Ask me about Warfare

[Gray-Hand]

It seems like cultural warriors are a thing in a decentralised society where the warriors need to be spread out throughout local areas to provide protection and maintain order. A certain amount of the resources of each local area are used to maintain the local warrior caste.

Professional soldiers start appearing when authority centralises and more wealth gets redirected to the central government which allows it to raise and maintain a professional army. The cultural warriors gradually become less relevant as the local resources that used to support them get redirected to the centre.

 

[Aldarion]

It seems like cultural warriors are a thing in a decentralised society where the warriors need to be spread out throughout local areas to provide protection and maintain order. A certain amount of the resources of each local area are used to maintain the local warrior caste.

Professional soldiers start appearing when authority centralises and more wealth gets redirected to the central government which allows it to raise and maintain a professional army. The cultural warriors gradually become less relevant as the local resources that used to support them get redirected to the centre.

Good for a start, but too much of a generalization, I think.

It would be good to consider a) effectiveness of state administration and b) cultural norms and values. Basically, a normally peaceful society generally needs to have professional soldiers to have an effective army. Society that is constantly in conflict (e.g. nomads) can just pick people up from their day jobs and march them off to war - though even there a professional army will be better.

Likewise, is political centralization cause or effect of the military centralization? Consider following examples:

1. In Western Roman Empire, you had said feedback loop. As barbarians invaded and raided, damage weakened the central government while also creating the incentive for local protection - cities and rich individuals raising personal militias. So magnates and cities raised their own armies, but this took money to support, meaning that central government's resources were even more limited. Which then weakened central government further, creating even greater incentive towards the local autonomy. So you have political and military decentralization feeding each other.
2. In medieval Hungary, king actively created a class of magnates that could raise the heavy cavalry necessary to counter the Mongols after the disaster that was the 1241 Mongol invasion. This active military decentralization then caused political decentralization.
3. In post-7th century Byzantine Empire, you had precisely the situation you describe for "cultural warriors": soldiers were spread through the provinces to provide protection and maintain order. Yet because the Empire had maintained tradition of the strong central government, this military decentralization did not cause decentralization of the society. Governors of the themes were military commanders, appointed and dismissed by the central government, and armies were entirely professional - despite soldiers being paid with land.

So Byzantine Empire at least breaks with your pattern, and you also have pomestie system in Russia, and Timar system in the Ottoman Empire. All three systems used local resources to maintain professional armies.

 

[Mad Swede]

It was indeed about economics, at least in part. Also needed is a solid infrastructure, for soldiers need to be housed, fed, and outfitted on some sort of reliable basis. Many will have families, so the pay has to be sufficient and regular. All of that presupposes a government with sufficient stability, organization, and income to pull it off. It also presupposes the government and people both see the need for such a national expense.

I agree there were precursors as early as the 15thc, I tend to place the shift more in the 16thc when a hundred years of religious warfare caused many governments to see the need for more than just mercenaries. But I would also argue you don't really see standing armies until the 18thc, when a whole range of social and economic changes ranging from the maintenance of colonies to the identification of national prestige with national wealth (and much else) produced a constant and permanent need. We move from some nations having standing armies to no nation being without one.


Epochal change happens like that. It takes epochs to transpire.

One interesting example of this is Sweden, where Gustav II Adolf and his Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna first organised the administration of Sweden and then used that as a basis for his foreign policy. One of the most important reforms in all this was the separation of military and civil administration and organisation. The legal system and courts were overhauled and re-organised. The tax system was also simplified and a proper set of national accounts (the so-called rikshuvudbok) was collated showing all the state incomes and expenditures. Together with a proper census these all laid the basis for the very first standing Swedish Army (1634), with organised regiments, recruitment, training and (what we now call) logistics.

 

[Gray-Hand]

Good for a start, but too much of a generalization, I think.

It would be good to consider a) effectiveness of state administration and b) cultural norms and values. Basically, a normally peaceful society generally needs to have professional soldiers to have an effective army. Society that is constantly in conflict (e.g. nomads) can just pick people up from their day jobs and march them off to war - though even there a professional army will be better.

Likewise, is political centralization cause or effect of the military centralization? Consider following examples:

1. In Western Roman Empire, you had said feedback loop. As barbarians invaded and raided, damage weakened the central government while also creating the incentive for local protection - cities and rich individuals raising personal militias. So magnates and cities raised their own armies, but this took money to support, meaning that central government's resources were even more limited. Which then weakened central government further, creating even greater incentive towards the local autonomy. So you have political and military decentralization feeding each other.
2. In medieval Hungary, king actively created a class of magnates that could raise the heavy cavalry necessary to counter the Mongols after the disaster that was the 1241 Mongol invasion. This active military decentralization then caused political decentralization.
3. In post-7th century Byzantine Empire, you had precisely the situation you describe for "cultural warriors": soldiers were spread through the provinces to provide protection and maintain order. Yet because the Empire had maintained tradition of the strong central government, this military decentralization did not cause decentralization of the society. Governors of the themes were military commanders, appointed and dismissed by the central government, and armies were entirely professional - despite soldiers being paid with land.

So Byzantine Empire at least breaks with your pattern, and you also have pomestie system in Russia, and Timar system in the Ottoman Empire. All three systems used local resources to maintain professional armies.

I don’t think that the situation in the Byzantine Empire really breaks the pattern. The Byzantine Empire was the cultural inheritor of the Roman Empire which had converted to a professional military culture 700 years earlier following the Marian reforms. They still had a strong central government in the mid 7th century, so there is no reason why it would revert to a cultural warrior military system.

And in any case - those ‘provinces’ were basically countries. The authority within those provinces was centralised around the Governor who had the means to maintain professional armed forces. It’s not like every village was relying on the local knight for protection.

 

[Aldarion]

I don’t think that the situation in the Byzantine Empire really breaks the pattern. The Byzantine Empire was the cultural inheritor of the Roman Empire which had converted to a professional military culture 700 years earlier following the Marian reforms. They still had a strong central government in the mid 7th century, so there is no reason why it would revert to a cultural warrior military system.

And in any case - those ‘provinces’ were basically countries. The authority within those provinces was centralised around the Governor who had the means to maintain professional armed forces. It’s not like every village was relying on the local knight for protection.

Well, you should have worded it better then because the description you provided was pretty much what was going on in the Byzantine Empire. Literally the only difference between Byzantine theme system and Western European feudalism was that in Byzantine Empire there was no dissolution of the central authority.

Also, as I said - there is a difference between professional soldiers and professional army. I still consider knights to be de-facto professional soldiers.

 

[Gray-Hand]

Well, you should have worded it better then because the description you provided was pretty much what was going on in the Byzantine Empire. Literally the only difference between Byzantine theme system and Western European feudalism was that in Byzantine Empire there was no dissolution of the central authority.

Also, as I said - there is a difference between professional soldiers and professional army. I still consider knights to be de-facto professional soldiers.

Yeah, I thinking on the nation rather than empire scale when I wrote what you responded to.

I agree with you about knights being professional warriors, but I think that’s probably true of pretty much any type of ‘cultural warrior’ I can think of off the top of my head. If it were a Venn diagram, the cultural warrior circle would be inside the professional warrior circle.

 

[Finchbearer]

Knights were a fickle invention though…not all knights were interested in protecting communities or of being gallant or even proficient ‘warriors’. A lot of them were just culturally expected to enter into knighthood for personal gain or loyalty to the Lords. Some were just sons of noblemen who probably felt obligated to go down that route.

 

[Aldarion]

Knights were a fickle invention though…not all knights were interested in protecting communities or of being gallant or even proficient ‘warriors’. A lot of them were just culturally expected to enter into knighthood for personal gain or loyalty to the Lords. Some were just sons of noblemen who probably felt obligated to go down that route.

That however depends on the period. Original definition of knight is fundamentally "heavily armored horseman". Hence why "cavalry" comes from "cavalier". Many knights weren't even landed but rather paid with money... professional soldiers in all senses of the term.

It was only later that knights become an official social stratum in their own, and from that point on you also get differentiation of "knight" from "mounted man-at-arms", with latter being basically what knight used to be before.

 

[Malik]

That however depends on the period. Original definition of knight is fundamentally "heavily armored horseman". Hence why "cavalry" comes from "cavalier". Many knights weren't even landed but rather paid with money... professional soldiers in all senses of the term.

It was only later that knights become an official social stratum in their own, and from that point on you also get differentiation of "knight" from "mounted man-at-arms", with latter being basically what knight used to be before.

The way I built this in my fantasy world, knights are mounted cavalry, expensive and rare. They're mostly lower nobility, primarily because of the expense involved in training and outfitting. They buy their own gear, horses, etc., as their duty to the king. They don't draw a salary. The orders are specialized: there's an order or knights for mapping, one for finding lost travelers, one for training knights in distant castles (who are actually spies visiting their contacts), one for airborne operations via pegasus, and of course orders of heavy cavalry, rich guys with huge weapons who grunt a lot and always look kinda sleepy.

There's a way for those who have shown promise and skill in battle to join an order of knighthood; they become "riders" for the Order, basically sergeants who command soldiers for the knights, relay information on the field, and serve as the knights' seconds. Riders draw a salary--they're not wealthy--and they rise in social standing with knighthood, which involves a grant of land or a well-paid military position at court or perhaps on staff at a castle or fortress.

Their dragoons, who ride to battle but fight on foot (much cheaper and faster than heavy cavalry), are salaried professional soldiers. Rather than being a toothless rabble, they're revered members of the artisan class and often come from generations of soldiers. This way, too, most soldiers have grown up in the trade. I don't do mooks. The lords can call up a levy if they really need one, but it's a once-in-a-generation occurrence, and most of the levied troops are support, primarily because they'd get their asses kicked.

Since there aren't a lot of knights, they're used as shock troops, flankers, and to break formations. The running joke is that knights' horses kill more people on the field than they do.

(I also did a whole thing where the merchant class is below the artisan class. Selling things you didn't make isn't nearly as respected as making the things that people sell. A merchant might make more money than an artisan, but it's considered a lower-class profession and looked-at side-eyed. My world, my rules. It's also fun because you'll have a merchant train with unfathomable wealth being guarded by salaried troops, but the merchants bow to the soldiers and treat them very kindly.)

Knights and riders greet each other as "Rider" as a term of respect, the same way soldiers in the U.S. Army who have Ranger tabs address each other as "Ranger." This also goes back to the "cavalier"/"cavalry" etymology, and I hint that their words for "rider" and "knight" share a common root.