And let's remember, there has been only one or two successful counter insurgency wars in all the military history that I am aware of. If you do not have the hearts and minds of the natives every effort will fail. The natives give food and supplies to their rebellious friends, carry messages and so on. (And lest anyone plans to pipe up, having the natives by the balls does not help the invaders on the long run.)
The critical point comes when the guerillas have to mass enough forces to confront the invaders in set-piece battle style.
At 10:09 AM 1/29/2001 -0000, you wrote:
>> Are Starbrow and the Argraths at least partially Gloranthan
>> equivalents of
>> Michael Collins and Ho Chi Min - freedom fighters who turn the enemy's
>> strengths into weaknesses using small dispersed bands of
>> dedicated raiders,
>> manipulating politics as well as military events to win the hearts of
>> majority to their cause?
>
>Bear in mond that there are significant differences in the capacity for
>guerilla action in pre-technical societies. Tghe success of 20th century
>guerilla movements is heavily influencedc by very modern phenomenon, such as
>the presence of automatic firemarms. These permit the recruitment of
>peasants with little or no training, while close combat with sword or spear
>is a much more specialised skill and has much greater physical requirements.
>Secondly, modern tinned or dehydrated foods allow guerillas to establish
>long lasting caches of supplies, and great portability, whereas bronze/iron
>age guerillas cannot store much food for more than a couple of days,
>usually. Radio and sattelite communication systems allow separated units to
>stay in direct contact with a central coordinating command, which permits
>much greater tactical flexibility than isolated and autonomous groups of
>near-bandits - and of course banditry is the form that this "guerilla"
>action falls into pretty quickly, as the need to "liberate" supplies on the
>hoof becomes paramount.
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