The Cost of Gathering and Marching Torrhen's Army across the North

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Nyrhex said:

I think we have a different mental picture of what a grown man eats in the army, and what a piglet looks like, costs, or translate to in other foods. 

Your average diet for the common medieval soldier did not have bacon with every breakfast and pork chops with every lunch. For the overwhelming majority of those Stark soldiers a gold dragon is a considerable sum, and not "a family's food budget for a week or two" considerable, the "90 stags (1/3rd dragon) would buy a hit on a Bran Stark" considerable. Six coppers got you a melon during the same timeframe of the six skinny piglets, and a stag got you a bushel of corn. A gold dragon is laughably more than you would spend on such a small group for a day.

A farmer in Duskendale, which suffered relatively little during the war, went on to recieve lashes because he could not afford the 50 stags he was fined for mixing sawdust in his flour. By your calculation the man was willing to suffer 50 lashes (or at least 1 per 1 stag he was short) rather than cough up a ~2.5 day's worth of food (assuming he had a horse, or up to a week's worth of food if he was living alone and ate sparingly). Who the hell can't afford that, that they would be willing to take lashes?

A common number of silver stags found in purses of characters is in the single digits. This is for traveling characters, which would consider this a traveling sum to last a while, not a pocket change sum for minor purchases at the market.

If a suit of basic plate armor costs 800 stags, (just under 4 gold dragons), are you suggesting that an unskilled worker saving a couple of months could purchase a suit of plate armor? Because the books would beg to differ. We barely see farmers with any sort of metal armor even in town militias. The entire Northern mounted contingent can't afford plate, they are only refered to as wearing mail (at least the bulk of them are wearing mail and the ones who wear better are a minority), and yet it was all relatively easily purchasable and they simply chose otherwise because fuck it, it's heavy and they already carry too many furs because of the cold? 

 

 

Just leave it. GRRM does not do economy well. Tywin has the "Dwarf's Penny" while acting Hand, to pay for the Royal Wedding. One penny per act. Let's work the math on that one, no real world prices needed. King's Landing has ~500,000 people, plus <20,000 Lannisters from Tywin's army, and <80,000 from the armies of the Reach and the Stormlands. Let's go with ~250,000 males in King's Landing. Let's not reduce every man and child too old or young to perform an act. Let's add ~100,000 soldiers, and double them by 2.5 for the sake of argument, to show that they perform more regularly than the average person, horny soldiers and all. 500,000 pennies, over the ~2 months, at best that the tax was in place, how many acts were performed? Let's say everyone goes to a whore once a day. 60x500,000 pennies = 30,000,000 pennies. Divide by 11,760 we get ~2,551 gold dragons, or, about what Robb Stark had to pay in order feed his own men for a week (using the above minimal estimation).

Do you see the problem with this? Tywin can just reduce the City Watch back to it's original size for a couple of weeks that the armies of the Westerlands, Reach and Stormlands are in the Capital, and he has the money for literally the feast of the century. How many guests was that? Tyrion beggs to reduce the number from 1,000 to 300 but was refused. 1,000 nobles ate and drank and feasted on 77 courses far more costly that the average food of a common soldier in the Stark host, I think you'd agree. So ~2,551 gold dragons buys you 77,000 expensive meals, plus all the food and drink for the soldiers that we do not see. 

This is of course a massive exaggeration. Not every greybeard and every toddler go to a whorehouse. Not even all men of age. Not everyone has the coin, and not everyone is a sex addict who has to go to a whorehouse at least once a day. 

And even if we are talking about something that aided the Lannisters to pay for the wedding, with what other other funds were they using? The coffers were next to empty after Tyrion used it all up on Wildfire and his chain, the interest on all the loans was eating awy the overwhelming majority of the incomes of the crown, and Tywin was both insisting on not using his own funds for a royal event and on not going for the Tyrells in order to show the power of the crown. We are talking abouta massive event that was payed for entirely out of the "Dwarf's Penny" tax. An event you would insist could have been payed for entirely by Robb Stark saving up the cash he was spending on just feeding his 3,000 troops and 2,250 horses for one week.

 

Give me a break. 

 

If you're trying to point out that Martin is inconsistent with his application of numbers, then absolutely, we agree. We agree that he does not compare the price of 6 piglets to that of a suit of plate armor, before he pulls it out of thin air. Absolutely, we are on the same page.

But all of that does not matter. The fact is, we know how expensive it was in the real world to support a soldier in the field for a day. And to support a horse in the field for the same period. So we know that supporting 30,000 men for multiple months is hellishly expensive.

If you can finance that, you have a lot of money. Whether the amounts in question tie up to Martin's off-hand assessment of what 6 piglets cost in King's Landing, is irrelevant.

Bottomline, soldiers and horses in the field cost you money per DAY. So if you need to keep them in the field for 3 times more days than the next kingdom, because of the distances involved in getting them to the battlefield, then you are spending 3 times as much money as the next kingdom.

Meaning that if you are raising 30k men for 3 months, it costs the same as another kingdom raising 90k men for one month.

So a war costs the North more money than it does the average southron kingdom. Meaning they have that money to spend in the first place, else they could not be able to send armies of 20k-30k men South of the Neck, as we have seen them do.

[Nyrhex]

19 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But all of that does not matter. The fact is, we know how expensive it was in the real world to support a soldier in the field for a day. And to support a horse in the field for the same period. So we know that supporting 30,000 men for multiple months is hellishly expensive.

If you can finance that, you have a lot of money. Whether the amounts in question tie up to Martin's off-hand assessment of what 6 piglets cost in King's Landing, is irrelevant.

Bottomline, soldiers and horses in the field cost you money per DAY. So if you need to keep them in the field for 3 times more days than the next kingdom, because of the distances involved in getting them to the battlefield, then you are spending 3 times as much money as the next kingdom.

Meaning that if you are raising 30k men for 3 months, it costs the same as another kingdom raising 90k men for one month.

So a war costs the North more money than it does the average southron kingdom. Meaning they have that money to spend in the first place, else they could not be able to send armies of 20k-30k men South of the Neck, as we have seen them do.

My point is that the comparison to real world funds based on a single point of referance was a methodological error. You can't take a price of a horse from 100 years ago in a short story that shares a world with a book series, then convert it into 14th century English economics and back again in order to come up with close on half a million gold dragons to feed an army of 18,000 men for a few weeks.

There are different values in universe which the OP's calculations are completely ignoring. 

Yes, feeding and clothing and everyday logistics of an 18,000 man army in both 14th century England and in fictional Westeros is bloody expensive, I have never argued otherwise. But the faulty conversion of costs made in the OP leads to a ridiculously infalted figure, all based on a single point of reference. The price of six piglets at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the prices people pay for a bushel of corn at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the price of a suit of armor is relevant, the sums people carry around for daily purchases or for cross-country travel which needs to support themselves and a mount for weeks on end is relevant. 

Bottomline, soldiers and horses in the field cost you money per day both for feeding and clothing and logistics and for the pay that you need to pay them for each day (and usually extra on battle days). So if Robb had a total of about a month or so for raising his army, while the Riverlands and the Westerlands have been gathering men for weeks beforehand, there is no relevance to Robb marching a long road. He is only paying for troops for a month, a month and a half, while armies larger than his have been on the move and fighting for more than a month, a month and a half. The bloody size of the North is not a friggin factor in "how mighty and rich muh Starks are". 

The Stark army was not raised longer than anyone. Maybe the Tyrells and Stormlords had a month extra if we are only counting from Renly's coronation, but FFS, there were in the field long after the Northern army was destroyed.

A war does not cost the North more money also because they are not paying for the same things. The southern armies are far more expensive because even if soldier pay and food is the same, they have more expensive gear, more horses, more everything. They are man-per-man far more expensive.

[Free Northman Reborn]

14 minutes ago, Nyrhex said:

My point is that the comparison to real world funds based on a single point of referance was a methodological error. You can't take a price of a horse from 100 years ago in a short story that shares a world with a book series, then convert it into 14th century English economics and back again in order to come up with close on half a million gold dragons to feed an army of 18,000 men for a few weeks.

There are different values in universe which the OP's calculations are completely ignoring. 

Yes, feeding and clothing and everyday logistics of an 18,000 man army in both 14th century England and in fictional Westeros is bloody expensive, I have never argued otherwise. But the faulty conversion of costs made in the OP leads to a ridiculously infalted figure, all based on a single point of reference. The price of six piglets at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the prices people pay for a bushel of corn at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the price of a suit of armor is relevant, the sums people carry around for daily purchases or for cross-country travel which needs to support themselves and a mount for weeks on end is relevant. 

Bottomline, soldiers and horses in the field cost you money per day both for feeding and clothing and logistics and for the pay that you need to pay them for each day (and usually extra on battle days). So if Robb had a total of about a month or so for raising his army, while the Riverlands and the Westerlands have been gathering men for weeks beforehand, there is no relevance to Robb marching a long road. He is only paying for troops for a month, a month and a half, while armies larger than his have been on the move and fighting for more than a month, a month and a half. The bloody size of the North is not a friggin factor in "how mighty and rich muh Starks are". 

The Stark army was not raised longer than anyone. Maybe the Tyrells and Stormlords had a month extra if we are only counting from Renly's coronation, but FFS, there were in the field long after the Northern army was destroyed.

A war does not cost the North more money also because they are not paying for the same things. The southern armies are far more expensive because even if soldier pay and food is the same, they have more expensive gear, more horses, more everything. They are man-per-man far more expensive.

The moment Tywin's army passes through the Golden Tooth, its maintenance costs drop drastically as it is living off the land. He is pillaging enemy lands to feed his army. By contrast, Robb has to support his men with his own resources all the way past the Neck. Massive difference.

And as Lord Giggles pointed out, those men had to be supported by Northern resources to just get to Winterfell from the far flung corners of the North as well. You cannot handwave that away.

[Lord Giggles]

33 minutes ago, Nyrhex said:

My point is that the comparison to real world funds based on a single point of referance was a methodological error. You can't take a price of a horse from 100 years ago in a short story that shares a world with a book series, then convert it into 14th century English economics and back again in order to come up with close on half a million gold dragons to feed an army of 18,000 men for a few weeks.

There are different values in universe which the OP's calculations are completely ignoring. 

Yes, feeding and clothing and everyday logistics of an 18,000 man army in both 14th century England and in fictional Westeros is bloody expensive, I have never argued otherwise. But the faulty conversion of costs made in the OP leads to a ridiculously infalted figure, all based on a single point of reference. The price of six piglets at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the prices people pay for a bushel of corn at wrist-cutting prices is relevant, the price of a suit of armor is relevant, the sums people carry around for daily purchases or for cross-country travel which needs to support themselves and a mount for weeks on end is relevant. 

Bottomline, soldiers and horses in the field cost you money per day both for feeding and clothing and logistics and for the pay that you need to pay them for each day (and usually extra on battle days). So if Robb had a total of about a month or so for raising his army, while the Riverlands and the Westerlands have been gathering men for weeks beforehand, there is no relevance to Robb marching a long road. He is only paying for troops for a month, a month and a half, while armies larger than his have been on the move and fighting for more than a month, a month and a half. The bloody size of the North is not a friggin factor in "how mighty and rich muh Starks are". 

The Stark army was not raised longer than anyone. Maybe the Tyrells and Stormlords had a month extra if we are only counting from Renly's coronation, but FFS, there were in the field long after the Northern army was destroyed.

A war does not cost the North more money also because they are not paying for the same things. The southern armies are far more expensive because even if soldier pay and food is the same, they have more expensive gear, more horses, more everything. They are man-per-man far more expensive.

First thing. I point you to the title. These calculations were for Torrhen Stark's army not Robb Stark's. Hence why there's closer to 30,000 men total than 18,000 and the Karstark and Manderly numbers are not those provided in the books. And it's not a few weeks either. It's a campaign lasting between 109 and 219 days depending on how quickly the northern army moved.  However, if you wish I could do exactly the same calculations for Robb's march south as I did for Torrhen's here and see what the difference was. 

 

And the size of the North is most definitely a factor in how much it costs to raise an army. Due to the North's sheer size they may still be getting their army together while a Westerlands army may already be on campaign. Hence the Northern lords need to pay more per campaign season than many of their southron counterparts as it takes them a long time to muster their strength before they're even on campaign hence they need to pay to feed their men for longer. 

 

Yes, southron troops are going to cost more per man in terms of equipment and such. But those costs don't effect a medieval lord/king's spending on a campaign as they were procured privately(with the exception of an English archer's arrows). How much he needs to pay in order to feed his men and their horses does, even if by some miracle he doesn't need to pay them wages(a cost I haven't included in here given that, as I said earlier, I would need to get in to "regards" and all that if I did). 

 

And also, out of curiosity, where did you get the information about medieval troops being paid more on days when they had fought in a battle? I have never heard of that practice although it could just be the English might not have done it. 

[Nyrhex]

3 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The moment Tywin's army passes through the Golden Tooth, its maintenance costs drop drastically as it is living off the land. He is pillaging enemy lands to feed his army. By contrast, Robb has to support his men with his own resources all the way past the Neck. Massive difference.

And as Lord Giggles pointed out, those men had to be supported by Northern resources to just get to Winterfell from the far flung corners of the North as well. You cannot handwave that away.

The moment Tywin's army passes through the Golden Tooth they are still living off of supply lines, which Tywin laments the Riverlords are raiding after the first Battle of Riverrun and ponders if Tyrion would like to take up on himself to deal with. It is only living off the Riverlands after the link to the Westerlands is broken by the loss of Jaime's army and the free hand the Stark-Tully forces have along the border with the west. Jaime's army itself was also being supplied from the Westerlands, and also suffering from Riverlords raiders. Raiders which Jaime was so fed up with he blindly took most of his cavalry to chase them off with right into the Whispering Woods. Jason Mallister literally calls it out in AGOT that Tywin is cut off from supplies from the Westerlands now.

By contrast Robb is supporting his own troops all the way from the North and into the Riverlands, and then still because the bulk of his men are still in the Riverlands and need to purchase foodstuffs from local Riverlords or riad the Riverlands. Though I'll admit that we hear of plenty Stark raids in the Riverlands, regardless of who is in direct control of the local raid destination at the time. 

While Robb was in the Westerlands, sure, he was cut off from supply lines and was mainly raiding to supply his men. Though how Mormont was going to get thousands of cattle heads when Robb only entered the Westerlands by passing the guarded road via a goat track is beyond me. 

I am not handwaving the fact that those men were supported while arriving from the far flung corners of the North. I completely reject the reasoning that due to said distances they were by definition supplied for more time than other armies. The Lannister and Tully hosts were gathering since the day Catelyn took Tyrion, neither side wasted time. Even if we are talking about a day or so of RavenMail™ (and forget about travel charts, we have a case of a raven making it from Riverrun to the Crag and the other way around in a day), those armies were mustered since the moment of Tyrion's kidnapping. Robb only gathers the banners later. Estimations place the timeframe it took Cat to get from the inn to the Eyrie (where she wrote the letter to Robb and sent it from) at roughly a month if not more. During said month the Westerlands and the Riverlands have gathered hosts and were at a staring contest, with the Lannisters at least twice the size of the North, the Riverlands at least the same size as the North. 

Robb arrives at Moat Cailin and hears the news that war had broken out in the Riverlands less than two weeks ago. That means that if Robb took under two months to raise an army and get there, the Riverlands have had to pay for about the same force for about three months, or 50% more than the North all else being equal. The Lannister had to pay for twice the host for three months, meaning that they had to pay 200% more than the North, all else being equal. In both cases, things are not equal because a southern army is more expensive, man per man, and with more horses, which of course increases the upkeep of the animals.

You don't need to convert this into 14th century English currency. The only thing you can accomplish with that is confuse people with technobabble. With all the North's size, the Stark as of the timeframe of the calculations in the OP (March to Winterfell, and then to Moat Cailin) did not have to pay more than anyone else "just because they are bigger". The Reach and the Stormlands start recruiting about a week or two after the Lannister invasion. During the next month they have more than everyone combined. By definition they pay more than Robb in that single month alone than he had payed in total for his food. In the first 4 months since Robb got Cat's letter, the Tyrells have already spent more than he did both on food and for troops. Simply due to size of population and size of host which it produced.

The scope of the North plays fuck all of importance here. It started later, and had to pay for fewer troops, fewer mounts. If they all started at the same time, with same composition of troops, the North would still be paying for the same amount of troops for the same timeframe. They don't pay more because they have to raise troops from far flung areas of the region because that is ignoring any context. I know that is the official reasoning from GRRM, but it's just bad. 

3 hours ago, Lord Giggles said:

First thing. I point you to the title. These calculations were for Torrhen Stark's army not Robb Stark's. Hence why there's closer to 30,000 men total than 18,000 and the Karstark and Manderly numbers are not those provided in the books. And it's not a few weeks either. It's a campaign lasting between 109 and 219 days depending on how quickly the northern army moved.  However, if you wish I could do exactly the same calculations for Robb's march south as I did for Torrhen's here and see what the difference was. 

 

And the size of the North is most definitely a factor in how much it costs to raise an army. Due to the North's sheer size they may still be getting their army together while a Westerlands army may already be on campaign. Hence the Northern lords need to pay more per campaign season than many of their southron counterparts as it takes them a long time to muster their strength before they're even on campaign hence they need to pay to feed their men for longer. 

 

Yes, southron troops are going to cost more per man in terms of equipment and such. But those costs don't effect a medieval lord/king's spending on a campaign as they were procured privately(with the exception of an English archer's arrows). How much he needs to pay in order to feed his men and their horses does, even if by some miracle he doesn't need to pay them wages(a cost I haven't included in here given that, as I said earlier, I would need to get in to "regards" and all that if I did). 

 

And also, out of curiosity, where did you get the information about medieval troops being paid more on days when they had fought in a battle? I have never heard of that practice although it could just be the English might not have done it. 

First thing. I point you to the methodoligical errors in your calculation, the fact that you would take a singular point of text to base your assumption on and convert into 14th century English currency for calculations and then back again into fantasy currency is a bug, and me pointing it out to you using several examples is a feature. If you have an issue with me using several prices from 299 AL, I have issue with you using one price from 209 AL for a mustering over 200 years earlier. How much did the Reach pay? They had gold coins that were worth less than the later Targ dragon. Did the North not use it's own coin as well at the time? Have you tried to figure the conversion rates? Adjusted for inflation? Did Torrhen truly raise 30,000 men or is this a myth like the Dornish 50,000 spears? What about the Kingsroad, how does that factor in?

Your logical train was thus: In 209 this was the price of a horse. I'll go on the internet, figure out how much a horse would sell for, and reconvert to see how much food would cost. I'll go to the map of the North, and see how long it would take to get from all the different places at medieval marching times. 

First thing that is wrong is using an anachronistic price. Second thing that is wrong is converting it to 14th century English currnecy and then back again without looking at the food prices in the same short story you got the horse price from. If you assume that the horse's price did not change, surely you would accept that the price of food had not changed. Then you went and looked at how long it would take for an army to make the march, which is also available in the books: It's not a 109-219 days depending on how quickly the North moved, we have an estimated figure for how long it took Robb to move his army and it was not even close. Robb managed to raise 18,000 men and march them to the Green Fork in under two months, or 60 days. Unless by raising 30,000 men you mean Torrhen took months to train new recruits, no, that is not a travel time issue. The local population that did not make it in time is negligable. We see the overwhleming majority of what the North has left, and they were not taken mainly because they are all that is left and they are barely enough to hold garrison duty.

The Karstarks arrived all the way from Karhold, everyone marched for Moat Cailin, the army split up at the Twins, and the Battles of the Whispering Woods, the Camps, and the Green Fork all happened within 60 days. If you are taking an extra 49-159 days, it is not because people can't reach you, it is because people are not ready for war and you need to train new recruits. 

Here you can bring up the Kingsroad! Surely that would mean that in olden days it took longer to travel! And to this I retort that the Kingsroad is a dirt road. It did not take much to make it so, as it was already the existing road to the Wall. Any improvement in transportation is negligable, and the main difference is in the naming. Robb has to lay down planks and logs to cross the Neck, because the road turns into a muddy mess that made even the short royal party travel there into a crawling nightmare. Trade with the south is non-existant on that road, and if Torrhen wanted to march south he would have marched on his Kingsroad to lay down planks and logs in the Neck just as Robb would do three centuries later. 

 

And I'll rephrase, the size of the North is not the only factor. Robb takes ~60 days to raise an army 18,000 strong and lead it to war (counting from the letter from Cat to the Battles of the WW, Camps, Green Fork). In the 90 days since Tyrion was taken and until that same point the Riverlands and the Westerlands have raised a similarly sized army or more, and have been at war for 14 days by the time Robb hears of it at Moat Cailin and is marching south. 76 days. Sure, they waited after they were at full muster and could have probably cut down a month or so, but that is another factor in how much they payed. Just like the factors that the southern armies have more men, have more horses, pay more for logistics (plate vs mail and halfhelms...), etc. So the above claim:

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So a war costs the North more money than it does the average southron kingdom. Meaning they have that money to spend in the first place, else they could not be able to send armies of 20k-30k men South of the Neck, as we have seen them do.

Is flat out wrong, because it uses one arbitrary factor and bases itself entirely around that, without any considiration for other factors. If the Lannisters and the Starks were going at each other from the same time, Robb would pay for 60 days before reaching the Twins, and Tywin would pay for 120 days because he is mustering from the same time and for twice the numbers. He would be paying more of course, again because his army is more costly man per man, but I'm simplifying it for one factor vs one factor. 

If Tywin is "only" mustering when he hears that Robb had crossed the Neck, he would make a hasty call up of his army and only pay for ~15 days for a defensive war in the Westerlands while Robb is paying for ~75 (rounding up for convenience), which would mean that Tywin would pay (again, ignoring that Tywin's troops are more expensive) 40% of what Robb pays in those 75 days because he is "only" paying double for those 15 days. In that specific scenario, Tywin would be paying less than the North. But that is a silly scenario that is doing backflips to show just how far-fetched this claim of "long muster times" is. If the war drags on for a month from contact without a major battle, Robb had payed for 105 days, while Tywin would be paying for 45 double days = 90 days. If the war would drag on for a month and a half, Robb would pay for 120 days, while Tywin would be paying for 60 double days = 120 days - the exact same as Robb. From here on Tywin would be paying more than Robb, simply because despite having two months of Robb raising troops, Tywin is still paying more. The only way for the North to pay more for it's troops, and thus have the "The North pays more than anyone else because they have to, ergo they must be richer", is if all wars enged within a couple of weeks of finishing muster. You go to war come spring, say late May/early June, march to war in early July, and you are back home and it's still august and the enemy you were fighting was your size or smaller. Wars don't work that way. And we would still need to have zero context as to the extent of how wealthy regions are because spending more on your army does not mean you are richer, it means you spend more on your army. It can just as easily be taken as reasoning that the North is poorer than others because it has to pay more for wars, and is thus limited in how much it can spend on itself.

You see how this would make the claim that the North has to spend several times as much as anyone else, and is so richer than others, laughable?

And the costs of armor and the likes most definatly do influence. You keep your force maintained not only with food, you take care of thier gear as well. This adds to the running costs, not just of purchasing. Anyone who was in the military, no matter which position, can tell you how wear and tear of gear from uniform to tank, airplane and ship parts is significant and increases in rate during war time. The same is true in medieval times. You banged up your mail? Sure, let's fix those rings. You banged up that plate? That's gonna cost you. The tools you would require are different, more bowmen (and Jaime's alone had more bowmen than Robb had in his entire army) means more arrows. Those ain't cheap either. These things stack up, and if you insist on using only how much a single person eats, that is intentionally ignoring other costs just to make it sound like the Starks have to be wealthy just to keep up with everyone else. The entire argument that southern armies spend much more on gear not in wartime is entirely ignored. Again, just to make it sounds that the Staks have to pay more for thier army than anyone else and so they have to be richer. We are talking about Westeros, not 14th century England. We read about those sort of things, and it's at the officers level and Tywin has to order the person in charge of arms and armor to provide armor (including plate) and steel weapons for 3,000 Vale Clansmen as per Tyrion's promise.  This was done from the "spare" stores in the army, the same spares with which Tyrion was armored for the Battle of the Green Fork. Tywin sent more spare breastplates to the Vale Clanemen from his spare stores than Robb Stark's cavary had between them, just to get the massive gap between the running costs of the armies.

Extra pay on battle days... I honestly don't remember. I mean I remember it, but I'm studying history with a focus on the Hellenistic Period, so medieval matters are not my forte, and I can't remember which course it was on or if it was in one of the sources I looked up aside of the courses. Strike that off until I figure out a source for it.

[Lord Giggles]

On 9/29/2016 at 4:08 AM, Nyrhex said:

The moment Tywin's army passes through the Golden Tooth they are still living off of supply lines, which Tywin laments the Riverlords are raiding after the first Battle of Riverrun and ponders if Tyrion would like to take up on himself to deal with. It is only living off the Riverlands after the link to the Westerlands is broken by the loss of Jaime's army and the free hand the Stark-Tully forces have along the border with the west. Jaime's army itself was also being supplied from the Westerlands, and also suffering from Riverlords raiders. Raiders which Jaime was so fed up with he blindly took most of his cavalry to chase them off with right into the Whispering Woods. Jason Mallister literally calls it out in AGOT that Tywin is cut off from supplies from the Westerlands now.

By contrast Robb is supporting his own troops all the way from the North and into the Riverlands, and then still because the bulk of his men are still in the Riverlands and need to purchase foodstuffs from local Riverlords or riad the Riverlands. Though I'll admit that we hear of plenty Stark raids in the Riverlands, regardless of who is in direct control of the local raid destination at the time. 

While Robb was in the Westerlands, sure, he was cut off from supply lines and was mainly raiding to supply his men. Though how Mormont was going to get thousands of cattle heads when Robb only entered the Westerlands by passing the guarded road via a goat track is beyond me. 

I am not handwaving the fact that those men were supported while arriving from the far flung corners of the North. I completely reject the reasoning that due to said distances they were by definition supplied for more time than other armies. The Lannister and Tully hosts were gathering since the day Catelyn took Tyrion, neither side wasted time. Even if we are talking about a day or so of RavenMail™ (and forget about travel charts, we have a case of a raven making it from Riverrun to the Crag and the other way around in a day), those armies were mustered since the moment of Tyrion's kidnapping. Robb only gathers the banners later. Estimations place the timeframe it took Cat to get from the inn to the Eyrie (where she wrote the letter to Robb and sent it from) at roughly a month if not more. During said month the Westerlands and the Riverlands have gathered hosts and were at a staring contest, with the Lannisters at least twice the size of the North, the Riverlands at least the same size as the North. 

Robb arrives at Moat Cailin and hears the news that war had broken out in the Riverlands less than two weeks ago. That means that if Robb took under two months to raise an army and get there, the Riverlands have had to pay for about the same force for about three months, or 50% more than the North all else being equal. The Lannister had to pay for twice the host for three months, meaning that they had to pay 200% more than the North, all else being equal. In both cases, things are not equal because a southern army is more expensive, man per man, and with more horses, which of course increases the upkeep of the animals.

You don't need to convert this into 14th century English currency. The only thing you can accomplish with that is confuse people with technobabble. With all the North's size, the Stark as of the timeframe of the calculations in the OP (March to Winterfell, and then to Moat Cailin) did not have to pay more than anyone else "just because they are bigger". The Reach and the Stormlands start recruiting about a week or two after the Lannister invasion. During the next month they have more than everyone combined. By definition they pay more than Robb in that single month alone than he had payed in total for his food. In the first 4 months since Robb got Cat's letter, the Tyrells have already spent more than he did both on food and for troops. Simply due to size of population and size of host which it produced.

The scope of the North plays fuck all of importance here. It started later, and had to pay for fewer troops, fewer mounts. If they all started at the same time, with same composition of troops, the North would still be paying for the same amount of troops for the same timeframe. They don't pay more because they have to raise troops from far flung areas of the region because that is ignoring any context. I know that is the official reasoning from GRRM, but it's just bad. 

First thing. I point you to the methodoligical errors in your calculation, the fact that you would take a singular point of text to base your assumption on and convert into 14th century English currency for calculations and then back again into fantasy currency is a bug, and me pointing it out to you using several examples is a feature. If you have an issue with me using several prices from 299 AL, I have issue with you using one price from 209 AL for a mustering over 200 years earlier. How much did the Reach pay? They had gold coins that were worth less than the later Targ dragon. Did the North not use it's own coin as well at the time? Have you tried to figure the conversion rates? Adjusted for inflation? Did Torrhen truly raise 30,000 men or is this a myth like the Dornish 50,000 spears? What about the Kingsroad, how does that factor in?

Your logical train was thus: In 209 this was the price of a horse. I'll go on the internet, figure out how much a horse would sell for, and reconvert to see how much food would cost. I'll go to the map of the North, and see how long it would take to get from all the different places at medieval marching times. 

First thing that is wrong is using an anachronistic price. Second thing that is wrong is converting it to 14th century English currnecy and then back again without looking at the food prices in the same short story you got the horse price from. If you assume that the horse's price did not change, surely you would accept that the price of food had not changed. Then you went and looked at how long it would take for an army to make the march, which is also available in the books: It's not a 109-219 days depending on how quickly the North moved, we have an estimated figure for how long it took Robb to move his army and it was not even close. Robb managed to raise 18,000 men and march them to the Green Fork in under two months, or 60 days. Unless by raising 30,000 men you mean Torrhen took months to train new recruits, no, that is not a travel time issue. The local population that did not make it in time is negligable. We see the overwhleming majority of what the North has left, and they were not taken mainly because they are all that is left and they are barely enough to hold garrison duty.

The Karstarks arrived all the way from Karhold, everyone marched for Moat Cailin, the army split up at the Twins, and the Battles of the Whispering Woods, the Camps, and the Green Fork all happened within 60 days. If you are taking an extra 49-159 days, it is not because people can't reach you, it is because people are not ready for war and you need to train new recruits. 

Here you can bring up the Kingsroad! Surely that would mean that in olden days it took longer to travel! And to this I retort that the Kingsroad is a dirt road. It did not take much to make it so, as it was already the existing road to the Wall. Any improvement in transportation is negligable, and the main difference is in the naming. Robb has to lay down planks and logs to cross the Neck, because the road turns into a muddy mess that made even the short royal party travel there into a crawling nightmare. Trade with the south is non-existant on that road, and if Torrhen wanted to march south he would have marched on his Kingsroad to lay down planks and logs in the Neck just as Robb would do three centuries later. 

 

And I'll rephrase, the size of the North is not the only factor. Robb takes ~60 days to raise an army 18,000 strong and lead it to war (counting from the letter from Cat to the Battles of the WW, Camps, Green Fork). In the 90 days since Tyrion was taken and until that same point the Riverlands and the Westerlands have raised a similarly sized army or more, and have been at war for 14 days by the time Robb hears of it at Moat Cailin and is marching south. 76 days. Sure, they waited after they were at full muster and could have probably cut down a month or so, but that is another factor in how much they payed. Just like the factors that the southern armies have more men, have more horses, pay more for logistics (plate vs mail and halfhelms...), etc. So the above claim:

Is flat out wrong, because it uses one arbitrary factor and bases itself entirely around that, without any considiration for other factors. If the Lannisters and the Starks were going at each other from the same time, Robb would pay for 60 days before reaching the Twins, and Tywin would pay for 120 days because he is mustering from the same time and for twice the numbers. He would be paying more of course, again because his army is more costly man per man, but I'm simplifying it for one factor vs one factor. 

If Tywin is "only" mustering when he hears that Robb had crossed the Neck, he would make a hasty call up of his army and only pay for ~15 days for a defensive war in the Westerlands while Robb is paying for ~75 (rounding up for convenience), which would mean that Tywin would pay (again, ignoring that Tywin's troops are more expensive) 40% of what Robb pays in those 75 days because he is "only" paying double for those 15 days. In that specific scenario, Tywin would be paying less than the North. But that is a silly scenario that is doing backflips to show just how far-fetched this claim of "long muster times" is. If the war drags on for a month from contact without a major battle, Robb had payed for 105 days, while Tywin would be paying for 45 double days = 90 days. If the war would drag on for a month and a half, Robb would pay for 120 days, while Tywin would be paying for 60 double days = 120 days - the exact same as Robb. From here on Tywin would be paying more than Robb, simply because despite having two months of Robb raising troops, Tywin is still paying more. The only way for the North to pay more for it's troops, and thus have the "The North pays more than anyone else because they have to, ergo they must be richer", is if all wars enged within a couple of weeks of finishing muster. You go to war come spring, say late May/early June, march to war in early July, and you are back home and it's still august and the enemy you were fighting was your size or smaller. Wars don't work that way. And we would still need to have zero context as to the extent of how wealthy regions are because spending more on your army does not mean you are richer, it means you spend more on your army. It can just as easily be taken as reasoning that the North is poorer than others because it has to pay more for wars, and is thus limited in how much it can spend on itself.

You see how this would make the claim that the North has to spend several times as much as anyone else, and is so richer than others, laughable?

And the costs of armor and the likes most definatly do influence. You keep your force maintained not only with food, you take care of thier gear as well. This adds to the running costs, not just of purchasing. Anyone who was in the military, no matter which position, can tell you how wear and tear of gear from uniform to tank, airplane and ship parts is significant and increases in rate during war time. The same is true in medieval times. You banged up your mail? Sure, let's fix those rings. You banged up that plate? That's gonna cost you. The tools you would require are different, more bowmen (and Jaime's alone had more bowmen than Robb had in his entire army) means more arrows. Those ain't cheap either. These things stack up, and if you insist on using only how much a single person eats, that is intentionally ignoring other costs just to make it sound like the Starks have to be wealthy just to keep up with everyone else. The entire argument that southern armies spend much more on gear not in wartime is entirely ignored. Again, just to make it sounds that the Staks have to pay more for thier army than anyone else and so they have to be richer. We are talking about Westeros, not 14th century England. We read about those sort of things, and it's at the officers level and Tywin has to order the person in charge of arms and armor to provide armor (including plate) and steel weapons for 3,000 Vale Clansmen as per Tyrion's promise.  This was done from the "spare" stores in the army, the same spares with which Tyrion was armored for the Battle of the Green Fork. Tywin sent more spare breastplates to the Vale Clanemen from his spare stores than Robb Stark's cavary had between them, just to get the massive gap between the running costs of the armies.

Extra pay on battle days... I honestly don't remember. I mean I remember it, but I'm studying history with a focus on the Hellenistic Period, so medieval matters are not my forte, and I can't remember which course it was on or if it was in one of the sources I looked up aside of the courses. Strike that off until I figure out a source for it.

Your logic for why the Lannister force would take more time to assemble(that there are more of them) makes no sense. We know that the Westerlands is a smaller, more densely populated realm than the North. That means it's not going to take as much time to raise an army in the Westerlands as the soldiers have a smaller distance to go and there are more of them within a shorter distance of the Lord's keep than in the North so it therefore follows that it should take them less time to muster a larger army than it takes the North to gather a smaller one. 

 

Also, I don't believe a lord would pay his troops armour costs. We don't know. It's a feudal system so each man needs to supply his own equipment(Vale clans excepted) but then as far as repairing it goes, often more wealthy individuals(knights, lords etc.) brought men able to repair their armour with them as servants and indeed some of the non noble troops could easily be blacksmiths by trade in peace time(personally I don't think so but it's possible) and serve their lord by repairing his retinue's armour in addition to fighting for him. Or alternatively, the less wealthy troops could be paying blacksmiths from among the camp followers to repair their kit for them. However, those are costs it's true and I agree completely with you that southern armies are, in all likelihood, spending more on that in peace time than their northern counterparts meaning that per man, on an equipment level, they probably cost the kingdom more. 

 

As to the error in my methodology, yes it's true. I took the cost of a horse but the price I used was from Juliet Barker's book "Agincourt"(I belive. It could also have been her other book about the English Kingdom of France during the Hundred Years War or Alison Wier's book about the Wars of the Roses). It listed the price of a mounted archer's rouncy at 1£, a courser at 25£ and then the highest level of war horse at I think it was 50-100£ and then an ordinary knight's riding horse at 5£, which I assumed to be a palfrey. So yes, this is flawed due to an assumption on my behalf in an attempt to try and establish a rough value for a gold dragon. 

 

 

[Nyrhex]

1 hour ago, Lord Giggles said:

Your logic for why the Lannister force would take more time to assemble(that there are more of them) makes no sense. We know that the Westerlands is a smaller, more densely populated realm than the North. That means it's not going to take as much time to raise an army in the Westerlands as the soldiers have a smaller distance to go and there are more of them within a shorter distance of the Lord's keep than in the North so it therefore follows that it should take them less time to muster a larger army than it takes the North to gather a smaller one. 

I never said the Westerlands would take more time to assemble, I pointed out that the claim that the North has to pay more for it's wars because it takes a couple weeks extra to raise it's manpower is laughably false. At most you could say that it would take more time to muster it's army, but it only translate to a minor initial increase in expenditure if we are talking about similar sized forces. It would also only be a greater expenditure per war if all wars ended within a month.

Again, you are ignoring the size of the hosts raised, you ignore the composition of the hosts, the number of horses that other regions have, the running costs that other armies have, the availability of food which would influence costs, etc. Your entire calculation was based on a singular point of reference, the cost of a horse two centuries after the events you are talking about. You did not even bother to look at the prices of food of the period of that singular point, you just jumped to the internet to find what it would cost in the historical influence of the fantasy setting. 

Robb had to pay for 18,000 men for 60 days = he had to pay for 1,080,000 daily meals, all else being equal and not counting the horses of which the Lannisters had far more. After this he losses ~5,000-6,000 men in battle. 

Tywin had to pay for ~35,000 men for ~76 days before he launched his attack on the Riverlands = he had to pay for 2,660,000 meals in total up to that point, and another ~490,000 by the time he met Robb's forces in battle for a total of ~3,150,000 meals. Even if you cut back on a month advance where Robb was not aware of the need to raise troops, and even if you knock down a month of standoff, we are talking about the Westerlands spending 1,050,000 on meals for his troops in 1 month. He spends the same as Robb because he is paying for double the manpower, even if it is in half the time. 

Again, this is all else being equal, not counting for horses, of which the Lannisters had far more, or other running costs. This is because there are other factors aside of the extra couple of weeks it takes to muster the Northern levy. Every week that goes by without a major battle or something to change the numbers, the North's spendings are dwarfed by those of literally anyone else. Even the bloody Greyjoys probably spend more because even without horses, ships cost a hell of alot of money to maintain. 

The Starks are not rich because they have to afford the extra couple of weeks of muster. They are poor because they go to war with the cheapest army and even then they get hosts that are not that large. Torrhen had the luck of being Aegon's last target. He started building an army at the same time as the Westerlands and the Reach, but was confronted by Aegon long after they were defeated. 

1 hour ago, Lord Giggles said:

Also, I don't believe a lord would pay his troops armour costs. We don't know. It's a feudal system so each man needs to supply his own equipment(Vale clans excepted) but then as far as repairing it goes, often more wealthy individuals(knights, lords etc.) brought men able to repair their armour with them as servants and indeed some of the non noble troops could easily be blacksmiths by trade in peace time(personally I don't think so but it's possible) and serve their lord by repairing his retinue's armour in addition to fighting for him. Or alternatively, the less wealthy troops could be paying blacksmiths from among the camp followers to repair their kit for them. However, those are costs it's true and I agree completely with you that southern armies are, in all likelihood, spending more on that in peace time than their northern counterparts meaning that per man, on an equipment level, they probably cost the kingdom more. 

First of all a lord would pay for his household troops' gear, landed knights get land to maintain thier gear and horse, commoners bring what they can afford or are issued from existing stocks of thier overlord. The Lannisters are repeatedly mentioned as having better equipped troops because they can afford to issue them with better gear. 

Even in a feudal society, you have gear that is issued depending on version. The Vale Clansmen get 3,000 suits of armor from the army's stocks, indicating quite clearly that the Lannisters give their men thier gear and take care of it. 

1 hour ago, Lord Giggles said:

As to the error in my methodology, yes it's true. I took the cost of a horse but the price I used was from Juliet Barker's book "Agincourt"(I belive. It could also have been her other book about the English Kingdom of France during the Hundred Years War or Alison Wier's book about the Wars of the Roses). It listed the price of a mounted archer's rouncy at 1£, a courser at 25£ and then the highest level of war horse at I think it was 50-100£ and then an ordinary knight's riding horse at 5£, which I assumed to be a palfrey. So yes, this is flawed due to an assumption on my behalf in an attempt to try and establish a rough value for a gold dragon. 

And again, I don't give a shit what the prices are in Real World books. You had the figure for a horse, you had the figure for a suit of armor, you had the price of food all there in the short story in universe of the year 209 AL. Why on earth would you then give out the figure in 14th century English currency converted back into fantasy currency? We know that can't be what they pay because we have actual price tags on food which comes nothing close. So if you wanted to get the costs of Torrhen's army, you got nowhere near it due to faulty methodology. If you wanted to show that the Starks have to be rich becasue they have to pay more than anyone else, you are laughably wrong because, again, faulty methodology that ignores all other factors. 

Torrhen Stark spent a long time building his army, he was not gathering troops, he was training new ones from all available manpower. We don't know how long it took him in days, only that he arrived after the rest of the wars were over, and Aegon had enough time to bring his army to meet him. We know from the World Book that Torrhen was making plans since Aegon's proclemation of intent, and after both the Riverladns and the Stormlands fell, he started raising troops at the same time as the Westerlands and the Reach started to prepare. When Torrhen was making plans into the night, Gardener rode to the Westerlands to make an alliance with the King of the Rock. All three raised thier armies from the time the Riverlands and Stormlands fell. Torrhen was lucky to be the last one, because with even less prep-time, the Westerlands and the Reach managed to only get ~55,000 troops for the Field of Fire. That means that Torrhen had more to pay simply because he had a large army 30,000 strong, which was both the last to arrive on scene, and survived to make the way back. Meaning that they also actually saw thier pay, instead of dying in battle. 

Here other factors, not size of land and time of travel from all corners of the North, make a strong case for Torrhen maybe paying as much as others. We don't have good info regarding how many men were raised by house Durrandon, and for how long. Same with the Iron Isles. We know that the Westerlands brought ~40% of the men on the Field of Fire, or ~22,000 men to Mern's ~33,000 men. How come three centuries later each region can easily support over double those numbers on relatively short notice while the North, including all left overs in ADWD, can barely recreate Torrhen's army, we can only guess. Ignoring composition and other factors, the Westerlands "only" had to pay for ~22,000 men and the Reach for ~33,000 men for less than the period that Torrhen had to (start at the same time, and lose the battle before Torrhen even crossed the Neck, let alone made it back). So assuming they did not have to pay for more horses, and did not have other, greater running costs than the Northern army, it is possible that Torrhen had spent more money on his army. But that is not because it took time to muster, it's because it was an equal number of men, for a longer period of time. Had Aegon chose to go for the Northern army first, fighting his Field of Fire in the North, it would have been the Westerlands and Reach armies that would have payed more than Torrhen Stark by the exact same metrics. Thier armies would have potentially been larger due to more time to prepare, and they would have spend more time waiting for the confrontation with Aegon meaining more days to pay for troops. This also completely ignores the composition of forces. We don't know how much Torrhen's army cost him aside of food, becasue we don't know how much he had to pay his men. We can assume that his army was cheaper both in running costs and in total costs at war's end based on the relative differences we see later in the timeline between the North and the southern kingdoms. 

In short, the metrics you used to calculate Torrhen's time to march are arbitrary and lead to a false conclusion. The claim that the North has to pay more because it's bigger ignores literally any other factor (like the composition of force, relative army sizes, average length of wars...) and also leads to a false conlusion.

[Universal Sword Donor]

I have yet to see where the WL forces are considered better armored by the Lannisters. This is the only quote I remember about the WL forces:

Infantry outnumbered cavalry by a considerable margin, but for the most part we are talking about feudal levies and peasant militia, with little discipline and less training. Although some lords do better than others. Tywin Lannister's infantry was notoriously well disciplined, and the City Watch of Lannisport is well trained as well... much better than their counterparts in Oldtown and King's Landing.

 

Is there a SSM or something that says otherwise? I know that the Lannisters are the richest house. I know the WL are the richest land. Nowhere does it say that the Lannisters armor their men. Nor would they as that's not how a feudal levy worked.

[Nyrhex]

50 minutes ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

I have yet to see where the WL forces are considered better armored by the Lannisters. 

The South has better gear

Westerosi armor does not correspond one to one with any single period in European history, but I suppose it is closest to the armor of the Hundred Years War. Not only Agincourt, but also Crecy and Poitiers before that. Of course, there were important changes in armor between each of those battles, but there were also holdovers, individuals who had used or older armor, styled from the earlier period. I took that trend considerably further in Westeros, and felt free to mix armor styles from several different periods. You will also note that Westerosi armor tends to "later" styles as you go south. Plate is more common in the Reach say, while mail is more the rule in the North, and beyond the Wall the wildlings have very crude primitive stuff.

Whenever we have a description of Northern heavy cavalry, it's mail and halfhelms. Lords, like Roose Bolton and Maege Mormont and her daughters off the top of my head, wear simply mail. Even Robb Stark's armor was only described as boiled leather and ringmail, and later grey chainmail over bleached leathers. Though the captain of the Stark household guard, Jory, wore plate armor for the Hand's Tourney and Bran remembers him in mail and plate, which means that at least the Starks have some plate to give to thier commander of the household guard, and Robb and Ned probably had plate armor as well. The mandelys being the only other house I can find with advanced armor, for obvious reasons. 

The Lannisters, on the other hand, rarely have a knight that is not described as wearing plate armor. The lords and landed knights can afford better armor, and to hand their men with better gear. The fact that the Westerlands are better equipped than the North is plain to see. I think that the fact that the Lannisters have a supply train that has enough spare stores to hand over gear to fully equip 3,000 extra combatants speaks for itself.

Feudalism is not just "you bring as much gear as you can support", it can also mean equipping your men, depending on era and location. A knight has a "lance", his retainers. He arms his men the same as a lord equips his household knights and men-at-arms. If each of the Westerlands lords can have thier men wear superior gear, then yes, it is fair to say that the Lannisters, as in the Westerlands, can support thier men better than the North. No, it does not mean that the Lannnisters are using arsenals and munition plates to make batches of armor for all of the Westerlands' soldiers, if that is how you took my words.