Did Roose betray Robb from the get go?

[Bernie Mac]

36 minutes ago, JonSnow4President said:

 But so many of his actions before that on't line up that it's hard to make the case that he wasn't actively hurting Robb's chances of winning before then.

Such as?

[Lost Melnibonean]

4 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

Not necessarily as they happen only a few paragraphs from each other. Arya learns of it later in the day as she meets Elmar who is angry about not being able to marry a princess but the order to Duskendale happens at the start of that very day.

 

At the start of that day, just before he gives the order, we are told how Roose is receiving letters from his wife at the Twins almost every day (having just received another). 

It is more than possible that Roose knew a few hours before the Freys or Arya only finds out later in the day from Elmar, the Freys having known it for a few hours before that. 

Yes, that is possible. But what do you think the storyteller was saying to us? 

[Violet]

House Bolton had their eyes on Winterfell since forever, it's not their first time betraying House Stark.

[Dorian Martell's son]

48 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

It is more than possible that Roose knew a few hours before the Freys or Arya only finds out later in the day from Elmar, the Freys having known it for a few hours before that. 

Elmar, as a child and a Squire would not be privy to every bit of Info that Roose is exchanging with his partners in crime 

[JonSnow4President]

1 hour ago, Bernie Mac said:

Such as?

Maybe read the posts 5 and 9 posts above the one you quoted for my own examples/link to someone else.

[Bernie Mac]

8 minutes ago, JonSnow4President said:

Maybe read the posts 5 and 9 posts above the one you quoted for my own examples/link to someone else.

I have read them and none of them prove that Roose was trying to betray Robb before Arya's final chapter in ASOS, the chapter that he learns of the Tyrell-Lannister alliance and Robb's marriage to Jeyne. 

 

You claimed that he was actively trying to hurt Robb's' chances of winning before and said there was many examples of this. I was just wondering what they were?

And of course if he really wanted to hurt Robb's chances he could have been less cautious at the Battle of the Fords and fallen into Tywin's trap instead he got away with most of his army

• "I put the least disciplined men on the left, yes. I anticipated that they would break. Robb Stark is a green boy, more like to be brave than wise. I'd hoped that if he saw our left collapse, he might plunge into the gap, eager for a rout. Once he was fully committed, Ser Kevan's pikes would wheel and take him in the flank, driving him into the river while I brought up the reserve."  -Tywin

 

Roose never had a chance of this battle, not only did he have less men, but he only had a 500 Cavarly against a 7k Westerland cavalry. Not only that but people act like he knew exactly where Tywin was going to be and the exact terrain they would b e fighting on, and expecting him to have taken advantage of this before the battle. 

 

Roose was tasked with surprising a larger, superior equipped (and possibly trained) enemy. Of course he got beat. Neither Robb, the Blackfish, Theon the emotional Karstark (who had his son captured in this battle) or any other Stark commander blamed Roose for this. Neither Tywin or Tyrion think they were lucky to win. Roose and his infantry was given a shit sandwich of a task, no wonder three thousand five hundred of them were willing to betray Robb a few months later. 

[JonSnow4President]

Sorry for the delay.  I read this earlier right as dinner was finished.  

Roose gets the drop on Tywin.  Only him forming up instead of rolling into a panicked camp keeps it from being a massacre. This is by far the biggest sin. It's like if this kid decided to wait and let the defense get back in front of him.

Roose leads his assault by doing the equivalent of having a sniper clear rooms. Charging spearmen into cavalry is not keeping his options open.  It's actively trying to lose the battle to weaken your regional rivals at best, as opposed to simply having his rivals' troops in the front lines. The only time he ever uses his own archers is to fire in the one place they can take friendly fire, instead of utilizing the high ground to eliminate Tywin's archers first. He completely ignores the high ground, at which point disciplined and massed spear infantry are actually in an advantageous position over cavalry. 

As far as the other commanders, Robb never talks with any commanders of the second army besides Roose. If a scheming liar is the only source of information you have, of course you won't have any reason to object.  Robb expected to lose.  He has no way of knowing that Roose threw the fight (or GRRM is a decidedly awful military strategist).  

[Bernie Mac]

14 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

 

Roose gets the drop on Tywin.  Only him forming up instead of rolling into a panicked camp keeps it from being a massacre. This is by far the biggest sin. It's like if this kid decided to wait and let the defense get back in front of him.

Of course he has to form up, a 17k army that has marched through the night can't just march into an enemy camp (a camp that would not have not had a specific location or terrain) without some kind of planning and organisation 

• "The Stark boy stole a march on us," Bronn said. "He crept down the kingsroad in the night, and now his host is less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array."

noun

the strategic arrangement of fighters and weapons in a battle

Roose is picked because he is cautious and Robb wants to limit the casualties this plan of attack will get. Of course he has to organise these thousands of men, many of whom have never been commanded by Roose in battle before. 

And he does not get the drop on Tywin, Addam Marbrand's outriders are clearly superior to Jaime's and Stafford's equivalents as it is the Lannister trumpets that sound the alarm. 

How exactly is this evidence that Roose was trying to deliberately lose this battle?

14 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

Roose leads his assault by doing the equivalent of having a sniper clear rooms.

Sorry. I have no idea what that even means. 

14 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

 

He completely ignores the high ground, at which point disciplined and massed spear infantry are actually in an advantageous position over cavalry. 

The high ground? A hill was mentioned, we have no idea how high, how large, how steep or even how defensible this hill was. 

How so many people are experts on what Roose could and could not have done just because a hill was mentioned is puzzling. Tyrion or Tywin are not puzzled why he does not try to do what you are suggesting. 

Are all the men with Roose idiots? Who can't see these obvious mistakes he is making that is putting their own lives in jeopardy? You would think the likes of Aenys, Hosteen and Harrion, who are all captured as a result of this battle. would have kicked up a bigger fuss on their release. 

 

14 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

As far as the other commanders, Robb never talks with any commanders of the second army besides Roose. If a scheming liar is the only source of information you have, of course you won't have any reason to object.  Robb expected to lose.  He has no way of knowing that Roose threw the fight (or GRRM is a decidedly awful military strategist).  

Riverrun is well aware of how many men survived that battle as Cat points out that Roose only has 10k men left after the battle. The idea that the only contact between Roose's army with both Riverrun and the Twins is through Roose is absurd. Other nobles would also be  in contact with their family members. 

Ei

[JonSnow4President]

15 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

Of course he has to form up, a 17k army that has marched through the night can't just march into an enemy camp (a camp that would not have not had a specific location or terrain) without some kind of planning and organisation 

• "The Stark boy stole a march on us," Bronn said. "He crept down the kingsroad in the night, and now his host is less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array."

noun

the strategic arrangement of fighters and weapons in a battle

Roose is picked because he is cautious and Robb wants to limit the casualties this plan of attack will get. Of course he has to organise these thousands of men, many of whom have never been commanded by Roose in battle before. 

For attacking an army, you form up in battle array.  For attacking a waking, panicked camp, with the vast majority of its fighters still struggling to put armor on, arm themselves, and find their companions, you run through them and get to murdering.  Tywin's army's readiness (or lack there of) completely changes the situation.

15 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

And he does not get the drop on Tywin, Addam Marbrand's outriders are clearly superior to Jaime's and Stafford's equivalents as it is the Lannister trumpets that sound the alarm. 

When they're a scant mile from the camp.  Outriders should have detected them much further out.  The few minutes it takes to close a mile is nowhere near enough for a knight to put on a full suit of plate armor, let alone wake up, do so, and be combat ready. 

15 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

How exactly is this evidence that Roose was trying to deliberately lose this battle?

What Roose does is the equivalent of a modern soldier breaching a room in the middle of the night, but then sitting there and politely waiting for his enemy to put on their fatigues, boots, and armored vest, load a few magazines, and grab their weapon. 

15 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

Sorry. I have no idea what that even means. 

Clearing rooms is close quarter fighting, requiring close quarters shooting and high maneuverability.  Sniper rifles are non-automatic rifles designed for firing at distance, and are fairly unwieldy, especially when trying to maneuver in close range and tight spaces.  In other words, he's having soldiers meant for one thing do the exact opposite of that thing. 

As far as Tyrion/Tywin, we're never inside Tywin's head, and Tyrion does not dwell on the battle afterwards.  Beforehand, they are specifically planning on Robb being young and dumb. 

As I've said before, I think it's just as likely that GRRM either didn't know or didn't care that he was making a mockery of medieval battle strategy. (Dany's Yunkaii battle strategy is also dumb.  He has 30ish men attack 4000 in the center, and then has spear infantry "surprise" attack the flanks.While 10,000 unsullied and the treachery of the Stormcrows (which was only after the plan was conceived) would have still won the battle, the strategy behind it ignores the strengths and weaknesses of spear infantry, basic pre-firearm infantry warfare, and sheer localized numbers) At the same time, Stannis' potential strategy at Storms End is rooted in real history. 

I don't pretend to be an expert on medieval warfare, although I think I know more than your average Joe.  But I do trust what a historian who shows an immense knowledge of medieval warfare is telling me. 

[PCK]

No, I don't think he did. 

[Bernie Mac]

4 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

 

I don't pretend to be an expert on medieval warfare, although I think I know more than your average Joe.  But I do trust what a historian who shows an immense knowledge of medieval warfare is telling me. 

I am going to start of with this statement, as I think it needs addressing. 

Any historian who has told you or others that the pitiful details we get from Tyrion's chapter in AGOT of that battle is sufficient to say that Roose deliberately lost that battle is a Fraud. He or she is either not a real historian or is telling gullible people what they want to hear as no credible historian would make such a judgement on such little information. 

I am sorry to offend, but you have been had. You, and others, saying you have been told by historians that this theory is correct is pure bullshit. 

4 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

For attacking an army, you form up in battle array.  For attacking a waking, panicked camp, with the vast majority of its fighters still struggling to put armor on, arm themselves, and find their companions, you run through them and get to murdering.  Tywin's army's readiness (or lack there of) completely changes the situation.

 

Where is it mentioned that Roose snuck past Addam Marbrand's outriders? We know when Tyrion woke up and eventually got to Bronn to learn of the situation, we have no idea when Tywin's outriders learnt of Roose's 17k armies position. 

We learn of the disgust at Jaime's outriders,  of them  missing a much smaller and more mobile army, after the battle of the Green Fork

• "A man who sees nothing has no use for his eyes," the Mountain declared. "Cut them out and give them to your next outrider. Tell him you hope that four eyes might see better than two … and if not, the man after him will have six."
• Lord Tywin Lannister turned his face to study Ser Gregor. Tyrion saw a glimmer of gold as the light shone off his father's pupils, but he could not have said whether the look was one of approval or disgust.

It is funny that no one has similar complaints about Addam Marbrand who let a much larger army on foot sneak past him, infact Addam Marbrand actually is promoted by Tywin once he gets to Kings Landing. This suggests that when Addam actually did his job and was able to spot the approaching Northern army and send his outriders at Tywin's camp to warn them in time before before the Northern army could do anything about it

 

• Groggy, he sat up and threw back the blanket. The horns called through the night, wild and urgent, a cry that said hurry hurry hurry. He heard shouts, the clatter of spears, the whicker of horses, though nothing yet that spoke to him of fighting. "My lord father's trumpets," he said. "Battle assembly. I thought Stark was yet a day's march away."

It is not conclusive, but there is not information either way to say that Addam's scouts failed and only noticed Roose's army after they stopped.

 

4 hours ago, JonSnow4President said:

 

What Roose does is the equivalent of a modern soldier breaching a room in the middle of the night, but then sitting there and politely waiting for his enemy to put on their fatigues, boots, and armored vest, load a few magazines, and grab their weapon. 

What? Where are you getting this from? Are all the Northern Lords with Roose idiots? If victroy is that obvious to a reader who can't see the actual battlefield then why was it not obvious to any of the other Northern nobles? 

And what does Roose stand to profit from doing this? Here is what the author satys about Roose in this battle

 

• And the best sword is the one that cuts both ways, he might tell you. Take the Battle of Green Fork. Had his night march taken Lord Tywin unawares and won the battle, he would have smashed the Lannisters and become the hero of the hour.

There is really little incentive for Roose to purposefully lose this battle.

• Ned is still alive
• Joffrey is still seen as Robert's legitimate heir
• Neither Stannis or Renly have rebelled
• Purposefully losing means losing respect from the Starks, maybe even the role as commander
• It means keeping your own men away from your own lands at harvest time
• Winning actually means gaining prestige and money from profitable Westerland noble ransoms

Before the battle of the Green Fork there was far more incentive for Roose Bolton to win that battle than there was for him to lose it.

Again, I would like you to ask this historian to clarify what is in it for Roose at this point?

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Clearing rooms is close quarter fighting, requiring close quarters shooting and high maneuverability.  Sniper rifles are non-automatic rifles designed for firing at distance, and are fairly unwieldy, especially when trying to maneuver in close range and tight spaces.  In other words, he's having soldiers meant for one thing do the exact opposite of that thing. 

Please clarify. Which soldiers were meant for one thing and are being used for another? And what are your solutions to what he did?  The only informartion we have from Robb at Moat Cailin is that he tasked his infantry to catch Tywin by surprise (which they did) and keep them occupied in a feint while he was saving Riverrun (which they did) and also wanted a cautious leader (whcih we know from Tywin he was). 

 

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As far as Tyrion/Tywin, we're never inside Tywin's head, and Tyrion does not dwell on the battle afterwards.  Beforehand, they are specifically planning on Robb being young and dumb. 

Tywin does. He makes it clear that he was disappointed as he thought he would kill more Northmen. He is pretty clear on this. 

If you can prove that he was lying to Tyrion and his War council about being disappointed with the battle I would be grateful to hear about this. 

 

 

 

[JonSnow4President]

The historian in particular is listing them as exhibits for why he thinks Roose was actively throwing the fight, not why Roose definitely does.  I don't want to throw the guy under the bus because of my poor explanations. Spoiler tag for length.

Exhibit A is giving away the advantage of the night march. 

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o begin with, I am only further convinced of my theory that Roose Bolton deliberately botched this battle. Re-reading the chapter’s description of the pre-battle operations, we learn two things: first, Brynden Tully’s mission to ensure that “Addam Marbrand…will not know when we split” was absolutely successful, as the Lannisters learn from “Ser Addam’s outriders [that] the Stark host has moved south from the Twins…Lord Frey’s levies have joined them. They are likely no more than a day’s march north of us.” In other words, Stark scouting operations on the right bank of the Green Flank don’t seem to have failed. This is confirmed by the second fact, which is that it’s not the case that Marbrand detected Roose on his night march. Rather, when “the horns called through the night, wild and urgent, a cry that said hurry, hurry, hurry,” the Lannister host was *surprised* by the movement and only discovered Bolton’s forces when they saw “his host…less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array.” This last point is crucial.

credit to Jon Gilbert

The entire point of a night march is to move at full speed to get into contact with an unexpected enemy as quickly as possible. You don’t stop a mile away to draw up in formation and offer a set-piece battle and give your larger opponent a chance to mobilize; you slam into your enemy as quickly as you can, using the disorganization and shock of the attack to carry the day. This is born out in a number of historical examples:

• The Battle of Lincoln in 1141 A.D (one of the major turning points in “the Anarchy”) – Earl Robert of Gloucester “cunningly concealed his purpose all the way from Gloucester to Lincoln, keeping the whole army in uncertainty, except for a very few, by taking an indirect route… he resolved to risk a battle at once, and swam across the racing current of the river mentioned above with all his men.” No pause to form up into battle array; Gloucester piled straight into battle straight across a contested river crossing and crushed King Stephen’s army between his arhttps://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-tyrion-viii/my and the garrison of Lincoln castle.
• The Battle of Falkirk in 1298 C.E – in which Edward I triumphed over William Wallace, began with a night march in which the left battalion of the English forces slammed straight into the enemy’s knights and archers, requiring King Edward’s personal intervention to reorder his disorganized cavalry which had broken their peers but failed to break the Scottish  infantry’s schiltron formation; that task would devolve to the English archers who massacred the tightly-packed Scottish pikemen.
• The Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 C.E – began with a night march of Tokugawa’s Eastern Army literally stumbling into Ishida Mitsunari’s army due to a dense fog that had masked the positions of the two armies.
• The Battle of Culloden in 1746 C.E – started with a night march in which two-thirds of the Jacobite army mounted a night attack despite orders to the contrary because the messenger carrying those orders missed them in the dark.

Bolton’s actions here have no explanation, given his experience as a commander and competence later displayed when fighting for his own House. His pause almost a mile away to form up into battle gave the Lannisters crucial time to mobilize their forces; had he simply kept marching, the Starks would have fallen on a sleeping army with no opportunity to get themselves into line and under chain of command, and thus unable to carry out their plan. However, this is only Exhibit A in my case against Roose Bolton. 

*https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-tyrion-viii/

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The Battle and Bolton’s (Lack of a) Strategy

Part of the reason that it doesn’t happen that way is that Roose’s actions on the battlefield makes little military sense. To begin with, we have Exhibit B in my case: the question of why in hell Roose is attacking a force that contains at least 7,500 heavy cavalry (Marbrand’s 4,000 are three-quarters of the total knights, plus the 300 around Kevan, plus the 2,500 in the reserve) and 1,000 light cavalry on the left flank when he has around 600 cavalry – and why he’s attacking at all. The Northern attack on the Lannister left flank is described as “boiling over the tops of the hills, ” and Kevan’s assault is described as having “pushed the northerners against the hills.” Given the enormous defensive advantage given to disciplined infantry fighting from the high ground, especially when fighting heavy cavalry, Bolton had the perfect opportunity to eke out an unlikely victory by retaining the high ground and forcing the Lannisters to attack, an opportunity he squanders without cause or benefit. Moreover, Roose’s main action – the attack on the Lannister left – involves only infantry, “advancing with measured tread behind a wall of shields and pikes,” rather than sending in his limited cavalry to open up a gap that his infantry could exploit against the Lannister center. 

We can see the inappropriateness of this tactic almost immediately: the Stark attack never lands, because the Lannister left is fast enough to counter-charge first, forcing the Karstark infantry into a slapdash schiltron. This shield wall is easily broken by the Mountain and the mountain men (great band name, by the way), and then the Stark right is forced into a chaotic retreat made all the worse once the Lannister center and reserve is brought in to finish the job.

In other words, Roose Bolton is doing the exact opposite of what the Saxon army of Harold Godwinson did to try to win the battle of Hastings – take the high ground, which can be easily held by a disciplined shield wall of infantry against heavy cavalry trying to charge up-hill and avoid charging into feigned retreats, where the superior mobility of cavalry can be used against slower infantry. No experienced infantry commander would make this mistake, especially once he laid eyes on his enemy’s dispositions.

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Exhibit C is the mysterious absence of much of the Northern army. As Brynden BFish has noted, the Flayed Man of House Bolton isn’t seen on the field, despite the fact that it makes up a full quarter of their numbers. I would point to additional absences that make little sense: the first is the absence of the Northern cavalry in the fight, given how crucial they would have been to making the attack on the left actually succeed. The second is the absence of the Northern archers; the Northern infantry is described without exception as being composed of spearmen operating in shield walls when it should have quite a few archers given that it’s the whole of the Stark foot. The third is the total absence of any description of the North’s left flank engaging in the battle at all (and the relative absence of the North’s center, which we only hear about later in the battle when Kevan pushes forward), which you would think would have come more into play when the Lannisters commit their entire reserves to their left (which would be on the Stark’s right). This last part is quite mysterious: given the geography of the battlefield, the Starks should be trying to get around the Lannister’s *right* not the left, so that it can roll up the flank in the direction of the river, trying to push their enemies downhill, instead of trying to fight up the gradient the entire way. And yet we never see or hear of any action other than the Stark right on the Lannister right.

Given that the Northern host is only 16,000 strong, the absence of the Boltons (4,000 men) and the Northern cavalry (600) and the Northern left (approximately 5,300 men) suggests that perhaps only 6,100 of the Northern host – the unlucky Northern right – were fully engaged in the battle. This failure to commit the bulk of the Northern forces to the fight suggests that, just as is later the case at Duskendale and the Ruby Ford, Bolton is deliberately throwing a third of his army into the meat grinder.

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Exhibit D comes with the mysterious beginning of the battle, which opens with the *Lannister* archers firing first: “a vast flight of infantry arched up from his right [i.e, from the center where Kevan commands]…the northerners broke into a run, shouting as they came, but the Lannister arrows fell on them like hail.” This also fails a very basic test of military skill: in medieval warfare, you send out your archers first, to clear away the enemy’s archers, so that your infantry is no longer threatened and your archers can safely concentrate on disrupting your enemy’s infantry formation. Given how ineffective Norman archers were at penetrating an in-place shield wall on the high ground at Hastings, the Lannisters’ initial volleys should have been an ineffective tactic and yet it’s successful in disrupting spearmen trying to charge on foot, and it’s not answered. Only later do we see massed missile fire that could conceivably be from the Starks, and then it’s directed at the one place on the battlefield where the Stark infantry could be hit by friendly fire (as Brynden BFish points out).

Again, this makes no sense: given the impossible task of attacking a largely cavalry force, the Northern commander should have used his archers from the outset to engage the Lannister archers from the high ground, while the Lannisters ineffectually fire up-hill. This factor is normally dominant: at the Battle of Towton, for example, a strong opposing wind was enough to make the Lancastrian archers fire short, allowing the Yorkist archers to advance without being threatened, pluck up the Lancastrian arrows feathering the ground, and use them to decimate their opposing numbers with the wind adding to their range. Likewise, at Hastings, firing up-hill was enough to render the Norman archers completely useless. He should then have had the archers screening his infantry advance to allow them to keep their shield walls intact and to disrupt the enemy’s formation.

One of these errors on their own would suggest incompetence most uncharacteristic to the carefully-planned victor of Harrenhal and Moat Cailin. All four together point to malice. This is compounded by the politics of the situation.

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I concur with Brynden that it’s not possible to tell in AGOT what Bolton’s plans were at this moment, whether he was planning from the outset to betray Robb Stark. However, what we can say is that Bolton not only botched the battle, but did so in such a way as to weaken his nearest rivals, and put himself closest to the North should Robb Stark fall in battle. Most definitely something to keep an eye on in the future.

As I've acknowledged and am increasingly leaning towards, GRRM isn't a military strategist.  I don't think we're supposed to think Dany is a bleeding idiot for having 30 cavalry in wedge formation assault a center of 4,000, while spear units serve as flankers in the battle of Yunkai (before she knows the Stormcrows will be coming to her side). 

[Praetor Xyn]

I seem to remember him basically sending a bunch of northern troops to get slaughtered at Duskendale. It's arguable whether he had already decided to betray at this point or if he was just trying to keep his options open.

I think him deliberately getting troops from other northern houses killed points to the former.

[Roswell]

Robb called his bannes and defied the royal decree.  He was a rebel.  Roose Bolton, it could be argued, had a greater duty to the kingdom to work against Robb and to take down the Starks. 

[acwill07]

I do not think that Bolton was actively betraying Robb from the get go, and there is no evidence to back it up either.  Having said that, Roose is definitely a shrewd guy....extremely cunning and ruthless as well.  

When the war began, none of Robb's bannermen had any idea how competent of a battle commander and strategist he would be.  That first battle on the Green Fork was before Robb destroyed Jamie in the Whispering Wood, and we definitely can not blame Roose if he had doubts about whether or not Robb's plan will work.  Well, part of Robb's plan was sacrificing a decent amount of the foot that he put under Roose's command.  Robb knew they would be GREATLY outnumbered and that many of them would lose their lives, but their sacrifice would allow Robb's heavy horse to approach Riverrun undetected and with no warning, which culminates in a rout of epic proportions and the capture of Jamie Lannister.

Assuming Roose had doubts about Robb's plan, it's not surprising that he put those other houses' men in the vanguard and the middle and left his men largely in the rear.  He figured that if a large portion of his host was going to be destroyed, it would be better for him if it weakened the other houses and not his own.  He did exactly what Robb asked him to do as far as the battle of the Green Fork was concerned.