AFAIK horses need more than just grass if they are supposed to do hard work or they will lose weight fast. Except for the steppe nomads I think all fed their horses with grain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
CBR
Printable View
AFAIK horses need more than just grass if they are supposed to do hard work or they will lose weight fast. Except for the steppe nomads I think all fed their horses with grain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
CBR
Actually more then losing weight will happen. For instance the horse could founder in the middle of a charge. Lots of problems can occur from working horses beyond the levels of endurance provided by the nutrients that they recieve.Quote:
Originally Posted by CBR
Sometimes Horses will founder because they get a feed they are not used to. I wonder what problems the Knights and their horses had after leaving the grass and feed available in Europe for the feed available in the Middle-East. or for that matter the Steppe Ponies as they came in contact with the lusher pastures of Europe.
I say this because I have seen horse founder off of a change in the type of hay they are given.
If anyone does not know what founder is here is a link that describes it and several of the causes of it.
http://www.invma.org/displaycommon.c...barticlenbr=20
Well they lost nearly all horses in the first crusade before reaching Jerusalem. That undoubtedly was a combination of several factors of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
Ann Hyland doesnt mention anything specific about differences in feeding (or I just cant find it) but more about the risks from sea transport as well as the different climate, that apparently caused lots of sickness in crusader horses. There were also all kinds of endemic diseases and the overall mortality rate must have been high.
CBR
I've read assorted very in-depth analyses on the logistics of medieval armies (such as for example the major encampement William the Conqueror's army occupied for quite a while when waiting for suitable winds to cross the Channel), and horse feed (mixed grain and hay) always features prominently. Apparently the issue is that horses brought up on grain-based diet will not survive or operate very well without the stuff, although they can subsist for a while on just grazing.
Of course, while transporting the feed is a logistical pain in the arse (pack animals need their share too, and it's not long before they have eaten more than they can carry) nevermind now that horses aren't the only thing that need to eat grain, you can only imagine the amounts of time the nomads had to spend grazing all their ponies or the trouble it was for them to locate suitable "supply places" for their herds, particularly away from the plains and if the local forces have rudely gone and secured or destroyed the produce of local fields...
Anyway, De Re Militari has a lot of stuff like that. Peruse through them if you want, many of the articles are quite interesting.
As for the Crusades, well, the First one wasn't exactly a victory of planning or logistics anyway - more like ad hoc improvisation and soldiering on by sheer desperation in spite of some truly appalling attrition. By Antioch only a fraction of the cavalry still had forces in anything resembling a fighting shape, by what I've read (the fact that warhorses were a prime target for Turkish archery didn't help one bit). Being able to capture or buy (primarily from the relatively sympathetic Armenians) local horse stock eventually helped the matters, though.
This is true, but to the steppe pony grass was grain. Try to feed a destrier grass the way steppe ponies ate it and he'll probably croak quite quickly (replying to Redleg on page 1). If not that, he certainly will not function to his full capacities.
I can't remember who said it - but its logistics that win battles and wars.
Eisenhower, IIRC. And indeed, this bears true for modern warfare. But much more so than ancient warfare. Without effective means to blockade large regions and bring nations to their needs without a single battle, tactics enjoyed a position of greater appreciation before the late 19th century. Nowadays, generals busy themselves with strategy, and lower rank officers with tactics. This was different before (although it is not clear anymore when tactics end and strategy begins these days).
An army like that of the Mongols had little to no supply line. This, in turn, gave them their immense mobility and therefore ability to take the initiative at all times.
Wasn't it "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleg
That's the one. Only attribution I have seen is to "Bradley". I suppose this is Omar Bradley but I have had trouble finding a definitive quote.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ludens
Horses, forage and supply lines were critical to the ACW. Eventual Union victory was dictated by finding the proper way to handle the logistics, so that the armies could actually penetrate the interior. Sherman took this a step further, eventually cutting loose from his supply line to live off the land marching to the sea and through the Carolinas.
In the civil war the cavalry worked those poor horses to death in short order during raids or active army movement. A favorite quote of mine from Lincoln involved the loss of a substantial number of horses, and the capture of a Union general during a Confederate raid (by J.S. Mosby if memory serves.) Lincoln replied to the effect that it was a pity because "I can make more generals, but horses cost money."
Last weekend I saw a Percheron on parade that they claimed was 17 hands high--it looked about that to me but I haven't been around horses much in many years. Magnificent animal. My understanding is that the current world record is a 19 hand Percheron named Goliath. In fact, our former vet certified the animal.
Logistics for premodern armies were a bit different than they are for modern ones, but no less important. They were, after all, smaller forces by several orders of magnitude (and neede fewer "consumables" - mainly just foodstuffs, but not things like ammunition or fuel or pens or paper or...), and could thus feed themselves fairly well by "living off the land" (which is, as someone once put it, "a polite term for some very rude activity"). This wasn't infallible, however; to "forage" like that, there needed to be something to loot to begin with so too sparsely inhabited regions were problematic. Moreover, an army needs to disperse a bit to cover enough ground for this kind of thing, and this usually means sending out light cavalry patrols to do the job as the footsloggers are a bit too difficult to gather together quickly in a crisis (they form the "main colum" the mobile patrols operate from, and on the side lay waste to everything on their path). This is the clincher, really - if the enemy can sufficiently restrict the activity of these light "foragers", for example by constantly harassing them with his own cavalry, he may well be able to start causing acute supply problems in a very short order. For example the French adopted such "shadowing" tactics against English armies on a large scale during the HYW, fairly succesfully.
Only comparatively large ancient armies - usually those of the "hydraulic empires" such as the old Mesopotamian ones or the Chinese reached sizes where the lines of communication became vital, but then again they also had the logistical and organizational chutzpah to rapidly move armies and mobilize resources whose sheer scale boggled the mind of less developed nations. Most others could operate in relative self-sufficiency.
The nomads weren't untouched by considerations of supply, however. It is a bit of an art form to keep thousands after thousands of ponies fed and watered, and particularly the location of suitable water reserves must have been an important limiting factor in their strategic movements; moreover, opposite to what is often thought, the pastoral horsemen did not carry all their belongings on horseback - far from it. The young, the elderly, many craftsmen (blacksmiths come immediately to mind), and any worldly possessions large and heavy enough to be untransportable on horseback (such as many of those huge, decorated princely tents) were carried in large waggons; these waggon trains were the closest things the nomads proper had to urban habitation, rather slow moving, and obviously jealously guarded. A nomad horde was more or less centered upon its waggon train, which for most intents and purposes was both its past and future; the lightly encumbered horsemen might range far and wide from it, but it was never left unguarded and most of the smaller patrols would sooner or later return to its vicinity, if for nothing else then to unload whatever loot they had gathered.
The Mongols developed a relatively sophisticated military system, but given that their armies in short order also aquired infantry and a siege train they, too, would have been burdened by a waggon park.