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Military Strengths-2 and More!


Corvo the Crow

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There you go.

16 minutes ago, Adam Yozza said:

Except as Free Northman says, ADwD should actually push the estimates of the North's military strenght upward, not downward.

Not really. ADwD shows the North almost entirely tapped out of remaining mobilizable men, and the total number mobilized by the end of ADwD is very well short of 40k. With only Skagos to rest your hopes on as an untapped resource, well, I would assume the reason for their sustained defiance was being an island with mountainous territory, with all the difficulties that would cause invaders, as opposed to their having some kind of enormous force. But that's me.

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11 minutes ago, Adam Yozza said:

Except as Free Northman says, ADwD should actually push the estimates of the North's military strenght upward, not downward.

How? 

The Karstarks and Umbers are down to the bare bones, the Manderly's are only seen 'on screen' to have 300 and the Mountain Clans are only able to raise a large host because many of their menfolk (not actual soldiers) are off to sacrifice themself. 

ADWD makes the North look vulnerable, not strong

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55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

The previously unknown 3000 Mountain Clansmen warriors. 

They are mostly men going to sacrifice themselves because they are aware there is not enough food. It is a stretch to call them warriors given how inept they were against the fleeing Ironborn. These same men were not available in Summer when Bran and Rickon were captured. 

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

The reference to the Dustins and potentially Ryswells holding much of their strength back.

Barrowton sent men with the Young Wolf as well. I gave him as few men as I dared, but I knew that I must needs give him some or risk the wroth of Winterfell. So I had my own eyes and ears in that host. 

There is no indication that she has a huge( as in multiple thousands) army available, just that outside of Roose and Wyman she is the strongest remaining Northern leader

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

The new warriors joining Stannis from the Wolfswood.

Many of them were the survivors from Rodrik's host

… more northmen coming in as word spreads of our victory. Fisherfolk, freeriders, hillmen, crofters from the deep of the wolfswood and villagers who fled their homes along the stony shore to escape the ironmen, survivors from the battle outside the gates of Winterfell, men once sworn to the Hornwoods, the Cerwyns, and the Tallharts. 

 

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

Samwell’s allusion to the difficulty the Starks had in suppressing the Skagosi rebellion, suggesting a far from negligible reserve of men should Skagos be raised.

Possibly, we have yet to see. 

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Manderly’s description of his wealth, strength and shipbuilding activities to Davos.

And yet we only see him with 300 and he needs Davos to sail to Skagos. Nothing actually seen in the book suggests multiple thousands of troops remaining with Wyman.

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

And even the revelation of Torhen Stark’s comparatively vast projection of 30k men into the Riverlands compared to the other single kingdom armies of the time.

30k seems more than reasonable for the North. 

 

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I have beat my head around numbers multiple times and it always becomes an exercise in futility.  We can guess all we want, but there is so little hard data we can use.  Honestly the only hard data we have is the size of the kingdom from maps which is fairly concrete.  Then you have military figures from an RPG game that uses a lot of "perhaps","estimated","about", etc. in the descriptions about military size.  From this you have people trying to backwards calculate populations to come up with population densities to then use circular logic to justify a military size based on an average % of a population.  None of this works with the number of abstracts at play.

-Military sizes based on an RPG are unreliable due to ambiguous language used

-Military size based on men raised in the novels at any given time are unreliable.  Using the North as an example, it is huge so Robb was only able to gather 20,000 men.  How much did geography play?  Had he waited longer could he have gathered another 5, 10, 20 thousand?  More?  Who knows.  Some Lords deliberately held back men.  Those that did, did they send half what they should?  Maybe less, hard to say as it is not spelled out.  Then you have the moving target of whats left.  Survivors came North, but how many?  Iron Born raided but to what degree did this deplete able bodies?  To what degree are internal strife limiting the pool of soldiers.  If I was a Chieftain of a village that was a vassal to the Umbers and I already sent my best South with Robb, even if I have old or young but otherwise solid bodies I could send to one Umber or the other in the most recent silliness, I may just think about sitting that one out, especially if I am worried about all the Wildlings that just showed up at my doorstep.

-Figures based on an average % of population size (1% being the most often cited figure) dont work first because we dont have a population size.  Second, even if we did, that % does not work universally.  For example, the Iron Islands would raise significantly more because the way their society is built.  Likewise the North, Dorne, and Stormlands could pull a higher % due to their harsh environment, individuality, and/or martial history.  Places like the Westerlands may have under 1% but make up for it in quality, and when pushed could increase the % with lower quality troops.  Furthermore, % can be highly varied depending on circumstances.  If you are a petty Lord and the King calls his banners, your lord tells you to call your banners to send of to the king to fight in some far away war; you send a dozen men.  Your Lord call his banners to protect his (and by extension) your kingdom; you send 2 score men.  Your castle is under direct threat, you man the battlements with everything you got.

What it boils down to is that anything we do here is just guess work.

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21 hours ago, Bernie Mac said:

They are mostly men going to sacrifice themselves because they are aware there is not enough food. It is a stretch to call them warriors given how inept they were against the fleeing Ironborn. These same men were not available in Summer when Bran and Rickon were captured. 

Also these men aren't soldiers in the sense of say Umber or Karstark men. They are unarmed and unarmored in the sense of metalwork weapons. Only a select few have those and even then we see some of them are covered with rust. The 3000 mountain men are perhaps all of the old men in mountains that can still fight and some young too.

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13 hours ago, wendelsnatch said:

I have beat my head around numbers multiple times and it always becomes an exercise in futility.  We can guess all we want, but there is so little hard data we can use.  Honestly the only hard data we have is the size of the kingdom from maps which is fairly concrete.  Then you have military figures from an RPG game that uses a lot of "perhaps","estimated","about", etc. in the descriptions about military size.  From this you have people trying to backwards calculate populations to come up with population densities to then use circular logic to justify a military size based on an average % of a population.  None of this works with the number of abstracts at play.

-Military sizes based on an RPG are unreliable due to ambiguous language used

-Military size based on men raised in the novels at any given time are unreliable.  Using the North as an example, it is huge so Robb was only able to gather 20,000 men.  How much did geography play?  Had he waited longer could he have gathered another 5, 10, 20 thousand?  More?  Who knows.  Some Lords deliberately held back men.  Those that did, did they send half what they should?  Maybe less, hard to say as it is not spelled out.  Then you have the moving target of whats left.  Survivors came North, but how many?  Iron Born raided but to what degree did this deplete able bodies?  To what degree are internal strife limiting the pool of soldiers.  If I was a Chieftain of a village that was a vassal to the Umbers and I already sent my best South with Robb, even if I have old or young but otherwise solid bodies I could send to one Umber or the other in the most recent silliness, I may just think about sitting that one out, especially if I am worried about all the Wildlings that just showed up at my doorstep.

-Figures based on an average % of population size (1% being the most often cited figure) dont work first because we dont have a population size.  Second, even if we did, that % does not work universally.  For example, the Iron Islands would raise significantly more because the way their society is built.  Likewise the North, Dorne, and Stormlands could pull a higher % due to their harsh environment, individuality, and/or martial history.  Places like the Westerlands may have under 1% but make up for it in quality, and when pushed could increase the % with lower quality troops.  Furthermore, % can be highly varied depending on circumstances.  If you are a petty Lord and the King calls his banners, your lord tells you to call your banners to send of to the king to fight in some far away war; you send a dozen men.  Your Lord call his banners to protect his (and by extension) your kingdom; you send 2 score men.  Your castle is under direct threat, you man the battlements with everything you got.

What it boils down to is that anything we do here is just guess work.

Well to me, to keep things as simple as possible, the amount of men you can pull off from the castles, towers, holdfasts, fields etc. and equip properly is the amount of your fighting men. To give the North as an example since it's the place with the most info available, we know Torrhen took 30000 men south but we don't know whether this was all he could take or if he left anyone behind and we also don't know how properly equipped this men were. We also know Robb took near 20000 men south and as far as we've seen they are properly armed and equipped and even after that there are many lords who keep raising more men in their hundreds with proper equipment and some who declare they still have many more men, again in their hundreds and some who apparently didn't contribute at all. I am not counting mountain clans that join Stannis as they aren't equipped properly. 

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To add my voice to this fool's debate: Is 100k for the Reach a little high? I'm pretty sure at some point someone puts Renly's army at closer to 80k, and that includes a fair number of houses from the stormlands. So might we expect that, for the Wot5K at least, Highgarden was able to muster maybe 60k or so from the Reach itself?

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1 hour ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Well to me, to keep things as simple as possible, the amount of men you can pull off from the castles, towers, holdfasts, fields etc. and equip properly is the amount of your fighting men. To give the North as an example since it's the place with the most info available, we know Torrhen took 30000 men south but we don't know whether this was all he could take or if he left anyone behind and we also don't know how properly equipped this men were. We also know Robb took near 20000 men south and as far as we've seen they are properly armed and equipped and even after that there are many lords who keep raising more men in their hundreds with proper equipment and some who declare they still have many more men, again in their hundreds and some who apparently didn't contribute at all. I am not counting mountain clans that join Stannis as they aren't equipped properly. 

I just don't understand the logic that the North is supposedly tapped out based on the troops shown on screen in Dance. What reason or motivation would the lords only nominally loyal to Bolton have to send anything other than a token part of their strength to Winterfell as Winter is about to arrive?

Do people think lords have nothing better to do than eagerly await the chance to spend their carefully hoarded gold and resources to raise and march their full strength of levies hundreds of miles to Winterfell just because a Bolton who they don't even like is marrying the daughter of their betrayed liege lord? This after they have already lost thousands of men in the South, the Ironborn are loose in the North and a wildling horde is attacking the Wall?

Heck, if I was a Flint of Widow's Watch, Locke, Slate, Cerwyn, Ryswell, Dustin or any other non-fanatic lord (read Umber and Karstark), I would send a token force only and bunker down for  Winter instead.

Indeed, this is exactly what we see happening. The evidence is right there in front of us.

Manderly has more heavy horse than the Boltons, even now. Even if you give the Boltons a minimal 500 heavy horse returning from the South and only 200 heavy cavalry out of Ramsay's 600 men, that still gives them around 700 heavy cavalry today.  So Manderly quite conservatively has around 800 heavy cavalry left (as a lower limit). Yet how many does he bring to Winterfell? A mere 100 knights. That's barely 10% of his total heavy horse strength. And no lord is going to have a cavalry-infantry ratio of better than 3-1. Especially heavy cavalry. That means the 200 infantry he brought to Winterfell will be well below 10% of his infantry strength.

So in the case of Manderly it is easy to demonstrate that less than 10% of his remaining strength is at Winterfell. Why then would it be any different for the Flints of Widow's Watch, Lockes, Slates, Cerwyns, Dustins, Ryswells and Flint's of Flints Finger? Why would they impoverish themselves needlessly by sustaining large armed forces logistically when a small token force would achieve the same goal?

In fact, we can see exactly that in the numbers. Theon says Roose has 6000 or more men at Winterfell. Yet he brought 6000 men already from the South. And got 300 Manderlys, 400 Umbers and probably 1000 Dreadfort and Hornwood men from Ramsay after that. So just from those forces he would already have between 7000 and 8000 men at Winterfell. More than matching and in fact exceeding Theon's estimate. 

That tells us without a doubt that the assorted other lords at Winterfell brought little more than honour guards with them. So the numbers gathered on page in Dance CLEARLY don't represent the full strengths of the lords of the North. To use that as evidence that the North is depleted is mind boggling to me.

It makes no sense.

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You're making some very large assumptions in your attempt to estimate your way to numbers that are not visible on the page, as I think anyone reading the above can see.  This is okay. But those assumptions strike me as no more defensible than the assumptions that ADwD shows that the greater part of what the North can manage to mobilize is now mobilized, and that there's not a lot more left.

By my count, you're insisting there's anywhere from 20k to 25k men out there ready to be raised. That's a number that would surpass the forces Robb took south. That's a number almost equal to all the men that mobilized in the North across five books. I don't buy it, anyways, but I suppose if one wants to dream on behalf of the North, that's what one should dream for.

 

Re: the Reach, the Stormlands are not very populous, and it was suggested that some of their numbers were held back in the Marches due to the threat from Dorne that Tyrion arranged, so it's unlikely that they provided such a large number of forces. There's also the fact that we know there was a force of 10,000 more at Highgarden during all this, and if you assume everyone held some normal reserve, 100k doesn't seem wrong. 90k certainly seems very reasonable.

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31 minutes ago, Ran said:

You're making some very large assumptions in your attempt to estimate your way to numbers that are not visible on the page, as I think anyone reading the above can see.  This is okay. But those assumptions strike me as no more defensible than the assumptions that ADwD shows that the greater part of what the North can manage to mobilize is now mobilized, and that there's not a lot more left.

As do we all given the absence of official numbers.

However, it is fact, not assumption, that Roose returned North with around 4000 Northmen and 2000 Freys, that Ramsay had roughly another 600 Dreadfort men and additional Hornwood men as new Lord of Hornwood, that Manderly brought 300 men and the Whoresbane Umber hundreds more to Winterfell. 

It is fact  that Theon estimates 6000  or more men now at Winterfell. Meaning Roose easily exceeds Theon’s estimate with ZERO men from the Dustins, Ryswells, Slates, Lockes, Flints and any other lords assembled there. 

Therefore, we clearly aren’t seeing their armies at Winterfell. Just token honor guards.

It is fact that Manderly puts his remaining heavy horse above even Boltons numbers, and proclaims huge reserves of wealth to Davos, to mobilize more men with. (And it is fact that we see only 100 of this heavy horse brought to Winterfell. So the rest is clearly somewhere else, along with the rest of his infantry).

Would we get even a Torrhen Stark level of mobilization at Roose’s command, considering the season, time provided, recent hardships suffered and divided loyalties in the North? I would find it astounding if we did. 

Instead, even in the absence of some great northern conspiracy, lords are playing it cautious, keeping their options open and waiting for Winter to arrive. It is logical that a North united under a popular Stark will be able to raise more men than one wracked by division, doubt and uncertainty, with enemies on all sides and Winter approaching.

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Some lords are playing it cautious, but they already sent men to die with Robb and with Ser Rodrik, so how much more do they really have? Most don't have much left.

25k more waiting around to mobilize in the time of the novels really is just a pipe dream. It won't happen. 

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

Some lords are playing it cautious, but they already sent men to die with Robb and with Ser Rodrik, so how much more do they really have? Most don't have much left.

25k more waiting around to mobilize in the time of the novels really is just a pipe dream. It won't happen. 

I'm not going to claim that there are 20-25k of untapped men in the North as of the end of Dance. However, across the series we've seen 26/27k raised. Skagos hasn't been touched and is considered part of the North. The Reed's didn't mobilise as a host but their warriors must still be added to the overall strength of the North. Dustin claims to have sent as few men as she could get away with and houses like Ryswell, Locke and the two Flint houses have yet to commit their reserves to any battle (if Cerwyn and Tallhart could still raise men in Clash, and Karstark/Umber can call upon some form of levies as of Dance it stands to reason that the more powerful houses in better locations also have some extra manpower they haven't used yet) and of course we have Manderly's claims that he has the most remaining heavy horse out of any lord left. For a house as powerful as Bolton I can't see them having less than 500, minimum. So unless you believe Manderly's horse outweights his foot, he should also have a proportionate amount of foot still available to him (how much depends on what his horse-infantry ratio is at the time of ADWD).

So no, there isn't another 25k sitting around doing nothing. But across the whole North, if they called upon absolutely every semi-able bodied men, there might be another 10-15k though.

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4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I just don't understand the logic that the North is supposedly tapped out based on the troops shown on screen in Dance. What reason or motivation would the lords only nominally loyal to Bolton have to send anything other than a token part of their strength to Winterfell as Winter is about to arrive?

Do people think lords have nothing better to do than eagerly await the chance to spend their carefully hoarded gold and resources to raise and march their full strength of levies hundreds of miles to Winterfell just because a Bolton who they don't even like is marrying the daughter of their betrayed liege lord? This after they have already lost thousands of men in the South, the Ironborn are loose in the North and a wildling horde is attacking the Wall?

Heck, if I was a Flint of Widow's Watch, Locke, Slate, Cerwyn, Ryswell, Dustin or any other non-fanatic lord (read Umber and Karstark), I would send a token force only and bunker down for  Winter instead.

Indeed, this is exactly what we see happening. The evidence is right there in front of us.

Manderly has more heavy horse than the Boltons, even now. Even if you give the Boltons a minimal 500 heavy horse returning from the South and only 200 heavy cavalry out of Ramsay's 600 men, that still gives them around 700 heavy cavalry today.  So Manderly quite conservatively has around 800 heavy cavalry left (as a lower limit). Yet how many does he bring to Winterfell? A mere 100 knights. That's barely 10% of his total heavy horse strength. And no lord is going to have a cavalry-infantry ratio of better than 3-1. Especially heavy cavalry. That means the 200 infantry he brought to Winterfell will be well below 10% of his infantry strength.

So in the case of Manderly it is easy to demonstrate that less than 10% of his remaining strength is at Winterfell. Why then would it be any different for the Flints of Widow's Watch, Lockes, Slates, Cerwyns, Dustins, Ryswells and Flint's of Flints Finger? Why would they impoverish themselves needlessly by sustaining large armed forces logistically when a small token force would achieve the same goal?

In fact, we can see exactly that in the numbers. Theon says Roose has 6000 or more men at Winterfell. Yet he brought 6000 men already from the South. And got 300 Manderlys, 400 Umbers and probably 1000 Dreadfort and Hornwood men from Ramsay after that. So just from those forces he would already have between 7000 and 8000 men at Winterfell. More than matching and in fact exceeding Theon's estimate. 

That tells us without a doubt that the assorted other lords at Winterfell brought little more than honour guards with them. So the numbers gathered on page in Dance CLEARLY don't represent the full strengths of the lords of the North. To use that as evidence that the North is depleted is mind boggling to me.

It makes no sense.

Well we have only a dozen or so "lords" in Winterfell and many of them are Ryswells, so yes what's with Roose is not what's left of the North, many lords didn't even bother to come to the wedding.

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40 minutes ago, Ran said:

Got no quarrel with 10k. You'll find Northman does. ;)

One thing I've always found really odd is that the Northern parts of the North have raised 12000 men initially and after that, raised another 4000 or so, not counting the 4000 clansmen from woods and mountains and yet the southern part with better climate and the two big population centers   Have so far raised just 7500 men initially and then we see that they raise what, perhaps another2000?

Umbers living in a land where they don't even graze sheep (they do it in clansmen land) has found it in them to raise another 800 despite raising too many men at the start but Manderly only raises another 500-600 (those helping Rodrik and those going to wedding)

If Northern parts have raised 16000(20000 if we count all the clansmen) so far and still has some men to raise(like the men not close to winterfell unlike the 600 of Rodrik) southern parts should still able to raise some ten thousand with fewer than 10000 raised so far.

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There are not that many 'fresh troops' from the North in ADwD, anyway, are there? Roose's men are all old troops, as is a considerable part of the men who join Stannis at Deepwood (survivors from the Battle of Winterfell). New men are only the laughable forces of Arnolf Karstark and the Umber uncles (which won't stand a chance against proper troops in a pitched battle where they do not suddenly change sides), the Ryswell and Dustin men that joined Roose (or rather the portion which didn't come back with Roose), the 300 men Manderly brought from White Harbor, and the clansmen.

That's it. That is not much.

One can reasonably assume that Manderly could marshal more men, especially if they were whipping the refugees in shape and had them and the townsfolk of White Harbor take up pikes and spears (and one also assumes that there are some more knights back in the city), and there should be a few men in the Neck left (although they most likely would never march with any army), and then there is Skagos.

That's it.

The idea that lords who are neither courted by Stannis nor forced to show up at Winterfell by Roose have some troops hidden in their breaches or under their beds then George would really drop the ball there. Because people would know about those hidden troops.

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Re: the Reach, the Stormlands are not very populous, and it was suggested that some of their numbers were held back in the Marches due to the threat from Dorne that Tyrion arranged, so it's unlikely that they provided such a large number of forces. There's also the fact that we know there was a force of 10,000 more at Highgarden during all this, and if you assume everyone held some normal reserve, 100k doesn't seem wrong. 90k certainly seems very reasonable.

It is not just that the Marchers from the Stormlands kept a low profile in Renly's campaign (and the Tarths and Estermonts as well), it is also the fact that the Hightowers apparently (as per AFfC; in ACoK there are Hightower banners seen in the army) stayed out of the army - and the Redwynes, too. That means a large chunk of Reach power was actually not marching with Renly, at least in their full force.

Which means if the numbers he gave - and I don't think they were necessarily *completely correct* - are accurate, then the potential of the Reach - if we are talking their complete potential, not taking logistics and provisions into account - should actually go well beyond 100,000 men.

But we can take some of Renly's boasting with a grain of salt, especially since he is also awfully sure Dorne will join him, too (which they never intended to do). The tricky thing is Tyrion's ASoS talk about the size of the army Tywin and Mace brought into the city.

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On 10/10/2018 at 1:02 PM, Bernie Mac said:

They are mostly men going to sacrifice themselves because they are aware there is not enough food. It is a stretch to call them warriors given how inept they were against the fleeing Ironborn. These same men were not available in Summer when Bran and Rickon were captured. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Also these men aren't soldiers in the sense of say Umber or Karstark men. They are unarmed and unarmored in the sense of metalwork weapons. Only a select few have those and even then we see some of them are covered with rust. The 3000 mountain men are perhaps all of the old men in mountains that can still fight and some young too.

 

These are dangerous assumptions to make.  We know the Mountain Clans not traditionally armed, Axes, spear, knives, quarterstaves and flung stones, some archers, their leaders with greatswords and two handed axes.  Armor is leather and fur with some having helms and some rusted mail.  We have estimates of their numbers between 2-4 thousand (2 to 3 per Jon, 3 to 4 from the scout Asha killed in Deepwood).  I do not recall any information indicating that the Mountain Clans were sending just the old and young, that they were fearful of starvation, that they are out to sacrifice themselves.  This area was left untouched by the Wars, has come off a long Summer, and did not appear to have sent men south with Robb.  The idea that they are inept warriors is also unjustified.  A small party was nearly able to infiltrate Deepwood, bring a siege army dangerously close without notice, pursue the Ironborn throughout the night, silently dispatch sentries, etc.  Just because they are irregular troops does not make them inept.  To me they seem more like the "Braveheart" style highlanders.

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15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Hightowers apparently (as per AFfC; in ACoK there are Hightower banners seen in the army) stayed out of the army - and the Redwynes, too. That means a large chunk of Reach power was actually not marching with Renly, at least in their full force.

Hightowers do get lands as rewards though. So they  must have at least helped  against Stannis in KL.

 

14 hours ago, wendelsnatch said:

 

 

 

These are dangerous assumptions to make.  We know the Mountain Clans not traditionally armed, Axes, spear, knives, quarterstaves and flung stones, some archers, their leaders with greatswords and two handed axes.  Armor is leather and fur with some having helms and some rusted mail.  We have estimates of their numbers between 2-4 thousand (2 to 3 per Jon, 3 to 4 from the scout Asha killed in Deepwood).  I do not recall any information indicating that the Mountain Clans were sending just the old and young, that they were fearful of starvation, that they are out to sacrifice themselves.  This area was left untouched by the Wars, has come off a long Summer, and did not appear to have sent men south with Robb.  The idea that they are inept warriors is also unjustified.  A small party was nearly able to infiltrate Deepwood, bring a siege army dangerously close without notice, pursue the Ironborn throughout the night, silently dispatch sentries, etc.  Just because they are irregular troops does not make them inept.  To me they seem more like the "Braveheart" style highlanders.

Could their lack of armed men is because they have a smaller percentage of fighting men in the sense of the rest of 7K and not due to a small population? Perhaps. But whether it's because of lack of population or just lack of  resources (steel to  forge, gold to pay) Starvation is still a major issue with them. It has been pointed out repeatedly by several characters.Also Robb had mclansmen with him that were properly armed with spears and not rusty swords or slings or ashstaves. We hear them getting cut down by Gregor, being part of a rearguard to Roose against Gregor  preventing him from crossing the rubyford, celebrating Edmure's wedding together with Umber and Karstark men, getting their nobles killed in RW.

If we are counting any peasant with a pitchfork in hand then Freys to date have raised some 5000-6000 but we know the miserable state of their latest levies compared to the original "full strength" Walder waited for; men with Sharpened Sticks compared to "rank on rank of pikemen with blueringmail".

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10 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Could their lack of armed men is because they have a smaller percentage of fighting men in the sense of the rest of 7K and not due to a small population? Perhaps. But whether it's because of lack of population or just lack of  resources (steel to  forge, gold to pay) Starvation is still a major issue with them. It has been pointed out repeatedly by several characters.Also Robb had mclansmen with him that were properly armed with spears and not rusty swords or slings or ashstaves. We hear them getting cut down by Gregor, being part of a rearguard to Roose against Gregor  preventing him from crossing the rubyford, celebrating Edmure's wedding together with Umber and Karstark men, getting their nobles killed in RW.

Starvation during long winters is a problem for many in the North, not just the Clans.  Thing is, its not even winter yet and they have no way to know what sort of winter it will be.  Sacrifice at this point because of starvation seems foolish.  I do stand corrected that there were troops from 2 Clans that went south with Robb.  I do not recall anything about the Clansmen specifically being armed properly when they went south with Robb.  Reading the passages with the Mountain clans, I don't find descriptions of their weapons being rusty, just their Mail.  Regarding the ash staves and slinging stones, that references the "common men".  When we are described the fight with Asha, they only metal weapons are described being used by the Clans men (Axes, Swords, Spear).  As far as the ruby ford, they were caught waiting for boats with nowhere to run and rode down by Gregor's heavy cavalry.  IMHO this is not proof they are poor fighters.

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