First off, thanks to Peter Metcalfe and Harald Smith for the Different Worlds reference on the Building Wall Battle (talk about obscure references...). I suspect this post is going to be long, so I hope folks will bear with me.
Jean Durupt wrote some stuff I tended to agree with back in dig#494, but
noted:
>There was no Esrolian army, but an Esrolian corp in the king's army.
While it's true that there is a distinction between the Holy Country's military and the Esrolian military per se, the Pharaoh, being an outlander, did not have a separate power or population base to draw on AFAIK. The Holy Country's army would presumably have been composed of units drawn from each of the Sixths: God Forgot and the Rightarm Islands probably provided a good part of the naval forces, though Esrolia itself is economically in a better position to finance a fleet, but I doubt the Islanders would have been major contributors to a land army; Caladraland was described in the RQ Companion as using largely guerilla tactics to repel invaders, though their volcano priests would no doubt work well with Maran Gor cultists to turn the earth itself against opponents, and I assume they play a big role in the Warm Earth Alliance; the Shadowlands aren't very populous, and their trollkin militia units would have considerable difficulty in daylight, even under AArgar's protective shadow, and the trolls use raider/skirmisher tactics for the most part anyway; leaving us with Esrolia and Heortland to provide the bulk of the Pharaoh's land army. Given that Esrolia has three times the population of Heortland, I would suspect that Esrolian troops, whatever they might actually be, would be the dominant arm of the Holy Country's military during the time of the Pharaoh's rule.
Jean also added, after some perfectly reasonable speculations:
> ...Hence the bad reputation of the Esrolian army.
This is, I suppose, the crux of the problem: the presumption that the Esrolian army has a bad reputation. Off the top of my head, I can recall no "official source" that states or even implies that the Esrolian army _has_ such a reputation; if anyone can dig one up, please post it. The idea that the Esrolian military is lame seems to have simply taken root, perhaps because Esrolia is ruled by women, perhaps because it has no tradition of conquering its neighbors, or perhaps because it's made up mostly of farmers.
That some folks will believe that an army dominated by women is "naturally" going to be weaker than one dominated by men is, I suppose, going to be a given; if it is necessary for some to rationalize a strong Esrolian military by assuming that it's dominated by males, then so be it. There seems to be a resistance to the idea of strong, well-trained male-dominated infantry forces combined with elite female warriors, with a preference to seeing this as an either/or option; either military action is left in the hands of men, in which case cults like Babeester Gor are relegated to minor ritual duties, or Babeester Gor is dominant, in which case male military forces are mostly fodder. Personally, I don't see well-trained male militia units and female elites as being mutually incompatible concepts; ultimately, of course, this is just IMO.
There is no question, in my mind, that very little has been written about Esrolian military history, though I think this reflects on the fact that Esrolia itself tends to get little ink, despite its proximity to Dragon Pass and Our Heroes, the Sartarites (hmm; because its a matriarchy?). I suspect that this lack of military history partly results from the fact that Esrolians are not a conqueror people, and there is a tendency, both in the RW and in Glorantha, to equate "imperialist" impulses with strong military traditions. Just as in the RW there are some notable exceptions (I think it would be possible to argue that the Greeks' military reputation is largely a product of their internal squabbles and their defensive wars, and the Swiss certainly come to mind), I would be willing to suggest that Esrolia is perfectly capable of producing a strong military tradition without having to invade its neighbors. Indeed, Esrolian internal struggles, once they reach the point of violence, might well mimic ancient Greek hoplite wars between different cities; in an Earth-dominated agrarian culture, I think it's possible to theorize that land is the root of power, both religious and economic (though I doubt that the Esrolians speak of "owning" the land as property per se; anyone have any thoughts on how the Esrolians would describe their relationship with the land?), so claims on land must be backed and held by force when needed. Who better to fight for land than the people who work it, as the Greeks did?
IIRC, this whole debate began as a spin-off to the thread on farmers and battle magic, in which Pam posed her initial questions on the composition of Esrolian forces. That particular thread seems to have been dominated by the idea that farmers make bad warriors; this may be true, I suppose, but on a certain level that doesn't impact on the question of whether or not farmers make bad _soldiers_. I would be willing to suggest that throughout RW military history, the best infantry has almost always been the product of agrarian cultures; on a really reductive level, I suppose that it could be said that just as nomad cultures tend to produce superb horsemen, agrarian cultures tend to produce superb infantry -- whether this is the result of citizen-soldiers, such as the Greek farmer-hoplite or maybe the Swiss pike, or the result of a society using a strong agricultural base to develop and support a standing army, as could be considered the case with the Romans (though I believe the legions routinely grew their own food, and there are certainly examples of the legions being used as supplemental farmers during down-time). And, in fact, strong infantry forces often seem to develop either in the absence of or in direct competition with more specialized, "elite" warrior castes; cf. the Greek hoplites' hostility to the horse-riding aristocratic elites of the polis, the tensions between the Roman legions and the equites, the eventual rise of Swiss and Italian infantry in direct competition with noble-dominated cavalry, the English archer tradition. The existence of "elite" forces in Esrolia, whether composed of women or men, would hardly preclude a military tradition amongst its farmers; in fact, depending on the social structure, it could easily encourage it IMO. Nor would this necessarily result in eventual mutiny; I cannot recall, frex, any examples of Greek hoplites turning on their own hippeis on the field of battle, however much they disliked them. Farmers in Esrolia know they are central to its society, whether they work the land for a Queen, their mother, or a wife, and part of that role, as farmer, father, son or consort, is to defend and protect land and family (though I suppose that like all infantry what carries them through a battle is ultimately their connection to their buddies in the ranks). IMO, of course.
Outside of the Granite Phalanx cult, disciplined infantry tactics do not seem to be entirely associated with specific gods; the Yelmalions are certainly associated with phalanx warfare, but there is little within the cult's magic or in myths about Yelmalio himself which demonstrate a strictly mythocultic link (and indeed, I seem to recall speculation that the Yelmalions were initially chariot riders, who developed phalanx traditions later on). The cult of Argan Argar subsumes the training of trollkin militias, but I can't recall any specific magical or cultic link there either -- IIRC, that's a connection that was developed within history, after the Compromise. It would seem perfectly reasonable to me, then, that the cult of Barntar in Esrolia could well have developed a strong military component not unlike that of Yelmalio's; and just as the best armor of the Ancient RW, the hoplite panoply, was developed for and by a mass infantry culture, it's perfectly possible for Esrolian farmer-soldiers to be well equipped, with more than just their "two-handed spear" to rely on.
Oliver Bernuetz wrote:
>Not to add any more wood to the fire but don't forget that the Romans did
>beat the Germans and other barbarians on more than a few occasions even
>though they were smaller and weaker than their opponents. Discipline and
>training count for a lot.
I think Oliver hit the nail on the head here; the Celts were routinely noted by the Romans for their size and fierceness, IIRC. There's little question that in individual match-ups, size and strength can be determining factors (though skill and equipment may well override them), but when discussing large-scale warfare, tradition, discipline and training are far more important. Oliver's remarks reminded me of a passage from Simon James' _The World of the Celts_, which, since it's written straight-forwardly in non-specialist language and seems applicable, runs as follows:
"When they first appeared, Celtic armies were the terror of the ancient world. The fanaticism of their charge became legendary ... Many Celtic generals lacked the skills of a Cassivellaunus [defeated by Caesar only through treachery], however, and their armies were far less tenacious than the Nervii [who fought to the death at Sambre]: if not quickly victorious, they rapidly lost heart and fled. Greeks and Romans learned this lesson well...
"Celtic armies were fragile, virtually clouds of individuals almost as much in competition with each other for glory as in conflict with the foe [an observation: this is similar, oddly enough, to the pre-hoplite Greek tradition; think of the Illiad]. They consequently lacked cohesion: if part of the line wavered, panic could spread with great speed. In contrast, Roman legionaries were trained to fight as teams, to trust each other and remain steady under pressure. This difference gave the legions a decisive tactical advantage, while the Celtic lack of discipline and tenacity gave Rome a clear strategic edge. Celtic armies were bad at supplying themselves: Caesar dealt with one large Gallic army by the simple expedient of waiting for it to get hungry and go home. In weapons and in courage, individual Gauls were equal to the Romans, and against Caesar they frequently had great numerical advantage. Yet this was more than offset by the Romans' quantitative advantage in arms: by the second century BC, legionaries were all mail-clad, helmeted, and armed with swords. Only the Celtic chieftains were consistently equipped as well as this; their armies mostly remained of unarmoured spearmen.
"Perhaps the root of the Roman conquest of the majority of the Celtic peoples lay in the contrasting nature of the two societies, which led them to think about and wage war in different ways. For the Celts, war -- and one's role in it -- was a very personal affair, in which one could display valour and win prestige and booty. (Paradoxically, the Roman nobility had much the same attitude ...) But for the Romans generally, war was a very serious business ... Method and planning were important, and it was conceived on a scale which, ultimately, overwhelmed the Celtic armies."
We are used, I suppose, to thinking of the Sartarites as Celtic parallels and the Lunars as their Romanesque opponents; the RW parallel works just as well, however, if one wants to think of the Ditali and Solanthi raiders as warriors in search of loot and glory amongst their Esrolian foes. The wealth of Esrolia, after all, is likely to produce a quantitative edge in arms and equipment, not to mention a population edge -- assuming one isn't predispossed to handicapping them -- and the Building Wall and a standing fleet clearly indicate large-scale (albeit defensive) war-planning.
Finally, I wanted to agree whole-heartedly with Carl Fink, who wrote:
>The attempt to argue Esrolia's tactics via real-world example is
>fatuous, IMO. There has never been a real-world matriarchy. Clearly
>there is some mythical reason that Esrolia is different from real
>places, and we should look for that, rather than argue whether
>earthquakes can be used to disrupt cavalry charges.
Indeed, if we are strictly using the RW as a _limit_ to Gloranthan possibilities, rather than a springboard, the argument should run that since there has never been a RW martiarchy, then Esrolia can't be a matriarchy _to_begin_with_. Obviously our Gloranthas all differ somewhat, but in most I assume Esrolia is still, in fact, a matriarchy as it has been described in "official sources", and IMO Carl is correct in noting that the true project here is actually an exploration of what that matriarchy "looks like."
On that point, I agree with Jesper Wahrner, who finds "the technique of creating matriarcharial societies by reversing the social roles of the genders crude," or as David Hall puts it, "a reverse stereotype avoids all the issues and the grey areas." Indeed, I would point out that William Blake Tyrrell, in his book "Amazons: A Study in Athenian Myth-Making", follows Page duBois' project in her "Centaurs and Amazons" in noting that Greek conceptions of the Amazons, at least in Athens, did precisely that, simply reversing traditional roles of interiority and exteriority, domesticity and external vigor, "soft" and "hard", to create their picture of the Amazons. The Amazons simply wound up occupying an ideological space of inversion, between the concepts of "male" and "female", just as the Centaurs occupied the space bewteen "human" and "animal". This might work for the Trowjang Amazons, as someone pointed out, but Esrolia seems primed for something a little different.
My own thought would be to start with some of Marija Gimbutas' speculations on the supposed matriarchies of Old Europe, the culture of the "Great Goddess", which seems more focused on a potential reordering of values, rather than simply switching men for women. This post is already way too long, however, so I'll simply throw that out as a suggestion for later.
Sorry to have taken up so much space; I promise Martin that I will attempt to
avoid expressing distaste except when he says something outrageously
offensive, and ignore the minor crap.
Hopefully relurking this time,
Mark
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #500
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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