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.
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Are you sure you don’t have cause and effect reversed? Strong armies can conquer more oand especially if they smashed the opposing forces in the first opening moves of the war leaving them free to move further into enemy territory.
Something to consider is that the relative strength of the victorious army vs the defeated army is going to come into play. If I’ve crushed your front line defensive force, you’re going to call up reserves or second line units, who likely have less training/experience/modern equipment. So yeah, the victorious force took some losses, but the next fight is often against a (possibly significantly) less capable defender.
Depends on the context. Hannibal’s army got smaller as he attacked Italy. Napoleon’s got weaker as he invaded Russia. US got stronger invading Germany (kept pumping in more troops).
If you take something like Hannibal, his army lost a lot of troops but Rome lost more. So you may have army X and Y both getting weaker at different rates.
Is that really the case?
There is a great infographic on the size of Napoleon’s army as he advanced on Moscow that shows how his forces weakened with every victory:
https://cdn.britannica.com/87/75087-050-243A02EA/size-army-Napoleon-campaign-retreat-lines-advance-1869.jpg
This is not always the case, specially in modern warfare. The more you move (and conquer) enemy territory, your supply lines are more likely to stretch thin and become vulnerable to enemy attack. Logistics is the backbone of any invading army, and the more you go into enemy territory, the logistics of it become more complex.
My understanding is that there are two parts.
Back in the ancient times nations could usually only muster 1 army for 1 punch at the “other guy”. So both nations threw their biggest punch at each other into 1 big battle.
The side that loses is now crippled. Any follow up engagements is with one side having a punch but a little tired (winner) and the other throwing a punch with a broken hand (loser). It seems like the winner is now way stronger. It’s largely the loser is so weak.
The second is food. An army marches on their stomach. At the start both sides run off of supplies from their side. If you get into enemy territory you get to steal/forage for food from their supply. That feeds you and denies them supplies which makes their life harder.
Afterward when winning side leaves the losing side is down treasure from the pillaging, down population from all the pillaging and the land needs time to recover from the pillaging.
But I am no historian and this is how I learned it from podcast and hs.
Think of things in terms of how they would be if the world was perfect. You have an army, of young healthy brave soldiers lined up in their finest uniforms on the parade square having travelled across the land to their muster points Now think about what happens if part of that nations territory has been taken. The warehouses of uniforms, weapons and ammunition are lost. The paperwork saying who has what and who needs what is lost. The roads to the muster points are blocked. The trains are no longer running. The smaller groups cannot come together to form a group large enough to defeat the invasion and if they encounter the enemy, are destroyed. The farmers cannot bring in their crops in the occupied areas. The crops may be burned and lost entirely. The stability of the system has declined. What is going on with the invaders? On their land, the stability and efficiency of the system is still near 100%. New soldiers arrive unhindered. The trucks and trains run on time. The quartermaster sits in his office, with his paperwork. The ability of a nation to conduct warfare depends on having a more effective force than its opponent, either due to efficiency or mass.
The era really impacts the answer to this question. That said historically most people were poor and spent most of their time farming. Most places didn’t have full time armies and instead armies are were made up of levies who were in some cases those farmers and varied in their experience with many being untrained.
During the campaigning season assuming neither side has a standing army the invader might raise an army and invade with them, the defender would have to do the same in defense.
Contrary to the cataclysmic numbers of some of the more famous battles, not every fight was a bloodbath and the bulk of the loses frequently are on the losing side. This allows the winning side to gain experience from the battle. It also weakens the losing side who may now need to levy even more people to plug the holes.
As for supply lines and leaving troops behind. Most armies didn’t have the complex supply lines we see today. The campaign season was during the summer offer opportunities to forage food or the could simply pillaged the areas they invaded. You weren’t leaving troops just anywhere either while you might need to garrison a city or town you’d be leaving as little to 50-100 men behind there to do so.
This isn’t *always* the case but there are some instances of it.
For this to make sense, you would need to understand the geopolitical situation in a specific conflict. I’ll use ukraine as a contemporary example.
In the donbas region of ukraine that borders russia, there is a sizeable ethnic russian population, and in the years prior to the war, russia was actively spreading it’s own propaganda and influence in this region.
When they invaded, many people in this region collaborated with russian forces, and offered little resistance to their advance. After the initial invasion russia was able to start recruiting people from this region to fill it’s ranks. Sometimes this was voluntary, sometimes it wasn’t. Now, in the grand scheme of things, it was still probably a net loss, but i’m only using this as an example to show one way that it can potentially happen.
It’s important to note that most wars, are wars of conquest, not wars of anihilation. The goal is not to simply kill everyone, instead a conquerer wants to force the civilian population to submit to their authority. Once that happens they can leverage that population to fill their ranks and support their war effort economically. Put simply, it’s not just the land that invading armies are interested in, but also the people that come with it.
Another reason this can happen is because of an active resistance against an occupation. For example, occupied france during WWII. The germans took and held france for most of the war, but french nationalists maintained an active resistance. The german occupation of france was more or less “accepted” by the french, but it was hardly “welcome”. So, when allied forces invaded france, they found many new allies among the resistance, and were welcomed with open arms as liberators by the french people.
It is also important to note the role of nationalism in modern conflicts. The idea of having loyalty to a set of ideals and a system of governance, instead of loyalty to an individual or a ruling class is a fairly new thing. The historical norm for most of history is that most people had limited loyalty to the ruling class, and generally didn’t care who was in charge as long as it didn’t interfere with their daily lives. Nationalism has largely changed this in more modern conflicts, by giving common people a set of ideals to rally behind that is beyond their own prosperity and self interest.
I should point out that this is distinctly different from religion. Religion does create loyalty to a set of ideals, but generally advocates for loyalty to a higher power instead of a ruling body or a system of governance. There are some exceptions though, such as the catholic church.
The last thing i want to touch on is geography, strategy, and logistics. Sometimes an army can get stronger simply because the front line has gotten smaller. A big part of strategic warfare is manuvering troops around, and armies grow or shrink depending on where commanders want to put their troops. Taking a strategically valuble location can create a choke point where you can concentrate a large number of troops. It is also quite common for an invading army to establish bases and supply lines in newly captured territory just behind the front lines. These bases allow you to house and sustain additional troops that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to deploy for logistical reasons. This is especially true with modern military equipment such as aircraft, tanks, and artillery.
That hasn’t been the case since the start of the Industrial Age. Before then, supply lines where an after-thought, as an invading army was expected to live off the land and conscript troops from the civilian populace as they passed through the countryside.
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