Dothraki, Literary device or genuine military might?

[John Doe]

On 14.8.2016 at 2:41 AM, Aenarion said:

IN SHORT,

GRRM made the Dothraki for drama, not a as well thought out military force. Without his intervention, they would fail. The Dothraki are, in NO WAY, equivalent or equal to the Mongolians that created the largest empire this planet has known.

The mongolians created the british empire?

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

3 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

Wow. Where to begin...

1. Thrusting is the main method of attack for heavy cavary, be it with lance or with sword. Excellent french heavy cavalry swords in Napoleonics (and indeed, most other heavy swords) were straight, for thrusting. Light cavalry, which was to harass and fight other light cavalry and broken infantry, had curved blade - to deliver maximum effect against unarmored opponent. Even so, when pursuing fleeing infantry expert cavalry preferred not to cut, but to smash faces in a backstroke, as cut was often stopped even by a rolled coat or a pack.

2. Bow maximal range and effective range are vastly different thing. cavalry carbine did not have much shorter max. range than infantry musket, but results of volleys from horseback were abysmal and dragoons usually dismounted - THEN were their volleys close to infantry. You have the same problem with bows with the bonus that you need more physical effort, so the horse is even less stable platform. You have to spam area target - but if that target is mass of foot archers, they have more stable platform and even denser formation, meaning you are far better area target.

3. Knights the weakest and lamest soldiers? Ah, that was why they were a crucial part of any army and why they did the most heavy lifting on British sid at Crecy and Azincourt (longbow causes celebres). Role of longbows was in large part to channel french knights to fight english knights on a narrow frontline (negating the advantage in numbers).

+1 to this.

I would add that whilst that is certainly what happened at Agincourt, the damage done by arrows did play a far larger role in Crecy as the armour of the time offered less protection than what war worn in Agincourt, and because the French knights and Crecy were largely mounted, and arrows were effective against the mostly unarmoured flanks of the horses, whereas Agincourt was fought almost entirely on foot.

[Runaway Penguin]

Yep. Another effect was that French men at arms )with richer lords knights in all but anointing - gens d'armes had the same armor, same lance and same sword - and same training) had to fight with visors down, due to risk of arrow hit to unprotected face (bow fanboys would argue about how bows can reliably hit visors but hitting such target at combat range is hard enough with modern rifle) - while at least at Agincourt a lot of English men at arms (most notable example the King himself) fought without visors - getting an important advanage.

Back to Dothraki though, light cavalry generally never broke an infantry square. even at carrhae the Roman formation was not broken, it was pinned in a place without water and with inept commander. Heck, heavy cavalry had little chance in breaking infantry squares and combined arms were needed - dany lacks them. Few heavy cavalry (Second sons seem to be mostly light one, used to routing low morale and low skill opponent, otherwise daario would have longsword and dirk instead of arakhs - thoug light Westerosi cavalry), very limited infantry (Unsullied)... Basically she has two one-dimensional outfits that cannot really cooperate.

[Trigger Warning]

Carrhae is a really good example of unit cohesion, the heavy cavalry at Carrhae was used to disrupt the testudo forcing the Romans back into a more vulnerable formation to fight them before withdrawing, allowing the archers to continue their attrition, the Dothraki would not be able to achieve anything like this, the Westerosi would likely be able to weather a lot of the Dothraki arrows, between their advanced armour, shields, longbowmen etc, just look at how effective the mailed knights were at withstanding Seljuk horse archers at Dorylaeum, literally acting as human shields and the Wetserosi would fare even better since a larger number of men would have protection closer to or surpassing  that of the 11th century knights .

The Dothraki simply lack any ability to counter the changes of the battlefield, they're the lightest of light cavalry with only the most bare bones similarities to their real life nomadic counter parts and yeah I've even heard people argue that since the Parthians crushed Crassus, that the Dothraki would also tear apart Roman armies, yes the Romans struggled against horse archers but they didn't face armies entirely composed of them and unarmoured light cavalry, basically people are too quick to make the comparison of horse archer = mongol, or horse archer = Parthian etc.

Massed foot archers will basically always beat horse archers anyway, there's a reason that these armies that relied so heavily on them often had them dismount when engaging ranks of massed enemy archers, a man on horse is a bigger target than a man on foot for one and takes up much more room. I don't see any reason why mounted crossbowmen should be more uncommon in Westeros than they were in Europe either and since a lot of the armies that employed horse archers actually had heavily armoured horse archers the Dothraki are already at a huge disadvantage when compared to their real life counterparts. 

[The Fresh PtwP]

17 hours ago, Marcus corvinus said:

Yes, the dothraki are a part of dany's army in the SHOW. But we have not really seen them get on her side in the books. Its not logical in the books as the books tend to follow a more plausible route than the show which is just in a hurry to end with as less expenses as possible. We are talking about the dothraki hordes in general. A dothraki horde vs a westerosi army(say Tywin's army at the green fork).

And as far as dany's army goes, the rest of her army is 8000-10,000 unsullied and 1000 sellswords. Barristan himself laments to dany that if he had 500 knights he could defeat the slavers. Which is a gross underestimation of the enemy.

Just imagine this scenario: dany has 30,000 dothraki riders(drogo's horde of 40,000 was the largest khalasar at the time). It is bolstered by the 10k unsullied, 3k sellswords and 10k raw freedmen levies. She with her force of 52k marches out to meet the slavers in open battle.

The slavers have lost the yunkai. They've been broken and routed and the command has passed to the new ghis legates and sellsword commanders. Lets look at their army: 6 full legions, nearly 36,000 phalanx troops and 4000+ mercenaries.

I can't see dany beating this army. The slavers can form a long line of phalanx but dany's army can only cover half that distance with phalanx assuming that she keeps very little unsullied for reserve. Dany's freedmen infantry won't last a phalanx charge from the legionaries for long, they'll break and the royal lines will start to waver(real life example: spartans vs persians at platea).

At this point the dothraki will have to launch an all-out attack on the flanks supported by the sellswords. The slavers will first lock this assault down with the legionary phalanx and then retaliate with their own greater numbers of heavy horse, the dothraki being a huge unorganized mess will probably start to cause confusion and jamming among the cavalry task force. They'll be wittled down by elyrian crossbowmen, tolosi slingers and other bowmen. And dany doesn't have large numbers specialized bowmen herself. At this point between the faltering front and the failed assault on the flanks, dany will have no choice but to retreat or just call back the attack and reform the line.

So dany can't win in an open battle against them but she won't probably lose either

 

I don't even watch the show but the dothraki she ran into at the end of Dance are most likely going to join her, or burn...I don't even consider Dany's ragtag group a real army I'm assuming (I know dangerous) that when she lands in Westeros people will rally to her she'll have *gasp* real cavalry and will not have to rely on the Dothraki as heavy horse which as we've both pointed out they clearly are not, they just behave like it for some reason.

A Dothraki horde vs a Westerosi army would get ravaged...quickly. My only "defense" of the Dothraki is with there bows and some solid leadership they would make decent mounted bowman. Realistically yeah the Dothraki are like a super super watered down version of the Mongols and any wins they achieve in story is going to seem like a plot gift from GRRM.