Why were Medieval armies in the West so small compared to armies in the east most of the time?
Why were Medieval armies in the West so small compared to armies in the east most of the time?
Why were Medieval armies in the West so small compared to armies in the east most of the time?
K selected species vs r selected
Because China and India have always been more populous, I guess?
Asian populations are exaggerated. Besides early history due to river deltas China never had more population than the west as a whole.
Various factors.
>Medieval European realms had smaller populations vis-a-vis Easterners.
>Medieval European realms were less wealthy compared to some of the more organized Eastern realms.
>Their military system was quite decentralized, reliant upon a network of lords & cities being able to furnish men & supplies for war. Some of your lords & cities might be too poor to furnish supplies, or have fewer men in their locale. Feudal bullshit could mean a duke not showing up in a fight because he dislikes the King. Compare this to centralized military systems supported by proto-military-industrial complexes found in Imperial China or Islamic Empires. Even Japanese Feudalism was centralized in the domain level where Daimyo runs a centralized military.
>For most the medieval ages, the political-cultural-economic norm that forced Euroes to rely upon professional warrior elites and mercenary forces- all armed & outfitted by their own resources- meant that there were very few soldiers for an army around. At the very most they could ask Urban communes for militias to bolster armies. There wasn't exactly a military barracks that accepted voluntary recruits for a state army or mass conscription as in the East.
Except the West is divided into several small countries while China is a huge patch of Asia under a state entity.
Because at middle-ages average population from most of countries was from 500.000 persons to -1 or 2000.000 with luck. Only France and Germany had more population, circa 9 million, but Germany was a mess in every sense.
If you have a brain you can figure out the reason from pic rel
Who the frick was having a naval battle in the south Indian Ocean, near Antarctica? Japs torpedoing something in WWII?
Because the population was smaller in the west.
There were not that many cities with +10 population.
E.g. in 1377 England only had one city with +10K people, London.
When Edward III besieged Tournai with an army 20,000 (one of the biggest armies England raised during this period), Tournai had a population of 50,000. So the whole campaign was possible only because the Netherlands was the second-most dense region and highly urbanized.
There wouldn't have been any point in sending an army of 20,000 to Ireland, where the largest city had a population of 5,000, it would have starved in a month.
So, in general, because armies are expensive, army size should be as small as it can, Europeans simply did not have a need for gigantic armies, and large armies were generally limited to densely populated regions like the aforementioned Netherlands or Italy. In contrast to China which had a billion cities with a great population, thus everything required significant armies.
Accuracy vs exaggeration, having more than 10k men campaigning in a long period of time it would take a huge amount of preparation, money and work only to keep them and all the horses and other animals feed and specially the field hygiene and sanitation which was crucial to stop any epidemic.
Since the Roman period only the Ottomans could field around 100k but only in well prepared major campaign like against Vienna, half of those were workers and slaves who had to take care of any logistics
>The big change was they made large bureaucracies and centralised more
That's literally my point lmao. Try reading more.
>Try reading more.
No.
>350 thousand men
Is the the entire army including garrison troops in any part of the country or was this amount used in a single campaign, which would be a huge difference
The west would be more decentralized, with smaller countries overall. Also there is the cost of extensive armors to ponder.
quantity = quality
>quantity = quality
Not if you're looking to conquer places you don't. Hence there were almost no major conquests during the Medieval Europe outside of the Norman Conquests & The Crusades, which were both notable for gathering more than 10,000 men.
I meant to post that they don't mean the same thing but I am busy so I got all mixed up lol
logistics
The largest army in Europe 1500 would have been the ottoman army. I think they at around 100,000 for the fall of Constantinople, maybe more.
European armies were much larger In ancient times (If Roman numbers are correct) so the smaller medieval numbers are more likely logistic based.
Except Anon is right and you need an expansive centralized bureaucracy to mobilize the vast resources needed for 100,000 men. Rome had that. Measly medieval kangdoms didn't
Western historians are more rigorous.
You are the moron here, for you cannot fathom difference between the army and a field army. The Romans had 300,000 soldiers on their payroll but that didn't mean they could mobilize most of them to a single field, because bigger the field army, the harder it is to supply, which is why legions were composed out of only 5,000 men and scattered across the empire, while multiple legions could be brought together to form a large field force for a limited time, the Romans never used more than 100 000 men for a single battle.
Medieval rulers didn't have standing armies, so they would mobilize temporary armies up to 30,000 men.
It wasn't until Napoleon that field armies of 100,000 became the norm.
It made warfare more soulful