Between attrition (lost in battle), needing to leave troops behind to control conquered territory, and longer supply lines, shouldn’t the armies have gotten significantly thinner and weaker.
In: 247
So this answer is moreso true in the pre-modern world as war changed *a lot* in the last two centuries.
If you go back and look at the breakdowns of old wars, one thing you’ll notice is that there tends to be 1 or 2 key battles…and that’s it. Pre-industrial nation-states tended to be quite fragile, and incapable of taking too many punches so to speak. Part of that is because maintaining a standing army was usually far to expensive, so most places didn’t. They would have a small core of professional soldiers, often called a royal guard or something to that effect, but the bulk of the army would be conscripted peasants who likely had never held a weapon before. So this means it can take a good bit of time for you to get your army together because you need to go gather everyone up, make the weapons and kit, gather supplies, get everyone together and organized and then go off to battle. Often in history a smaller number of more professional soldiers will handily defeat a scrapped together army of conscripts. This is in part why the Roman legions were so effective, especially in the late-Republic to early Empire days.
So if you go through all of that…and then *lose*, you historically would be in a really bad shape. You have to try to muster up additional forces all the while dealing with the army that just defeated you.
Now the invading army may also be taking losses, but they tended to be actively recruiting along the way. Often the other neighbours or even some parts of the state being invaded didn’t really want to be part of that state, so they join the invaders once they think they’ll win to get a better deal. These turn arounds are actually rather common, and was a textbook strategy of the Romans, Carthaginians, and even latter the British Empire.
Latest Answers