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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[varelishawt]

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