Strongest army of the mid 1700's?

[GH@Z!]

No one thinks the Ottomans?

[ConnMon]

No one thinks the Ottomans?

Ottomans were good to a certain point, but were outdated. Not to discredit them, for they kicked many armies back home. They might be able to sweep the world if they were to *cough* rediscover cannon-mountain elephants. *cough* Or something like that

[Sheogorath]

No one thinks the Ottomans?

The Ottoman Empire was past its prime by this point. The Janissary's essentially ran the government and changed out sultans at will. And every sultan had to give them a pay raise by tradition.
You can well imagine, at the rate they Ottomans went through sultans, how high their wages became.

The Ottomans experienced a brief, very brief, revival after the Napoleonic Wars, followed by an utter and irreversible collapse.

Which is really too bad, because the Ottomans were really the only ones to effectively control the Middle East, and a good deal of the areas current problems can be traced to the Anglo-French divvying up of the spot post WWI.

[Polemists]

so as Sir Beane is taking a break, I must find more threads :)

Well I think England is probably the winner so to speak, though each had better in differrent circumstances.

Make no mistake the Ottomans, probably next to Russia are the largest army numerically but ever since the Seige of Malta and Seige of Constantinople there has been no unified muslim front, which was the Ottomans strong point (and christian mercanries).

As time goes on they become more divided along class lines and out teched by nearly everyone. Even in WW1 there contributions hardly compare to that of other major nations.

This is the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire really.

Which would be clearly shown......if we had......a demo (see......i'm good :) )

[Sheogorath]

I don't think you could really say the English army was their main strength...operating out of conjunction with their navy, the English army was comparatively small and would hardly have been adequate of the English navy wasn't so godawful huge.
I seem to recall that the League of Armed Neutrality, with something like a total of seven nations (Including Prussia, Russia and the Ottoman Empire) all together couldn't match the English navy for numbers.

I, personally, doubt the long-term capability of the English army. Much like the Swedes, in a protracted conflict they would have had difficulty supporting the army. Considering the fairly small population of the UK (10,000,000 in 1800, compared to Russia's 35,000,000 and France's 29,000,000). While certainly better than Sweden (~2.3 million), the UK simply doesn't have the population to hold out in a long term, one on one, fight. Other relatively low-population countries experience the same problem. There's only so many men between the ages of 16 and 45.

Which is why the British government generally, quite wisely, almost always attempted to organize an alliance to support themselves. And then committed their army only to select areas.

It is true, of course, that other, larger nations (IE: Russia) frequently experienced monetary and supply issues, but, compared to a loss of manpower, those are less important when fighting a really desperate war.

Much of the Russian resistance against Napoleon was accomplished by the Russian peasantry. As I recall, the Russian Orthodox Church declared him to be the anti-christ and, essentially, called a jihad on him. The Russian serfs responded nicely.

There are some rather unpleasant tales of what would happen to French soldiers who were captured or caught alone by peasants.

[Sir Beane]

Since the OP of this thread has been instagibbed and the thread itself isn't really discussing the game I think we can safely move it over to the Monastery.

It will be happy in it's new home, free to roam amongst its fellow historical discussions in its natural habitat.

[Kralizec]

Considering the fairly small population of the UK (10,000,000 in 1800, compared to Russia's 35,000,000 and France's 29,000,000).

Wow...either the UK was seriously underpopulated at that time, or France very densely.

[CBR]

Wow...either the UK was seriously underpopulated at that time, or France very densely.

The census of 1801 showed a combined population of 10.5 million for England, Wales and Scotland and then one can add an estimated 5.5 million from Ireland. So total it would be 16 million.


CBR

[Sheogorath]

The census of 1801 showed a combined population of 10.5 million for England, Wales and Scotland and then one can add an estimated 5.5 million from Ireland. So total it would be 16 million.


CBR

But, at the time period, I dont believe England could count Ireland as part of its population for military purposes, given that it was pretty much in constant rebellion :P

I should also note that the numbers from Russia are for European Russia only. It's difficult to get a census of Siberia