Great Houses and their personal forces

[James Steller]

My question is simple: where the hell are they?

Obviously the real strength of these great houses is that they can muster all the noble houses' forces and command them. But surely they needed to have fought their way to the top to earn that loyalty? So where are these direct bannermen?

We get something of an idea of the Stark forces. Hundreds are mustered by Rodrik Cassel and we can assume that Ned and Robb Stark took Stark men with them when they went south, but we never get an idea just how many they can muster on their own. If the Boltons can summon over four thousand and the Manderlys can bring maybe six or seven thousand to their side, surely the Starks should have a similar amount?

And when it comes to the others, it's the same ambiguity. Storm's End and Riverrun both seem to have garrisons that number fewer than four hundred apiece. Where are the assumed thousands of men which directly support Houses Baratheon and Tully and allowed them to take control of their regions? Same with House Arryn for that matter.

Houses Lannister and Greyjoy seem to have more pronounced forces directly serving them, as do the Tyrells. It just seems like the information we've gotten is skewed to purposefully give certain characters more of an underdog status, but that means it isn't consistent with what makes a Great House powerful. 

[Lord of the Vale]

the great houses are first tier houses , manderlys  and boltons are second tier houses. The main portion of the forsces of the former comes from the secon tier houses, but they will also have some third tier and lower tier houses sworn to them directly. The cerwyns are probaly third tier, the glovers and tallharts are probaly also third tier, since they are masterlye houses.  The secon tier houses on the other had derives most their forsecs from third tier houses, but they will also have some lower tier houses sworn directly to them.

I think the reason why some of great houses seem to have few soilders, thats because we know about their lower their Lords and therfore counts the lower house soilders as that house and not as the greate houses.

if you just want to count the soilders that har sworn directly to the greate houses, it would only be few hundred, the castel garnison and the soilders that can be raided from the.  Castle town. Houses that controls cities can raise more from the city. The greyjoys are the exeption, as they control the iron fleet with tousands of soilders.

 

[James Steller]

56 minutes ago, Lord of the Vale said:

the great houses are first tier houses , manderlys  and boltons are second tier houses. The main portion of the forsces of the former comes from the secon tier houses, but they will also have some third tier and lower tier houses sworn to them directly. The cerwyns are probaly third tier, the glovers and tallharts are probaly also third tier, since they are masterlye houses.  The secon tier houses on the other had derives most their forsecs from third tier houses, but they will also have some lower tier houses sworn directly to them.

I think the reason why some of great houses seem to have few soilders, thats because we know about their lower their Lords and therfore counts the lower house soilders as that house and not as the greate houses.

if you just want to count the soilders that har sworn directly to the greate houses, it would only be few hundred, the castel garnison and the soilders that can be raided from the.  Castle town. Houses that controls cities can raise more from the city. The greyjoys are the exeption, as they control the iron fleet with tousands of soilders.

 

I understand that the Great Houses depend on the lower ones for their troops, but at some point they had to conquer these houses in the first place. The Starks, Durrandons, Lannisters, Arryns, all of them. And yes, some of their troops did get promoted to their own houses like the Mormonts, but the histories point out that the Great Houses had their own considerable forces. When the Wildlings invaded the North, it's specifically stated that Houses Stark and Umber teamed up to fight them. If the Stark armies are made up of lower tier houses, why name the Umbers as a specifically separate force?

[Floki of the Ironborn]

It did puzzle me why we have yet to see Baratheon household guards with either Renly, Robert, or Stannis.

[GallowsKnight]

At the end of the day, aside from house guard and those from the lands immediately surrounding the lord, every other man a lord can summon is through a master or landed knight equivalent link in the feudal system. This counts for pretty much every lord or king. But the overwhelming majority of these little guys are just going to ask "how high?", as soon as their lord says "jump" that's it's meaningless distinction. 

When we know a bunch of these guys it looks like their overlords have less men. House Glover and Tallhart for example are powerful but basically landed knight equivalents and it's very likely Lord Cerwyn though being a lord and having the right of pit and gallows, is just another of house Stark's direct bannermen, rather than a Lord of significant standing.

Why do certain houses appear to have more direct men?

Well houseguards are separate to bannermen. You can basically have as many men armed and at the ready as your household can pay, feed and supply. The Lannister's probably have heaps (300men guarding the Queen, Tywin and Casterly Rock's guard, Tywin probably funds the Lannisport guard)

Ned has about a 100 (can't remember exactly). It's also not that he couldn't afford more, just he likely didn't need more than that number.

Navies are a different cost. Sailors are much cheaper than professional soldiers (who are only a small amount of crew) and ships though having maintenance costs, usually cost the most to build. A one off payment rather than a yearly amount. In times of peace you can easily build up a strong navy

[Leonardo]

Castles are and were very, very important. The shadow on the wall is everything when it comes to the feudal system

 

Winterfell under Eddard can almost certainly field more men than any house but White Harbor, it owns huge tracts of land. Bolton is probably next on the list. Robb probably took a lot south with him since it was such short notice and the troops you get first are the ones clostest to you, which is honestly a bad move. You want to use your vassals to fight your wars if possible since that is the point of having vassals you can trust

The short answer is they often do have more men than many; what evidence is there otherwise?

[Leonardo]

Also, EVERYONE'S armies are made up of lower vassals, including the Boltons and such.

[Lord of the Vale]

 

14 hours ago, James Steller said:

If the Stark armies are made up of lower tier houses, why name the Umbers as a specifically separate force?

Because we know their Name, whilst we don't know the named of any house sworn to the boltons, before they became LPs of the north.

[Free Northman Reborn]

15 hours ago, James Steller said:

When the Wildlings invaded the North, it's specifically stated that Houses Stark and Umber teamed up to fight them. If the Stark armies are made up of lower tier houses, why name the Umbers as a specifically separate force?

I think that the War of the Five Kings, and the brief descriptions of Aegon's Conquest, has given us a somewhat false impression of the normal scale of warfare in Westeros. Particularly where the North is concerned, I don't think that a mass call up of the Bannerlords is how war is normally conducted.

Sure, there are occasions where that occurs, but more often the Starks probably don't bother calling up their entire strength. Instead, they would likely just mobilize their own strength and maybe that of a few vassals that are most loyal or most affected by the current threat, and go and deal with it.

Much like Eddard sent the Tallharts to fortify Moat Cailin at the start of the series, or how they instructed the Manderlys to fortify White Harbor. Frankly, I don't think the Wildling invasion was a big enough deal to warrant raising the entire North for. Especially given the logistical nightmare that raising the North entails.

How many men could Raymun Redbeard possibly have brought over the Wall? 10,000? And that would be Wildling raiders. No heavy armor. Certainly they would have had no horses scaling the Wall. So a 10,000  strong army of poorly armored footsoldiers moves across the Gift. They cannot hope to conquer any major fortress by siege, so they are reduced to raiding some villages, maybe overwhelming a few small earthen or wooden keeps.

So the Starks's main aim would not be to raise the largest force possible, but rather to get there in the shortest time possible to put the moderate but localized threat down. The quickest way to do so would be to raise the forces of House Stark - and maybe some small support forces from the Cerwyns etc, and to meet up with the Umbers who are most threatened by the wildlings.

So 4000 Starks coupled with 2000 Umbers, with heavy horse, castle forged steel weapons and armor would absolutely have smashed Raymun Redbeard's forces, judging by what Stannis' 1500 knights did to Mance's 100,000 strong host.

So I reckon that battle was dominated by House Stark and Umber, with maybe much smaller contributions from a few other lords. But a force of 5,000 - 10,000 was probably the maximum size the North brought to bear on Redbeard. They would not have needed any more.

 

[The Holy Goat]

To answer the OP: The Starks likely has a significant force of men sworn directly to them. Ser Rodrik gathers at least 600 men from the area directly around Winterfell, and these are the forces which remains after Robb has already taken the initial crop of men and marched south. Ned himself rode south with 100 men from the Winterfell garrison, and that's said to be half of the peacetime garrison of Winterfell, so 800 Stark men are confirmed, with several thousand being a liklier estimate of their full force, similar to house Bolton. Granted some of these men will likely be sworn to Houses Poole, Cassel, Mollen and other smaller houses, but that goes for all major lords.