Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Hanny]

I believe in this case the misunderstanding is yours: he did not, as you claim, "put 17 days grain into the forts leaving the legion to starve and they mutiny".

Belief is what people fall back on when the facts dont support their viewpoint, its very simple, you have not read or not undeerstood the text.

I posted the link so all can see what he wrote, that he took 20 not 17 days with him, "And having settled on his plan, he had the grain allowance for twenty days taken from what was to be consumed in the winter quarters, and baked up to serve for some time; he put this hard-tack" later after moving some distance, he then writes, "And to the end that speed might make his wise policy safe, he took a part of the seventeen days' provisions, which the soldiers, when they marched forward on their expedition carried about their necks and stored it in those same forts, hoping that what had been deducted might be replaced from the harvests of the Chamavi." He then relates, "But it turned out far otherwise; for the crops were not yet even ripe, and the soldiers, after using up what they carried, could find no food anywhere; and resorting to outrageous threats, they assailed Julian with foul names and opprobrious language, calling him an Asiatic,​57 a Greekling​58 and a deceiver, and a fool with a show of wisdom" he then mentions the mutiny twice ending with "At length, after the mutiny had been quelled, not without various sorts of fair words, they built a pontoon bridge and crossed the Rhine".

Shame your use of a refernce to 17 days actually refers to a 20 days carry weight, and putting a part of 17 days of it into granaries in forts.

Read the text again and you will see that he took 17 days full ration with him, and only allocated a portion of that to the forts. The troops complained but neither starved nor mutinied, and the campaign was a success.

I can read and count so that gives me an advantage over you, he started with 20 days extra rations for a 2 month campaign "he put this hard-tack (as they commonly call it) on the backs of his willing soldiers, and relying on this supply he set out under favourable auspices (as he did before), thinking that within the fifth or sixth month two urgent and inevitable campaigns might be brought to completion", since 20 days is not suffiecent rations for 2 months in the field, this is extra to what he would need, and not the full load.

This demonstrates that ancient logistics were considerably more flexible, and effective, than the rigid arithmetic of modern military analysis might have us believe.

It demonstartes you have issues with both reading comprehension, and how much ahuman body can do under loaded marches. You can put another 20 days rations on your back, making it now over c100lbs weight,and what you think that means is you can then spend 90 days with it on your back marching to Angelsey and fighting there for a week with it not on your back, and then from Sept 3 to 16 Sept march to london at 198 and 56 miles in 13 days, a total of 19.5 mpd. Thats the longest sustained 100lbs march rate in human history, Roman march rate of 5 hours a day is c4mp with full gear, that does not include weeks of extra food rations, so when i used a high end 15 day, its high end, you otoh say with hindsight, actually no, i need it to be more....

Where are you getting this from?

Its in almost every book on logistics that looks at mules, note also the effects of forced march on troop numbers at end of march 144, page https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ntMe...us&f=false

Roman troops marched five hours a day and rested the remainder.

No they did not. They marched 5 hours under their normal weight and then did a vast array of other things, from erecting the camp which took hours, grinding their own corn, which took hours, to standing gaurd in full kit, https://www.jstor.org/stable/525803 and http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/8075/2/8075_507...?UkUDh:CyT

Infantry General William B Hazen, in a well-known anecdote, claimed that infantry could outmarch cavalry after seven days on the road (campaigning in the arid regions of the US southwest). If American infantry could march across arid country for more than seven days without rest, what leads you to believe that trained Roman troops could not?

this is the quote "After the fourth day's march of a mixed command, the horse does not march faster than the foot Soldier, and after the seventh day, the foot Soldier begins to outmarch the horse," recounted COL William B. Hazen

Congress disagreed and kept the Cav strength at 10 Regiments.

Hazen, a true Infantryman hated the Cavlary arm and Custer in particular, wanted Congress to reduce the cav Regiments numbers in favour of more Inf Regiments, his testomany to Congress to which you refer, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JE9H...se&f=false

Includes his reasoning why 10 Cav Regiments was to many, but excludes an explantion of why this was so, horses require rest days, they dont sweat the same way a human does who has evolved a skin suited to pursuit hunting allowing him to pursue on foot more effiecently than a horse/deer etc can run away, a man can run down his prey who eventually drops from heat exhustion and kill it from this evolutionary advantage. They require more food and water inputs than human do, and lack of natural fodder meant horses perfomed poorly in arid areas, so 50 horse needed an acre of fodder each day, which simply did not exist, so had to be wagoned in which is the part of hazens testomany you ignore, that its wagons that slow the daily march rate down as they are needed to transport the horse fodder, as well as teh munitions, botyh horse and cav regiments required c 180000 rnds of munitions, so the 12000 lbs of firearms munitions was mostly in the wagons, see also supplying War M V crevald, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supplying-War-L...0521546575

US infantry of the period carried 3 days rations in there 60lbs weight carried, and achived 8-12 mpd, not 20 days rations and 100lbs and 19.5 mpd you want them to carry for months.