Celts - do you find it Gauling how rulesets treat them...

[DougM]

I didn't see Rich as taking Caesar et al. at face value.  Many of the references in Caesar are in his descriptions of Gallic politics, they neither advance nor retard his political objectives which ( if we can assume  that the commentaries are written as he goes along) are to tell folks innRome why he felt compelled to attack out of the Province
, start a war and add new areas to Rome's dominions which was not his original brief. A lot of the societal information is accidental to his purpose, so its highly believable. As to whether when he speaks of the 'senate' of a Gallic tribe it is something that meets regularly, has members that include wise men and Druids ,or is mainly aristocrats with military power, we do not know.
Something that suggests a fairly broad involvement is the attempts by such as Orgetorix to become kings. That implies a large body of men who can be appealed to over the heads of the aristocrats and threatens their power, hence why they are so against it and have anti regal policies enshrined in law.

Roy

I think you missed the point. It's not about the political framework. In the cast, Rich talks about Caesar's accounts of the actual battles. Which are highly suspect,  I think we can all agree. So for example, as per the recent Slingshot article, the numbers at the Sambre are highly suspect. Any conclusions drawn, for example on relative fighting strength, are very dodgy if you are basing your conclusions on Caesar's propaganda.

[Imperial Dave]

I didn't see Rich as taking Caesar et al. at face value.  Many of the references in Caesar are in his descriptions of Gallic politics, they neither advance nor retard his political objectives which ( if we can assume  that the commentaries are written as he goes along) are to tell folks innRome why he felt compelled to attack out of the Province
, start a war and add new areas to Rome's dominions which was not his original brief. A lot of the societal information is accidental to his purpose, so its highly believable. As to whether when he speaks of the 'senate' of a Gallic tribe it is something that meets regularly, has members that include wise men and Druids ,or is mainly aristocrats with military power, we do not know.
Something that suggests a fairly broad involvement is the attempts by such as Orgetorix to become kings. That implies a large body of men who can be appealed to over the heads of the aristocrats and threatens their power, hence why they are so against it and have anti regal policies enshrined in law.

Roy

I think you missed the point. It's not about the political framework. In the cast, Rich talks about Caesar's accounts of the actual battles. Which are highly suspect,  I think we can all agree. So for example, as per the recent Slingshot article, the numbers at the Sambre are highly suspect. Any conclusions drawn, for example on relative fighting strength, are very dodgy if you are basing your conclusions on Caesar's propaganda.

yes completely agree.....reliance on ancient authors is beset with problems even 'eyewitness' accounts

[aligern]

Except that with so few sources we have to be careful of editing down ancient sources until they become so skeletal that we are left with nothing.  I am quite happy with the idea that barbarian armies are smaller than is alleged by the sources, but and here is a point Patrick would have made, there is a  difficulty when there is no other source or means of logic to arrive at a different number. Patrick's is not a mantle I particularly wish to take on as I am susceptible to the argument that  armies that we do know about such as Caesar's itself top out at say 50 or 60,000 men, possibly a lot less than that as we would expect given the attrition rate of the tenth legion over the years of combat ( and we don't, of  course , know the initial strength. Marching around Gaul with many more than that looks difficult. Tge roads are not great , though the country is agriculturally productive .
However, I recall the Patrician argument on Gallic strength:
A fair assumption for Gallic numbers is four  to five million souls. In the time of Louis XIV there were supposedly twenty million inhabitants with a farming system not that greatly improved. Using an assumption that one person in four is a warrior then the military potential of the country is a million or a million and a quarter men. The discussions so far support a case that free status and military activity are quite widely spread. On that basis the Belgae might well have 250 or 300,000 men that they could only move a short distance as happened when Caesar was  approaching and the Belgae concentrated then decided  to go home.  If as this discussion suggests there are various grades of Celtic troops and  the bulk are not of the grade of the leaders then Caesar's massacre might be better taken as a slaughter of the 'professional' troops and the rest running off and losing men as the cavalry pursue. So the body count will look impressive. but might only be a third of the number engaged. Of course, the likelihood is that Caesar did not know the numbers and that the Gauls themselves  may not have known the numbers that turned up. Trouble is, if we don't have Caesar's account of the Sambre we have no account of the battle.
Roy

[DougM]

I'm instinctively wary of numbers that simply couldn't be supported by logistics. How did these 300000 feed and water themselves for more than a couple of days?

[Jim Webster]

I'm instinctively wary of numbers that simply couldn't be supported by logistics. How did these 300000 feed and water themselves for more than a couple of days?

That would worry me.
They would have to be considerably superior logistically to the Romans to keep that army in the field for any length of time.
There is a limit to how much each man could carry.

Thinking about it, it does make sense to assume that you have the soldier and his servant. The latter carries food for both of them, in the case of a horseman looks after the horse etc. The 'servant' who is just a lowly client, takes his place in the back rank with a spear and shield when the fighting starts. But even so, that doesn't solve the logistic problems of huge armies

[aligern]

They didn't  Doug. But we should remember the medieval troops who were due to turn up with supplies  for 40days .
If the Gauls had such a system then everyone could bring supplies for a defined period and go home when they ran out. c.f. the behaviour of the Gauls who. mustered to fight Ariovistus' Germans, but did not fight. Logistics was a major deficit for the Gauls when facing Caesar. He worries constantly about the grain supply and Vercingetorix' main period of success against him is when he operates a scirched earth policy.

Jim, the Cektic cavalry are said to have operated in trimarcisia, a three man unit with two mounted servabts and  a  proper warrior, a but lije a medieval lance.

https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1998_num_1998_1_2162
You will enjoy, but it comes to no conclusion
Roy

[Erpingham]

The "one in four" argument would be the top limit, given the rule of thumb that an ancient population is 50% 15 or under, and half the population are women (unless we assume large number of female combatants, for which I think we lack evidence).  It assumes every able bodied adult male can get to the fight.  No home guard, no slaves, no artisans in the oppida., no exempted Druidic class .  So maybe 1 in 5 is the real upper limit.  Again, we hit the fundamental question of whether we are talking "every free man a fully effective warrior" or whether a lot of them are actually basically equipped and untrained and suitable only in home defence or at the back of a great migrating horde.

Doug's point on logistics is a fair one.  We may suggest that the entire country had a military labour force of a million available, but how many could be assembled together and supported?   

[Jim Webster]

They didn't  Doug. But we should remember the medieval troops who were due to turn up with supplies  for 40days .
If the Gauls had such a system then everyone could bring supplies for a defined period and go home when they ran out. c.f. the behaviour of the Gauls who. mustered to fight Ariovistus' Germans, but did not fight. Logistics was a major deficit for the Gauls when facing Caesar. He worries constantly about the grain supply and Vercingetorix' main period of success against him is when he operates a scirched earth policy.

Jim, the Cektic cavalry are said to have operated in trimarcisia, a three man unit with two mounted servabts and  a  proper warrior, a but lije a medieval lance.

https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1998_num_1998_1_2162
You will enjoy, but it comes to no conclusion
Roy

the mounted lance makes sense because we forget that the Cavalryman was, almost by definition, a gentleman, an aristocrat, wealthy enough to own horses. Of course he'll travel with servants, and I suppose they rode 'spare horses' which he would ride if his warhorse needed resting

[aligern]

i don't know about the 1 in 4, 1 in 5 as a multiplier for actual military potential .  Not very many men would  live beyond military age and there would be some exemptions as Erpingham says, but military age probably starts at 15. Most infants die in the first years if life so I would expect there to be less than  40% of the population aged 0-15. We need an anthropologist here.
The Helvetii are a special case because they have a wagon train loaded with food that they had planted in increased amount in previous years.
We might indeed query how many Gauls could be assembled in one place , but to be fair to Caesar....only his due...he does not say that the Gauls assemble  a million or anything lije that in one place.  They  make a supreme effort to relieve Alesia, but that army shows every sign of logistic collapse, retiring when it coukd have maintained the pressure if it had the resources.
Roy

[DougM]

Personally, I'm just wondering how an individual brings supplies for 40 days? Meat, grain, water... that's about 120kg minimum. Exclude water and assume you're marching by a river large enough, it's still a huge load, that assumes your locally available supplies are readily portable. What are you doing if you're a dairy farmer? Or a shepherd?

[Tim]

So we are back to discussing numbers.

Understand that it is possible that Gaul could support more men than the lands of Greece, Asia Minor and the Fertile Cresent combined but take Ipsus. The survivours of the Diadochi bring everything they can muster for the final confrontation. On one side you have the Antigonids, the other side the Seleucids, combined with the rulers of Macedon and Thrace. Even these great leaders cannot bring much more than 150,000 men to the battle BETWEEN THEM despite combining the resources of Macedon, Greece, the Balkans, Asia Minor and the Persian Empire. Do we really believe that the Gauls could on their own logistically support twice that many men in one place? At Wagram the combined armies of France, her Allies, and the Habsburgs totalled approximately 300,000 men. Napoleon and Berthier, probably the greatest general and the greatest staff officer combination ever, could not bring 200,000 men into one place. If Vercingetorix could get anything like 300,000 men armed and supplied in one place to fight the Romans, then Clauswitz should have been writing about how he conducted war.

[Justin Swanton]

Personally, I'm just wondering how an individual brings supplies for 40 days? Meat, grain, water... that's about 120kg minimum. Exclude water and assume you're marching by a river large enough, it's still a huge load, that assumes your locally available supplies are readily portable. What are you doing if you're a dairy farmer? Or a shepherd?

I'm reminded of Boudicca's last battle against Suetonius. She brought a very large force to the battle which is credible as the Britons also brought a large baggage train along with them, big enough to block the retreat of Boudicca's army:

At first, the legionaries stood motionless, keeping to the defile as a natural protection: then, when the closer advance of the enemy had enabled them to exhaust their missiles with certitude of aim, they dashed forward in a wedge-like formation. The auxiliaries charged in the same style; and the cavalry, with lances extended, broke a way through any parties of resolute men whom they encountered. The remainder took to flight, although escape was difficult, as the cordon of wagons had blocked the outlets. The troops gave no quarter even to the women: the baggage animals themselves had been speared and added to the pile of bodies. - Tacitus: The Annals, 14.37

It is easy enough to conceive that the Gauls, no less capable than the Britons in logistics, would have supplied their warriors in the same way.

[davidb]

On logistics, Nathan Rosenstein, in Military Logistics from the Web Essays on the Landmark Julius Caesar,  gives the following figures. He gives Caesar 8 legions of 4,000 men each. "Eight legions required four thousand mules plus more for officers and centurions, and several hundred muleteers. Allies, too, needed pack animals. And officers and other aristocrats, reenlisted veterans, and of course the cavalrymen all rode horses"  We can assume that the needs of a Gallic force of roughly the same size would be similar. (Probably more horses and less mules.)  The question then is, how big of an army can the Gauls sustains and for how long. Given these numbers, a considerable number of Gauls would be required as much, if not more, for supplying the army as for the actual fighting.

"The amounts of food required by an army of 20,000–40,000 men, its entourage,
and animals quickly reached staggering totals. Roman (and presumably allied) soldiers,
being shorter and lighter than their modern counterparts, needed somewhat less food.
One estimate puts their daily caloric needs at around 3,300, supplied by about 2.64
pounds/1,200 grams of various foodstuffs. At that rate, 32,000 legionnaires needed
about 42.43 U.S. tons (38.5 metric tons) of food daily, 15,066 tons (13,677.5 metric
tons) each 355-day year. A pack mule might eat 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of grain and
12.12 pounds (5.5 kilograms) of green fodder or hay daily, so that these legionnaires'
4,000 or more mules would require at least 33 tons (30 metric tons) a day, 11,740
(10,650 metric) per year. Horses ate even more. If 4,000 cavalrymen each had a pair of
mounts, these would need 84 tons (76 metric tons) of grain and hay daily, 29,740
(26,980 metric) in a year. Add the food requirements of other personnel and animals, and
the total might easily exceed 66,000–77,000 tons (60,000–70,000 metric tons) annually.

Nor does this exhaust the list of what an army needed."

[DougM]

My conclusion is that Roman annalists 300,000 is much more likely to be 15,000.

[Erpingham]

We did assemble some resources on ancient logistics here

In terms of comparing medieval and Celtic logistics, we should remember that the contingents with their 40 days were usually in organised groups and could invest in transport for the group, so Celts may have done likewise.  We might also consider peaceful passage rather than living off the land.  If we take the Carolingian system, there were strict limits on what an army could take for free in friendly territory (essentially water and fodder).  To assemble a multi-tribal army, agreements to allow passage of allies, what supplies they could expect to source and what they needed to carry would need to be agreed.