Military Training

[Universal Sword Donor]

1. Still sometimes.

2. Half-trained then. I don't give a shit about Meribald! He was (probably) a camp follower. Not all peasants are.

3. Yeah, there were in training. Therefore untrained before. And that means they aren't part of the first levies, but second one. Worser quality troops.

5. Osgrey didn't send them away, Duncan did because he knew that peasants in training would get slaughtered. Osgrey wanted them to go to war.

3. We have seen peasants being trained, which means that untrained peasants are conscripted and then marched off to war (though they are trained), but they are not career soldiers.

Socks these days...

I'm assuming yours is all sticky or something? Kind of irrelevant in this thread. The OP asked about untrained soliders. They aren't untrained. They are specifically trained. Even the ones that are used for bait or slaughtered were half trained. Your entire post is pretty off point or off topic. You pick.

"How well trained are majority of westerosi troops that are not full time soldiers like knights and household guards. I know in medievals England longbow training on Sundays was mandatory and I'm sure there were other instances. Do the levies/peasants/men-at-arms ever drill, train or conduct wargames. And are they really as poorly armed as Septon Maribald says because it seems to me that most of them have like basic mail and spears and stuff. And if they were really utterly untrained and armed with hoes it seems to me that they would not be worth the food they eat, and the reasources could better be put toward givinv training and arms to fewer soldiers. "

1) Sometimes and they are still trained when they do

2) Once again you're muddling the distinction between peasant and man-at-arms. For the purposes of war, they stop being peasants when they start being trained.

3) I'm glad we're getting somewhere. They aren't utterly untrained or ill-equipped as Meribald said they'd be

5) Dunk told them to leave. Osgrey easily could have gone and rounded them up. He did not.

3) They aren't career soldiers now. Most of the soldiers marching aren't career soldiers. They are farmers, land owners, and other professions who go to war when called. The new crop is liable to do the same.

[Universal Sword Donor]

No; just no. First off in the 20k northern army that marched south at least 10k if not way more were just levied peasants. They are barely armed of they are armored at all and have whatever weapon they could steal or make. Knight and men at arms were better equipped and trained but the majority of all westerosi armies are just levies. The levies are used for pushing, building, and digging but they are a VERY important part of the main battle. First every man is a weapon. Secondly the peasants are the ones who form up the spear lines. Third they are arrow fodder and bodies to be slaughtered. Every peasant that is getting slaughtered is a opening for a better trained knight or men at arms to kill.

In all anyone who thinks that the westerosi army is a majority of knights and men at arms and not MOSTLY peasants needs to re-read. Also to deny the battle strategic value of the levied troops shows a real military ignorance.

If I have to go further in defense and or explanation just ask.

FFS. We actually did read those chapters. Every. Single. Time. we see northern infantry -- not the knights or armored lances mind you -- they are in ringmail/chainmail and have at least a polearm like a pike or spear. They are definitely not arrow fodder.

The karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen and near two thousand foot from their castle at karhold. The steel points of their pikes winked in the pale sunlight as the column approached.

Quote

Ser wylis and his brother ser wendel followed, leading their levies, near fifteen hundred men: some twenty odd knights and as many squires, two hundred mounted lances, swordsmen, and freeriders, and the rest foot armed with spears, pikes and tridents.

A crescent of enemy spearmen had formed ahead, a double hedgehog bristling with steel, waiting behind tall oaken sheilds marked with the sunburst of karstark.

Tyrion saw shagga catch a spearman full in the chest as the fool came on at a run, saw his axe shear through mail and leather and muscle and lungs.

“His quarry met him sword in hand. He was tall and spare, wearing a long chainmail hauberk and gauntlets of lobstered steel, but he’d lost his helm”

They are peasants in the sense that they aren't nobility, knights, or full-time soldiers, but they are either wealthier and own land or were sent by someone who is. A helmet cost about as much as a cow in 13th or 14th century England. A mail hauberk was about a dozen cows. A large portion of that man's wealth/property is going to be tied up in what he brings to war. He's not going to want to die because it means his family is that much poorer and because dying is awful. They trained quite a bit historically. No one's denying the non-noble/non-knight aspect or the strategic values of levies, mostly just the way you characterize it.

[Lord of the Vale]

I think, that most of the soilders in westerosi arms are eiter full-time profesionals( Knights, housold guards, men at arms and selswords) or part-time profesionales that have equipment and train regulary, but have another profesion in peace-times, like modern day national and home guards and reserve forces