How big is a division?

[zute]

I apologize for another lame-ass question, but in the story I'm writing now this actually has relevance. It's the difference between paranoia and reasonable concern.

When you rescue Riordan he tells you that Loghain had turned away 200 Grey Wardens and two dozen divisions of cavalry.  When I looked up division sizes I got utterly enormous numbers like 10,000 for single light infantry division, in the modern army. I'm sure that must be vastly larger than in middle ages terms.

Does anyone have a feel for how many actually people that would be? 

My thanks!

Zute

Comments

[cave_fatuam]

Okay, it's my understanding that a division really is that many people. Divisions weren't really the standard unit until the World Wars when that many men were actually involved.
It seems like if they were going with a modern military structure they probably at most meant a company which is roughly around 100 to 200 individuals.
That would still be 5000 cavalry men though.
My background in anything involving an army is mostly related to the American Civil War. So to me a division would be at around 12 to 20 thousand men... or less as the war went on and each side wanted to seem like they had more men. Xl
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Okay so, that probably wasn't very helpful, but I did math. That warrants a post. :D

[sabreene]

I do my figures in a strange way.

For lack of a better method, I take the numbers given in the wiki, and found a math correlation. It says a group is 50,000 to 100,000 and a division is 10,000 to 18,000.

The lowest by the lowest was .2, and the highest by the highest .18, which both felt a little too big (out of 555 soldiers, 100 would be mounted). So I took the smallest number for a division (10,000) and the middle number from the group (75,000) and came up with .135

So if the army group (group, not whole army) is 5000, then the division is 675. (times 5000 by .135)

Or, if the division is 150, the group is 1150 (1111, exactly, but I rounded up)(divide 150 by .135)

I based it on the quote from below:

From this, "The biggest units of some armies are called army groups, comprising several hundred thousand soldiers. 50,000 to 100,000 soldiers form a single corps, and many such corps forms an army. Each of the corps is divided into two or more divisions and any necessary support troops.

The basic fighting unit of many armies is known as the division, which include infantry, armored forces... [snip] Each of the division may vary in size from about 10,000 to 18,000 soldiers.

[zute]

So, I think 24 divisions calculating it using your method would still be just an enormous number. Like 1/4 of their standing army?

[sabreene]

It should be closer to 1/7 and 1/8 of the group, .2 =1/5 and .125 = 1/8, so .135 is in the middle of that. But that's of the group, not the whole army. So for the whole army... I don't know. 24 divisions of calvary in one army seems like it must be a pretty large army!

Or maybe they count divisions like they are battlions or companies, which would make them much smaller.

Because no matter how you count it, 24 divisions seem like they would be an awful lot of men.

[elysium_fic]

If it helps, a legion is 3000-6000 troops, and Loghain also says later that they wanted to bring in four legions of chevaliers, which would have been 12,000-24,000 soldiers.

[zute]

Oh! So he did say that? I thought I had heard that too, but then went over the Riordan dialogue and heard 2 dozen cavalry divisions.

So, either way you slice it, it's a butt-load of guys.

If I recall correctly, it sounded like they only had about 2,000 or so troops at Ostagar and they estimated the horde was 10,000 or more.

It is a little surprising to me that this enormous army of Orlesians were so easily turned away at the border. They could have said, "You and what army?" *lol* and come across anyway.

[elysium_fic]

Given the geography of Thedas, I'm operating on the notion that passing into Ferelden from the west has to be done at a mountain pass if they're not coming by sea, which is likely a pretty defensible position (ala 300) . Still, with that sort of numerical disparity, it would seem like if the Orlesians HAD been belligerent, they could have broken through eventually; they just likely would have taken a lot of losses to do it.

[sabreene]

It always struck me as strange that they used the terms legions and divisions, because the two terms come from completely different military styles.

Really I think it's much like most of the game -- loosely based on the time & reality. So they could make a division mean however many men they wanted to.

[scarylady]

My husband is asking some wargamer friends on facebook for me, so we may have a proper answer at some point. Not sure when, though.

[zute]

Thanks! I appreciate it. Right now I'm going to assume it's a big enough number to make Loghain nervous, even without his paranoia about Orlais.

[sakuratea]

Even if it was as little as a few hundred, it makes sense to me that it would be enough to make Loghain nervous. People don't forget occupations quickly. I think he could be justified in his fears or not...

Woo hoo open-ended game!

[sakuratea]

those numbers seem crazy big to me. Louis XIV's enormous French Army only had 120,000 people. Quotes I get for Henry VIII's cavalry divisions are about 50-100. I think the numbers might even be smaller. England invaded France a number of times in the late middle ages with forces hovering around 24,000-30,000. Now, even if it was only 240 cavalry, that's a huge number of the best trained, best armed, most dangerous (not to mention notorious and hated) members of their army. Especially since I think that Ferelden probably lost a large portion of their army at Ostagar.

[klarabella]

That's true. I saw some guys discuss this on the BSN forums once and they came up with surprisingly small numbers.

They explained that the cavalry would be accompanied by infantry, of course. Their estimation was that a legion was about 1000 people, with only 100-250 cavalry. Or something to that extend. I can't find the link. :-/

Standing armies are expensive and Orlais is constantly disputing the boundaries with Nevarra, they're traditionally at war. On the other hand a Blight is coming and if it's not beat back on Fereldan soil, Orlais is likely next in line.

Ostagar is a big pile of nonsense, according to people who claim to know a bit about medieval warfare. Cailan would have been with a small portion of the army in a defensible position (Cailan ordering them to charge the darkspawn and break the line is so stupid that it should be ignored, really, no one would do that), while the majority would have been with Loghain. Ordering the retreat after one or two hours easily makes Loghain look like a fool (or a traitor), considering that in such a setup Cailan's men should have been able to hold out for days(!).

If Loghain is really concerned about Orlais armies amassing at the borders (at Cailan's request, without trying to cross them), why exactly does he spark civil war? While the darkspawn are devastating the south? It's like he's determined to offer Ferelden to Orlais on a silver plate. *headdesk*

[zute]

I'm trying to remember from The Stolen Throne how many chevaliers they had in Ferelden. I remember it mentioned some number of legions at one point. It seemed like it was 4-ish. Of course, there were probably unmounted troops too.

I wish I had the e-book so I could search it.

[elysium_fic]

This is some very helpful information, as I'm presently in a place in my writing where dissecting Loghain's mentality is very important, and these are good details to have. Thank you.

[prisoner_24601]

I don't know shit about warfare, but the way I always figured Ostagar happened, was that you had Cailan's troops in the pass, Loghain's off to one side. The plan being to wait until the darkspawn were close enough to Cailan's troops and then sweep in from the side and cut them off from behind to catch the darkspawn in the pass between the two sections of the army.

But what happened was that there were a lot more darkspawn than anyone thought. The darkspawn and they didn't have enough soldiers. And the situation turned from "Hey, let's cut them off from behind" to "Holy shit, there's four times their number and they just keep coming. If we go down in there, we're going to be the ones that get sandwiched between their troops, cut off and slaughtered.

At least that's how I interpret it.

[prisoner_24601]

Yeah those numbers seem crazy big to me too. Having that huge of a standing army is really freaking expensive. Unless you're massive and super wealthy like the sprawling Roman Empire, I don't think they could support any army that large.

[scarylady]

Right, apparently they didn't have divisions at all in the middle ages.

An army was divided into 3 Battles (or Bataille in French/Orlesian). The size of a Bataille was determined by the size of the army.

Within each Bataille there would be a number of Retinue Company Household Familia (or Household Familia Regis or King's Household Lance depending on your country). This was a european term for a group of troops where you have a knight, 2-3 men at arms, 6-10 archers etc

Or there could be a number of Lances Fournies, which is a unit of 10 men based around a knight.

Personally I'd be tempted to take the latter to be your division, led by a Chevalier. That'd make 240 men + 24 Chevaliers. In this case, then, they would be split into 3 Batailles of 80 men, led by 8 Chevaliers. Does that help?

[sakuratea]

Your numbers make the most sense to me. I think that would be enough to make a person nervous, even though I'm very much not a Loghainista.

[scarylady]

Yeah, an army big enough to make Loghain nervous, but not one the size of Napoleon's force in the Pyranees which would just be stupid for a world with medieval population figures.

[varelishawt]

Large forces of cavalry separated into 10,000 strong men were not unheard of in medieval times.

[elysium_fic]

Not unheard-of, but certainly rare. I think if any nation in Thedas is capable of marshalling such a force, it would be Orlais, but just because the COULD, I'm not certain they WOULD.

Looking at the historical and military equation, it becomes really apparent that it just doesn't benefit Orlais to invade Ferelden, or even to rattle their sabers in the direction of Ferelden, with a Blight looming.

As the seat of the Divine of the Andrastrian Chantry, as well as being surrounded by countries that have been hit hard by Blights in the past, Orlais cannot avoid having a fairly accurate understanding of just what a Blight means and just how much devastation it can wreak.

Ferelden doesn't, because they've never been touched by a Blight. Orlais has, and Orlais is also right next door to the Anderfels, which apparently has areas that were so corrupted by the First and Second Blights that the corpses left never decomposed properly because of the lack of insects and microbes to gnaw on them.

Orlais knows this, and because they know this, two other facts become apparent:

1) it will be of NO profit to them to conquer Ferelden if Ferelden falls to the Blight. Oh, look, we've conquered a wasteland! Whoopee! When I say no profit to them, I mean that literally. If Ferelden is so corrupted by the Blight that they can't grow crops or pay taxes, then it will be a huge expenditure to send and maintain troops in Ferelden with no return on investment. There would simply be no point to it.

2) If they distract Ferelden's defenses, they weaken their own defenses. The only hope Orlais has to prevent the Blight spreading to their own soil is to stop it on Fereldan soil. The Divine in Val Royeaux have to be shitting in their robes about that possibility, to the point where I'm actually surprised they're not sending an army of templars to help. Orlais understands the Blight, they understand the very real threat they're under, which means they very sincerely WANT to be Ferelden's New Best Friend.

Would I put it past the empress to try to turn the situation to her advantage and use that newfound spirit of cooperation to attempt a more subtle takeover, like, say, coaxing Cailan into marriage? No. But all the information on her indicates that shes a savvy enough ruler to know that it's in her best interest NOT to frighten Ferelden with military threats.

This, I think, is the biggest tragedy of Loghain's actions. Do I believe HE believed Orlais to be a serious threat? Sure. But in the end that threat was in his imagination. He wasn't seeing the whole picture. Because he didn't take the Blight seriously or understand just what was at stake, he didn't see that Orlais WAS taking the Blight seriously, that they DID know what was at stake, and thus was no danger to Ferelden.

[zute]

It wouldn't make much sense to do it before the Blight is dealt with. Assuming the Blight was handled in a timely manner and it didn't leave Ferelden all blighted and gross, most of those forces could still be in the country and possibly disinclined to leave.

There isn't enough information to know whether or not Orlais was truly a threat or whether they were potentially good allies. There's a gap of 30 years since the end of the occupation and we don't know whether there had been assassination attempts, plots uncovered, spies, etc.

I am certain that Loghain would never trust Orlais. Sometimes you just have to wait for the older generation to die off before you can make progress in changing attitudes. One thing I wondered about is how long it took people who experienced Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust to trust the Japanese or the Germans as allies. It probably takes longer the worse your experience is.

Empress Celene was pretty sly to murder her uncle and outmaneuver her cousins to get the throne at age 17. Who knows what sort of plots she was hatching.

[prisoner_24601]

No I'm sorry, but I disagree.

It makes all sorts of sense for them to try and invade Ferelden, especially if, like you say, they thought the blight was for real. For one thing, if the Ferelden screws this up, then it makes things bad for Orlais in the long run. Better to go in there and take care of it yourself, then letting the noobs handle it and standing on the sidelines hoping for the best.

However, I think assuming that Orlais is somehow more appreciative of blights more so than Ferelden is quite a logical leap. Hasn't it been hundreds of years since the last blight? It's human nature for people to forget how bad things in the past were and not appreciate appreciate the danger. Look at the brutal Orlesian occupation as an example - it's still within living memory, and yet you already have the king of the next generation being dumb enough to consider marrying the Empress and handing over Ferelden without a fight. And that's within 30 years, not with a few hundred year gap between blights.

I mean, really, we don't know if Celene actually has taken the blight seriously or not. There's no real evidence for this in the game either way. And from Loghain's point of view, even if there has been no saber rattling from Orlais, with the brutal Orlesian occupation only 30 years prior, it makes a lot of sense to be wary of this huge occupational force that is there to "help." It is entirely possible that the Orlesians would come in with their much larger forces, fight the blight and then never actually leave. So really, it's entirely rational of him to keep the Orlesians out, especially in this circumstance.

Where he makes his mistake, I think, is that he doesn't take the blight seriously enough, which is unfortunate and gets people killed as he's busy sending assassins after the grey wardens, poisoning Eamon and whatnot.

[niniane]

Why wouldn't it benefit Orlais to invade Ferelden? I mean, it's got land. Trees. Probably mineral resources of some sort. They invaded before for a reason, I'd assume. If it was worth something then, why not now?

The last Blight was, what? 400 years ago? I mean, you can't even get Americans all that freaked out about flu, despite that we had an epidemic that killed more than any war only about 100 years in the past (and probably better record keeping). It wouldn't surprise me if Orlais isn't all that worried, or figures that with it's military force and large stock of Wardens that it's just fine. (After all, they can let Ferelden take the brunt of the Blight, then come in afterwards and either eliminate the Blight, or eliminate the few stragglers remaining in Ferelden. Easy peasy!)

1. I'm not sure that Ferelden will be a wasteland after the Blight. It might be, but the farmland may still be fertile and great to give to some good Orlesian peasants. Mineral resources should be intact. Likely there will still be lumber. Really, it's a gold mine!

2. I'd agree that it makes more sense to stop the Blight in Ferlden than in Orlais. But potentially Orlais thinks that they can wait until the Blight takes out 90% of the Ferelden defenses, then march in, take out the Blight, then finish off Ferelden. That's probably what I would do, were I Celene (and totally ruthless, but she seems to be.)

I think a lot depends on how risk averse you think Celene is, as well as how badly damaged you'd expect land to be post-Blight. (Like, do you destroy just the infrastructure and kill all the people, or totally salt the earth, too?) If Celene's not too risk-averse *and* doesn't think that the Blight would destroy Ferelden forever and ever, she's probably going to post her troops at the border and merrily wait it out until one side is dead and the other is weakened.