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The following post is the first part of a three part series where we look at the question “how medieval is Game of Thrones?” and – if not the European Middle Ages – what period of history does it most draw from? In each part, we will draw on a different historical framework: first military, then social and finally political history.
Part I, which you are reading now, will deal with this from the perspective of the structure of war and conflict. Part II, linked here, will instead pose this question from a social history perspective, looking at cultural and religious norms along with questions of gender and family structure. Finally, Part III, linked here, will look at political structures and norms (and also have the conclusion).
But first, I want to answer a question: Why am I bothering? Isn’t this all a bunch of useless nitpicking? Well, first – what did you expect from a blog named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry? Useless nitpicking is our specialty. But – for once – I think this is useful nitpicking. For a great many people, Westeros will become the face of the European Middle Ages, further reinforcing distorting preconceptions about the period. How we view the past has a tremendous influence on what we think about the present. In particular, the tendency to view the distant past as a time of unrestrained barbarism provides us with both an unearned sense of superiority and often a dangerous hubris – ‘we’re not like that anymore, that can’t happen anymore – people in the past were just stupid.‘ But they were not just stupid or just maniacs – they were people. People are people, no matter when they lived.
The number of times I have been told by enthusiastic fans that Game of Thrones was superior to other fantasy works because it showed a medieval society ‘how it really was’ or ‘more realistically’ is beyond counting. Sometimes that praise is simply extrapolated to ‘the past’ as if human experience was a binary between ‘the now’ (when things are good) and ‘the past’ (when things were uniformly bad). To argue that Game of Thrones is more true to the ‘real’ Middle Ages is making a claim not only about Game of Thrones, but about the nature of the Middle Ages itself. And that claim deserves to be assessed.
This is part of why I have opted to look primarily at the show, Game of Thrones and not the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire. The show – reaching many millions more people and being far more culturally pervasive – is going to have a much larger impact on the public perception of the past. Moreover, to be honest, the ‘defense of historicity’ repeatedly made for the show seems less common as a defense for the books (perhaps, in part, because book fans seem to feel the books need less defending).
We should also define the European Middle Ages for the purpose of this comparison. The Middle Ages in Europe stretch from c. 500 AD to c. 1450 AD, a nearly 1,000 year period. Understandably, there are massive differences between what war and society looked like in 550 compared to 1350. But the trappings of Game of Thrones are a lot more specific: the plate-clad knights, courtly ladies, martial tournaments all evoke the High (c. 1000-1250) and Late (c. 1250-c. 1450) Middle Ages, so that is the period we’ll primarily compare with.
Finally, before we dive in, two final caveats. First, this is not a criticism of George R.R. Martin’s world-building. There is, after all, no reason why his fantasy world needs to be true to the European Middle Ages (we’ll talk about known/possible historical inspirations as they come up). I do not think Martin set out to design a sneaky medieval culture lecture in fantasy novel form, so he cannot be faulted for failing to do what he never attempted. Second, this look will draw more from the show than from the books, simply because the show is complete and it is easier to discuss a complete thing – that said, elements of lore that didn’t make it into the show, but are still illustrative, may come up.
Alright? Let’s dive in.
Destructiveness
One thing Game of Thrones is very clear about is how brutally destructive the wars of Westeros are. The wheel – “on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground” (S5E8) – very nearly ends Westerosi society writ large. The War of the Five Kings disrupts the food supply situation sufficiently enough to cause famine and starvation in the Crownlands and bloody riots in King’s Landing (S2E6). King’s Landing itself would be essentially destroyed during Daenerys’ capture of the city (S8E5), with probably hundreds of thousands of casualties, given the scale of the destruction and the reported size of the city (but more on that later).
But how destructive is this wheel really? Can we give it a number? Neither the show nor the books provide a clear metric to assess the war losses, but given the burning of King’s Landing and the repeated mentions of famine, they cannot be lower than several hundreds of thousands for civilians alone (and possibly much higher if we include deaths from the nearly certain Winter famine). To this must be added the North and the Riverlands, which experience sustained devastation and occupation.
What about army losses? The armies of House Tyrell, Lannister and Baratheon are all destroyed on the field – we’ll look at issues of scale in a moment – but for now, if half of their strength were casualties, we might estimate some 80,000 losses from these houses. The losses to the Riverlands, the North, Dorne, the Crownlands and the Iron Islands are less clear, but we might assume they’d roughly equal the proceeding total. To which must then be added Daenerys’ forces, reduced by half at Winterfell to the loss of around 4,000 Unsullied and 30,000 Dothraki (we are told she lost ‘half’ of both).
Based on all of that speculation, we might ballpark a minimum figure for losses in the wars as being 300,000+ civilians and around 200,000 combatants (not including losses sustained in Essos). If widespread famine is included – and it almost certainly should be, given the coming Winter – the real figure would be much higher, perhaps well over a million. And we have left out the near total destruction of the Wildlings, the death caused by the army of the dead moving south, or by Ironborn raiding. To this would need to be added excess casualties from disease, which are more severe than battlefield losses – the likely total casualty figures could thus easily be in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 or more.
War in Game of Thrones is thus not only endemic, but also shockingly destructive. Importantly, warfare in Westeros reaches a level of demographic significance – this war is sufficient to cause a real, identifiable decrease in the total population of Westeros (the books provide no tool for estimating the size of Westeros’ population, but a ballpark of 40 million is perfectly reasonable – meaning the war killed something between 2.5 and 5% of the entire population, in just a few years). This is a level of death that future Westerosi archaeologists and historians, excavating villages and reading town records, will be able to identify through the marked loss of population. Wars that destructive are rare in the pre-modern period – most wars are not ‘demographically visible’ in this sense, because the war losses get lost in the ‘noise’ of normal births and deaths.
While warfare in the Middle Ages was frequent, it was not generally this destructive. Estimating the destructiveness and scale of death in medieval wars is nearly impossible to do with any precision because of the nature of the sources. But a few comparisons can be made. The standard estimate for the loss of life due to the Crusades is 1-3 million, meaning that the War of the Five Kings was roughly as lethal in three or four years as two hundred years (1091-1291) of medieval religious warfare in the Near East. Alternately, the Albigensian Crusade – an effort in France to suppress the ‘cathar’ heresy – is thought to have killed anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 people; the main of the violence took twenty years (1209-1229), but the death toll also typically includes decades of efforts by the Inquisition which were only complete in 1350, a century and a half after the crusade began. Importantly, these wars – which still fall far short of the scale and intensity of war in Westeros – were religious wars, where norms preventing violence against civilians were much weaker.
Most wars were not religious wars, and these tended to be significantly less destructive, especially to the peasant farmers who made up the vast majority of the population. Partly, that was simply good sense: in a territorial war, control over the peasantry and their agricultural production was the goal, so mass-murdering the peasantry accomplished little. Wars between lords could thus often occur ‘over the heads’ of the peasantry (although the danger of raiding or of having food stolen for use by the armies remained acute – we shouldn’t minimize how hard even these wars could be for the people on the ground).
Another factor was a set of social norms. While the Middle Ages was a period of frequent (small) wars, it also saw some of the first efforts to curtail violence in a general sense, arising out of the Catholic Church: the Peace of God and Truce of God movements. The Peace of God (10th-11th cent.) gave religious protection to the peasantry and the clergy (along with women and widows) as non-combatants. The Church encouraged knights and lords to swear oaths to the effect that they would not violate the peace by attacking the peasantry.
That’s not to say that this prohibition always held – in practice, it seems to have mostly been honored in the breach. But it is a clear contrast to warfare in Westeros, where striking at the civilian population is clearly normal – Tywin thinks nothing of “setting the Riverlands on fire from God’s eye to Red Fork” (S1E10) and none of his bannermen questions the order. Cersei’s Season 8 effort to deter Daenerys from attacking by gathering civilians is attempted only because she thinks that Daenerys is different from a normal lord – who presumably would think nothing of the deterrent.
In this sense, warfare in Westeros is less like warfare in the Middle Ages – where, observed or no, there was a general sense that some individuals were ‘civilians’ and thus not valid military targets – and more like warfare in Antiquity. To the Romans, for instance, wars were generally against peoples – the Romans will talk about being at war with the Carthaginians (all of them) or the Celtiberi (all of them) or the Helvetii (all of them). The one exception are the Hellenistic monarchies of the East, which were the personal possessions of royal families rather than larger ethnic groupings – there the Romans went to war with individual monarchs. But that was the exception, rather than the rule.
In that context – where the Romans are at war with an entire people, then the entire people became valid military targets. And the Romans behaved as such. Polybius describes the Roman process for sacking a city – “When Scipio thought that a sufficient number of troops had entered [the city] he sent most of them, as is the Roman custom, against the inhabitants of the city with order to kill all they encountered, sparing none, and not to start pillaging until the signal was given…one may often see not only the corpses of human beings, but dogs cut in half, and the dismembered limbs of other animals…” (Polybius 10.15.4-5; emphasis mine). Such slaughter was not seen as outside the rules of war, but rather a normal consequence of attempting to hold out against a besieging army. A city which wanted to avoid massacre should surrender before the siege began in earnest (the last moment to so surrender, under Roman rules of warfare, was before the first ram touched the city wall).
It is true that on occasion, the same kind of indiscriminate killing occurred in the Middle Ages, almost always in the context of religious wars (where, the enemy being heretics or infidels, the religious restrictions on violence did not hold), but even then it is typically presented by the sources as unusual and shocking. The capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade (1099) is the typical example of peak medieval brutality – the crusaders massacred much of the city’s population in a horrific spree of blood-letting. Raymond d’Aguliers, an eyewitness, declares of the massacre that “If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief,” (trans. A.C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses via Edward Peters, The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartes and Other Source Materials) – yet such a slaughter would have been normal and unremarkable in the Roman world – or, seemingly, in Westeros. What was exceptional in 1099AD was normal in 199BC – or in King’s Landing.
Of course, there is another reason why medieval wars tended to be much less destructive – medieval rulers simply lacked the capacity – in administration, infrastructure and resources – to deal that much damage. Which brings us to:
Scale in Warfare
Warfare in medieval Europe was generally a relatively small affair. While a lot of attention is paid to wars between kings – the Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, etc. – the vast majority of conflicts were small, between local lords with limited holdings. This kind of warfare often involved ‘armies’ of only dozens or hundreds of men. In the past, I’ve had students read excerpts from the many complaints of Hugh V of Lusignan (dating to 1028) – Hugh is perpetually in military conflict with his neighbors, but the scale of such conflicts is tiny – he takes just 43 horsemen to try to win a castle and some land, for instance (yet it is a large enough force that his Lord, the Count of Aquitaine, is aware he’s taken it and orders him back to court). The same sort of small-scale warfare populations the ‘tales of deeds’ (French: Chansons de Geste), like that of Raoul de Cambrai, where Raoul spends the poem attempting to recover the fief of Vermandois (Raoul’s chanson also ties back into the previous point about norms of warfare: Raoul breaks the Peace of God by attacking a convent, which causes his best knight, Bernier, to side against him; Bernier then slays Raoul in battle, leading to a blood feud between the families. Note how the transgression of the religious protection owed to non-combatants thus leads to the protagonists’ demise and a permanent rift in the community – the moral is clear: don’t attack non-combatants).
In comparison, the armies of Westeros are huge. Going by the Wiki of Ice and Fire, we might estimate the field armies – not inclusive of garrisons and other small forces – of each of the major players as roughly:
The North: 20-30,000 (but slow to gather; notional strength 45,000)
Iron Islands: 20,000
Riverlands: c. 20,000 (notional strength 45,000, but divided politically)
Vale of Arryn: Roughly equal to the North or Dorne (c. 45,000 notional)
Westerlands: 35,000 in the field in the war (notional: 55,000)
Crownlands: 10,000 to 15,000
Stormlands: c. 30,000
The Reach: 80,000-100,000 deployed with Renly (!!)
Dorne: c. 50,000 thought to be available to the Martells
For comparison, the French army at Agincourt (1415) was no larger than perhaps 35,000 men (some historians have argued it was significantly smaller), yet its defeat was enough to cripple France (suggesting the army represented the lion’s share of the field forces available to the king of France at the time). The English field force was smaller – only around 9,000. Agincourt was no small skirmish – these were royal armies that represented the best their kings could do (Henry V, king of England was with his army, in fact). Nor were these typical sizes restricted to England and France. The Battle of Nicopolis (1396) was between the Ottomans on one side and a grand alliance of Christian powers on the other, and probably involved no more than 40,000 men on both sides (meaning two armies of c. 20k), despite the fact that the battle was between the well-organized Ottomans on one side and more than a dozen European powers on the other.
In comparison, the armies of Westeros are massive – and the figures above do not include the multiple hundred-ship fleets that many lords maintain either. Renly Baratheon alone has a host in the field of 100,000 men; Mace Tyrell later marches to King’s Landing with 70,000 Tyrell soldiers. For comparison, in 1527 – well into the early modern period (where army size jumps markedly) – the entire Ottoman army consisted of 18,000 regular troops and 90,000 timariots (ethnic Turks called up to fight for specific campaigns, much like knights and their retinues). The Ottomans were far better organized than any medieval European power (thus the requirement that opposing Ottoman expansion required grand alliances – see above). And all of those Ottoman troops absolutely could not be maintained in one place, as Renly does with his host.
It does little good to protest that Westeros covers a massive area, because that simply introduces new problems: the logistics of armies this large are likely beyond the capacity of most medieval European rulers. Even the Romans – whose logistical capacity significantly exceeded that of the medieval period – rarely assembled armies as large as Renly’s or Mace Tyrell’s and only for short times. Tiberius (as a general under the emperor Augustus) assembled an army of c. 100,000 to deal with a revolt in Illyricum (modern Albania, Bosnia, parts of Croatia and Slovenia) – the army was sufficient to eat the province into famine within a single year (which seems to have been, in fact, Tiberius’ goal – suppress the revolt by denying it supplies) and never strayed far from the rivers (where it could be supplied at distance).
Mace Tyrell’s army will have had to march down the Roseroad some 850 miles to reach King’s landing. It probably moved no faster than 10 miles a day, so it was marching for 85 days (file that number away – we’ll come back to it). 80,000 men, along with pack animals for a fairly lean baggage train (c. 20k mules – yes that is a fairly lean baggage train for an army of this size!) would consume around 189 tons of food per day. The army might be able to carry around 20 days supply with it (that assumes those mules are pulling lots of big, slow wagons) and it is far too large to supply itself by simply pillaging the local peasants as it moves. That means the Tyrells will have to have built up stockpiles of food at key points all along the Roseroad. How much food? Assuming the army sets out of Highgarden fully supplied (this seems unlikely), 12,285 tons. And that doesn’t even account for horses.
No medieval king had access to those kinds of resources, nor to the sort of administration which could procure such massive amounts of supplies. The Roman Empire could do this – but it required the involvement of treasury officials, local magistrates and a built up system of supply (which was maintained by a large, standing army of professional soldiers). Which leads into:
Army Building for Dummies
Remember that 85 day number? We’re coming back to it. Soon. I promise.
The phrase I drill into my student’s heads about the structure of medieval armies is that they are a retinue of retinues. What I mean by this is that the way a medieval king raises his armies is that he has a bunch of military aristocrats (read: nobles) who owe him military service (they are his ‘vassals’) – his retinue. When he goes to war, the king calls on all of his vassals to show up. But each of those vassals also have their own bunch of military aristocrats who are their vassals – their retinue. And this repeats down the line, even down to an individual knight, who likely has a handful of non-nobles as his retinue (perhaps a few of his peasants, or maybe he’s hired a mercenary or two on retainer).
If you want to read a really detailed (and rather dry) look at how this functioned, take a look at David Simpkin’s The English Aristocracy at War (2008); he combed surviving English records from c. 1272 to 1314 and he analyses (among other things) average retinue size. The average retinue found was five men although significant lords (like earls) might have hundreds of men in their retinues (which were in turn comprised of the retinues of their own retainers). So the noble’s retinue is the combined retinues of all of his retainers, and the king’s army is the combined total of everyone’s retainer’s retainers, if that make sense. Thus: a retinue of retinues.
This is exactly the system that Game of Thrones claims its armies work on. The high lords – folks like Tywin Lannister – ‘call their banners’ and their bannermen – the Westerosi term for vassals (and presumably a direct take on what was called a ‘knight banneret’ historically – the lowest form of aristocrat who would have his own banner and thus his own military unit) show up with their own retinues, exactly as above. And, at first blush, this seems quite medieval – this is how medieval armies in the High and Late Middle Ages were formed (mostly). The problem is that armies in Westeros never seem to function within the constraints of this system.
First, the obvious: this system, where armies are assembled based on personal relationships and where the smallest units are often very small simply does not have the capacity to scale up forever. There are just only so many retainers a king can keep a personal relationship with – and so on down the line.
Second, those retainers aren’t ‘on retainer’ to serve forever. They are obliged to a certain number of days of military service per year. Specifically, the standard number – which comes out of William the Conqueror’s settlement of his vassals after taking the English throne – was 40 days. The entire point of this system is that the king gives his vassals land and they give him military service so that no one has to pay anyone anything, because medieval kings do not have the kind of revenue to maintain long-term standing armies. It is no accident that the most destructive medieval conflicts were religious wars where the warriors participating were essentially engaged in ‘armed pilgrimage’ and so might stay in the field longer (God having a more unlimited claim on a knight’s time than the king).
Finally, imagine organizing supply for an army like this. Every retinue unit comes in a different size: Lord Tarly might have a few hundred men, Lord Risley a couple dozen, Lord Hastwyck showed up with just his household guard of five and so on (for dozens and dozens of retinues). You – the king’s quartermaster – do not know how large these retinues are, but you must ration and distribute food so that you don’t run into a position where one retinue is starving while the others have surplus. You also need to coordinate the baggage train of excess food…but of course most of the wagons and pack animals belong to all of the minor lords with their small retinues. You begin to see the problem: centralized supply – necessary for keeping a large army fed – is practically impossible.
(If you want to read about the difficulties of keeping even an early modern army (with somewhat more centralized supply and logistics) together at long distance, consider reading Geoffrey Parker’s The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road and keep in mind that, at its peak, the army he describes (and the insurmountable challenges of paying and supplying it) was never more than 90,000 men – smaller than Renly Baratheon’s host – and tended to be on average a bit less than 60,000 strong).
What Kind of Army is This?
So, to sum up what we’ve covered so far: warfare in Westeros isn’t actually very medieval. While we’re told that the armies are organized on medieval lines, they are much too large and the wars they wage are far more destructive than what was normal for political (read: non-religious) conflicts in the Middle Ages. Moreover, they seem unconstrained by the cultural norms of the Middle Ages (like the Peace of God), or by the logistical limits common to (poorly organized) medieval armies.
Is there a time in European history these armies would fit better into?
I think the answer to this is ‘yes’ – these armies are not medieval, but rather early modern in their size, capabilities and destructiveness.
Several things set the early modern period apart from the Middle Ages, but the one that concerns us most right here is state capacity. What I mean by that is the ability of the state (read: the king) to extract revenue and use that revenue to do things (raise military forces, reshape society, hire bureaucrats to extract more revenue, etc). Medieval kings had very limited state capacity, because their own nobles – who (see above) had their own armies – worked to limit the power of the central monarch. In contrast, the early modern period (c. 1450 – 1789) is a period of rapidly increasing state capacity as monarchs begin to aggressively centralize the governance of their country.
Changes in the nature of armies is both a cause and effect of this. Centralized royal power enabled larger, more standardized, more professional armies raised through royal revenues outside of the control of the nobility – which were, in turn, efficient mechanisms for the suppression of the nobility and thus further centralization of power (I should note: the scholarship on the exact mechanisms by which this happens is voluminous and contested – this is just a general description of the phenomenon; ch7 of Wayne Lee’s Waging War (2016) is actually a pretty layman-approachable introduction to the history and the debate if you want that).
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the visual language that Game of Thrones uses for all of the armies of Westeros save for those of the North is drawn from the early modern period. These armies have uniform equipment – presumably provided by state armories – and have been trained and drilled to march and fight in time. Even if we dispense with the visual representation of the armies as mistakes on the show’s part, the fact that these armies can stay in the field month after month implies that at least significant parts of these forces are effectively professional and being paid for their service, rather than having been raised in a vassalage system.
The size of armies also points in this direction. While the exact trajectory of army growth in the early modern period is somewhat contested, what is not contested is that armies in the early modern period were substantially larger than those of the late Middle Ages. From medieval armies in the thousands or low tens of thousands, the armies of the great powers of Europe ballooned into the upper tens of thousands in the 1500s and then well over 100,000 by the mid-1600s. These armies were not generally concentrated in one place due to logistics issues, but the overall destructive capacity of the state had increased several times over.
Thus while George R. R. Martin has often pointed to the War of the Roses (1455-1487 – thus, I may note, an early modern, not medieval war) as the historical inspiration for Game of Thrones, the scale of conflict and the size of armies more clearly evokes the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, like the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). As one might imagine, larger armies often means greater ‘collateral damage’ so let’s look at how the early modern period compares to the Middle Ages in the destructiveness of warfare.
The wars of the 16th and 17th centuries – especially the Thirty Years War – were shockingly destructive compared to what had come before. Part of the reason for this was the nature of the conflicts: many of these wars were born out of the Protestant Reformation and were thus religious wars, pitting Protestants against Catholics. In that kind of a war – unlike a political dispute over a throne or territory – the enemy populace becomes a target of violence for believing the ‘wrong’ thing. In the Thirty Years War, Catholic armies would destroy Protestant villages and vice versa, with the objective of changing the religious make-up of the region by violence.
But not all of the conflicts of this period were religious wars. While the secular wars never reached the raw butchery of the Thirty Years War, they were still markedly more destructive than what had come before. Another part of the reason for this was the improvement in the armies themselves – you will see people chalk this up to gunpowder, but slow firing muskets aren’t that much more destructive than the weapons of the past. But a medieval army – as we’ve discussed – could only be so big, and could only stay in the field so long. But the new standing armies of the early modern period were made up of professionals who can war all year round, and they’re larger to boot. Moreover, the Reformation – by splintering the power of the Church – had weakened the very religious norms which sometimes restrained violence (however weakly) in the Middle Ages. The consequence was armies both more capable and more willing to inflict damage on the population at large.
Finally, the large size of these armies also contributed to greater levels of destructiveness in another, unexpected way: they strained against the very upper-limits of pre-railroad logistics. As governments struggled to pay, feed and equip these soldiers, armies in the field were forced to supply themselves locally and to pay soldiers in captured loot, at the expense of the local population. Under these conditions, restraining hungry soldiers from acts of extreme violence in taking food or loot became increasingly difficult, verging on impossible. Armies in the field became almost elemental forces of destruction, careening from siege to battle to siege and wrecking the countryside they passed over.
Thus the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) depopulated much of modern-day Germany, killing around a quarter of the entire population (but the carnage was often very localized – some areas were effectively untouched, others were completely depopulated). In the Low Countries, the Eighty-Years War (1568-1648) created a depopulated no-man’s land where the two sides (the Spanish armies and Dutch rebels) met in a long defensive stalemate. Spanish armies, having gone long without pay, also sacked Antwerp (1576) – the regional seat of Spanish government – to recover their arrears in pay through looting, severely damaging the local economy for decades and killing thousands of inhabitants.
This kind of war – less limited, with larger, more destructive and more rapacious armies – is far closer to what we see in Game of Thrones. Ironically, Joffery actually suggests (S1E3) building an early modern style standing army and has the idea dismissed by Cersei. One wonders though – given that Cersei knows little of war and isn’t nearly as smart as she thinks – if Tywin hasn’t already begun using Lannister gold to build the early modern style army he apparently already has.
Conclusions on Military Medievalism
The military situation in Westeros thus does not seem to fit the actual European Middle Ages very well. Westerosi armies do not seem to be limited by short terms of military service common in medieval armies, they are much larger than medieval armies ever were and capable of significantly more destruction. Moreover – and this is a thread we will pick up again next time – they seem unconstrained by the social and religious limits to violence of the Middle Ages. We should not be overly rosy – those limits were often more honored in the breach than the observance (and they didn’t apply to everyone equally either). Nevertheless, the sharp increase in military mortality in the early modern period attests to the fact that those limits – organizational limits, along with cultural ones – did, in fact, result in a lower overall level of violence.
It seems like almost any discussion of the Middle Ages begins with “this period was extremely violent.” And there is some truth to that – compared to the modern world, medieval kings and lords went to war a lot. War was a normal part of life. But compared to the early modern period or even classical antiquity, these wars tended to be relatively small and their impact limited. Compared to the modern period (meaning our historical period) – well, we managed to kill more people (in an absolute sense) in a single horrific spasm of earth-shattering violence from 1937 to 1945 (c. 85m people) than probably died in all medieval European wars combined. Violence is relative. Compared to the long peace of the Roman Empire (27 BC – c. AD 235; the empire itself lasted to c. 450 in the West (and to 1453 in the east), but its last centuries were more violent), yes, the Middle Ages were quite violent. But compared to what came after, the Middle Ages had more war, but less death (and we haven’t even discussed the human catastrophe that was the discovery of the new world…).
Does this mean Martin has ‘failed’ somehow? No – not at all. Again, A Song of Ice and Fire is not a thinly disguised history lecture, it is a fantasy novel series. Martin has built a society with its own rules and systems and then followed that societies’ rules and systems to their conclusions. Instead, what I want to stress is that – as it comes to military affairs – the armies of Westeros are actually not very much like the armies of the European Middle Ages, despite the similarities in knights and arms and armor.
Nevertheless, observing the difference between the Middle Ages and Westeros is important because it reframes one of the central themes of the setting. It is comforting to think that the out-of-control violence in Westeros is the product of something – a culture of warrior-knights and violence – that we don’t have anymore. But the opposite is true: out-of-control violence, of the sort Westeros has, is the product of something we still very much have: the tremendous capacity of the modern administrative state for violence.
Our modern administrative states can do wonderful things – they build roads and schools, provide healthcare (sometimes), they can care for the poor and regulate workplaces. But they can also produce spectacular and horrifying amounts of violence. It is this task – the violence, not the schools or the roads – for which they were designed and to which they remain best suited. We forget this (by pretending such violence belongs only to HBO and the distant past) at our peril.
Next time, we’ll look at how cultural and religious norms function in Westerosi society. The Middle Ages in Europe was in many ways defined by strong cultural and especially religious norms. How does Westeros match up?
While I do not disagree with the main thrust of this essay… The Harrying of the North in 1069-70 by William the Conqueror was apparently very destructive, demographically as well. The Chevaunchees of the Hundred Years War come to mind, too.
I think the first at least ties into the concept of “obstinate defense”, as evolved from the Roman policy on that discussed above. The idea is that you’re supposed to know when you’re licked and submit, instead of engaging in what would later be termed guerrilla war. (That actions like the Harrying of the North were the response to guerrilla war, and more restraint was otherwise used, might explain why the concept fell out of favor in Europe.)
I agree with your article, it´s very accurate and I will refer to it when this conversation arises but one thing you said the depopulation of the New World (América), in the Spanish area, with war and killing “sodomites” and those who refused to convert, the vast majority of deaths were due to disease, like pox, sarampion, etc…
A different thing is what happened in the Thirteen Colonies and in USA territories in the XIX century, where there are so few natives left…
Only to show my bit of pedantry, for the rest I am delighted of your unmitigated pedantry, thanks and continue with this kind of “nugae”…
There were a number of substantial errors in your post. I’ve listed them and explained why they’re wrong here over on /r/badhistory.
I found your reddit post just fine, but you might want to post a link for everyone else.
I did try, but the blog wouldn’t let me submit the comment when I had the link in it.
How strange. let me try: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/c2to6b/unmitigated_pedantry_about_unmitigated_pedantry/
While I’m here, I think a lot of the points you raise are quite interesting and I enjoyed reading your comments. I don’t think your objections, by and large, touch the overall thesis – that the ‘Game of Thrones is historical’ thesis (as usually presented) argues that the Middle Ages was ‘unusually’ violent’ and that Game of Thrones reflects this. A lot of your corrections consist of details I am aware of (paid soldiers, longer service terms, the complexity of Raoul’s Chason), but simply don’t fit within the sort of ‘zoomed out’ approach I’m taking here – after all, you take some 3,000 words to amplify a few less than 1,000 of mine.
Those extra details, by the way, are fantastic, and folks following these posts should absolutely read them.
You’re also, though, attributing to me positions I don’t think I made and certainly don’t intend. I am not saying that medieval armies could only live off the land – merely that they lacked the logistics to move very large armies (c. 40k+), a capacity which had existed in Antiquity and also existed in the Early Modern Period, but only very sporadically in the Middle Ages (exceptions exist of course, e.g. the First Crusade). Likewise, in saying the Truce of God was mostly ‘honored in the breach’ – what that phrase means is that it was rarely followed. What is exceptional is not that the movement was followed, but that it existed at all – there is no equivalent in antiquity, for instance.
I think if – as you do – one reads GoT and ASOIAF as having much lower levels of violence, closer to the more typical levels of violence in the European Middle Ages, that vision of ‘how it was’ (uniquely violent middle ages reflected in the violence of Westeros) simply collapses from another direction. That said, the show really emphasizes the destructiveness of the warfare and plugs that into the central theme of systems of violence and ‘breaking the wheel’ – which make a lot less sense and lose much of their power if we are looking at systems of violence which can continue for a century without seriously disrupting the social fabric.
As for the HYW, this is part of why I set ‘demographic significance’ as a key measure of levels of violence. The impression we get in GoT is that the wars in Westeros are demographically significant – they are the kind of thing which would show up archaeologically in settlement patterns, or demographically in census records, if they existed. Medieval wars are almost never demographically significant in this way. The HYW is an odd special case – it is absolutely not demographically significant, but that’s because it overlaps the single largest demographic event of the Middle Ages: the Black Death. Trying to tease out the demographic impacts of the HYW in France is like trying to listen to a mockingbird at a metal concert.
That said, I sincerely doubt that – even without the Black Death – the HYW would be detectable. 50,000 deaths in six years in a population c. 13 million is a blip – it won’t be detectable against the background noise of a high mortality, high birth-rate society. Of course, the absence of complete census records means we can’t know for certain. But, for comparison, Italy suffers in excess of 70,000 combat related deaths (battlefield *only* – so the true figure is much higher) in three years (218-216), out of a population of c. 5m (so something like 3.5 times your six-year sample as a percentage of the population), and that *did* produce a detectable decline in census figures (because the Romans had those), albeit not a massive decline. The other obvious example of a demographically significant war in Europe is the 30-Years-War, which is almost certainly more than an order of magnitude more lethal than the HYW, despite being quite a bit shorter.
As a final caution – be careful in over-extrapolating from the Kingdom of England. It is not a typical medieval kingdom – it is far more centralized than most, and the king has more cash to play with than most other monarchs (in part because the English king was the majority or plurality landholder in basically the entire country – contrast the comparatively pathetic holdings of the Capetians). The danger, of course, is that precisely because of this better administration, English armies are the best documented forces and so attract the most (English language) study – but they are not typical (as I’m sure, since you are quite well read on the topic, you already know well – this is caution is mostly for the peanut gallery). This is especially true in terms of the relative reliance on feudal service.
“Likewise, in saying the Truce of God was mostly ‘honored in the breach’ – what that phrase means is that it was rarely followed.”
Well, if we’re going to get really nitpicky – and after all this is a collection of unmitigated pedantry, so I am going to – what the phrase ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’ *really* means is that it would be more honourable to break [the custom] than to observe it (because it’s a bad custom). Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 4.
I want to note that late medieval armies got noticeably smaller than high medieval armies. Because of the black death. It isn’t entirely unheard of for major clashes to be over some tens of thousands divided between two sides circa the 12th and 13th centuries, but that major battle representing large musters of the royal army shrank in later years. Something very noticeable by the hundred years war.
At the very topmost, a strong Holy Roman Emperor could amass a force of around a hundred thousand for crusade, as is thought Frederick did for the third (as opposed to the million contemporary chroniclers assert). The HRE being the most populous and wealthy lands in europe, which a unique quirk of having an even more decentralized and devolved state compared to even their neighbors. Barbarossa would be a rare ruler to be able to, after years of conflicts with rebellious vassals, muster an army like this. But it does show that it CAN be done, something I don’t think would be possible a century later just from the death toll of the plague
I think it’s probably an anti-spam measure.
” I am not saying that medieval armies could only live off the land – merely that they lacked the logistics to move very large armies (c. 40k+), a capacity which had existed in Antiquity and also existed in the Early Modern Period, but only very sporadically in the Middle Ages (exceptions exist of course, e.g. the First Crusade).”
I apologise if I misinterpreted you there, and I probably let myself be influenced by frustrations with other Classical scholars on this point. However, I feel the fact that medieval armies *could* move very large armies large distances and *did* move them, albeit sporadically, has a lot more to do with the general lack of a *need* to do this than an inability. I won’t argue that Renly’s armly is absurdly large – although I’m pretty confident that Bernard Bachrach, David Bachrach and Leif Inge Ree Petersen would see no issue with it, so opinions do differ – but I don’t think you can criticise it on logistical grounds, especially given the close proximity of Mander to the Rose Road for most of the way to King’s Landing and the fact that every village, holdfast and castle has massive caches of supplies for Winter that allow an army to rob Peter to pay Paul and replace stores more slowly after the army has passed.
“Likewise, in saying the Truce of God was mostly ‘honored in the breach’ – what that phrase means is that it was rarely followed. What is exceptional is not that the movement was followed, but that it existed at all – there is no equivalent in antiquity, for instance.”
Here I believe I’ve interpreted your argument correctly. The very next sentence after your caveat is “But it is a clear contrast to warfare in Westeros, where striking at the civilian population is clearly normal”, which means you were making the argument that, in medieval warfare, it was not normal to target a civilian population. This is, as I’ve demonstrated, factually incorrect. Tywin’s method of waging war is entirely medieval, whether a “large” or “small” war, albeit Tywin commits far fewer men than needed to actually inflict the damage portrayed, which is my main beef with the show and books. Similarly, you discuss the slaughter of whole cities in Antiquity and then claim that it was rare outside of religious wars in the Middle Ages. Again, as I’ve shown, this is also incorrect.
“I think if – as you do – one reads GoT and ASOIAF as having much lower levels of violence, closer to the more typical levels of violence in the European Middle Ages, that vision of ‘how it was’ (uniquely violent middle ages reflected in the violence of Westeros) simply collapses from another direction.”
I think you may be misrepresenting my argument here, or maybe I’m just not understanding you. I don’t believe that GoT and ASOIAF have lower levels of violence, closer to those of the Middle Ages, I’m arguing that *you’re* wrong in how low you believe the levels of violence were in the Middle Ages.
“As for the HYW, this is part of why I set ‘demographic significance’ as a key measure of levels of violence. The impression we get in GoT is that the wars in Westeros are demographically significant – they are the kind of thing which would show up archaeologically in settlement patterns, or demographically in census records, if they existed. Medieval wars are almost never demographically significant in this way. The HYW is an odd special case – it is absolutely not demographically significant, but that’s because it overlaps the single largest demographic event of the Middle Ages: the Black Death. Trying to tease out the demographic impacts of the HYW in France is like trying to listen to a mockingbird at a metal concert.”
I don’t believe I mentioned that the HYW would be particularly detectable with regard to 50 000 battlefield deaths. The widespread burning and destruction of towns and villages, however, would certainly be detectable in the archaeological record (especially in Languedoc where many towns never recovered). I don’t have enough information to figure out how severe the civilian casualties in the countryside would have been, nor even approximate figures for populations of the towns destroyed, but the towns would definitely be far above normal mortality rates (at minimum 25% killed).
Mostly I was just bringing up the major casualties to demonstrate that serious casualties were inflicted in battle during major conflict, as I felt you were minimising this aspect of medieval warfare. I’d agree, however, that the battlefield casualties in ASOIAF are both ridiculous and probably demographically significant. I have more doubts about your estimations for civilian deaths, however, and would argue that the HYW would by far outstrip ASOIAF. Just look at Rogers’ map and how much of France was burned and devastated.
“As a final caution – be careful in over-extrapolating from the Kingdom of England. It is not a typical medieval kingdom – it is far more centralized than most, and the king has more cash to play with than most other monarchs (in part because the English king was the majority or plurality landholder in basically the entire country – contrast the comparatively pathetic holdings of the Capetians). The danger, of course, is that precisely because of this better administration, English armies are the best documented forces and so attract the most (English language) study – but they are not typical (as I’m sure, since you are quite well read on the topic, you already know well – this is caution is mostly for the peanut gallery). This is especially true in terms of the relative reliance on feudal service.”
This is kind of why I always referred to the situation in France immediately after I talked about England. While I can only speak in greatest detail in England for now (French is coming eventually), the French situation has always been roughly comparable to the English situation after the end of the 12th century and Philip Augustus’ efforts in modernising France, which were carried on by Louis IX. Philip Augustus even had a standing army of 3000 men during his conquest of Normandy, and frequently had the communes commute their service for money to pay mercenaries whenever he was fighting offensively. The French unpaid feudalism declined as early as English unpaid feudalism, if not a tad earlier, but it was used as a recruitment method for paid armies to a much larger degree than in England by the end of the 13th century, and remained in use for much longer. Make no mistake, though, the 40 days free service as almost non-existent in France by the end of the 13th century.
An addendum to my reply from Friday, regarding France more specifically. John Beeler, in “Warfare in Feudal Europe”, notes that “military feudalism in France, as in England, had become obsolescent by the twelfth century.” The earlier Capetians were no strangers to hiring mercenaries – Louis VII used money fiefs to sustain a mercenary band of 200 knights, archers and crossbowmen, but Philip Augustus took it to new levels. In 1202/1203 he had a total of 2300-2600 paid men (I seem to have misremembered it as 3000) that he shuffled from castle to castle until they were concentrated for a push into Normandy. I’m honestly not sure how long they remained employed, but Philip had been experimenting with commuting the obligations of the towns into cash payments since at least 1194, and by 1202 all of the wages of the standing force was paid out of the towns’ payments – not that the government couldn’t afford to pay out of ordinary revenues, which were more than up to the task.
I think it’s also important to note that “France” wasn’t really “France” at this point, and the lands controlled by the Capetians – generally the standard model of French feudalism – were actually exceptional rather than normal. Leaving aside the areas that were mostly allodial into the 13th century, the various counts and dukes whom the French kings fought up until the time of Philip Augustus were generally richer and better organised the French crown, which allowed them to make heavy use of mercenaries compared to the French kings, although the French kings used them whenever they could and paid service – even if because of “feudal” obligations – was increasingly the norm. In the early 13th century it was just beyond 40 days, but by the end so many lords and knights had wiggled out of their unpaid service (and this had always been a fraction of total knightly manpower anyway) that it was the norm to be paid from the start.
The Eastern Roman Empire seems to have had Professional armies, at least partly. Such as the Tagmata, and the Varangians. Though it seems to be completely absent from European history as anything else than a footnote.
Indeed – I mention these armies in the Siege of Gondor series of posts.
The thing is, the administration and organization of the Byzantine Empire was very different from the systems of vassalage that prevailed in much of Western Europe. None of the kingdoms of Westeros or even Essos strikes me as having a Byzantine style of administration or anything close to it, which is why I didn’t bring that in as a potential parallel.
Regarding that, it would be interesting to see how exactly feudalism developed in A Song of Ice and Fire. Because in the West, it developed in the context of breakdown of Western Roman Empire. In Eastern Roman Empire, “typical” feudalism never developed, though there were periods when large landowners were extremely influental.
Reblogged this on Military Fantasy.
First, thank you for taking the time to write and share those post with us. They are informative and compellingly well-written.
Second, just one note: when writing “Chasons de Geste”, is chason a specific spelling when talking about that specific type of literature? Because, as a French, I had learned it was called ChaNsons de Geste, like the French word for song.
Again, thank you and have a nice day.
Ah, no, you are correct. Fixed!
Sorry about that – I don’t have much time to proof-read these posts and still balance them with my professional work (teaching and research), so my poor spelling tends to slip through. Appreciate the correction!
You’re welcome and no issue, it’s even more admirable how you’re doing it out of your free time/
An excellent analysis! I agree the Westerosi armies seem more like early modern than medieval in size and organisation (more Europa Universalis vs Crusader Kings).
Perhaps the real difference is from the Targaryen dynasty? One all-powerful royal family with unstoppable dragons, who keep intact the existing feudal structure but also strengthen it and lay a fairly well-organized, bureaucratic state on top of it.
I recall reading somewhere in Fire and Blood how the realm was said to double in size during the reign of the old king (probably an exaggeration but still). ‘Medieval Westeros’ was the one at the time of Aegon’s conquest. By the time of WOTFK its like 1500s Europe but without guns or Columbus.
An excellent analysis! I agree the Westerosi armies seem more like early modern than medieval in size and organisation (more Europa Universalis vs Crusader Kings).
Perhaps the real difference is from the Targaryen dynasty? One all-powerful royal family with unstoppable dragons, who keep intact the existing feudal structure but also strengthen it and lay a fairly well-organized, bureaucratic state on top of it.
I recall reading somewhere in Fire and Blood how the realm was said to double in size during the reign of the old king (probably an exaggeration but still). ‘Medieval Westeros’ was the one at the time of Aegon’s conquest. By the time of WOTFK its like 1500AD Europe but without guns or Columbus.
How does the style of warfare, size of armies, and level of violence against civilians in GoT/ASOIAF compare to Chinese interregnum periods? In general the giant size and population of Westeros (compared to England for instance) and the relatively normal amounts of high and middle tier nobility seem to presupose that Westeros is actually made up of many small to medium sized with strong centralized governments that then only have a feudal fealty style system on top of that with only roughly four or five tiers even though the Seven Kingdoms span an Americas sized continent (just the North is supposed to be as big as India) and has a population density compared to medieval Europe.
Does that make any sense?
This time, once lone proofreading correction for your consideration:
warfare populations the ‘tales of deeds’ -> warfare populates the ‘tales of deeds’
I just discovered this blog a few weeks ago (through a link to the “Lonely Cities” article), and I’ve been devouring it ever since.
One question comes to mind regarding the destructiveness (or lack thereof) of medieval wars: how do steppe nomads such as the Huns and Mongols fit into this picture? Were their destructive tendencies exaggerated by their enemies? Were they less restrained because they weren’t fighting against coreligionists? Or is there some other answer?
It is also possible to make a comparison in destructiveness to the Thirty Years War; between 10% and 20% of the population of the European combatants were killed.
I’m very confused about what happened to non-combatants. First it sounds like attacking them would be economic and social suicide, then like it’s the normal method and there’s only the barest of lip service against it. Which is it, or what does it depend on?
“Part of the reason for this was the nature of the conflicts: many of these wars were born out of the Protestant Reformation and were thus religious wars, pitting Protestants against Catholics.”
More accurately, there was a three-way religious conflict between Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists: the latter two, while “Protestant,” hated each other as much as they did Catholics. An echo of this is seen in the TYW’s spinoff, the English Civil War, which as well as being political was a religious confrontation between Calvinists and Anglicans.
Just a nitpick: is five men average or median retinue size?
Also, armies based on banners (Hungarian banderium) can be quite large:
https://militaryfantasy.home.blog/2020/06/11/army-of-john-hunyadi-and-matthias-corvinus/
Your pedantry has crossed the line into a straw man almost immediately, when you argue that the knights in 1540 aren’t Medieval because of a historical date range classification. Game of Thrones and many RPGs are heavily based on the “medieval” period immediately before the introduction of matchlocks. So War of the Roses or Hundred Years War. Your entire series is basically arguing against a technical definition that no one except a dedicated scholar means when they talk about how medieval something is.
Obviously I disagree. The latest date I’ve seen argued for as the ending of the Middle Ages is 1521. More often the Middle Ages are said to end in the mid-1400s. Historians of Italy often mark the transition even earlier, sometimes as early as 1300 (with the Renaissance as a distinct period between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern; myself I think the Renaissance should be understood as a movement within the Middle Ages). A century is a long time, so an armor dated almost a full century after the generally accepted end point (c. 1450) of the Middle Ages is hardly medieval.
Ironically, the matchlock arrives in (Ottoman) Europe no later than 1425 and in Germany by the 1470s. If you want “Europe just before the matchlock” you really need to be working in the late 1300s or the very early 1400s. Now you are a full century-and-a-half before those armors.
Treating these distinctions as excessively nit-picky and academic is, in a way, exactly the point. Early Modern Europe was meaningfully different from medieval Europe. There was a *lot* of change in the late 1400s and early 1500s which mark a real, meaningful break. Political, military, social, religious and economic changes – changes that meant, as I point out over and over again here, that many of the things GoT thinks are medieval were in fact not part of the long Middle Ages but things that came into being in the late 1400s, the early 1500s and in some cases the 1600s. That came into being on the very cusp of modernity and as a direct result of that modernity.
If the public conception of history is so poor that those very important differences are being elided, someone ought to say something.
While I myself tend to stick to the 1450-ish date for the start of the early modern period I have frequently heard 1485 bandied about in English historiography, at least when referring to England. There is of course no bright line between the middle ages and early modernity, and landmark events are landmarks only, not necessarily moments of decisive and definitive change in themselves.
I can certainly see an argument for characterising the WotR as a medieval conflict (or series of conflicts) rather than an early modern one. Firstly, while the wars collectively stretched from 1455-1487, the bulk of the actual fighting was from 1455-1461, right at the start of that range. That period ended with a Yorkist victory, a couple of years of mopping up, and then five tears of peace, followed by a further outbreak in 1469 which continued to 1471, ending again in a (near-total) Yorkist victory, and another period of peace through to 1485, with one brief campaign at Bosworth and another last-gasp at Stoke Field in 1487.
Secondly, the armies used appear more characteristically medieval than modern, both in composition and equipment. From what I gather, English warfare in this period remained relatively conservative, and while the French were aggressively modernising their own military (one of the reasons they eventually won the HYW) England continued to stick with the same systems that they had been using at Agincourt. While artillery begins to appear as a significant factor in the 1470-1 phase, in the first and most destructive period there is relatively little use of gunpowder, either in artillery or small arms, and the use of cavalry seems to have been fairly restrained: even the commanders sometimes fought on foot (Warwick famously so at Towton).
Compositionally the armies of the time also seem to have been more “feudal” (yeah I know) than professional, albeit I gather that distinction isn’t always all that clear in late medieval England. This was famously a period when England had no standing army. The support of Warwick Kingmaker was critical not so much because of his brilliant generalship (I gather his actual record is relatively unimpressive, and his uncle was the real soldier in the family) but because of the massive Neville landholdings and the consequent manpower he drew with him. Even by 1485, Richard III is still gathering his army through essentially feudal measures*, relying on his own personal support base in the north (not the home counties where his government is based) and the retinues of his major vassals: the betrayal of the king’s cause at Bosworth by Lord Stanley and (possibly) the earl of Northumberland were critical to the royalist defeat.
While Towton may have been the largest battle in English history (although Marston Moor can’t have been much smaller) some of the major battles were still relatively small. At Bosworth the numbers on the field may not have exceeded 20,000 and that included foreign mercenaries. Tewkesbury, the decisive battle of the war’s second phase, had fewer than 15,000 (albeit there had been more at Barnet shortly before). (1st) St Albans and Mortimer’s Cross were even smaller.
Finally, the political situation which produced the wars – and then the wars themselves – precluded the kind of centralisation that was already underway elsewhere in Europe. Richard II’s early attempts at it ended badly; Henry V died prematurely, and Henry VI was then a fantastically weak – and reputedly rather mentally feeble – king. There is some coalescence under Edward IV but the weakness of the central English state by the time of his death is evident by the difficulty Richard III had in recruiting an army to defend his kingship in 1485. After the wars, things change rapidly, but that is likey at least in part a product of the simultaneous arrival of a king with the vision and will to execute that policy and the wars’ themselves having devastated the country’s leading aristocracy (a policy continued under the Tudors, who happily suppress or butcher many of the remaining leading lights).
So inasmuch as they can be considered a singular event rather than a series of connected events, they strike me as being essentially medieval conflicts that nevertheless took place in what we would ordinarily consider the early modern period. I am not going to die on this hill though and am fully prepared to be talked out of it: I am not by any means a 15th-century specialist.
*Of course, the same measures that Charles I is *still* nominally using to gather his forces in 1642, but that’s for complicated reasons.
Thank you for researching and sharing such interesting articles with us Bret Devereaux.
I wanted to ask in regards to the destructiveness of the wars in Westeros how you reached the numbers of civilian losses and the losses through famine and disease.
Or sources so that I may research it myself.
I had a theory as to how to estimate the population of Westeros. Please tell me what you think of it and how I could improve it. If you think it shows I am terrible at maths, please tell me. Assume (as mentioned in https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/) that a Westerosi family unit consists of eight people: parents, grandparents and four children. Of those, two (the father and the older son) are eligible for military surface. 100 divided by 8= 12.5. 12.5 divided by 8 and multiplied by 2= 3.125. Multiply that answer by 0.9 (because there will be people who are badly disabled or injured, are performing work that exempts them from military service, or can “dodge the draft” in some other manner)= 2.8125. 100-2.8125=97.1875. Multiply the notional strength (I am using that, not the actual strength, as notional strength includes everyone who can, in the Westerosi mindset, serve in the army) by 97.1875, round to the nearest hundred and add together to estimate the total population of Westeros. (If the army size is unsure, I will use the median).
The North: 45,000 X 97.1875= 4,373, 400
Iron Islands: 20,000 X 97.1875=1,943,800
Riverlands: 45,000 X 97.1875= 4,373,400
Vale of Arryn: 45,000 X 97.1875= 4,373, 400
Westerlands: 55,000 X 97.1875= 5, 345,300
Crownlands: 12,500 X 97. 1875= 1,214,800
Stormlands: 30,000 X 97. 1875= 2,915, 600
The Reach: 90,000 X 97.1875= 8,746,900
Dorne: 55,000 X 97.1875= 5, 345, 300
Add it all up:38, 622, 900. If my calculations are correct, Dr. Deveraux’s estimates for the population of Westeros are about right. Then again, he does this kind of thing for a living, so of course they are.
I don’t get that part of the calculations:
> 100 divided by 8= 12.5. 12.5 divided by 8 and multiplied by 2= 3.125.
100 / 8 = 12.5 would be the number of families for a hundred people
multiplying by two because of two persons eligible for military service
But I don’t understand the ‘12.5 divided by 8’. Is it to reflect a draft rate?
And from which book (or other source) the troops estimates are from?
In the realm of belated replies to posts from 2019… interesting that you bring up about how in some aspects, Westeros is closer to the antiquity era as a classicist. George R R Martin has repeatedly cited Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius” as a major influence on him, so it really wouldn’t shock me if Rome-by-way-of-Graves seeped into Westeros as well. Notably, the Westerosi custom of taking the kids of defeated leaders as hostage a la Theon Greyjoy to be raised in proper civilized environs seems very Roman, as does the unrealistically efficient and disciplined food-hording and storage. Maybe the extremely destructive war-style is more Rome than it is Lancaster?
(Also, Tyrion seems to be like Claudius if he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, the wry observer underestimated by all, for all that isn’t very setting-relevant. I suppose Valyria is the psuedo-Rome stand-in in-setting.)
A few thoughts on this.
The war of the five kings seems to me to be inspired by both the thirty years war and the hundred years war. Take Tywin and his “set the riverlands aflame” strategy, that is directly based on the Black Prince and Edward I(Tywin’s historical inspiration)-burn the crops, slaughter the peasants, and take everything you can carry. In the Riverlands-this is how the Lannisters operate immediately following Robb’s victory over Jaimie at the whispering wood.
As for the intensity of the fighting-in fairness the factions in the Wot5K are fighting for a single throne-except Robb and Balon who are both fighting for independence from central authority. But Joffrey, Stannis, and Renly have no reason to negotiate, they have competing claims to the same chair, and so there is little restraint in how they conduct their wars. If Stannis wins-Tywin can expect no mercy, same for Stannis, and really the same for Renly-as well as their supporters too, who can expect execution, attainment, or exile. (Though many lords do switch sides, especially after the blackwater). In such a struggle, where expectations of mercy and fair treatment are low if not outright non existent, then you aren’t going to be chivalrous to those who said your a usurper.
As for the peace of God-its made very clear that the faith of the seven is neutered politically and spiritually at the beginning of the series. It was broken as a secular power centuries before by Maegor, and was subordinate to the crown for the entirety of its existence, (beyond some protests over Bloodraven’s magic police state). So religious restraint on how armies operate is not really in effect.
In the books-we do see some of the consequences you list later. Actually, you do a reading of the books would be really interesting, and comparing it to how the show did things.
> Our modern administrative states can do wonderful things – they build roads and schools, provide healthcare (sometimes), they can care for the poor and regulate workplaces. But they can also produce spectacular and horrifying amounts of violence. It is this task – the violence, not the schools or the roads – for which they were designed and to which they remain best suited. We forget this (by pretending such violence belongs only to HBO and the distant past) at our peril.
This paragraph is ominous to read today.
I have published an excerpt of this on my blog (with linked attribution).
“Retinue of Retinues”
https://www.xenograg.com/881/excerpts/retinue-of-retinues
At least in the books, Renly arrives with fewer than 19K men to confront Stannis, rather than his whole army.
It’s fascinating to hear an expert’s assessment that GoT (the series) depicted social and political institutions more in keeping with an early modern setting than medieval. But I’m curious to hear opinions on how well this corresponds with the depictions of technology. To what degree is the GoT world consistently early modern across both institutions and technology? What are the most visible technologies partitioning the medieval from the early modern (architecture, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, weaponry…)?
On the one hand, as in reality, we might expect some laggards from less competitive corners of this fictional world to continue using obsolescent technology past its due date, like the northern houses’ arms and armor (although I don’t think that’s how the issue was treated on screen). On the other hand, the design, size and complexity of the sailing vessels in GoT struck me as anachronistic for a medieval or even early modern setting.
Looks like comparing the War of the Five Kings to the Coalition Wars was right all along.