Logistics in Ancient/Medieval military

[Juggernaut]

I never fully understood this part, wow exactly were logistics carried out in Ancient/Medieval military?
How many in the army were non combatants?
How did they managed to feed and take care of the horses?
When a ancient documents mention a army of 50000, does this include the non-combatants or only the combatants?
When it says 5000 cavalry does it mean the horse and the rider or including those who took care of the horses?

[conon394]

At least for Ancient or Classical armies the numbers are generally combatants only.


For example Classical Greece – numbers typically reflect a round take on the official number of troops or perhaps the official number by unit. That is unless losses do to sickness, injury, desertion or battle and the like represent a significant loss of manpower an author like Thucydides will probably simply note that on some expedition the Athenians sent 300 archers, 100 cavalry and 1000 hoplites which would reflect either the official numbers that either the government levied or the general took with him. Certainly not included are the personal attendants of the hoplites (be they slave, hired men or relatives), nor any doctors, drovers and rarely local guides etc.

The fun result is of course what you can do with those missing adjunct people – thus Hammond can for example find in the Macedon grooms who started Alexander’s little venture as attendants to the cavalry, a ready source of reinforcement for the cavalry over time…


If you’re really interested you might find these attempts to flesh out the logistics of the Classical and Hellenistic Era informative (at least for the Greeks and Macs):

‘The Transport of Sick and Wounded Soldiers in Classical Greece’ by Rachel Hall Sternberg in Phoenix (Vol. 53, No. 3/4 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 191-205).

‘Alexander's Intelligence System’ byDonald Engels in The Classical Quarterly (New Series, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1980), pp. 327-340)

…and Engel’s book

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. by Donald W. Engels

[Darth Caesar]

from a quick idea from the top of my head, a roman legion has 2 slaves for every 8 men forming a Contubernia, so,10 Contubernia to a Centuria, thats 20 slaves per century, 6 Centuria to a cohort, thats 120 slaves per cohort and 10 cohorts to a legion, 1200 slaves per legion.A legion has 4800 combatants and 1200 non combatant slaves and one full legion is thus 6000 men

I dont know about the cavalry as they were usually recruited in the region they came from and were rarely roman.

[The Super Pope]

The Medieval English army marched with cooks, farriers, fletches, drivers, animal herds, herdsmen, soldier's wives, soldiers' misstresses, smiths, armourers and more. At the siege of La Roche-Derrien the small English relief force had enough non-combat personnel as to create the imression there were two armies.

[Casus Belli]

You have to remember that an army on the march is a huge opportunity for business, too, including entertainers, prostitutes, providors and dealers of every kind, tradesmen, etc etc etc.
I think everyone agrees that estimates of numbers in ancient or medieval armies are guesswork, at best. 1000 knights might actually mean 50,000 men, if you include their personal bodyguards and foot support, archers, etc. Self-funded citizen-soldiers like hoplites had their own retinues.

[VoodooTengo]

I believe in a roman legion the legionairres were failry self sufficent logistically, carrying all of their equiptment, and generally living off the land or carrying the raw ingredients for bread and stuff. They were called "marius mules" because of all the things that they started carrying and taking care of themselves after the Marius reforms.

[Hansa]

In medieval terms, when an army of 50 000 is mentioned, it is sometimes presiced to something like (of these 20 000 had breastplates, and 15 000 were knights) and so on. Ofthen the numbers are not presised at all, and in these cases, we often do not know. From what I know, there is no rule for whether the author included non combatants or not. One should note however that numbers are not meant literally, but as an indicator of whether a force was large, small or enormous. I guess though, (emphasizing guess here), that most times, non-combatants are included. However, the terms non-combatant is in itself a rather loose one. It might be a serf who helps his knight with armor, but does his bit in the fighting, or it might be a fighting priest (Catholic priests were utterly forbidden to fight by the church, but it did happen), or a wife, or child of the knight/warrior. When it says 5000 cavalry, I suspect it means 5000 (a large force of) mounted warriors, again I am not 100% sure, but this precision seems to apply only to fighting men.

As for how horses were fed, this depends entirely on type of campaign, type of transportation, the climate and flora of the area of campaign etc. Military campaigns that needed large logistics would most often be conducted in for example harvest season, so there was an abundance of food along the routes the armies traveled. Also, emissaries of armies would often travel before armies negotiating with farmers and villagers in order for them to lay food supplies for men and horses along the route of an army, this would often be payed for. If an army had no supplies or money, it could of course pillage its needed logistics, something that was common aswell.

When large fleets moved with large amounts of horses, they often stopped at islands or mainland regions to resupply, also in these cases we often see a a more centralized and planned form of logistical planning where one person (e.g.king) takes care of the supplies for a large army including its horses. Obviously this person needs a lot of resources.

[hellheaven1987]

I never fully understood this part, wow exactly were logistics carried out in Ancient/Medieval military?

It depends, but usually the army used the resource from local area directly, except some organized examples.

How many in the army were non combatants?

Historians never sure about this since most sources do not mention it cearly. However, non-combatants usually were more than combatants in 1:2 ratio.

How did they managed to feed and take care of the horses?

Depends, sometimes the government might bring up horse supply from the home, but normally it was taken locally. Unless we know that Caesar's cavalries took their supplies locally.

When a ancient documents mention a army of 50000, does this include the non-combatants or only the combatants?

Depends, but unless there are other evidences, no one know the truth.

When it says 5000 cavalry does it mean the horse and the rider or including those who took care of the horses?

Usually it means only the raiders. However, it is notable that many ancient raiders were also the one who took care their horse, unless in late Republic/early Rome Empire time it was like that.

[Blau&Gruen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tross

The Wikipedia article to Tross (Dross) estimates that during the Thirt's Year War (17th century) the ratio of combatant and non combatant was pro 1000 : 800. If these ratio can be extend to the medieval period seems rather doutable. You have to consider, what kind of armies are lead into the field and what kind of war you consider. An army of nobles and mercenaries that was lead into a campaign for a season had to have a Tross to provide the necessary infrastructure. A local or regional levée what consisted in adhoc formations did not necessarily have a tross as it was not meant to be on duty over a longer period of time but was only risen to react on a situation.
Example: When Charles I, Duke of Burgundy, started to siege the swiss fortress of Morat the 9th June 1476 with about 23'000 men. Charles I had several thousand non combatant in his tross among them his and his noble followers servants and marketender women. The levée of the old swiss confederation to sally the siege was ready for combat on June 21th, when the last units arrived in the field camp. It had nearly no tross and consisted in about a bit more than 20'000 men. They remained one day in the field camp and had to be ordered to attack the following day, because of the lack of provisions.