Why are the Essosi so militarily incompetent?

[FylkirKarl]

Why are the Essosi so bad at warfare? They suffer problems from unarmored light cavalry, and their cities are so unprotected. Their main source of military is either the Unsullied, poorly trained and equipped slave soldiers or untrustworthy mercenaries. The only factions in Essos that can be said to have a competent military is either Braavos or New Ghis with their reborn lockstep legions. Essos is home to the First Men, Andals and Rhoynish who used steel and bronze armor and weapons, but the Essos seem so backwards militarily. If a war were to ever breakout between Essos and Westeros, the only thing the Essos would have on them would be being economically superior and having numbers, but that matters little with trained soldiers who can be as disciplined as the Ghiscari if they have a competent commander like Stannis Baratheon or Randyl Tarly. Anyone know why? Another question I have is what were the military forces of the Valyrian Freehold like? I'd imagine similar to the Greek soldier-citizens who would be the foil to the Roman Legion structured Ghiscari, but this is only theory. Any answers?

[DominusNovus]

If I were to guess, I'd say because they were utterly dependent on the Valyrian Freehold as a centerpoint to their respective civilizations, and they still have yet to recover from its loss.

Consider how dependent Europe is, for example, on the military hegemony of the US.  Now, imagine a scenario in which the entirety of North America just blew up, and electricity stopped working.

[Nihlus]

Because Essos is post-apocalyptic. A few thousand years ago, the Valyrians showed up and replaced all military development with dragons. Because of this most of Essos was stuck in the military Bronze Age to early Iron Age. Why bother advancing in this one area when magical WMDs make everything pointless? When the Doom hit and all the dragons were gone, Essos was left with no institutional knowledge and models horrendously out of date compared to the westerners, who had "normal" military development.

In due time they might have adapted, but in the aftermath of the Doom (picture Italy and Greece both being nuked off the face of the Earth at the height of the Roman Empire, except worse) a bunch of low tech and incompetent but extremely numerous Mad Max esque raiders went on a pillaging spree. This further set back any potential military development east of the Free Cities. Speaking of the Free Cities, the westernmost ones did manage to recover due to proximity to Westeros. Westeros-style mercenary armies as far as the eye can see.

This mostly doesn't apply to anything the Vayrian Freehold didn't rule, of course. For all we know Yi Ti (China), Leng (Japan), the Jogos Nhai (Mongols/Jurchens), etc. are totally competent and up to date. But we never see them, while we do see the pitiful armies fielded by the Dothraki, Astapor, Yunkai, Meereen, New Ghis, the Sarnor states, etc.

 

New Ghis's armies are crap, by the way. 2,000 years out of date, both in and out of universe. They're fielding hoplites (except with javelins and worse armor) when Westeros has hit 14th-15th century levels bar the lack of gunpowder.

[FylkirKarl]

But in terms of what Essos has to offer, Ghis and the Unsullied are the best they have. Extremely disciplined soldiers, one being slaves, the other citizens. Every other point I agree on.

[Universal Sword Donor]

15 minutes ago, Nihlus said:

Because Essos is post-apocalyptic. A few thousand years ago, the Valyrians showed up and replaced all military development with dragons. Because of this most of Essos was stuck in the military Bronze Age to early Iron Age. Why bother advancing in this one area when magical WMDs make everything pointless? Except when the Doom hit and all the dragons were gone, Essos was suddenly left to realize that their armies were horrendously out of dated compared to the westerners, who had "normal" military development.

In due time they might have adapted, but in the aftermath of the Doom (picture Italy and Greece both being nuked off the face of the Earth at the height of the Roman Empire, except worse) a bunch of low tech and incompetent but extremely numerous Mad Max esque raiders went on a pillaging spree. This further set back any potential military development east of the Free Cities. Speaking of the Free Cities, the westernmost ones did manage to recover due to proximity to Westeros. Westeros-style mercenary armies as far as the eye can see.

That's a pretty harsh whitewash tbh. The Rhoynar managed to defeat the dragons in a pitched battle. The armies are definitely a bit outdated now but the Free Cities are more or less supposed to the the Italian city-states during the early Renaissance. Those city states held pretty heavily to a militia model (after Machiavelli's time) and used condottieri (mercenaries) quite heavily.

[DominusNovus]

13 minutes ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

That's a pretty harsh whitewash tbh. The Rhoynar managed to defeat the dragons in a pitched battle. The armies are definitely a bit outdated now but the Free Cities are more or less supposed to the the Italian city-states during the early Renaissance. Those city states held pretty heavily to a militia model (after Machiavelli's time) and used condottieri (mercenaries) quite heavily.

The Rhoynar were ultimately defeated and driven out, their military hegemony replaced by the Valyrians'.  Think of the Valyrian hegemony over western Essos as a military equivalent to economic monoculture.  When a country is utterly dependent on one export crop or raw material, the rest of their economy atrophies, resulting in utter economnic collapse when they can no longer rely on that export.  Hell, look at how the US South took a century to recover from the end of the Civil War.

[Universal Sword Donor]

15 minutes ago, DominusNovus said:

The Rhoynar were ultimately defeated and driven out, their military hegemony replaced by the Valyrians'.  Think of the Valyrian hegemony over western Essos as a military equivalent to economic monoculture.  When a country is utterly dependent on one export crop or raw material, the rest of their economy atrophies, resulting in utter economnic collapse when they can no longer rely on that export.  Hell, look at how the US South took a century to recover from the end of the Civil War.

The US did reconstruction very poorly, both from an external governance perspective as well as an internal governance perspective. Both the US government with its carpetbagging, and the, let's call them regressive, policies enacted by the southern states. It's a bad comparison honestly, in at least a like for like analysis.

[falcotron]

2 hours ago, FylkirKarl said:

Why are the Essosi so bad at warfare? They suffer problems from unarmored light cavalry, and their cities are so unprotected. Their main source of military is either the Unsullied, poorly trained and equipped slave soldiers or untrustworthy mercenaries. The only factions in Essos that can be said to have a competent military is either Braavos or New Ghis with their reborn lockstep legions. Essos is home to the First Men, Andals and Rhoynish who used steel and bronze armor and weapons, but the Essos seem so backwards militarily. If a war were to ever breakout between Essos and Westeros, the only thing the Essos would have on them would be being economically superior and having numbers, but that matters little with trained soldiers who can be as disciplined as the Ghiscari if they have a competent commander like Stannis Baratheon or Randyl Tarly. Anyone know why? Another question I have is what were the military forces of the Valyrian Freehold like? I'd imagine similar to the Greek soldier-citizens who would be the foil to the Roman Legion structured Ghiscari, but this is only theory. Any answers?

Where do you get the idea that the Unsullied are not competent, or that the reborn lockstep legions are competent, or that Braavos has a good army?

And what makes you think the Westerosi are any better? Their armies are early feudal levies. A 20000-man army is not 20000 trained soldiers, it's a few hundred trained soldiers and the rest are peasants called out of the fields—as we saw in Dunk & Egg. Their equipment is slightly better than early medieval armies in our world, but their strategic understanding is way behind.

Most notably, almost nobody ever lays siege—everyone, including Stannis Baratheon, who comes upon a castle or city either immediately assaults it or just gives up. They certainly don't think of bringing in heavy siege machinery, even though we know counterweight trebuchets exist in their world (and the Essosi use them). Nobody seems to have grasped that cavalry supporting infantry can actually be more useful than cavalry on its own, despite that being something people in our world were figuring out as far back as the Carthaginians, and that had become universal by around the 12th century. Their navies have had, for thousands of years, the same ships that made longboats obsolete in a couple generations in our world, and yet the Ironborn continue to board them with no problem.

Also, why does it matter that Essos is home to First Men, Andals and Rhoynish? The First Men left something like 12000 years ago. Do you expect Africa to have the strongest military because the Europeans and Asians came from Africa? Of course not. The reason the US, Russia and China have strong militaries today has to do mostly with events in the past century or two, not with who happened to be living there during the bronze age.

Most likely, the reason all of the militaries of Planetos seem both crap and inconsistent is that GRRM really doesn't know or care much about military strategy, equipment, etc. Trying to draw conclusions from details you think you can guess about the different forces isn't going to tell you anything.

[Universal Sword Donor]

17 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Where do you get the idea that the Unsullied are not competent, or that the reborn lockstep legions are competent, or that Braavos has a good army?

And what makes you think the Westerosi are any better? Their armies are early feudal levies. A 20000-man army is not 20000 trained soldiers, it's a few hundred trained soldiers and the rest are peasants called out of the fields—as we saw in Dunk & Egg. Their equipment is slightly better than early medieval armies in our world, but their strategic understanding is way behind.

Most notably, almost nobody ever lays siege—everyone, including Stannis Baratheon, who comes upon a castle or city either immediately assaults it or just gives up. They certainly don't think of bringing in heavy siege machinery, even though we know counterweight trebuchets exist in their world (and the Essosi use them). Nobody seems to have grasped that cavalry supporting infantry can actually be more useful than cavalry on its own, despite that being something people in our world were figuring out as far back as the Carthaginians, and that had become universal by around the 12th century. Their navies have had, for thousands of years, the same ships that made longboats obsolete in a couple generations in our world, and yet the Ironborn continue to board them with no problem.

Also, why does it matter that Essos is home to First Men, Andals and Rhoynish? The First Men left something like 12000 years ago. Do you expect Africa to have the strongest military because the Europeans and Asians came from Africa? Of course not. The reason the US, Russia and China have strong militaries today has to do mostly with events in the past century or two, not with who happened to be living there during the bronze age.

Most likely, the reason all of the militaries of Planetos seem both crap and inconsistent is that GRRM really doesn't know or care much about military strategy, equipment, etc. Trying to draw conclusions from details you think you can guess about the different forces isn't going to tell you anything.

The irony of this post is amazing.

[DominusNovus]

2 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

The US did reconstruction very poorly, both from an external governance perspective as well as an internal governance perspective. Both the US government with its carpetbagging, and the, let's call them regressive, policies enacted by the southern states. It's a bad comparison honestly, in at least a like for like analysis.

I knew no matter which analogy I provided, there was the temptation to get bogged down in the details, particularly when I was equating the Valyrian hegemony with economic monoculture.  The point is that, when the region's economic system was disrupted, it went from being incredibly wealthy to incredibly not, and had a hard time adapting to the new order.  If you don't like the example, think of any region dependent on, say, coal mining, or those countries utterly dependent on oil drilling.

The point is: you have a society that it dependent on one key pillar - be it a particular segment of the economy or the might of the dragonlords - take away that pillar, and you will have far more trouble than simply the immediate effects.  You get a cascade of problems, each feeding into each other, until a new equilibrium is achieved.

 

[elder brother jonothor dar]

3 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

Consider how dependent Europe is, for example, on the military hegemony of the US.  Now, imagine a scenario in which the entirety of North America just blew up, and electricity stopped working.

US is dominant but analogy is poor, if US did blow up Europe would still have the tech, if not numbers or economy.

 

Europe is more than capable of holding its own it's just we have had enough of wars in the recent past, look at NATO GDP spend we are where the US was a century ago

[DominusNovus]

28 minutes ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

US is dominant but analogy is poor, if US did blow up Europe would still have the tech, if not numbers or economy.

 

Europe is more than capable of holding its own it's just we have had enough of wars in the recent past, look at NATO GDP spend we are where the US was a century ago

Of course the analogy is poor, we're comparing a magical cataclysm with reality.  Thats why I added a magical 'and electricity stopped working' to the analogy to really send the point home. What is it about analogies that draw out the desire to pick apart the details of the analogy instead of the actual topic?

And your point about Europe holding its own while also saying that they've had enough of war actually makes the point I'm making: They don't *need* to spend as much on military because they know that pretty much everyone in Europe is allied with the most powerful military on Earth, so they don't.  Just like the Free Cities didn't *need* to develop strong military, economic, cultural, and political institutions independently from Valyria, so they didn't.

[Aegon1FanBoy]

Cause Martin wants them like that i mean seriously The state of Westeros alone shows this

[elder brother jonothor dar]

2 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

And your point about Europe holding its own while also saying that they've had enough of war actually makes the point I'm making: They don't *need* to spend as much on military because they know that pretty much everyone in Europe is allied with the most powerful military on Earth, so they don't.  Just like the Free Cities didn't *need* to develop strong military, economic, cultural, and political institutions independently from Valyria, so they didn't.

Almost right they don't need to spend as much on military because pretty much everyone in Europe is allied with each other.  The free Cities would not have been allowed to develop strong anything independently of Valyria, once Valyria is gone there should have been an arms race as each city tried to gain the upper hand.

Slaver Bay is probably close to a Europe they are rivals and partners it is better to work together than fight no need to waste money on needless wars.

 

[Frey Kings]

Century of Blood

 

They have assassins, They have elite fighting units, They have a city guard... Volantis sent upwards of 500 ships against Daenerys, and Bravos is expanding through war. If we go look at Yi Ti, they have many armies throughout their lands.

 

I wouldn't say they're bad at fighting but they rather chose to focus on other things.

[FylkirKarl]

I never said the Unsullied were incompetent, to the contrary, I said they were one of the best military forces that the Essosi have to offer other than the disciplined, trained, and equipped Ghiscari. It's not a lie to say that the Westerosi military are better equipped and trained with even the peasants having the same or even better armor and weapons that the slave soldiers. I'm not saying the Essosi are anything to balk, but their less militarily capable than Westeros. Their city guard is as good as the Goldcloaks, good for policing, but not made for warfare. I stand by my statement to say that from what we've seen, that Braavos and New Ghis are probably better militarily. The Free Cities like Volantis may have a lot of ships, but ships don't win wars, infantry does, even more so when Essos is more of a landmass with a few coastal regions than a chain of islands or port cities.

[Frey Kings]

Invasion of the First Men - 12,000 years ago

At this time Westeros was settled by the Children of the Forest. But human settlers eventually arrived in Westeros from Essos through a land bridge that connected the two continents at the time called the Arm of Dorne. The humans were later given the name the First Men and arrived with bronze weaponry. First Men and Children of the Forest clashed for a long time, with the humans steadily advancing and cutting of the tress that gave the Children much of their power. The Children used their magic to shatter the Arm of Dorne, but it was too late.

The Children were eventually able to curb the invasion at Moat Cailin, laying down a magical calamity on the area called the Hammer of the Water, that shattered the area into bogs and swamps that separate North from South to this day. The result was a peace accord between the two races, and a friendship that lasted 4000 years that saw the First Men adapting the worship of the Old Gods and other customs.

Invasion of the Andals - 2,000-6,000 years ago

A second wave of human settlers arrived by sea who called themselves the Andals. They brought iron weaponry and the worship of the Seven. They would eventually invade six of the seven kingdoms, with only the Winter Kings being able to stop them at Moat Cailin.

Invasion of the Rhoynar - 1,000 years ago

Escaping the violent expansion of the Valyrian Freehold, the Rhoynar arrived in Dorne lead by their warrior queen Nymeria. There, Nymeria married Mors Martell, allying her people with his. The Martell-Rhoynar alliance would eventually conquer all of Dorne.

Invasion of the Valyrian Freehold - 500 years ago

House Targaryen of Valyria conquered the isle of Dragonstone and built a castle there, making it Valyria's westernmost outpost. A century later, Valyria itself is destroyed in an event called the Doom of Valyria, which was possibly a massive volcanic eruption.

Invasion of the Targaryens - 300 years ago

A few Valyrian houses headed by House Targaryen escaped the Doom by preemptively migrating to Dragonstone with one dragon, Balerion the Black Dread. There they stayed for 100 years, building up their forces and adding two more dragons to their forces, Vhagar and Meraxes.

From there, Aegon the Conqueror set out to invade the rest of Westeros, successfully uniting the seven kingdoms (with the notable exception of Dorne) under his Iron Throne. The rest is history.

[DominusNovus]

4 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Almost right they don't need to spend as much on military because pretty much everyone in Europe is allied with each other.  The free Cities would not have been allowed to develop strong anything independently of Valyria, once Valyria is gone there should have been an arms race as each city tried to gain the upper hand.

Slaver Bay is probably close to a Europe they are rivals and partners it is better to work together than fight no need to waste money on needless wars.

 

They're allied w each other because of the US involvement in NATO.

[Ser Petyr Parker]

Until relatively recently, Westeros was full of people always fighting each other. There were different groups, all right next to each other, vying for supremacy. There has also been a martial culture of chivalry and feudalism there for (apparently) thousands of years, with most male nobles raised to be strong fighters and commanders, and able-bodied peasants aware of the possibility of being drafted. To some extent, it was survival of the most militaristic.

Essos, on the other hand, hasn't seen the same sort of competition. The land seems much more sparsely populated and much of it was under the thumb of Valyria, so there was less reason for clashes. The culture there is more mercantile, with nobles growing up learning to make money, not to fight.

[hodorisfaclessman]

17 hours ago, FylkirKarl said:

Why are the Essosi so bad at warfare? They suffer problems from unarmored light cavalry, and their cities are so unprotected. Their main source of military is either the Unsullied, poorly trained and equipped slave soldiers or untrustworthy mercenaries. The only factions in Essos that can be said to have a competent military is either Braavos or New Ghis with their reborn lockstep legions. Essos is home to the First Men, Andals and Rhoynish who used steel and bronze armor and weapons, but the Essos seem so backwards militarily. If a war were to ever breakout between Essos and Westeros, the only thing the Essos would have on them would be being economically superior and having numbers, but that matters little with trained soldiers who can be as disciplined as the Ghiscari if they have a competent commander like Stannis Baratheon or Randyl Tarly. Anyone know why? Another question I have is what were the military forces of the Valyrian Freehold like? I'd imagine similar to the Greek soldier-citizens who would be the foil to the Roman Legion structured Ghiscari, but this is only theory. Any answers?

Covered this before essos would stomp westeros in a war...bravos alone is a naval superpower waiting to happen and thats before we talk volantis fleets.

No they have walls, few civilisations have fared well vs nomads (they always come back and persuing them into the wilderness is death) and the free cities standing professional merc forces are ahead of westeros fedual system not behind it. 

The ghicari cities seem kinda weak but bear in mind thats because new ghis seems to be the military powerhouse of that sub region the other 3 are economic powethouses more.