Hi guys. I took up the subject a few years ago. Greg chimed in and confirmed that a unit of blackhorse riders isn't literally 500 men, but rather something like a hundread men. It's the _equivalent_ of five hundread strong unit of heavy cavalry. I can dig up more of the posts, but they are also findable from the yahoo archives.
-Adept
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[from my original posting]
Going with some historic numbers, and some excellent H�rnmaster
supplements I've come up with these numbers.
Blackhorse County: Population 20 000.
Ignoring for a while the "capital" of Muse Roost, a knight driven feodal society like this should be composed of 200 villages of about a hundread people. Every village has a knight as a manor lord, and the knight has a fev squires with him.
>From this we get an elite body of 200 knights and 400 of the less
armored and less skilled cavalry.
In a village of 100 there should be about 20 men that can be raised as militia. This gives the the county a theoretical potential of 4000 militia.
In practise I would think 2000 militia would be the absolute maximum that can be trotted out for war for any lenght of time.
For a standard contract, of maybe a seasons fighting I'd say:
1 element of knights:
200 blackhorse knights, led by Ehilrist himself.
2 elements of cavalry:
400 riders of armored cavalry, also mounted on demonsteeds. (possibly
qualifying as superior or heavy cavalry)
6 - 8 elements of of spear.
1400 - 1600 men of cheaply equipped but somewhat trained spear levy, led
by professional soldiers hoping to make it to the cavalry / knighthood.
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A tidy little army, and one well worth hiring I'd say. Especially in a time and place where cavalry is scarse and knights a terrifying and almost unknown thing.
-Adept
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