I see a case where I would actually pay good GBs to get a unit of “Levies” back, instead of Infantry; Levies are people that were depleted from your province: if you don’t get them back the level loss is permanent!
I guess I’d pay back units only if I got hurt from them being missing (i.e. if musters are fixed on province level and you can’t re-muster another unit for one that is currently captive)
I can’t imagine a circumstance where people would take captives of any but the few knights and nobles. There are compelling reasons why its far more common for armies to kill prisoners despite the ransoms (Henry V at Agincort) than to take prisoners of commoners. The common practice when commoners were taken prisoner was to simply parole them.
Peasants don’t own enough land to calculate a ransom for. Given 10 acres per adult male, maybe 3 males per silver piece. Since it costs 1sp per day to hire a common soldier, you have a break even point for one day of 1 soldier guarding 3 peasants. If it takes more guards, or it takes longer than a day to ransom them, this is a money losing situation. And this assumes you pay zero for upkeep.
Hmm, so the peasants know that if captured they will be killed - and fight to the death? That’s impractical if you want to win battles.
Now a roaming cull that decimates the population to weaken a lord or draw them out is one thing - a tactic used in medieval times that Nemanja drew to my attention, massacring captives is another, it encourages your enemy to fight and is therefore counter-productive.
Of course putting your captives to work building your barricades, etc, confiscating their weapons, and chasing them well away should be more profitable even if they are worthless as ransom - although a lord needing their harvest brought in should be willing to pay something - they may get paid ‘x’ sp a day, but the lord gets much of his money during the harvest making the ransom profitable…
That said, ‘nasty brutish and short’ is a fair description of much life in medieval times, and being worthless as ransom would certainly explain low morale and ready routs amongst peasant troops.
Peasants would only fight to the death if they thought surrender was worse than death in battle, like torture by evil humanoids. And, they couldn’t simply run away.
Units that are “destroyed” are not killed, but rendered combat ineffective. Once you’ve seen enough of your comrades cut down, you lose the ability to fight. The long term trauma from this is shell shock, combat fatigue, or whatever you want to call it. In the short term, during battle, troops just loose the capacity to fight.
When this happens depends on how well trained troops are. Levied peasants are basically untrained, so they lose effectiveness pretty quickly. They can endure a single hit and then are removed as “destroyed”. This doesn’t mean every peasant was killed, it means the peasants not killed are so panicked that they can’t fight properly, and won’t be rallied by a good looking man on a horse.
So after a battle the idea is relatively few captives or dead, but lots of fleeing soldiers trying to get home / hide?
Yes.
They run for a while, and what happens is highly dependent on circumstances. They could:
In enemy territory this is the worst case to the best case scenarios. In friendly territory that stays friendly, going home is preferable to becoming bandits. Under normal circumstances, #4 can be a sizable number of troops. The more catastrophic the defeat, the less you get of #4, and more you get of the rest. If the regent is killed in battle, the whole army could dissolve. Armies had a tendency in the middle ages to fall apart if the commander was killed. After Hastings, where the King was killed, the English army never reformed and William was free to capture towns, fortresses, bridges, and strategic places.
Typically in the bloodiest battles, the winner loses a quarter of his troops, is able to rally all his broken units within a day or so, is ready to resume operations in a week, and continues to function as an army.
Typically the loser loses a third of his troops in battle, some additional losses to desertion, and depending on how many units were routed or “destroyed” could be ready to operate again in a month, or may be reduced to holding together the core of the army, too small to face the adversary a second time.
Something I’ve wondered in larger battles: what happens when the ranks of troops are so deep that retreat is flight back into lines behind, and the press of troops is crushing?
I realize that having the front ranks panicking and fleeing back into ranks behind would cause the following ranks a severe morale test (easily representable in BR as having a unit behind make a morale check if the unit in front routs).
But what are casualties like? The front ranks can’t escape easily, and the following ranks may even be commanded to cut down fleeing soldiers. Seems to me that these, like with routed units getting run down by skirmishers, could suffer terrible loss.
It seems to me existing rules easily handle either a high casualty or low casualty scenario, but not both. If a “destroyed” unit only suffers 10% to 30% casualties, it can be reformed. If it routs, however, and then is cut down in greater numbers due to aforementioned causes, how do we represent that? Allow further Attack actions to bring units down to -2 hits, at which point they are diminished to the point of not being able to be reformed?
Yeah, they’re all dead.
If it routs, however, and then is cut down in greater numbers due to aforementioned causes, how do we represent that? Allow further Attack actions to bring units down to -2 hits, at which point they are diminished to the point of not being able to be reformed?
No need for attacks. That assumes defense and a some chance of failure. Basically I get very good results by just assuming that one pursuing unit kills one fleeing unit. The question at hand is defenders in the rear guard. If the defeated army can, they’ll field defenders to cover their retreat. General George Washington knew how to handle a retreat. Its why he kept his army in being until the end of the war. You can stop every pursuer by throwing a proper unit at it. This creates a skirmish after the main battle. You can use regular attacks and defense here.
So how do you know if the defenders are effective in time?
Only units that withdrew in good order can be used to counter pursuers. If they weren’t in good order at the end of battle, they won’t be in good order by the end of the pursuit. If you like, PC’s might be able to rally a single fleeing unit because PC’s are special, powerful, and courageous.
Do you have a pdf reference of population numbers (from your castle post) & this thread’s land mass reference for Bright’s continent?