Persian Invasion of 480 BC - articles

[floofthegoof]

Aryaman, you mentioned that literary sources are almost always inflated when compared to documentary sources. Do you know of a large enough sampling of these instances to come up with some 'fudge factor' that is the average inflation percent? To me, this alone would be a better way to estimate a size for Xerxes army. I just don't think that logistics would be the bottleneck for army size, especially not in this particular case, where the enemy is a very small neighboring country.

And about that 5,000,000 for newcomers to the discussion; Xerxes counts up 2,500,000 for the total land and sea force. Then he casually doubles the amount to account for the expected number of camp followers. Pretty much the wildest guess one can make! I doubt that Napolean had the full compliment of 691,000 camp followers going into Russia. :lol:

[Tarbicus]

Sources on 1st crusade numbers for reasons of comparizon?

Give me a chance, I only posted it today! I read it somewhere once, so I need to dig it out. 100,000 Peasant Army, 500,000 footmen, x-000 knights is what I remember off the top of my head.

If it makes you all feel more comfortable divide it by ten, but then you've still got probably less than what was fielded by just the Romans and their allies at Cannae, after their main armies were slaughtered beforehand by Hannibal over a millenia before the Crusades.

[Anonymous]

We are running circles in this discussion.

Indeed we are.

I have already made my basic points time after time, but people keeps confusing field armies with global armies, literary sources with documentary sources, etc.

This implies that it is our failure to pursue an argument in a sound manner which leads us to disagree with you. That is not the case.

BTW I would like to see in people that keep talking about Napoleon´s example some actual knowledge of Napoleonic campaigns.

Well, the fact that we are able to say anything about them indicates a basic level of knowledge, doesn't it? You imply that we know very little, but, in fact, Napoleon's Army and, in particular, the Peninsular War and the Hundred Days, was something I studied for my own interest. I've been to Burgos and I've read Victor Hugo's description of the Battle of Waterloo (among others). There was a particularly good book on the Waterloo Campaign, called "An Infamous Army", which I found very informative.

I really think we should stick to just the one bone of contention or, if you feel it's lost its flavour, end the discussion here.

[Aryaman2]

"Nah, we're past that now. I'm challenging you to prove how your logistics theories, if true, would prevent 1,700,000 persians from walking into Athens. You have not done so. Dig deeper".

Read my previous post, I am just too tired to repit my arguments

"What's there to know? He took 691,000 men from Poland to Moscow. I think we can all agree on that"

That proves my point, you have no idea about Napoleon´s Russian campaign

[Aryaman2]

Well, the fact that we are able to say anything about them indicates a basic level of knowledge, doesn't it? You imply that we know very little, but, in fact, Napoleon's Army and, in particular, the Peninsular War and the Hundred Days, was something I studied for my own interest. I've been to Burgos and I've read Victor Hugo's description of the Battle of Waterloo (among others). There was a particularly good book on the Waterloo Campaign, called "An Infamous Army", which I found very informative.

If you have studied the Peninsular War you should be familiar with the enormous logistical problems that Wellington faced with an army that was regularly under 50.000 strong. Then try to imagine the problems of Xerxes with a much larger force.

[Aryaman2]

There have been several posts assuming that the Persian Empire was some sort of Absolutist govern with a well developed administrative machine. It was not, Persians made the transition of a bunch of nomadic tribes to running an empire in just a single generation. The empire at the time of Xerxes was less than a century old, it was plagued by revolts (Xerxes has just defeated the Babylonian revolt before the Greek campaign) and the Persians were a small ruling minority heavily dependant on the good will of local aristocracies, that is why Alexander always found collaborators defecting the Persians that allowed him to make use of supply depots stablished in the route of advance of his army inside the Persian empire.

[Tarbicus]

Some further reading:
Crossing the Hellespont PDF file.
[url:xud0fv9m]http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/43852//Location/Oxbow[/url]
[url:xud0fv9m]http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/1-4161.aspx[/url]

[floofthegoof]

"What's there to know? He took 691,000 men from Poland to Moscow. I think we can all agree on that"

That proves my point, you have no idea about Napoleon´s Russian campaign

True or False, Napoleon took ~691,000 men from Poland to Moscow, or the vicinity of Moscow?

[Aryaman2]

"What's there to know? He took 691,000 men from Poland to Moscow. I think we can all agree on that"

That proves my point, you have no idea about Napoleon´s Russian campaign

True or False, Napoleon took ~691,000 men from Poland to Moscow, or the vicinity of Moscow?

False, you should do some reading before posting those things.

[Robert Vermaat]

"What's there to know? He took 691,000 men from Poland to Moscow. I think we can all agree on that"
That proves my point, you have no idea about Napoleon´s Russian campaign

True or False, Napoleon took ~691,000 men from Poland to Moscow, or the vicinity of Moscow?

False, you should do some reading before posting those things.

So these figures are nonsense?

The Grande Armée was divided as follows:

A central strike force of 250,000 under the emperor's personal command.
Two other frontline armies under Eugène de Beauharnais (80,000 men) and Jérôme Bonaparte (70,000 men).
Two detached corps under Jacques MacDonald (32,500 men) and Karl Schwarzenberg (34,000 Austrian troopers).
A reserve army of 225,000 troops.
In addition 80,000 National Guards had been conscripted for full military service defending the imperial frontier of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. With these included total French imperial forces on the Russian border and in Russia came to some 771,500 men. This vast commitment of manpower severely strained the Empire - especially considering that there were a further 300,000 French troops fighting in Iberia and over 200,000 more in Germany and Italy.

450,000 French troops made up the majority of the army with French allies making up the rest. In addition to the detached Austrian corps under Schwarzenberg there were some 95,000 Poles, 90,000 Germans (24,000 Bavarians, 20,000 Saxons, 20,000 Prussians, 17,000 Westphalians and several thousand from smaller Rhineland states), 25,000 Italians, 12,000 Swiss, 4,800 Spaniards, 3,500 Croats and 2,000 Portuguese. In addition there were Dutch and also a number of Belgian contingents. In short every nationality in Napoleon's vast empire was represented.

Military losses amounted to 300,000 French, 70,000 Poles, 50,000 Italians, 80,000 Germans and perhaps 450,000 Russians. As well as the loss of human life the French also lost some 200,000 horses and over 1,000 artillery pieces.

[floofthegoof]

"What's there to know? He took 691,000 men from Poland to Moscow. I think we can all agree on that"

That proves my point, you have no idea about Napoleon´s Russian campaign

True or False, Napoleon took ~691,000 men from Poland to Moscow, or the vicinity of Moscow?

False, you should do some reading before posting those things.

I did! If there's something in the wikipedia article that is wrong, then say what it is! There's even a cool map that shows how the size of the army dwindled along the route. Why do I have to know everything about Napoleon to use this as an example?

Are you saying that Napoleons troops in Russia were not a proper 'field army' and in fact had a certain 'globalness' about them? If so, why could not Xerxes forces exhibit the same character in this regard?

[Aryaman2]

I did! If there's something in the wikipedia article that is wrong, then say what it is! There's even a cool map that shows how the size of the army dwindled along the route. Why do I have to know everything about Napoleon to use this as an example?

Are you saying that Napoleons troops in Russia were not a proper 'field army' and in fact had a certain 'globalness' about them? If so, why could not Xerxes forces exhibit the same character in this regard?

Ok, I checked the Wikipedia article. Adam Zamoyski book on the campaign is cited as a reference, however the author of the article fails to note a very important point in his numbers that Zamoyski emphasize, that they include second line troops, according to Zamoyski the total number of troops actually entering Russia was about 450.000.

Those 450.000 were not a field army, at least in the sense I understand it is generally used the term. By that I understand (I posted this before) a force marching together as a single body and exacting supplies from the same source. In that sense Xerxes army is a field army (an Independent Tactical Force if you prefer something more technical), but Napoleon´s 450.000 are not. They were divided into several field armies following different roads and extracting supplies from different supply lines.
Napoleon´s main army had a paper strength (according to David Chandler´s detailed OOB) of 228.000 men, substracting second line troops you get a real strength of about 160.000, minus detachments, stragglers, etc, you get about 130.000 as an efective field army, that is my estimate, and the maximum total estimation for Napoleon´s army at the battle of Borodino.
Answering more precisely your previous question, Napoleon´s army arriving at Moscow and surroundings was under 90.000.

[Magnus]

Field Vs Global army....

Inaki, while I'm familiar with the term field army...this global one seems to have escaped me. Where, what and how did you base it's usage on?

[Aryaman2]

Field Vs Global army....

Inaki, while I'm familiar with the term field army...this global one seems to have escaped me. Where, what and how did you base it's usage on?

"Global Army" is my translation into english, so it could be not adequate, it is used to denote the whole army of any given side as opposed to individual field armies. I hope this makes it clear.

[Magnus]

Ahhh..ok.