Combatants might be a better word than soldiers. I would guess most of the fighters were peasants.
Do we know how many fought on each side? How many deaths were there?
In the show “Game of Thrones” they talk of battle of tens of thousands of men. I doubt these numbers were possible in the middle ages (I know the show is fictional! - I’m just saying)
How does this battle compare with other famous battles in terms of manpower?
While I cannot be of any real help with the numbers at Hastings, battles between foes tens of thousands strong far from impossible, if rare. The greatest example (one that is perhaps not excellently suited given civilizational differences and borderline middle-agey-ness, yet still somewhat relevant) of this would most likely be the Battle of Sekigahara, 21/10/1600, between shogun-to-be Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi loyalist Ishida Mitsunari. Wikipedias estimates (Battle of Sekigahara - Wikipedia) are amongst the more conservative ones I have seen, and as far as I am informed, japanese accounts of manpower are relatively trustworthy ones; we thus have at least one battle in the late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance with a total combatant tally in the realm of 150,000.
GoT is very vaguely inspired by the War of the Roses. The battle of Towton in that war had something like 30,000 troops on a side, and Westros is a much larger place then England, so “tens of thousands” for major engagements doesn’t seem impossible for a late Medieval society.
The problem with any gathering of that size is supply. IIRC - Even the royal courts used to move from place to place back then so as not to put too heavy a burden on any one region for too long.
“1066 The Year of Conquest” by David Howarth states that William had about 7000 to 8000 men; 3000 horseman, 1000 archers and the rest infantry. Harold hsd slightly more. Estimates of casualities about 30%.
You’d guess wrong. On the English side, they were mostly huscarls and the fyrd, neither of which are analogous to peasants. Huscarls were professional soldiers/bodyguards and courtiers, the fyrd were landowners and minor nobles. And on the Norman side, nobles and mercenaries.
Bear in mind that the Battle of Plataea involved - according to modern estimates - 40,000 Greek soldiers and between 70,000 and 120,000 Persians. And that was in 479 BC.
Estimates which people doubt very much. You have been reading too much Victor Davis Hanson. Rome which had far better logistical capability only put 90,000 men jn the field once at Cannae. They had 150,000 plus for a few campaigns but could never put more than 50,000 in the field at any given time.
Speaking fairly generally, the ancients were usually capable of fielding larger armies than we see in the medieval period.
There are several reasons for this. Better central control is one – it’s hard to supply an army when the area between the army itself and its base is teeming with freebooters, bandits, and local strongmen of questionable loyalty, like much of medieval Europe. In Barbara Tuchman’s book, A Distant Mirror, she calls the four scourges of the century war, plague, the Free Companies, and the schism of the Church. By “the Free Companies” she refers to roving bands of former mercenaries, whose wars had ended, or they had not been paid, or they had deserted, who robbed and plundered their way across much of Europe. This sort of problem meant that, whereas a Roman official could expect a supply column to reach the frontier intact, a medieval king could only do so by sending a large detachment of troops to escort it.
The Roman and Greek world also had the Mediterranean Sea as a highway to move supplies, and that fact dominated many of the campaigns of the era. The Battle of Plataea mentioned above came about after the much larger Persian army was forced to retreat for lack of supplies after losing control of the sea.
The Romans also had a reliable grain surplus, which really helped.
The overwhelming problem of supply means that a large army must either have really top-notch supply arrangements requiring a major effort (and a lot of people who aren’t front-line soldiers) or disperse to forage on the countryside…and keep moving to new areas as it “eats out” the places it’s been. Time and again, throughout history, this issue forced leaders to give battle before they were ready – the inexorable reality of impending starvation drove them harder than political or military goals.
I haven’t watched “Game of Thrones,” so I don’t know how they portray it, but armies must fight, move on, disperse to forage (and then be vulnerable to defeat in detail), or move heaven and earth to keep the supplies flowing (typically this is difficult enough to do by water, and more difficult to do without water transport.)
Didn’t the third crusade see over 100,000 crusaders?
So a few tens of thousands seems plausible for a single kingdom/country, while a united force much larger COULD be assembled by medieval cultures, given the will.
How long would it have taken William to cross the channel with so many troops? How many ships did he have?
This battle from 208/9 AD boasted over 300,000 troops. Its one of the most famous battles in history although not widely known in the West.
1066?
Q
Not in one place. Their were several different crusading armies that joined the crusade and took different routes to the East. The largest contingent, the Germans, didn’t even make it all the way.
I don’t think any single army took to the field with more then the low ten-thousands. The crusaders had 20,000 at the battle of Asuf had a similar number at the Seige of Acre.
It seems low ten-thousands was probably the upper limit on European Medieval armies, due to the factors sailboat mentions.
I would have been done in one fleet. A Viking-style ship could carry about 50 men and their equipment and essential supply. A horse would take up the space of about 10 men.
The forces that Howarth suggests (3000 horse, 4000 foot) would therefore require around 750 ships.
Those figures are not impossible but seems high, as the slightly earlier Norwegian invasion is documented to have brought 300 ships and it is considered unlikely that the Normans were that greater a sea power than the Norwegian’s at that time.
Also the Norman invasion was delayed from fear of the Saxon sea power - which did not seem to be any discouragement to the Norwegians - which is suggestive that the Normans may have numbered considerably fewer than 7000 plus 3000 horses - perhaps as few as 1500 horse and 4000 foot.
What is agreed is that the Saxon’s outnumbered them by betweeen 25% and 33%, although a good number of those would be made up of the poorer end of the spectrum that was the Fyrd - landowners all but whom still varied widely in quality of their arms and equipment.
My question is slightly different_how long could ancient armies stay in the field? Men had to be paid and fed…and an army of 10,000 men needs a lot of food. Food could be obtained by foraging (stealing from the local farms)…but this makes invading armies extremely unpopular.
My guess is that military campaigns well very short-simply because of the great expense and difficulty in provisioning the troops.
Invading armies generally do not mind being too unpopular, although it might be more of an issue for defending armies.
Ancient armies generally had no choice but to forage. Whilst sea routes allowed some supply, horse fodder is too bulky to transport and so any army with any significant strength of cavalry had to be kept moving to keep the horses fed.
Campaigning time was indeed limited to the months before the harvest had to be collected, if as was usual the main manpower of the army were the same folk who would have to do the farming.
And it’s why it I get roll eye attacks every time this old cliche gets used as a plot point in a medieval/fantasy movie.
I know! We’ll fight in the winter! They’ll never expect it!
Yeah, genius, guess what, the reason no one fights in winter is 'cause you can’t feed an army in winter.
Notquitekarpov Howarth estimates about 400 ships but no one knows for sure, other estimates I’ve read say 700 to 1000.
Blood63 William was ready to go mid Aug. but winds didn’t prmit. Set sail on Sep 27 landed on the 28th.
One ( of several, including guesses based on the interplay between known terrain and reported deployment ) of the reasons for the 7,000-8,000 number is that one of the lengthiest and most detailed chroniclers, Master Wace ( writing ~100 years after the fact and utilizing earlier sources including his father ) cites the suspiciously precise number of 696 ships in the Norman fleet, which he said he got from his father. However he himself then goes on to say that said number is disputed in his sources.
As alluded to earlier, pre-modern observers were notoriously innumerate and prone of exaggeration in one direction or another. Even today estimating large crowd sizes is difficult and often yields controversial results ( note the frequent dueling cites for estimating the size of political demonstrations ). Just about all early sources should be taken with a bucket of salt.
Even when you try to take modern guessestimates it can be hard to know what assumptions to make. For example Anglo-Saxon England supposedly had a mobilization based on one man raised per five hides of land and since surveys quote a total of 80,000 hides, one could extrapolate a theoretical total mobilizable force of 15,000 for the medieval kingdom of England. Problem is it would be never have been likely that you would see a full mobilization, we don’t know how much of that was paper rather than actual strength, the level of exemptions or additions, we don’t know the full extent of casualties suffered at Fulford and Stamford Bridge, etc.
Opposing armies of 4,000-8,000 seem reasonable enough estimates, but pinning it down further ( or even that far ) is a little problematic.