Relative army strengths of the Great Houses

[Gurkhal]

Never use the TV show as proof of anything just because GRRM is a co-executive producer. He does not have oversight over scripts, he isn't involved in filming, he isn't asked to sign off on every single detail.

That said, yes, it's generally accepted that the total, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel army of the westerlands would hit about 60,000.

This is very old, but this came as a suprise to me. I thought that 50 000 would be the absolute total the West could hope to put in the field.

[Barty]

If I would rank them then it would go like this

1)Reach

2)Westerlands = North

3)Tullys = Arynns

4)Stormlands

5)Dorne = Iron Islands

[Bright Blue Eyes]

You're being friggin ridiculous, the pike/halberd formations of the middlesages/renaissance were very similar, people believe that things like the schiltron were derived from ancient sources which described phalanxes. Do some research, the pike square and phalanx had very little difference between them, they're easily comparable.

Similar and based on the phalanx, yes. But a bunch of absolutely vital improvements distinguish the schiltrons, gewalthaufen, tercios and their cousins from their great-great-great-grandfather.

Some examples (not an exhaustive list):

- The phalanx could move in one direction - straight ahead. The medieval pike formations could turn on the march or on the spot

- The phalanx could be easily flanked - the MPF protected themselves

- The phalanx had no defense to the rear - the MPF did

- The phalanx was lost when broken - the MPF had precautions and reserves against that

- The MPF used combined arms

[Arkantos]

- The phalanx could move in one direction - straight ahead. The medieval pike formations could turn on the march or on the spot

Alexander's phalanxes were drilled so that they could change direction quite effectively, i'm sure many others were too. it's not like we have good records of that period like we do of the medieval era.

- The phalanx could be easily flanked - the MPF protected themselves

Some of the MPFs protected themselves and those weren't exactly the mobile ones, it's hard to move a box when it's facing every direction y'know. Most formations can be easily flanked, that's why you have other troops, more phalanxes or something too.

- The phalanx had no defense to the rear - the MPF did

Some MPF had rear defenses, not all, some were entirely forward facing. Enemies getting around your rear would be incredibly rare in ancient greek warfare, it's a problem that wasn't really a problem, therefore nobody had to account for it often enough to create a new formation, doesn't mean it's a flaw in the formation.

- The phalanx was lost when broken - the MPF had precautions and reserves against that

Most formations are lost when broken, that doesn't really matter much.

- The MPF used combined arms

Hoplites often carried swords, does that count?

Anyway, none of this really matters, the phalanx was never obsolete in enclosed passes and such, aka, the mountain passes on Dorne's border, so their use of such a formation is not unbelievable. The Romans didn't necessarily render phalanxes useles either, they proved themselves far superior to the unprofessional version with no support, but phalanxes still fared very well when trained and used in the right manner against them. You've got to remember, Rome's troops also had better training and generals than the late Greek phalanxes, it's a bit unfair to the formation's reputation that it died in the hands of soldiers who were not on the level of Alexander's troops.

Just because they developed some formations more suitable for large open spaces in the medieval period, doesn't mean that the phalanx was a pile of crap, hell, a shieldwall is almost a phalanx and that was used for ages.

To sum it up, Dorne using the phalanx doesn't auto result in them getting their arse kicked, as you put it.

[Michael Herman]

1. Tyrell (duh) 90,000-120,000 (as said maximum numbers are far greater than numbers seen in battle)

2. Lannister 60,000-70,000 Tywin+ Jamie =40,000 add another 10,000 for Oxcross (which may include some of Jaimes men) and you get about 50,000, plus a few more on top of that.

3. Tully 40,000-50,000 the riverlands is fertile and populous and 20,000 men got to Riverrun on short notice during GoT.

4. Stark 30,000-40,000 18,000 men on short notice, plus all the mountain clans and skagos clans that didn't contribute, and assume more could have come with more notice or just didn't come.

5. Baratheon 20,000-30,000 The stormlands are said to not be populated too much, and Stannis' army on the blackwater (which included a few reach houses and the narrow sea houses) was only about 20,000 strong, despite that fact that Renly spent months building it up.

6. Crownlands, not mentioned before, but i believe it has a rough stength of 20,000

7. Greyjoy no figures mentioned, but they have a large enough army to control significant portions of the north and historically the riverlands, plus having female soldiers has to boost their numbers a bit.

8. Martell, 10,000 dorne isn't populous and has never fielded an army with more men than this.

? Arryn Since we have never seen any figures, it is stupid to even estimate this.

As you can tell this is a very rough approximation since i rounded all my estimates to the nearest 10,000, i generally used numbers mentioned in the books, and added 30-50%

[Lannisters worst nightmare]

The North-45000

The Riverlands-45000

The Vale-45000

The Westerlands-60000

The Reach-over 100000

The Stormlands-35000 (including Stannis's troops from Dragonstone)

The Iron Isles-15-20000

Dorne-25000

[SacredOrderOfGreenMen]

i

[SacredOrderOfGreenMen]

The TV series is not the books. And the numbers differ greatly.

Book numbers:
Tyrell 70,000
Lannister 50,000-60,000
Stark 50,000-60,000
Tully 40,000
Arryn 40,000
Martell 30,000
Stormlands 30,000
Greyjoy 25,000-35,000
Crownlands maybe 10,000-15,000

I'd get behind these numbers, but bump up the Reach to 100,000.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

I'd get behind these numbers, but bump up the Reach to 100,000.

Yes, and bump the North to 60,000-70,000 while reducing the Lannisters to about 45,000. Probably bumping the Vale and the Riverlands a tad as well.

It's a rather old post of mine, not the current point of the discussion.

[drhenry]

I understand everyone loves the North(me included) but come on those numbers are far too high.

[drhenry]

North-40-45,000

Iron Islands-25,000

Westerlands-50,000

Riverlands-50,000

The Vale-45,000

Stormlands-35,000

Reach-80-100,000

Dorne-25,000

Crownlands-10-15,000

[Ramsay's Penguins]

North-40-45,000

Iron Islands-25,000

Westerlands-50,000

Riverlands-50,000

The Vale-45,000

Stormlands-35,000

Reach-80-100,000

Dorne-25,000

Crownlands-10-15,000

Yeah. Everyone should know that the North is only powerful through retcon. Give or take 5k for each region though, this is the sort of thing that fluctuates.

[Lee-Sensei]

Reach: 100,000

Westerlands: 60,000

Vale: 50,000

North: 50,000

Riverlands: 50,000

Stormlands: 35,000

Iron Islands: 30,000

Dorne: 25,000

Crownlands: 15,000

[The silver dragon]

Reach: 90,000 normally 100,000 if all the reach houses stand with the tyrells.

Westernlands: 60,000

Vale: 33,000

(i can't image that they a very high levy due to them being the forth smallest region, Rocky terrain and hill clans men. but they probably make up for it with a high knight ratio. and just better troop quality due to having to fight off said mountain clans)

river lands: 45,000

storm lands: 32,000

north: 43,000

iron Islands: 20,000

crown lands + dragon stone: 12,000 to 19,000

dorne: 15,00 to 19,000

(^ reasoning is that daeron wen't in their during his invasion and initially only lost around 10,000 troops, this includes besieging castles like hell holt

so unless daeron was literally god when it came to warfare they can't have very many troops.)

[The silver dragon]

Thoughts?

[Bobby b's bobby]

Thoughts?

Drone a bit higher maybe 25k

The vale I might be wrong but I think there was a Ssm where it the north and pre needed dorne all had similar numbers 40-50k

The iron islands is too low just by the ships we've seen they need to be higher maybe 30k

The rest id say is about right

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

My overall estimates depend a lot on the composition of Renly's armies at Bitterbridge and Highgarden: Renly has 90,000 men in the field at the start of ACoK. About 20-25,000 of these are Stormlanders, giving Renly 65-70,000 Reachmen.

These 65-70,000 don't include the Redwynes, nor were there many Hightower men (though some Hightower vassals were present), there are many Reach houses that aren't even mentioned by anyone, which may well mean that they didn't send very many men with Renly. On top of that, of course there is no reason to assume lords would send every trained knight/archer/man-at-arms, on the first call to arms by their liege (though some seem happy to do that with the north), that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. If that army is destroyed then your house has no military power whatsoever, if that army gets ill your military strength is destroyed, if there is another attack from somewhere else then you won't have the men to answer a second calling of the banners.

Furthermore if there is any kind of idea about the maximum time for a call up (which there seems to be, though it is not elaborated on), then fielding all of your strength means that even if those men come home, you won't have any ability to field an army for another year or two, or more.

Based on that I've always been happy to give the Reach 100,000+ men, however if I was wrong and almost their entire strength is already raised, and they only have 80-85,000, then the numbers of the other houses may be less certain. A high number for the Reach inflates the minimum number for the Riverlands, westerlands and north, since I really can't picture those regions having considerably less than half of what the Reach does.

No way that the Reach has 100,000, and the West, Riverlands, Stormlands and north all have less than 40,000, that would mess up the power dynamic to the extent that no region would matter except for the Reach, which never seems to have been the case.

[Nihlus]

Thoughts?

The Iron Islands should have somewhat more. There's ~12,500 reavers in the Iron Fleet alone (100 ships of one hundred oars or more, so more than ten thousand oarsmen plus the other naval crews), and each longship is crewed by 30-35 guys. There were apparently 1,000 Ironborn ships deployed during the IB invasion of the Reach, including 900 longships. While that's most likely a big exaggeration, even assuming they had half as many ships as they were claimed to have had would mean they had 400 longships and ~13,000 extra men in addition to the Iron Fleet, resulting in more than 25,000 total. So I think it's unlikely for the Iron Fleet alone to have way more troops than the rest of their forces combined. Of course, the Ironborn forces are of generally low quality (not Essos-tier shit, but still), and they seem to completely lack cavalry.

The Vale, Riverlands, and North were all stated to be militarily on par with Dorne back when Dorne had 50,000 soldiers. The Lord Declarants of the Vale, six lords, can raise over 20,000 men on their own. Vale should probably be bumped up to ~45,000.

Dorne... well, we really don't have any information on Dorne, other than that its population is smaller than any of the other seven kingdoms, even the Stormlands. I still think 15 to 20 thousand is too low, though.

Do these estimates include city watchmen? I don't see any reason not to include them, since the half-trained sweepings of Lannisport, among others, are usually considered when discussing overall numbers, and they're arguably less capable than the city watch units. And does that 43,000 for the North include mountain clansmen, crannogmen, Skagosi, city watch, and naval crews?

60,000 is too high for the Westerlands. Tywin started the war with 35,000 men: 20,000 under his command, and 15,000 under Jaime's. After Jaime's host gets smashed at Riverrun, 4,000 manage to escape and later join up with Stafford Lannister, while the other 11,000 are killed or scattered. Stafford then bolsters their ranks with new recruits- low quality ones- to bring that army's total to 10,000. So that's 41,000 we see them raise in the field. Castle garrisons and city watch add another few thousand to that, so ~45,000 for the Westerlands. After Stafford's host is destroyed at Oxcross, we never see the Lannisters raise another one. Notably, even Tywin's initial muster included some low-quality recruits and mercenaries, which wouldn't be the case if the Westerlands, a small, centralized, and militarized region, could muster 60,000.

My overall estimates depend a lot on the composition of Renly's armies at Bitterbridge and Highgarden: Renly has 90,000 men in the field at the start of ACoK. About 20-25,000 of these are Stormlanders, giving Renly 65-70,000 Reachmen.

These 65-70,000 don't include the Redwynes, nor were there many Hightower men (though some Hightower vassals were present), there are many Reach houses that aren't even mentioned by anyone, which may well mean that they didn't send very many men with Renly. On top of that, of course there is no reason to assume lords would send every trained knight/archer/man-at-arms, on the first call to arms by their liege (though some seem happy to do that with the north), that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. If that army is destroyed then your house has no military power whatsoever, if that army gets ill your military strength is destroyed, if there is another attack from somewhere else then you won't have the men to answer a second calling of the banners.

Furthermore if there is any kind of idea about the maximum time for a call up (which there seems to be, though it is not elaborated on), then fielding all of your strength means that even if those men come home, you won't have any ability to field an army for another year or two, or more.

I put the Reach at about 80,000 by itself, with the Riverlands, North, Westerlands, and Vale all hovering around 45,000. I like to be as conservative as possible with the Reach, since as you said, them being that much more powerful than everybody else doesn't work with the power dynamic. Renly had 80k men at Bitterbridge, of whom 25,000-30,000 I'm guessing were Stormlanders, meaning 50-55k Reach soldiers. Then there was the 10k host at Highgarden for a total of 60-65k Reach soldiers in the field. I don't think the Redwynes matter beyond their navy (the Arbor is considered more or less defenseless without it), and I don't see a reason to believe that the Reach was holding back nearly half of its strength, which would be the case if it had well over 100,000.

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

Reach: 90,000 normally 100,000 if all the reach houses stand with the tyrells.

Westernlands: 60,000

Vale: 33,000

(i can't image that they a very high levy due to them being the forth smallest region, Rocky terrain and hill clans men. but they probably make up for it with a high knight ratio. and just better troop quality due to having to fight off said mountain clans)

river lands: 45,000

storm lands: 32,000

north: 43,000

iron Islands: 20,000

crown lands + dragon stone: 12,000 to 19,000

dorne: 15,00 to 19,000

(^ reasoning is that daeron wen't in their during his invasion and initially only lost around 10,000 troops, this includes besieging castles like hell holt

so unless daeron was literally god when it came to warfare they can't have very many troops.)

Westlands can't raise 60,000, we see in book 2 that raising above 40,000 is a stretch, and the West is a very compact and centralised region, cut your number by 1/4.

The mountain clans aren't a serious threat, their gain from fighting them is as negligible as the northern gain from fighting wildling raiders, IMO you are right about the Vale having a high cavalry ratio, but the overall numbers are too low. The Lords Declarant have 20,000 between them, they are a large part of the Vale, but not an overwhelming majority, so the Vale should have 35-40,000 without a huge amount of trouble.

No real criticisms of North, Riverlands or Stormlands (though I would put all three a few thousand higher).

Iron Islands I don't bother to estimate.

Crownlands may need some more, Rhaegar had 40,000 men on the Trident, 10,000 were Dornishmen, a negligible number were Reachmen, I don't know how he would have any Valemen, Stormlanders were mostly defeated or with Robert.

That leaves ~30,000 for the Riverlands and Crownlands, Targaryen loyalists include Darry, Ryger and Mooton (Goodbrook sounds like it was defeated mostly before the trident, and were probably only minor lords anyway), so I don't think the Riverlords had more than 10,000 with Rhaegar. Which leaves ~20,000 for Crownlanders, keeping in mind that a few thousand probably died at the Battle of the Bells.

So the Crownlands probably don't have fewer than 20,000 (though it is possible that Rhaegar trained additional men before he marched, or that those losses have never been replenished).

Dorne is about 20-25,000. Though the fact that Doran didn't bother to indicate the real number of men Dorne can raise to Arianne suggests 1 of 3 things: 1. GRRM doesn't know the strengths of the Great Houses with any certainty, in which case all of this speculation is pointless because the actual numbers don't exist 2. Doran doesn't know Dorne's strength to any high accuracy, 3. Their numbers are so low Doran doesn't even want to say them in fear of disheartening Arianne.

I am doubtful of the third idea, but if it is true then Dorne may only have ~15,000.

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

The Iron Islands should have somewhat more. There's ~12,500 reavers in the Iron Fleet alone (100 ships of one hundred oars or more, so more than ten thousand oarsmen plus the other naval crews), and each longship is crewed by 30-35 guys. There were apparently 900 longships during the IB invasion of the Reach. While that's most likely a big exaggeration, I still think it unlikely for the Iron Fleet alone to have way more troops than the rest of their forces combined.

The Vale, Riverlands, and North were all stated to be militarily on par with Dorne back when Dorne had 50,000 soldiers. The Lord Declarants of the Vale, six lords, can raise over 20,000 men on their own. Vale should probably be bumped up to ~45,000.

Dorne... well, we really don't have any information on Dorne, other than that its population is smaller than any of the other seven kingdoms, even the Stormlands. I still think 15 to 20 thousand is too low, though.

Do these estimates include city watchmen? I don't see any reason not to include them, since the half-trained sweepings of Lannisport, among others, are usually considered when discussing overall numbers, and they're arguably less capable than the city watch units. And does that 43,000 for the North include mountain clansmen, crannogmen, Skagosi, city watch, and naval crews?

60,000 is too high for the Westerlands. Tywin started the war with 35,000 men: 20,000 under his command, and 15,000 under Jaime's. After Jaime's host gets smashed at Riverrun, 4,000 manage to escape and later join up with Stafford Lannister, while the other 11,000 are killed or scattered. Stafford then bolsters their ranks with new recruits- low quality ones- to bring that army's total to 10,000. So that's 41,000 we see them raise in the field. Castle garrisons and city watch add another few thousand to that, so ~45,000 for the Westerlands. After Stafford's host is destroyed at Oxcross, we never see the Lannisters raise another one. Notably, even Tywin's initial muster included some low-quality recruits and mercenaries, which wouldn't be the case if the Westerlands, a small, centralized, and militarized region, could muster 60,000.

Beat me to it. Most of it anyway.