Guest Post: Medieval Warfare Was Bad, Actually

And A Song of Ice and Fire depicts it accurately.

[Thing of Things has its first ever guest post today, from my husband Topher Brennan. Please make him welcome!]

I'm a huge fan of Bret Devereaux. For those who aren't aware, Devereaux is an ancient and military historian (currently at Professor at North Carolina State) who,blogs at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (ACOUP for short). ACOUP contains so much excellent, accessible writing on history that it's hard to know where to begin recommending things. You might start with This. Isn’t. Sparta. (Devereaux's series debunking romanticized depictions of ancient Sparta) and from there look at his Resources for Worldbuilders. As you'll see from the second link, there's a lot of stuff there, and almost all of it is excellent.

Almost. 

Among Devereaux's voluminous output is a curious three-part series titled How It Wasn't: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages. How It Wasn’t argues that George R. R. Martin's claims to have produced a more historically "grounded" fantasy setting are hollow, and that Martin's portrait of medieval Europe is unfairly negative. In isolation, the series would be forgettable; apologia for the middle ages aren't hard to come by. What makes the series fascinating (to me, at least) is that I am quite certain Devereaux knows better. His arguments in defense of the honor of medieval Europe are the sort of thing he'd have no patience for if made in defense of Sparta, or ancient Rome for that matter.

Devereaux's complaints about the way Martin portrays the destructiveness of warfare in Westeros seems particularly misguided. A good chunk of Devereaux's post rests on army size numbers which he attributes to A Wiki of Ice and Fire, but which—if you look at the wiki's footnotes—appear largely based on a 2005 RPG sourcebook. This is rather misleading in a way one really ought to avoid when writing for a blog called "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry".

What does Martin actually tell us about the size of armies in Westeros? If you look at the actual text of Martin's novels, the armies rarely seem to exceed about 20,000 men. 20,000 is the size of the army commanded by Tywin Lannister. It's also where Robb's army peaks before he splits his forces into smaller groups. House Tully is also implied to be able to raise an army that size in theory, but for various reasons struggles to get all those men into the field and keep them there. In addition to Tywin's 20,000 men, Tywin's son Jamie at one point has an army of 15,000 men, but that includes a significant number of mercenaries from Essos. Furthermore, the two Lannister armies don't march together, which means their logistical challenges probably aren't much worse than Robb's.

It's true that, in the text, Doran Martell is rumored to be able to raise 50,000 men, but in A Feast for Crows it's all but stated that this number is wrong. In that book, Doran explains to his daughter Arianne that Dorne is actually the least populous of the Seven Kingdoms and has been encouraging the rest of Westeros to overestimate its military strength. I don't think this is a retcon, by the way—earlier novels have multiple examples of second-hand reports of army sizes being greatly exaggerated. In the first book, King Robert relays a rumor that Khal Drogo has 100,000 men under his command, but more informed sources say 40,000. Similarly, the size of Stannis' army becomes the subject of wild rumors in A Clash of Kings—and these rumors get even wilder in the next book, after Stannis' army has been defeated!

The real outlier in terms of size is the army commanded by Renly Baratheon, who brags he has 80,000 men with him. He largely owes this army to his father-in-law, Mace Tyrell, who Renly says has stayed behind at his castle, Highgarden, with another 10,000 men. This is pretty clearly not meant as a statement about a typical medieval anything, but rather a statement about the incredible resources commanded by House Tyrell. House Tyrell’s domain, the Reach, is noted for its fertility.

Now, to quote a more recent ACOUP post on pre-railroad logistics, logistical constraints were "why the ‘upper limit’ of ancient, medieval and early modern field armies in the broader Mediterranean remains so stubborn: 20,000 is normal, 40,000 is big, 80,000 is unusually huge and more than 80,000 is unsustainable in almost all circumstances." That matches Martin's numbers—usually his armies are at most 20,000 men, and when he wants an unusually huge army, he makes it 80,000. Perhaps Devereaux and Martin are working from the same textbook?

Devereaux might call this a coincidence, and question whether Martin really put that much thought into the size of Renly's army in particular. I would note, though, that the only time we're told of an army this large,¹ it's marching up one of the largest roads in Westeros, which runs through some of the continent's most fertile land and is lined with friendly castles whose stores Renly can use. True, Renly does go to confront Stannis at Storm's End—with a detachment of 20,000 cavalry rather than the full army. Renly is impatient and he knows Stannis' force is only a few thousand strong.²

What makes this story fantasy, of course, is the fact that the story doesn't work without the Targaryens using their dragons to conquer most of Westeros 300 years before the story starts. Absent that, there's no way for King Robert's death to plunge most of a continent into war—no reason for all those armies to take to the field simultaneously. But I don't think even the franchise's densest fans are confused about that point.

And here is the point I think is really crucial, the fatal problem for anyone trying to argue Martin has exaggerated the brutality of medieval European warfare. Even if you had a conflict with just two sides, and just one normal-size army on each side, that would still be a recipe for exactly the sort of horrific destruction Martin describes being visited on the Riverlands. And Devereaux knows this.

In the post on logistics I quoted above, about the limits on pre-railroad army size, Devereaux goes into detail about how feeding an army of 20,000 men will in most cases put a real strain on the resources of the local populace. If the army is in friendly territory, it might merely force the locals to sell it grain at below-market prices. In enemy territory it will "forage"—what Devereaux calls "a fairly bloodless word for what could be a quite ugly process".

The examples of this he cites include the 12th century troubadour Bertran de Born and the 13th century Chanson des Lorrains. The latter mentions "incendiaries", meaning the army is burning what it cannot carry off (presumably to deny those resources to the enemy). And even in medieval Europe, where capture and ransom was a possibility, Devereaux says of the people being "foraged" that "they'd have been fools to trust to the mercy of warrior-aristocrats. They ran and were wise to do so."

By Devereaux's account, soldiers in all eras had a tendency to steal not just the supplies they needed, but anything of value they could get their hands on:

Early modern armies, with their irregular pay (as a result of state finances crumbling under the new burdens of war in the period) seem to have been particularly destructive looters and we have abundant evidence that looting was an important part of the economics of soldiering in the period; a campaign with insufficient looting opportunities could financially ruin soldiers (and their camp women who clearly aided in the looting and seem to have generally shared in the spoils). That said, this wasn’t a phenomenon tied specifically to the early modern period; it is safe to assume that ancient and medieval armies also looted enemy settlements wherever they went.

Furthermore, rape was a common feature of foraging operatings, including in the middle ages: "Medieval accounts written predominately by the clergy might be a bit more circumspect (in part due to stronger norms about violence against co-religionists), but it is evident that war rape was common in this context too."

This is why I think Devereaux knows better than to minimize the horrors of medieval warfare. But minimize them he does. For example, he says:

The Church encouraged knights and lords to swear oaths to the effect that they would not violate the peace by attacking the peasantry.

That’s not to say that this prohibition always held – in practice, it seems to have mostly been honored in the breach. But it is a clear contrast to warfare in Westeros, where striking at the civilian population is clearly normal – Tywin thinks nothing of “setting the Riverlands on fire from God’s eye to Red Fork” (S1E10) and none of his bannermen questions the order.

I am not certain what distinction Devereaux is drawing between being subject to a "prohibition mostly honored in the breach" and "normal". Perhaps he imagines that, in every case where medieval a commander ordered widespread devastation as a deliberate strategy—such as William the Conqueror's Harrowing of the North, or the chevauchées of the Hundred Years War³—said commander always had at least one vassal objecting. If that is his point he presents no evidence for it.

Furthermore, it is easy to read Sansa's character arc—where she learns the hard way that "life is not a song"—as Martin taking pot shots at his fellow fantasy writers/ But there's also a more straightforward reading. Taken at face value, Martin is telling us that Westerosi elites profess ideals which they "mostly honor in the breach", to borrow Devereaux's phrase. "Knights are sworn to defend the weak, protect women, and fight for the right", Sansa thinks in one scene, concluding the knights under Joffrey's command "are no true knights". This is a similarity between Westeros and medieval Europe, not a difference.

Devereaux makes a big deal out of the fact that one of the most infamous massacres of the middle ages, the 1099 sack of Jerusalem, took place in the context of a religious war. The implication is that, as horrifying as religiously-motivated violence could be, warfare where Christians were fighting fellow Christians was more restrained. Devereaux’s explanation overlooks another explanation for why massacres on the scale of the sack of Jerusalem were rare: settlements of that size were not taken by force very often.

For example, after Paris was sacked by the Vikings in 845, it would not be taken by force again until long after the middle ages had ended. But suppose Paris had been taken by force during the hundred years war—not by negotiated surrender, but after a protracted siege lasting a month or more. In that scenario, I see little reason to think Paris would have fared any better than the many smaller towns where Christians massacred other Christians as part of medieval warfare.

Crucially, in A Song of Ice and Fire, it isn't just obvious villains like Gregor Clegane who commit atrocities. Even Robb's army commits atrocities, to the point that many people in the Riverlands come to dislike "wolves" and "lions"—that is, Starks and Lannisters—equally. This is a sharp contrast to typical pseudo-medieval fantasy fare, with its straightforward heroes and straightforward villains. A strange fact about Game of Thrones as a pop-culture phenomenon is how many fans wanted to view the story through that simple good vs. evil lens, in spite of the fact that the very first season had some very strong clues that that wasn't the kind of story fans were going to be getting.

Many readers of A Song of Ice and Fire have criticized it for being too dark, bloody, and full of violence and rape. However, Martin describes medieval warfare more-or-less accurately—certainly much more so than most fantasy authors. It makes sense for ordinary readers, who got much of their understanding of the Middle Ages from Disney princess movies, to be confused. But Bret Devereaux–a military historian with a long history of speaking frankly about historical brutality and its whitewashing in popular media–ought to know better. 

1. Fans sometimes assume that every single soldier in Renly's army that did not join Stannis ended up going on to fight against Stannis in the Battle of the Blackwater, but Martin never actually says this.

2. When Renly and Stannis meet in A Clash of Kings, Renly says he'll be "generous" and call Stannis' army 5,000 men—the book's prologue suggests the real number might only be 3,000.

3. I use these two examples because they're among the more famous medieval examples of widespread devastation as a deliberate strategy. Both are discussed in some detail in Sean McGlynn's By Sword and Fire: Cruelty And Atrocity In Medieval Warfare, along with many other examples. For those who don't want to read an entire book on the subject,  r/badhistory compiled a really quite impressive list of other examples in another critique of Devereax's post. CTRL+F for "Thirdly" if you want to skip to the relevant section.]