eli5: How did old militaries (such as ancient Rome) manage to keep fed and hydrated thousands soldiers in long military campaigns over long distance and time?
In: 8
There are a number of ways armies fed themselves and they usually used any or all of them as the situation permitted or demanded.
1) Supply trains – The army would bring food and water with it on the march, and several days behind them would be even more wagons carrying food and supplies, and on and on so you had a continual shipments of food, water, and anything else you needed. Obviously this tactic relies heavily on both the safety of the area and on the wealth of the army to pay for all this.
2) Foraging – Here the army uses some of their soldiers to hunt wildlife, gather wild plants, and even sometimes harvest crops if/when the original owners fled. This is a great way to supply your army cheaply, but this gathering will slow your army down and when you have several thousand men you very quickly drain the local area of any “free” resources.
3) Requisition – The army just takes the civilian population’s supplies. Sometimes the army would provide a monetary compensation, but even when they did you were are the general’s generosity to get a fair price. And even then you can’t eat money.
4) Pillaging – Basically requisition but without the possibility of compensation and with the addition of property damage and murder. Primarily reserved for when in enemy territory and you didn’t care about local reputation.
Just like today a huge amount of effort went into logistics. Commanders knew that an unsupplied army was a weak army and used that to their advantage whenever possible.
Latest Answers