The Biggest Battle Ever Fought - Ancient World

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

I never said it was, don't patronize me. But it's still a good way to quickly estimate the size of forces by using "army" and "100'000" interchangeably.

[hellheaven1987]

For most of history countries seem to have kept a very low percentage of their populations under arms (like, 1-3%) and even fewer were actually combatants, so you can do that math.

Actually throwing 100k men on battle was realistic for Chinese since Han dynasty as Han's population numbers around 60 millions; 100k is not even 1% of population.

[Cyclops]

I never said it was, don't patronize me. But it's still a good way to quickly estimate the size of forces by using "army" and "100'000" interchangeably.

For WW1? But the German army sizes were variable 180,000-300,000 odd (First army was massive), French forces varied from 150,000-250,000. Maybe the K series, they came in at about 90,000 each, when they weren't being cannibalised.

[O'Hea]

Actually throwing 100k men on battle was realistic for Chinese since Han dynasty as Han's population numbers around 60 millions; 100k is not even 1% of population.

Of course, but somebody just threw out a figure of 4-7 million for a war in India or several millions for a medieval war in Central Asia. Numbers like that just don't make sense.

[Cyclops]

Of course, but somebody just threw out a figure of 4-7 million for a war in India or several millions for a medieval war in Central Asia. Numbers like that just don't make sense.

Indeed. I wonder how many people ancient economies could concentrate in one place? Cities of a million people wouild take an empire, and thats in a co-operative space. Bringing rowdy groups of men and beasts into a contested space like a battlefield on campaign, I think if you had a million men per side then most would starve to death before or after the battle.

Maybe if they agreed on the battlefield, and heaped the supplies in a "no-go" zone where everyone could refresh themselves between clashes.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Assuming that you could conscript that much of your populace, how would you feed and arm all those guys? This was before canned food and mass production so it don't make sense.