Re: Ethilrist's men and total population

From: Scott Rogers <amaretto_sirloin_at_...>
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:27:27 -0700 (PDT)

Whatabout the idea that the majority of the warriors/cavalry would provide meat and game for the whole society along the lines of The Mongols or Native American Braves? Obviously the "straight-forward " civilians would need to provide grain, prepare furs, tan hides, fish and the like, but the warriors hunting would perhaps make some sense in that it would be sport and would hone their riding/bow/spear skills at the same time? This idea also furthers game ideas (chance meeting of a Black Horse hunting party etc). This was the semi-nomadic lifestyle we adopted for black horse county in a recent campaign of ours (although we never actually engaged any of them). Just a thought anyway...
Scott

donald_at_... wrote:
In message <1DiX9H-1JTyWe0_at_....t-online.de> "Norbert Franz" writes:
>
>Thank you, Peter. I guess I'll go with that number then.
>
>Still, if the total is 20,000, this means less than 3 people per
>each fully trained cavalry man or foot soldier.
>Is that enough to grow grain for everybody?

No, on those figures just about every able-bodied adult male is a soldier. The only sensible interpretation is that the majority of the foot soldiers are part-timers who also farm. Even so, if we take the figures in HW of seven squadrons of cavalry (3,500) and two squadrons of infantry (2,000) there isn't enough manpower to feed the full timers. So if those figures are right they are continually importing large amounts of food. I do remember a discussion where it was suggested that the cavalry squadrons were a lot less than 500 each but the demon steeds made them as effective as full 500 man squadrons. If they were 100 strong that would give 700 full-timers and give some 2,500 - 3,000 farmers on top of the 2,000 part-time soldiers.

As a rough guide I work on the basis that a society can maintain a maximum of 10% of it's total population as soldiers. In practice very few RW societies have ever reached that level.

>Any hints as to how many of the folks who are not men-at-arms do
>farm or learn a trade, like pottery, weaving and tailoring?
>
>And I haven't even started to count the liturgists. ;-)

I suspect the liturgists count as part of the total armed men given that it is a very militaristic society.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/


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