Effects a two decade long war (with truces in between) would have on a decentralized

[FifthView]

It's a fun but fruitless exercise to talk about what did not happen in history. It's hard enough to figure out what *did* happen. But standing armies and castles can and do go together. The Byzantines are but one example.

Unless the story is specifically set in a historical period on Earth, or perhaps on an alt-Earth, the question of what did or did not actually happen sometimes troubles me. Fantasy worlds are fantasy worlds. The OP did not seem to me to suggest that these countries are strongly Earth-like, even if asking for some real history parallels to use as a general guide for potential effects. Plus, magic played a role in this fantasy setup, so it's always possible that magic may have played a role similar to whatever role gunpowder played in our own history re: castles and such. (Or even a more extreme role and set of consequences.)

 

[Ban]

It's a fun but fruitless exercise to talk about what did not happen in history. It's hard enough to figure out what *did* happen. But standing armies and castles can and do go together. The Byzantines are but one example.

I don't think I fully agree. Thinking about what could have been and couldn't have been is a great way to learn more about history and the connections between events because it requires you to either dig up information wandering around somewhere in the back of your brain or to do some more research on it.

But ofcourse the OP does not need to write history exactly as it happened, especially in a fantasy world. It's just my personal preference to do so.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Yes. Cities are generally built in vast low-lying areas such as valleys or plains because these are the places able to sustain large populations. This makes it far easier for besiegers to surround the city. Castles on the other hand were generally built on defensible positions such as hills or cliffs and if such a place was not available the owner would usually build a moat around the castle which would be difficult to do for most cities due to their size.

But not all of them. Nineveh had a moat. Ancient Athens was on a hill. Both cities got captured.

The primary difference however is the supply of food. The main strength of a castle is that it allows long-time security for a relatively small group of key-figures from outside threats. Because a castle needs only defend such a small group of people it only needs a relatively small supply of food to sustain itself for months or years. A third advantage of the castle is that the people within the castle are in small enough numbers to be controlled by those in charge of the castle. In a city this is not the case however. If traders and farmers whose livelihood depended on goods produced outside of the city were to be locked up inside the city for months, the likelyhood of them rebelling against the lock-down for personal reasons would be high.

Fair point.

The size of the besieging force of a castle also wouldn't have mattered in a pre-gunpowder society. Without gunpowder the besieging force would not be able to tear the castle down unless they were willing to lose most of their manpower. Which is doubtful because even in medieval times there was a limit to how hard you could push the employed soldiers.

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Castles were great because of their redundancies, but when you have that many people there are so many things you can build to bypass them without leaving yourself open to an enemy raid that the people inside the castle are at a huge disadvantage. Like, for example, the Romans sacked Carthage with over 80 thousand troops. If an attacking force had that number of soldiers against a castle with a moat, they could, for example, have about 10,000 of them filling the moat, with another few thousand holding up wooden screens to protect the soldiers who are filling the moat from archery, another few thousand building siege towers, and still have about 60,000 soldiers ready to hammer anyone who comes out of the castle trying to disrupt the procedures. Then when the moat is filled and the siege towers are complete, they can just use the towers to get inside the castle. If instead of a moat they were on a hill, they could dig tunnels underneath, etc.

Keep in mind that the Romans did build fortresses and they did have the technical know-how to build castles. The fact that they didn't should suggest something.

 

[Ban]

You're right that not all castles were equal and that some cities had some of the advantages typical of castles. I think you're also right that almost any castle could have fallen if enough outside pressure would be placed on it, even in medieval times. Although I wouldn't go as far as to say that this is the case for every castle. There are numerous examples of castles built on high terrain that could only be reached by one path. Digging under there would be a monumentous task requiring so much manpower and resources that not even a complete lunatic would have thought about it. I would imagine that such a castle would have been nearly impenetrable no matter what pre-gunpowder army awaited outside.

On your point concerning Nineveh and Athens I would say that that is confirmation of the strength of castles. These two places were fairly large cities. Had they been castles than the occuppiers would have had to protect a far less substantial amount of land with far fewer people living in it, which would have allowed these places to survive for much longer.

I also think that the reason why large standing armies remained viable for the Romans was because they never met a people who built castles. Fortresses are not the same as they are not built to sustain the people living inside of them for extended periods of time. As far as I know not a single siege in Roman times lasted for longer than a few weeks or months. I can't even find how long Caesar's siege of Alesia lasted, so it couldn't have been too long. Yet despite this short time period, the besieged gauls ran out of food very quickly. If the romans had ever met a people who built castles than that would have changed their strategies of war significantly. Why the germanics, the gauls and all the others chose not to build castles is a different question entirely though, to which I have no answer. Perhaps they lacked the knowledge required for very long-term storage of food.

 

[TheKillerBs]

The siege of Drepana did take a few years, but that one's a naval base so it's a bit special. That said, I do believe that the reason the Romans rarely had to siege for long was that their huge professional army was so good at military engineering they were able to take fortifications in a short period of time. I highly doubt that castles would have made much difference.

 

[Ban]

That's definitely a big plus for the romans that I hadn't thought of, but Roman sieges were few and far between. Had Rome's enemies had lots of castles in the lands Rome was trying to invade than that would have allowed them to not fight the Romans on the field of battle. This would have lengthened Rome's wars significantly and have required a change in tactics, which probably would have led to a plethora of changes in the course of history.
That being said the Roman empire probably would have been able to counter their own need for castles by being such a strongly centralised state.

 

[Netardapope]

This exploded, but it went in an interesting direction. I've wondered about these questions myself sometimes.

Sent from my SM-J700M using Tapatalk