Preindustrial travel tangent – Warhorses [Part 2b]

Part 2b of my Preindustrial travel series, with much of the text copied from this link. I also added some notes for clarity.

-Part 1: Preindustrial travel times.

-Part 2a: Preindustrial travel times – Armies.

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First of all: DESTRIERS WERE NOT DRAFT HORSES. Horse/military historians are begging people to stop putting their fantasy knights on Shires, Belgians, and other massive, chunky farm-horses! The best known instance of “a knight needs to get lifted onto their 18-hand draft horse” is a SATIRE (A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, if I remember right), but somehow laymen decided to take it seriously.

Hell, I think the film’s historians knew that this was extremely inaccurate and begged the director not to do it.

For the purposes of this post, I will not get into the different TYPES OF WARHORSES. That is a hyper-fixation for another day, lol.

Preindustrial travel times – Armies [Part 2a]

Hello folks, this is Part 2a of my preindustrial traveling series! As with my first post, it’s been copied and pasted from the Tumblr link.

Series links:

-Part 1: Preindustrial travel times.

-Part 2b: Preindustrial travel tangent – Warhorses.

Now for a key aspect that many people often ask about: Preindustrial ARMY travel times!

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Much of this information was explained by Bret Devereaux’s article “How fast do armies move?” (https://acoup.blog/2019/10/06/new-acquisitions-how-fast-do-armies-move/)

A given preindustrial force will usually move at 8-12 miles per day (with the usual caveats of “fair weather and good roads”). Caveat: Exclude the Mongols and other extreme outliers.

Why are armies only covering half the distance of civilian travelers?

Captain Obvious’ answer: BECAUSE A SOLDIER’S KIT IS HEAVY, MOTHERFUCKER. AND BARRING EMERGENCIES, EVERY COMMANDER WHO HAS MORE THAN TEN FIGHTERS AND MORE THAN TWO BRAIN-CELLS WILL HAVE A SHITTON MORE STUFF AND MORE PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH THAN THE SOLDIERS.

No, that’s not an exaggeration. A preindustrial force larger than 10-20 foot soldiers, or any force who expects to travel for more than a couple of days in VERY nice weather, will need 1) AT LEAST ONE CART OR WAGON to carry tents, firewood, food, and cookware, and 2) AT LEAST A FEW CAMP FOLLOWERS to actually set up camp.