章 59: Militaries of the Seven Kingdoms
A/N: Before the next chapter, here is an appendix of the militaries of the Seven Kingdoms and changes to their tactics and organisations after Aegon's Conquest.
Thanks to Bryanfran36 and Ascalon451 on SB for beta-ing.
The Militaries of the Seven Kingdoms
"While Aegon's Conquest illustrated the feebleness of armies against living embodiments of power, the War of Roses and Serpents was what truly marked the start of a transformation of the military landscape of Westeros for good." - Obela Toinad, Evolution of Warfare
For as long as war has been waged in Westeros, there has never been a deviation from what was considered the standard face of warfare long before the time of Aegon's Conquest; armies were raised under noble banners, sent to die for countless political wars between the Seven Kingdoms.
In a time when the First Men ruled all of Westeros, their armies were largely disorganised into loose definitions of units - archers, warriors and cavalry - and equipped with bronze. Little to no records survive of the earliest First Men armies, but it is widely believed that they did not practice standard formations like the shieldwall, instead relying on mobility of light units and massed charges towards the enemy.
Their armies were also far smaller in numbers due to bronze being more difficult to smelt and existing in smaller quantities than iron ore. Bronze was also a softer metal, and while they could be bent back into shape, most times it was easier to just smelt a new blade.
When the Andals first came they brought with them their superior technologies, the most important being iron-smelting. Due to its greater durability, abundance and ease of smelting, iron allowed the Andals to field larger armies with more durable equipment, cutting into bronze like a hatchet against a tree.
Yet it was not just metallurgy that won the Andals much of Westeros; every war is fought with logistics being the greatest concern, and the Andals had superior bureaucracies organising armies and supply trains feeding them, along with better agricultural methods and tools to till the soil and feed their growing kingdoms.
One of the most prominent types of warriors the Andals fielded, being the most fearsome and skilled, were their knights; clad in arms of castle-forged steel, they could plough through regiments of half-trained and unarmored levies with every charge, utilising their greater speed and impact force for maximum lethality.
The knights dominated almost every battlefield they entered, and only skilled commanders could manage to trap them with excellent strategies. The knights came to be an elite warrior class celebrated and worshipped in Andal society, and at times reviled by the smallfolk as the most inhumane of tyrants.
When Aegon's Conquest was underway and the Reach invaded Dorne, it was here that House Rada's transformed military displayed its effectiveness against the Andals.
Dorne's Military Pre-Conquest:
Dornish armies, like armies in all the Seven Kingdoms, were feudalistic in nature with the nobles and their small elite retinues forming the core while supplemented largely by trained levies and knights. Furthermore, due to the unique cultural divide between the different regions of Dorne, they fielded different types of militaries depending on available resources and prevailing climate.
In the Red Mountains, which are culturally Andal by nature, they practise the same standard feudal Andal armies as the rest of Andalic Westeros did with their knights and levies. However, as the Dornish were prone to raiding their neighbours in the Dornish Marches, they had invested into light cavalry equipped primarily with light steel helms and chainmail for greater mobility.
In the Desert and Greenblood regions of Dorne, infantry and cavalry alike focused on light and airy armour to deal with the desert heat, for heavy plate armour was a good conductor of heat and could easily cook the wearer alive. Silk and cotton were commonly used for apparel, being similarly light and airy fabrics.
Due to much of the land being barren desert and Dorne lacking a widespread canal network, their agricultural industry could not support lengthy campaigns in more distant lands, and as a result any battle fought by the Dornish emphasised speed and shock, as if eternally on a short time limit. This is also primarily why the Dornish raid their richer neighbours for supplies aside from whatever riches and trinkets they could plunder.
Tactics Used:
The primary formation used among Dornish spearmen was the phalanx, an ancient tactic imported by Nymeria the Exiled when she began conquering Dorne. The phalanx involved men wielding large round shields and long spears crammed into a square formation eight-men deep, wearing naught but their own clothes and boots. Due to the phalanx holding solid ranks and being divided only into the centre and wings, there was little need for an officer corps to maintain cohesion; the entire phalanx marched in tune.
It is widely believed that the phalanx was adapted from the Old Ghiscari Empire long before their annexation by the Valyrian Freehold, and the Rhoynar of old adopted it for common use in inter-city wars before the Spice Wars.
The formation was frightening to enemies and promoted cohesion among advancing troops, but it was highly inflexible and difficult to manoeuvre, and once breached by the enemy, became little more than a mob.
To counter this, light infantry on both sides of the phalanx lent mobility and protection with javelins and bows and arrows, preventing any flanking or breaching of the formation. Even then, due to how rarely Dornish fought dedicated wars against the Reachmen or the Stormlanders and owing to their own underdeveloped logistical infrastructure and underpopulation, the Dornish never evolved their strategy for warfare until the coming of the Black Fox, Arin Rada.
House Rada's Reforms:
When Arin Rada first asked to be given the reins of government, he was given limited power and responsibility, and one of the longstanding issues he sought to tackle was House Rada's lacking military.
Due to constant political schemes, raids and internal backstabbing, House Rada had few levies to call upon, and being virtually surrounded by enemies, they have had to rely more on political favours to keep its neighbours at bay. Ifarahoy, the province under House Rada's purview, was impoverished and depopulated, struggling to survive day by day.
For two years after he reached the age of ten-and-four, Arin invested House Rada's money in roads, farms, canals and pastures to feed a larger population. Concrete, an ancient Valyrian recipe, was put to use building the new Ifarahoyan Roads that even now remain in use today after countless centuries, and were crucial in connecting all the towns and villages to promote the rapid flow of trade and development.
Once House Rada was no longer impoverished and lacking for money, Arin invested money into a trade fleet with which to bring in new goods and freed slaves provided by Braavos, repopulating more desolate villages and towns, in turn providing Ifarahoy with a greatly expanded pool of manpower.
He then pooled more money into building forts - what he called castrums [1] - that acted as both defensive strongholds and barracks for his professional soldier corps, along with a metallurgy industry to forge standard equipment for all his troops.
New water-powered, human and horse-powered furnaces sprang up throughout Ifarahoy, and charcoal was substituted with coke [2] for heating them. There was also the addition of white copper - or what Arin called Nickel - and cobalt [3] to iron ore, resulting in a far superior steel he called maraging steel which possessed superior strength and toughness without losing ductility.
That steel would become widespread in Dornian metallurgy, used for all kinds of weapons, armour and tools.
As House Rada's troops were often poor quality and lacking in training, Arin received permission to disband those he felt were not useful while retaining the rest to train his new legions.
Three thousand were trained in the new maniples, small and supple infantry formations each numbering 120 men in 12 files and 10 ranks. They would draw up for battle in three lines, each made up of 10 maniples and the whole arranged in a checkerboard pattern. In practice, each maniple was able to seamlessly merge and separate into different formations depending on battlefield circumstances.
As for their equipment, each infantryman was equipped with a ridge helmet [4], scale armour and segmented greaves and gauntlets. Depending on their assigned units, their weapons would be the standard round shield with a steel dome, a Saoidhar, a long spear or a composite bow with a quiver of arrows.
Cavalrymen were divided into three classes: First was the light scouts, who were equipped with light armour and a variety of equipment from javelins to bows alongside their swords; second were the cataphracts, the Dornish answer to heavy cavalry, armed with a long lance and covered in lamellar armour; the third and final class were the horse archers, also clad in lamellar and equipped with a composite bow that gave greater draw power to every arrow, said arrows being bodkin arrows capable of piercing thick plate armour.
Training standards were also exceedingly harsh; men were chosen for their stamina and fighting ability, and more often than not, this was primarily composed of farmers and the landless poor. Arin lured prospective recruits with generous pay and benefits for them and their families, and provided for them the best lodging and meals money could buy.
He also devised a gruelling training regime for the recruits; they would run extensive obstacle courses to build up their stamina, deal with incessant shouting and harsh discipline by sergeants, endure long-distance marches, and train in various formations and tactics. To effectively command all these troops required an officer corps, and they were the old veterans retained by Arin and the top performers.
However, Arin would not stop at improving the infantry and cavalry; to augment the chances of victory, he created a chariot corps. Another invention from the Ghiscari Empire and a common weapon in the Yi-Tish military, they were capable of wreaking absolute devastation upon infantry formations with impact force. Such chariots were often equipped with steel blades on wheel axles or scorpions that fired bolts. At times, they dragged huge spiked steel drums that crushed unfortunate infantry who survived the initial charge.
Altogether, these reforms turned House Rada's military into a terrifying machine that had yet to be tested, and they were tested against the rival Houses of Haro, Barro and Nasyr. Needless to say, they were mercilessly swept aside.
His new army would prove itself time and again, first in his rebellion against House Martell, and then against the Reachmen. His decisive victory against significant odds carved into the hearts and minds of all who witnessed the martial prestige of Dorne reborn.
Reforms by the Reach:
For the first time in history, an unfathomable defeat was inflicted upon the Reachmen by the Dornish, and not only did they lose close to four-fifths of their hundred thousand-strong army, King Mern IX Gardener himself was slain by the Black Fox in close combat. If any uneducated Reachmen were to hear such a story, they would think the Seven themselves had abandoned the Reach and consigned it to the Seven Hells.
It was a pyrrhic victory scored by the Dornish, but this victory alone permanently impacted the Reachmen's way of thinking.
The greatest pioneer was Brandyll Tarly, an unassuming young boy shaped into a worthy warrior and heir to his father Samwell Tarly, Lord of Horn Hill and bearer of Heartsbane. Having witnessed how the Dornish under House Rada fought firsthand, he petitioned King Edmund to experiment with new tactics, which he easily approved.
As the Lord of a rich and bountiful land, Brandyll, having inherited his position from Samwell soon after the War of Roses and Serpents' conclusion, invested heavily into reforms aimed at bettering both his soldiery and logistical capabilities. His house's vassals who fought and survived the war in Dorne were no less willing to follow in his footsteps, building infrastructure and devising new tactics and building the Reach's professional officer corps.
Having learned firsthand the devastating flexibility and power of Dorne's heavy cavalry, Brandyll sought to counter them and the new legions of Dornia with professionally trained pikemen, forming them into pike squares capable of defending from all sides with no vulnerabilities. Their training likewise became extremely strict and demanding, forming some of the best infantry in all of Westeros capable of charging in a disciplined way that often overwhelmed lesser enemies. To further bolster their effectiveness, crossbowmen were incorporated into every pike square, who would weaken both infantry and cavalry. In battle, these 'shot' units could easily withdraw into the pike squares once the enemy was close, ensuring they were not so easily killed.
Such a formation proved its devastating effectiveness against the mercenaries and Unsullied hired by Volantis in what the Daerians called the 'War of Liberation', when long pikes and crossbows made short work of the legendary eunuch warriors. Such a method of warfare was soon adopted throughout the Reach, or as it is now known, Tegonia.
And yet, powerful as this formation was, there was still more room for improvement.
On the off-chance that some skilled commanders managed to bypass the pikes, it was all the pikemen could do to fend off the enemy. Brandyll, taking this into account, proceeded to incorporate swordsmen into his pike squares who could fight infantry and cavalry while being protected by pikes, adding yet another layer of flexibility and lethality to his formations.
It is said that so impressed was Arin Rada by Brandyll Tarly, he gave an official name to his new formation: The Tegio [5].
Cavalry would still retain an integral importance in warfare for centuries, though no one could deny that infantrymen outside of Dorne could now pose a greater threat to enemies from that point onward.
Dorne would proceed to adopt the new Tegio formations with shocking speed, adapting the maniple system to incorporate more distinct unit sizes and tactics that differed from traditional mediaeval warfare in Westeros.
Westerosi Militaries circa 28 AC
Paletillia (The Crownlands):
The domain of the Targaryens practised the traditional Valyrian legion formations, organisation and tactics as it did for millennia with the addition of several militant knight orders and independent hedge knights along with the dragons for overwhelming might. As a result, their military has yet to adopt the tegio formation as Tegonia and Dornia did. Still, it is more professional, disciplined, well-equipped and well-supplied than Andal armies in general, with Valyrian Steel lending its troops a deadly edge.
Population: 4 million
Infantry: 14,000
Cavalry: 6,000
Dragonriders: 13
Ships: 25
Sailors/Mariners: 7,000
Qelbria (Riverlands):
Unlike the other kingdoms of Westeros that have been unified under single dynastic rule for millennia, Qelbria remains a highly divided and decentralised realm that holds no real loyalty to any single ruler throughout its history, and where Great Houses have been overthrown several times. Its government is no different under the Lord Paramountcy of House Tully, who rules only by the grace of House Targaryen.
Population: 6 million
Infantry: 32,500
Cavalry: 17,500
Ships: 20
Sailors/Mariners: 6,000
Rudiria (Westerlands):
As the richest kingdom with the greatest amount of gold deposits in all of Westeros, it boasts the ability to single-handedly field a strong professional standing army of fifty-thousand strong. While some believe they could field larger armies with their population numbers and infrastructure, any more additions would lead to great strain in their logistical capabilities, and as the famous maxim goes, 'Quality is better than quantity'.
Population: 5 million
Infantry: 30,000
Cavalry: 10,000
Ships: 50
Sailors/Mariners: 10,000
Jelmazmia (Stormlands):
The Stormlanders are by nature hot-tempered and stubborn, and refuse to back down from a challenge once posed to their faces. Like most other kingdoms, they field seasonal levies with small retinues and knights as part of their armies, and its armies are quite small due to its lower population. Its stormy seas are what give the lands their name, breeding some of the fiercest and toughest sailors if not the most professional.
Population: 7 million
Infantry: 30,000
Cavalry: 10,000
Ships: 70
Sailors/Mariners: 14,000
Blenia (The Vale):
Full of rocky terrain from steep hills to mountains and ravines, there is little arable land for the people to settle down on, and the local Andals face stiff resistance in the form of fiercely independent Mountain Clansmen - descendants of the First Men driven out long ago. The Vale can only field an army as large as the Riverlands, though they boast the most ancient and hallowed knightly traditions due to being the site of the first Andal colonies.
Population: 5 million
Infantry: 30,000
Cavalry: 15,000
Ships: 40
Sailors/Mariners: 10,000
Tegonia (The Reach):
Possessing the most fertile lands in all the continent, the Reach has endured a long history of brutal and bloody conflict with its neighbours, most of all the Stormlands and Dorne with whom they fiercely compete for ownership of the Dornish Marches. While the Vale claims the most hallowed traditions, the Reach claims the most battle-tested knights.
Their fertile land supports a thriving agriculture which, in turn, blessed them with a bountiful population capable of supporting an army of between 80,000 to 100,000. With recent reforms to its military, its infantry is now among the most formidable of all Westeros, capable of defeating the (not so) legendary Unsullied of Astapor.
Population: 18 million
Infantry: 80,000
Cavalry: 20,000
Ships: 100
Sailors/Mariners: 30,000
Dornia (Dorne):
The region most transformed in the time of Arin's rule, it has performed countless reforms and initiated countless infrastructural projects aimed at bettering the people's lifestyle and the country's logistical capabilities, allowing it to field one of the best armies the known world had ever seen.
Despite still being relatively underpopulated, it has a greater manpower pool and logistical infrastructure at its disposal, allowing it to field thrice the number of troops as it did in the past. Among its fiercest and most skilled troops are the Mareqavi, expert swordsmen who act as both the Grand Duke's honor guard and elite battlefield troops.
Population: 8 million
Infantry: 60,000
Cavalry: 20,000
Ships: 80
Sailors/Mariners: 25,000
Sonaria (The North):
The largest kingdom, it was ironically the poorest and most underdeveloped region of Westeros, capable of fielding a paltry army of 50,000 when it could easily field four times that number with a far expanded manpower pool and proper exploitation of its resources. House Stark claimed dominion over Sonaria, but due to Torrhen the Kneeler's submission, its reputation had plummeted, and it took many years to restore it.
Only the Neck fielded a proper disciplined army under House Blodfeld, and the region of Gosmerch has modernised rapidly to field a powerful fleet as well, becoming the new centre of trade and by far the only hospitable place the Andals and Dornians love to visit. Their magi - greenseers, wargs, skinchangers - were reorganised under the Druids, the religious arm of the Old Gods and an elite support class.
Eckard Blodfeld obtained the necessary knowledge for all his reforms and upgrades through his subordinates, whom he sent to study in both Paletillia and Dornia. Though he has yet to adopt the Tegio formation, he has already made plans to do so.
Population: 6 million
Infantry: 40,000
Cavalry: 10,000
Ships: 50
Sailors/Mariners: 10,000
Ajonia (The Iron Islands):
The smallest of the Seven Kingdoms, Ajonia is home to a strong seafaring culture that prides itself on its marauding and pillaging ways. The Ironborn field talented sailors and fierce warriors, yet because of their constant raiding long before Aegon's Conquest and stubborn refusal to change their ways, everyone else in the Seven Kingdoms scorns them as incorrigible savages, not that they ever truly cared.
Even so, their navy is top-class, such that even Arin Rada himself grudgingly respected their seamanship.
Population: 3 million
Infantry: 15,000
Cavalry: 5,000
Ships: 40
Sailors/Mariners: 8,000
A/N: The army numbers are based on book numbers centered around canon GoT time, though I don't know much about ship numbers. If anyone has suggestions or corrections they want to make, please feel free to do so.
[1] Castrum - An ancient Roman fortress designed to house and protect the soldiers, their equipment and supplies when not fighting or marching. This allowed Arin to maintain his conquests in the early days of his rebellion and unification of Dorne, and continue to serve as training centres for the Ducal Army.
[2] Coke - A grey, hard and porous coal-based fuel made by heating coal in the absence of air. It is used as highly efficient fuel in a smelting furnace, able to maintain high temperatures for long periods of time.
[3] Cobalt - A metal compound that has been used for centuries to impart a striking blue colour onto clothes and pottery glazes, Arin adds the pure element as a crucial ingredient for maraging steel.
[4] Ridge Helmet - The Late Roman Helmet introduced at the Late Antiquity period is characterised by the bowl shape made of two or four parts, united by a longitudinal ridge. It came to be a characteristic helm used by the Dornian militaries.
[5] Tegio - The Reach name for the Tercio formation, used extensively by the Spanish Army and mercenaries during the 16th - 17th centuries and somehow discovered by Brandyll Tarly.
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