers are highly exaggirated, like almost all ancient and medieval sources on army numbers are. Some contemporary chroniclers claimed Barbarossa amassed an army of 600.000 men for the 3rd crusade, and some old historians had the Frankish army at the Battle of Tours as 75.000 facing up to 400.000 Umayyad soldiers. These figures are of course not true. While army numbers in Eastern Asia tended to be higher than in Europe during the Middle ages, it wasn't that big of a difference, and anything above 5.000 men will require sufficient logistics.
Thanks for the video. I always like hearing about the medieval time ⚔️
Can you do an extended look into Roman bureaucracy/administration vs feudal
One other difference I ve noticed is that war in Medieval Europe tended to be between Royals only.
During the roman period and the similar era in China, there were many cases of armies that emerged from the common people. Some eventually became so successful that their commoner leader became the next King or Emperor.
Am i mistaken to think this way?
Meanwhile, Ancient China:
Professional armies were not too much larger . Mostly less than 3-5,% of the population , there were probably much less soldiers in china compared to Europeans
Chinese history:
>Chao Ling takes power
>two hundred and forty seven million perish
stop commenting, i’ve seen this multiple times u aren’t funny
Ancient India had far armies
Ancient China lied about the size of their armies,the issue is that we can't get easy access to debunk their lies like we can with western groups,due to language barriers,lack of research history(heh) and the CCP manipulating what it can for propaganda purposes.Their accounts of million man armies are as reliable as those of Herodotus
To put things in perspective, imperial Rome - caput mundi - had 1.5 millions inhabitants. In year 1000 it had only 30 thousands.
I bet those armies had great personalities though
It ain't the size of the sword, it's the motion of the ocean
People dont realise how advanced to Roman Empire was in its day (and even compared to many areas of the world today).
1million inhabitants in Rome wasnt surpassed again in europe until london in 1810.
Also no one else had professional armies in europe after rome until the french in 1430.
Eurooe genuinely went backwards by a couple of centuries once rome fell.
so crusaders kings levy size is realistic; that is truly surpising.
Why is that surprising? paradox is known for having games that pay attention to historical detail and plausibility.
Increased upkeep and recruitment cost, while farms and inns only still produce 100 and 450 per turn.
The ambient noise in some parts of the video are way too loud, am I the only one who is bothered by that?
Either way great video as always, best content on YT
That footsteps sound effect or marching or whatever it's supposed to be is super annoying
It has replaced seagull squawks as my least favorite
What is even more impressive is that how easily the late Roman Republic by the time of Caesar’s Civil War easily raised legions.
Another example on ancient wars having more soldiers would be the Marcomannic wars. The romans under Marcus Aurelius had deployed around 390 000 men(unless the auxiliary cohorts were auxilia where it would be 429 000)whilst the germanic-iranic confederation around 977,000 men. The wikipedia page even has a separate page just listing all the roman military units in this war.
more than 55 legions
I´ve always pondered this question. They seemed so petty compared to the ancient times or to the napoleonic battles. Thank you.
It's because it was an ice age and they had the plague. Humanity in Europe was barely hanging on, they didn't have the resources to raise large armies.
I noticed this especially in Britain during the Scottish wars of independence.
I suddenly realized that my standing army of 70k in CK3 might have been a little overpowered
Chinese History: Hold my beer!
That fire sound effect is powerful... wow
I think you’ve also got to factor in the tech of the armour in the Middle Ages, a knight was like a walking tank back then, arrows would only injure them with lucky shots or de horse them, if they was mounted. Compared with back then when you would still be effective being poor equipped, also religious and cultural advances tamed alot of the everyday folk, most didn’t fight on a daily basis or even train to. So for the average person going to war was just a death wish, with little or no reward compared to there easy lives at home, making it costly to hire people. Also you have to factor in the control the churches had then, it wasn’t in there favour to have large wars within the Christian domains, it would have hurt there finances to much, there’s a reason the crusades ect happed to divert war away from the lands they had power over, and create more lands they could tax.
Can you make a video regarding the Khalifa Arab army structure? I'm eager to learn more.
Love these history lessons. Well done sir
Thank you , K&G .
🐺
The background noises seems a lot more distracting in this video compared to the others
9:35
“The quarrels were so petty they were, sometimes, even over a fucking bucket.
Blood was shed over a fucking bucket, for crying out loud.”
One thing you could also blame when comparing it to antiquity is the lack of cities and larger towns. Cities and towns add to the population as they grow and with that comes a population for recruitment. Rome had access to the cities of Italy granting vast reserves for mobilization. Alongside that, you could also add the fact that warfare had changed over time from set-pitch battles to raiding as a result of the post Empire material conditions.
Not true. There were many towns and a few great cities in the Middle Ages. London, Paris, Constantinople, Genoa, Milan, Venice, to name a few
@@DieNibelungenliad I agree, just arguing they weren’t as large or as numerous.
Seeing a man running at you with a big axe
' No, no..I'm just the cook...'
Chop !
Oh man, how could you not mention one important aspect: the armies of the medieval were primarily cavalry. The cost and number of horses and riders available made the armies much smaller
Quick question, did you watch the video?
What?Aint no way Western European armies were mostly cavalry,in every medieval K&G video I remember armies had at least 2-3X more infantry than cavalry.
Maybe its true for the Mongols and turkic peoples but definetly not in Europe.
You watching too much movies, this isnt lord of the rings
Great video and great answer to the question.
Very cool Video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Please make a video about the history of the barbarian kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards, Merovingians (Franconian), Burgundians, Alemanians, Saxons and Avars
That was because of the smaller global population, disease spreading and armors, shields and swords were expensive, also there was more sieges with smaller numbers needed.
Nope. It was because of political decentralization.
Smaller global population ?
The population continued to grow during the Middle Ages, it only significantly dipped during the 1350's because of the black death, only to grow significantly higher in the centuries afterwards.
The loss of centralisation that resulted from the fall of the WRE led to a mass exodus of people from cities into rural areas, not to a sudden mass extinction.
@@hoppeananc Yes but I was comparing modern era and the middle ages. I comared the Soviets with millions of troops and the Crusaders with 30k.
@@lazarhistory Oh sorry. I tought you were comparing it with the Classical Age like the video.
Been waiting for so long for a video like this. Thank u so much kings and generals
I always learn so much from this series.
Finally, someone's answering my question after years of speculation
This is hitting a topic I was always wondering about. Thank you.
I asked this very question on this channel a few months ago. Great to see it so well explained in this video!
I think its important to mention that smaller armies dont necessarily mean worse armies, nor that the population was small. im pretty sure the population of france was often around 20 million before the black death while feilding armies of only 20,000. partialy because the general population was much more spread out rather than the ancient civilized trend of large concentrated population centers
And mentioning this, it seems like “barbarian” groups that ancients fought that had much less economic resources then most equivalent medieval states often still fought in the tens of thousands as well. Gauls, goths, huns, etc. I think there is a process of conscious “quality not quantity” intent in medieval warfare, especially with the domination of heavy cavalry on the battlefeild. I think there is an implication that these armies are somehow “lesser” then ancient armies when I dont think that is necessarily the case.
The feudal system was very particular and was effective enough to become very popular in its time.
8In addition to the reasons given in the video, it's important to remember that postclassical Europe was functionally a backwater (or at best a peripheral region to the central powers of Eurasia) that we have better records for than earlier regions that functioned in a similar matter. If we had texts from the pre-migration Germanic tribes or the Hittite border tribes, or the Amorite neighbors of the Ancient Middle East we'd likely see similar numbers and systems of raising armies. In that light events like the numbered crusades can be seen as a similar phenomenon to the significant raids/invasions of such "civilized" polities by their "barbarian" neighbors. There are other climactic etc. reasons as well but we don't see the same shrinking of army sizes in other parts of Eurasia except during periods of significant internal strife
I really want the Kings and Generals narrator to voice some characters in the next elder scrolls. High elves and Imperials especially
Put simply, logistics. It is easier to maintain a few great troops, over a lot of good troops.
A 100 knights might cost as much as 10K soldiers (in terms of land rights, pay, loot, etc), but moving, feeding, and organizing 100 knights is a hell of a lot easier than supporting a standard army.
Europe being extremely fragmented during the middle ages didn't have the logistics to support full size armies.