4 ms·
A castle doesn't necessarily have many people in it. If you have access to water, you can store quite a bit of food for a small number of people. The issue is
by bsder 3y ago
A castle doesn't necessarily have many people in it. If you have access to water, you can store quite a bit of food for a small number of people.
The issue is that an army MUST forage. An army will burn up all the food in an area very quickly--at which point it must move.
Now that you are moving, your back flank is vulnerable to the attackers which were in the castle. And you have a bunch of pissed off locals who hate you for eating all their food.
There was a reason why "quartering of troops" was explicitly written into the US Constitution.
- Dalewyn 3y agoNot only that, an important thing to consider as the besieging force was to have at least triple the numbers of the garrison defending the castle.[1] So if a castle was garrisoned by a defending force of 2,000, you wanted at least 6,000 men as the besieging force to even stand a chance of winning the siege whether through killing or attrition. And this quickly grows exponentially for the besiegers as the defending force becomes bigger: If the defenders numbered 5,000 men, you wanted 15,000 men as the besiegers. So not only did the besiegers have a harder time fighting compared to the defenders, the logistical requirements and demands for the besiegers was significantly larger than anything the defenders had to deal with. [1]: https://www.quora.com/How-large-of-an-army-unit-in-medieval-times-is-needed-for-a-siege-attack-1 https://www.quora.com/How-large-of-an-army-unit-in-medieval-...
- persnickety 3y agoNitpick: you mean that it grows linearly, not exponentially.