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

[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.

[aithne]

Or it's possible that, given the strained political situation between Ferelden and Orlais, they decided to sit tight rather than risk an international incident.

After all, Blights historically take years to resolve. They probably figured that they had time.

(but, holy crap, that's a lot of armed men to be sitting on your border. Okay, Loghain, I have a whole lot more sympathy for your position right now.)

[prisoner_24601]

You know, it's quite possible that the Orlesian troops were so easily turned away at the border because they figured either going in or not it's a win/win for them. If Loghain lets them in, then there's this huge standing army right in the middle of Ferelden - and then they just refuse to leave once the fighting was over. In that case they'd still probably have some resistance from what was left of Ferelden's army.

On the other hand, they can wait out the blight safely on the other side of the mountains and cross it later after Ferelden has been ravaged by the blight and the troops are even thinner and in worse shape. I mean, it seems to me that at the end of the game Orlais is still an extremely real and immediate threat considering how beat up the Ferelden military, supply lines, roads, infrastructure, etc... would be.

[niniane]

This. Esp. as Orlais has Grey Wardens, an army, etc. I'd imagine that Celene is thinking "well, if the Blight kills everyone, we take out the arch demon with a thief turned Grey Warden and take over. If the Blight doesn't, we kill the few remaining". It's really win-win from a conqueror's stand point.