The Zerg Swarm of Harchong

SWM wrote:This is true, but what does that have to do with the new recruits to the Host, who don't have pikes?

Weird Harold wrote:

SWM wrote:This is true, but what does that have to do with the new recruits to the Host, who don't have pikes?

Starting from Day One an army that intends to issue pikes -- or expects any other form of simultaneous actions -- is going to be teaching and reinforcing "Drill."

One of the reasons "close order drill" -- eg Pike Drill -- is still taught by most militaries is that it facilitates movement of large bodies of troops without the ill-effects of pointing a mob at the exits and shouting, "Fire!"

If the Harchongese army has successfully moved from Harchong to the Border States, they WILL have mastered basic close order drill. If they've mastered that, they're more than half-way to mastering any version of unit operations with any weapon.

n7axw wrote:...you are looking at a group that is poorly officered and led, two thirds of whom were conscripted ...

Randomiser wrote:Jeff
There won't be political problems back home just because lots of peasants are dying; that's their traditional function in a war. There may well be serious trouble about the number of men from mandarin and aristocratic families that are going to die.

I can't find the population figures tonight, but IIRC 1.3M is not a high proportion of the population of Harchong, so losing a lot of the peasant portion of it is not really going to wreck the economy or harvest that much. The landowners and bureaucracy can't know when the army is coming back even if they are totally victorious, so they will have contingency plans for getting the harvest in and the crops planted. No crops, no income, so it's in their own interest.

Tim wrote:I think 1.3 million men is a significant number. Add to that the millions of other workers moved into war industries. All of them taken from the inexhaustible manpower pool of Harchong?

The Black Death in Europe was the making of the modern world. The lost of huge numbers of peasants meant a labor shortage. The serfs now had control over a scarce valuable commodity, their labor.

So to throw out a cliché "Labor goes where it is most valued". This war is the death knell of the Harchong Empire. When the war is over I can see the empire trying to control population flow but they will fail.

I can just see a flotilla of ships floating off Harchong's coast waiting to on load refugees with labor contracts in hand.

Randomiser wrote:Jeff
There won't be political problems back home just because lots of peasants are dying; that's their traditional function in a war. There may well be serious trouble about the number of men from mandarin and aristocratic families that are going to die.

I can't find the population figures tonight, but IIRC 1.3M is not a high proportion of the population of Harchong, so losing a lot of the peasant portion of it is not really going to wreck the economy or harvest that much. The landowners and bureaucracy can't know when the army is coming back even if they are totally victorious, so they will have contingency plans for getting the harvest in and the crops planted. No crops, no income, so it's in their own interest.

Direwolf18 wrote:Caught up with the thread. Couple of things, first are we even sure the Harchong army was even being issued pikes? I was under the impression their army was a lot like their navy, mostly unarmed...

Like A Mighty Army
eARC (rtf) page 64 wrote:“They really do have close to two million infantry and cavalry, as nearly as I can tell,” the Treasurer continued. “That’s based on reports from my own transportation personnel and the number of rations they’re devouring. But I’ve got my own people looking at their manufactory records now—the real records—and I’ll be astonished if they’ve got as many as eighty thousand rifles to arm them … and fifteen or twenty thousand of those are in the hands of their Military Police, not combat units. And whether Zhaspahr wants to hear it or not, their officers are barely competent, at best.”

Maigwair looked like a man who’d just been shot, and Duchairn shrugged.

“Unless you want to simply use them as human shields to soak up the heretics’ fire so our own troops can get close enough to engage the enemy, we’ve got to improve their quality before we commit them to action. And let’s be honest here. Given the way Harchongese serfs are treated back home, expecting them to have anything like your regiments’ discipline is totally unrealistic. If you add that to the sort of casualties they’re likely to take, you’ve got a guaranteed recipe for troops who’re going to be almost as destructive to Mother Church’s loyal sons and daughters—especially her daughters—as to the heretics.”

The two vicars’ eyes met across the table, and Duchairn shrugged.

“Since we can’t move them up and feed them anyway, this is our one opportunity to give them the training—and the discipline—that might actually make them effective soldiers and not Shan-wei’s own scourge upon the Faithful as well as the apostate. I’ll come up with the food, the lumber and nails and tools to build their barracks, and some way to provide them with at least some rifles instead of arbalests, bows, and pikes. I’ve got some ideas on that subject, but I guarantee you their senior officers are going to shriek like dying dragons when they hear what I have in mind, and you don’t even want to think about what the Border States’re going to have to say about it! Shan-wei—I think this time I may manage to piss everybody off, and I know Zhaspahr’s not going to like it. But they lied to him, too, this time. I think he’s probably going to be … determined enough to back me on this if you and I can convince him it’ll work. But if I can come up with the weapons for them, you have to come up with the officers to train them, because without that, we might as well just drop any rifles we can give them into Hsing-wu’s Passage, instead. And, frankly, you need to find a way to put Army of God officers into their battalions when they move up. You’ve got to, Allayn, and you know it.”

Direwolf18 wrote:Caught up with the thread. Couple of things, first are we even sure the Harchong army was even being issued pikes? I was under the impression their army was a lot like their navy, mostly unarmed... The well equipped ones had a nail in the clubs they found along the road. Their officers plan seemed to be, in its entirety to throw these unarmed to barely armed peasants into the enemy to soak up fire and eventually smash into their lines, making an opportunity for the nobles to come charging in on their horses and break the heretic lines. Something we all know isn't going to work to well.

n7axw wrote:There was never a serious question as to whether or not they had pikes. The real issue is whether or not they knew what to do with them.

The traditional emphasis of the Harchongian army has not been pikes, but calvary armed with arbalasts and horse bows, and for shock, lances.

I would suspect that the reason for this is that the most likely use of this army was putting down slave rebellions.

A pre-SoS Siddarmarkan pike block would go through them like s**t through a wyvern.

Don