Illav
>IMO, your POV is too modern. Gloranthan regiments are not XX century units.
>The chain of command is not a complete tie at all, in game/Gloranthan terms.
I would disagree with you here. Chain of command is certainly a tie to SOME units, but not all. Even a warband has some chain of command. A phalanx has a clearly defined one and it is vital for its magical strength that this be maintained.
>Disaster was very often caused by such acts that you, as a modern eye, judge
>as mistakes.
I think any eye would judge them a mistake if a disaster was the result.:)
>Disasters were quite equally caused by what you call a military
>establishment, which tried to exert itself simply over stronger, less
>evident customs.
True enough.
>Take the byzantine army which was crushed at Manzikert, as
>an example.
This is an example of treachery more than anything, I'd have thought. Perhaps a better example would be the Indian Mutiny, where the chain of command completely failed to understand the Sepoys sentiments?
>I am asking you an act of faith, here, but believe me, Alex:
>wars, and especially non modern ones, are a foul, complicated and far less
>than rationale work.
I think Alex is well aware of this. After all, Clausewitz defined the friction of war way back. The chain of command is an attempt to control or minimise the chaos caused by such friction. Vegetius was studied in the middle ages, simply to provide some clue to the command system of the Romans. The gaining of control is a El Dorado often sought by the military of any age, and often missed completely, but still sought nonetheless.
Alex:
>I thought cav. companies were traditionally a fair bit smaller than this
>(over and above cav. regiments being 'smaller' in terms of numbers of
>men).
>I suspect that we fail to understand that the exact concept of company or
>regiment was not at all that which we are used to, nowadays.
I would agree with Ilav here. Company could mean a dozen or it could be applied to the Catalan Company of several thousand of all arms. It means a group with a coherant identity really.
>In the Roman Army, broadly speaking, the centurie could not be 100-men
strong. >They could descend from an ancient time when the common origin of a
certain >block or sector of Rome gave about 100 warriors; but after some
centuries (and
>centurie) the same block gave just 50 warriors or 150 or none at all (just a
>sum of money to buy mercenaries, for example), but they were still called a
>"centuria" for the sake of tradition.
Exactly. Yes, the Lunar Imperial Army had undergone a similar process, particularly with the garrison regiments, some of which are elite, but the majority of which are pitiful as military units and instead serve as watch or firemen or even petty ganglords depending on the city.
Martin Laurie
Powered by hypermail