Cost of the Armies of the War of Five Kings, version 2.0

[Lord Giggles]

So, we all know that the War of Five Kings was hideously expensive, not just in blood but also in gold. But just how much gold did the War of Five Kings cost the Seven Kingdoms? Well the fact is that we’re never going to know. The mass destruction caused by the armies marching across Westeros is something we’re likely never going to have the information to even try and calculate. However, if we use information that we’ve got from medieval England, which kept extensive administrative records and is therefore able to supply a surprising amount of useful information regarding the financial costs of waging war in medieval Europe, then we can take a stab at getting rough estimates for how much gold each of the armies of the War of Five Kings cost to maintain in the field.

 

A while back I did something similar at the request of Free Northman Reborn calculating the cost to the North of maintaining Torrhen Stark’s 30,000 man host with which he intended to fight Aegon Targaryen. In the thread where I posted my calculation, LionoftheWest asked if I could do the same thing for the War of Five Kings. I did actually make a start but then exams happened and I forgot about it until recently. So here we are, at my second attempt.

 

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this, a disclaimer. None of these figures are meant to be taken to be absolute. They are estimates and best guesses based on what information we have and can reasonably guess. To take one example: for these calculations I assumed that every horseman the armies are reported to have will have the “knightly standard” of three horses. However, we know that in history knights and lords were perfectly capable and willing to bring many more horses than three on campaign with them. For Henry V’s Agincourt expedition, we have numbers of horses that a noble could bring at the King’s expense. For Dukes this was 50, for Earls 24, for Barons 16, Knights it was 6 and for Esquires 4. This was just the number they could bring at the King’s expense, so they could have brought far more if they were willing to pay for them. However, because we know nothing about how many horses it’s standard for a great lord or a great lord’s son to bring on campaign in Westeros(or even how many men of each social rank there are in any of the armies) it’s impossible to factor that kind of thing into my calculations, so I just went with a flat number of 3 for each horseman.

 

Next, a couple of methodology and information points.

What did a Medieval ruler pay for in his/her army?

We all know the basic principal of a feudal army. You give a bunch of guys land and in exchange, when you call they come with warriors to fight for you. Simple, right? Well annoyingly not really. While you were obliged to come and fight for your liege in times of war and bring troops with you, it was your liege lord who had to pay to feed those troops. And no, they can’t just live off the land, particularly not when the armies are the kind of size we see in asoiaf. They can’t live off the land in your own territories for fairly obvious reasons and they can’t off the land for very long if they’re laying siege to somewhere for again fairly obvious reasons. However, it also seems as if they weren’t able to totally live off the land even when marching through enemy territory. During all of the Edward I’s Welsh wars as king, his second Scottish war and indeed during his war with France over Gascony, he had to ask Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, Marshal of England and one of Edward’s most reliable vassals, to import grain and other foodstuffs from his estates in Ireland in order to keep Edward’s armies fed. Edward did the same thing with his own Royal estates in Ireland, so clearly this was a necessity for a successful campaign as Edward was an experienced general even at the time of his first Welsh war so I doubt he would have imported food for his armies on this scale if he thought his troops could live off the land.

 

Apart from food there’s also the matter of how long can a liege call upon his vassals to serve at their own expense? Well that depends upon the nation, but generally the rule was about 40 to 60 days in western Europe and a year in the case of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. After this point, what happened obviously varied but in Western Europe the rule was that vassals were no longer under any obligation to serve their liege. They could, in theory, just leave if they wanted to and their liege couldn’t do anything about it. In addition, after this point their liege had to pay them to stay if they chose to. In England of the late 1200s the rate was 12d for every knight they brought and then a variable amount for the earls themselves depending upon the earl in question. However, for these calculations I’ve mainly left out this added cost for a variety of reasons but mainly because we have no clue the duration of time this would happen after in Westeros, which(given the continent’s size) would be longer than in medieval Europe almost certainly. I may cover it later but in the interests of simplicity, for the moment I’ll just be doing the cost of feeding the armies.

 

How much would a lord pay to feed his troops?

For this we have little information in the early medieval period that I could find, only that lords had to pay for it. However, later on we get records of it and apparently the amount given to an infantryman in the mid to late 15^th century England was: 2lb of beef or mutton, 1/2 lb of cheese, 1.5lb of bread and 2/3 gallon of ale, all of which would cost 4-5d. Not half bad given that a field worker’s wages for a day of work were about 2d at the same time. While I imagine that lord’s would have eaten significantly better, I believe that they would have needed to pay for their better food themselves if they wanted it, so I assumed that every soldier was given this same 4-5d a day fair.

 

And what about the horses? Well it so happens that we do apparently have a record for how much medieval noblemen fed their riding horses, about 75d worth of feed a day. However, while I applied this number to every horse the armies would have, doubtless war horses would need to eat more, so the numbers I give for the cost of feeding horses probably shoot a bit under the actual cost.

 

Renly Baratheon’s Army

Starting with the largest of the armies we see take to the field in the War of Five Kings, Renly’s colossal host of 18,750 horsemen and 60,000 foot. So that’s 78,750 men and 56,250 horses. As many have commented feeding this army would be a logistical nightmare but precisely how much would they need? Well using the figures above, the men alone would be eating 157,500lb of beef or mutton, 39,375lb of cheese, 118,125lb of bread and 51,975ish gallons of ale each day. In monetary terms that’s between £1,312 to £1,640 each day. Now for the horses, Renly has to feed a whopping 56,250 of them. So that’s around £1,171 worth of feed for them.

 

So, this means that to keep his army in the field, Renly is shelling out a grand total of between £2,483 and £2,811 every single day. But how much is that in gold dragons? Well, when I did the calculations for Torrhen’s army I calculated the value of a dragon at between £1 10s and £2 of medieval English money. So this means that Renly’s army is costing him 1,241-1,874 gold dragons each day that it’s in the field.

 

This means that if Renly had kept his army in the field for a year, it would have cost him 452,965-684,010 gold dragons JUST to feed it. Good job he had Mace Tyrell funding him.

 

Robb Stark’s Army

At the time of the battles of the Green Fork and Camps, Robb had 6,500 cavalry(6000 at the battle of the Camps and 500 at the Green Fork) and 16,800 foot that we know of. So, he had 23,300 men and 19,500 horses. This means that he’ll be paying £406 to feed his horses and £388-£485 to feed his men, leading to a total daily cost of £794-£891.

 

However, unlike Renly’s army, Robb Stark’s army takes quite serious losses early on in the War of Five Kings. By the time of Robb’s campaign in the West and Roose’s garrisoning Harrenhall, the Northern-Riverlands army is down to 5000 horsemen in the West and Roose’s 12,300 infantry in Harrenhall. That means that for most of the War of Five Kings, Robb Stark is supporting 17,300 men and 15,000 horses, meaning his total daily costs are between £517 and £568, 258-378 gold dragons in Westerosi currency. This means that Robb Stark is paying 94,170-137,970 gold dragons for to feed his troops for every year he keeps them in the field. 

 

The Westerlands

We know that at the onset of the War of Five Kings, Tywin raises two armies at Casterly Rock. The one which he is in command of numbers 7,500 horse and 12,500 foot while the one which he gives command of to Jaime numbers 2000-3000 horse and 12,000 foot. The combined Westerlands armies thereforehave between 28,500 and 31,500 horses in them(which alone would cost an eye watering £593 -£656 per day to feed). However, we know that 8000 of Jaime’s foot were freeriders which begs the question of whether they are genuine riders or just mercenary infantry who are described as freeriders. This raises the interesting possibility that the Westerlands foot(in Jaime’s army at least) get around on horses but dismount to fight in battle. This was far from unheard of in real history, in fact in France, England and Burgundy, at least, in the 15th century this was relatively normal. Many of the archers that Henry V took to Agincourt were described as mounted archers, meaning that they travelled on horseback and then dismounted to fight. It’s possible that this is also common in the armies of the Westerlands, after all if any of the kingdoms has the money to do it, it’s them. This would also fit with what we know of Tywin’s tactics for much of the War of Five Kings, which seem to put less emphasis on taking castles or forcing your enemy into battle than other kingdoms and more emphasis on destroying his economic capabilities through chevauchees. While men on foot can also do this, due to the need for mobility it’s a job to which mounted men are much better suited.

 

So where does this leave the Westerlands in terms of how much their army would cost to keep in the field? If the infantry are mounted, seeing as they don’t do their fighting on horseback, it’s likely they only have one horse for riding around on rather than the knightly 3. So, that leaves the Westerlands armies costing:  

 

Jaime’s army: 179-499 gold dragons per day, 65,335-182,135 gold dragons a year.

 

Tywins army: 400-1,144 gold dragons per day, 146,000-417,560 gold dragons a year.

 

The lower estimate is if their foot march everywhere, the upper estimate is if they are, in fact, mounted.