The Disappearing Dornish

[Aebram]

Good morrow, y'all,
When the Targeryens conquered the Seven Kingdoms, Dorne was the last one to submit.  They held out for many years and through several wars.  One of their most successful tactics was not to fight at all, but simply to flee their cities and disappear.  But how is that possible?  

Dorne is mostly a desert.  There are no places to hide, little water, and few animals or plants to forage.  The Dornish would have had to bring their own food and water.  That would require horses,which in turn would require even more food and water.

And of course, the Targaryens could fly. From the backs of their dragons, they could see great distances, and travel even farther, at speeds greater then men or horses could achieve.  How could  a town-size group of people hide, in the open desert, from a pursuer capable of aerial surveillance?

The Dornish wars are described in a number of places in several books; I won't include a lot of quotes.  But here's one that illustrates my point:

Quote

"The first Vulture King had commanded armies, leading thousands of men into battle. The second was no more than an upjumped raider, the minor son of a minor house with a few hundred followers who shared his taste for robbery and rape. He knew the mountains well, however, and when pursued he would simply disappear, to reappear at will. Men who came hunting him did so at their peril, for he was skilled at ambuscade as well. None of his tricks availed him against a foe who could hunt him from above, however. Legend claimed the Vulture King had an impregnable mountain fastness, hidden in the clouds. Jaehaerys found no secret lair, only a dozen rude camps scattered here and there. One by one, Vermithor flamed them all, leaving the Vulture only ashes to return to." (FAB "The Long Reign")

if a few hundred raiders couldn't hide from an airborne pursuer, how could a whole town-ful of people do it, with their women, children, and animals?  I think this excerpt is a valuable clue:

Quote

"In 7 AC, Orys Baratheon and the other lords who had been taken captive on the Boneway were ransomed back to King’s Landing for their weight in gold, but on their return it was found that the Widow-lover had lopped off each man’s sword hand, so they might never again take up swords against Dorne. In retaliation, King Aegon himself descended on the mountain fastnesses of the Wyls with Balerion, and reduced half a dozen of their keeps and watchtowers to heaps of molten stone. The Wyls took refuge in caves and tunnels beneath their mountains, however, and the Widow-lover lived another twenty years."  (FAB, "The Reign of the Dragon")

I don't think there's any other mention of the Dornish using caves.  But I think this must be how they did it.  All the Dornish castle towns must be located near caves, perhaps directly over them.  If the caves contain underground rivers, they would provide an endless supply of water for drinking, cooking, and sanitation.  They could even be pre-stocked with grain and other storable foods, as well as firewood and other supplies.

[Seams]

13 hours ago, Aebram said:

I don't think there's any other mention of the Dornish using caves.

In one of the released Arianne chapters from TWOW, there is a relevant passage. 

Spoiler

https://georgerrmartin.com/excerpt-from-the-winds-of-winter/

I realize this cave is in the Stormlands. It's probably a symbolic version of the "journey" of House Martell or Princess Elia Martell or something along those lines. It's probably also a parallel to Jon Snow's adventure in the cave with Ygritte after they follow a branch off from Mance's feast hall cavern. 

I agree with your theory about the Dornish hiding in caves as part of their strategy to avoid being conquered. 

[Ran]

The Arab Revolt shows how there are plenty of "places to hide" in a desert, and how thousands of men were able to fight from the desert with horses (and camels).

13 hours ago, Aebram said:

And of course, the Targaryens could fly. From the backs of their dragons, they could see great distances, and travel even farther, at speeds greater then men or horses could achieve.  How could  a town-size group of people hide, in the open desert, from a pursuer capable of aerial surveillance?

How did the Arabs do it against the Ottoman empire and its dozens of aircraft, under similar conditions?

There's also just the logistics. How much ground can a dragon effectively cover if you have no real sense of where people may be? Jaehaerys had an opponent who he knew to be in a particular part of the mountains of Dorne, but he could only guess where in the deserts of Dorne some of these forces could be. How much ground could three dragons cover in a day, and at what altitude to effectively spot people and camps, identify them as hostiles, and deal with them? It doesn't sound like Jaehaerys ever actually found the Vulture King and his forces directly -- he found encampments that they had prepared for use in their campaigns, and burned them all, but the troops themselves he didn't discover ("leaving the Vulture only ashes to return to"). 

I'm reminded of the search for Steve Fosset. A dozen and more aircraft never found the site of his crashed plane, despite days and weeks of searching. They went over the place where he crashed multiple times, IIRC, and it just wasn't spotted. It's not actually all that easy to identify things from the air, especially if you try flying higher up to see more of the ground beneath you.

 

13 hours ago, Aebram said:

I don't think there's any other mention of the Dornish using caves.  But I think this must be how they did it.  All the Dornish castle towns must be located near caves, perhaps directly over them.  If the caves contain underground rivers, they would provide an endless supply of water for drinking, cooking, and sanitation.  They could even be pre-stocked with grain and other storable foods, as well as firewood and other supplies.

All the above said, I think references to Dornish irrigation is a hint. Personally, imagine if every substantially inhabited part of Dorne is riddled with kilometers worth of qanats. While the ones featured on Wikipedia are quite narrow, there are some quite wide old qanats.

(Also, speaking of Dornish irrigation, this recent article about the restoration of Moorish-era acequia irrigation canals is pretty neat.)