My pet peeve: Military Campaigns

[Thadlerian]

Reading through Bakker's second, The Warrior-Prophet, I was dismayed to find that much of this book was about what I really dislike to find in fantasy: Military Campaigns. The story of main characters following a huge army through foreign lands, through unimaginable toils, diseases and suffering, being pursued by superior enemies, fighting and winning battles against impossible odds, you know the script.

I need help.
I need help to accept these sequences, because I'm completely unable to believe in them. My willing suspension of disbelief is being strangled at birth whenever there are huge armies in sight. Books like The Illearth Stone, Deadhouse Gates and now The Warrior-Prophet are being seriously marred in my eyes simply because whenever these scenes play out, they seem to scream their improbability against the strict regimes of logic and rationalism that otherwise rule High Fantasy.

Here's the problem:
The army starts out from wherever they started. They walk and they walk, and then they arrive at the first battle. Detailed descriptions follow, on how the troops move, on how the flanks work, on hails of arrows darkening the sun, of magical attacks destroying whole regiments, of victory despite "grievous" losses.

And then they move on. For a while, they're being harassed by enemy raiding packs, killing so and so many. Then there is another battle, even more horrible than the first, a victory within an even more narrow margin, and even worse losses.

And then follows a trek through some hostile environment, usually a desert. Horses and soldiers succumb to the heat and the dry. Thousands die. And then they're out of the desert, and they catch disease, and the whole army is down with sickness, and there are countless dead.

And then the enemy arrives again, and our heroes are forced to run, and so they do, and they run till they're exhausted, and countless fall from exhaustion and are killed by their pursuers. And then they stop running, and they fight another battle, and win, though paying a dear price.

And then the food runs out. And they go without food for weeks, and then there is another battle, which they win.

And then...
And then...
And thus it goes on, seemingly forever.

How does this work? How many can they lose before the whole army is eradicated? How come there are always enough soldiers left to fight just one more battle? How many were there from the beginning? The writers never seem to give away any approximate numbers that could help a reader keep track of all these soldiers dying. I'd be willing to swear, they're in deficit! By now there have been far more killed than they started with in the first place! Any common sense tells me their numbers rank in negative.

And, while we're at it, where do these large armies come from in the first place? How can decentralized agrarian countries launch such armies of hundred thousand every 5-10 years or so? Especially when you take into account that each war seems to completely lay waste to the countryside; plundering villages, putting women and children to the sword. And then, seven years later or so, *poof!*, out pop a dozen or so armies, each a hundred thousand strong!

It feels like cheating.

I don't know anything about military issues, especially not medieval war. Are there any members here who can explain these issues for me, point out the details I have missed, the concepts I've misunderstood, and help me understand how this stuff works?

If I could get over this issue, I would be able to find far more pleasure in Erikson's books. Believe me, I really want to.

 

[Paige Turner]

Perhaps the dead are only mostly dead, and they feel better later on and catch up in time to join in on the next battle.

 

[Karsa Orlong]

You didn't need to tell us that you were reading Bakker - we can already tell from the amount of italics you are using to emphasise your points.

That said, I agree that these military campaigns should be written in accordance with the logical rules of the particular world they're occuring in - on the other hand, I'm not sure most of the elements you point out here *don't* do that. I'm no military expert but let me try to answer your points. First off, the armies in question do tend to be pretty bloody big, the idea of many remaining even after seemingly endless amounts die doesn't seem unreasonable to me - especially as even a tiny amount of deaths can seem like such a huge event in certain circumstances. Granted, if you start off with seemingly only 500 and then 4000 die, things become ridiculous, but I can't give you an answer to your numbers question as, to be honest, I can't remember whether numbers were specified in most of the fantasy military campaigns I've read.

As for where those huge armies came from in the first place... I recall that gets explained in Bakker, at least? Sometimes many will travel to join the war, I'd imagine. At other times the populations will be huge to begin with, whether they're unrealistically huge or not depends on the area I suppose as you say, they probably sometimes are. I also imagine armies often pick up a lot of people as well as losing them, although granted, if said army just burns and maims everything then this probably can't occur.

Concerning the question of why there are always soldiers left to reach the final battle destination... well I suppose from the writer's perspective it would be a bit of an anti-climax if that didn't happen. I'd be interested in reading a fantasy novel where the premature end of an army's march actually occured, as I currently can't think of one. Such anti-climaxes can sometimes be highly effective, take Herzog's wonderful film Aguirre: The Wrath of God as a prime example.

To be honest, when reading your thread I actually felt more inclined to attack a different aspect of these military campaigns - namely, the fact that they usually seem to follow a similar formula to the one you wrote. "Generic", I suppose, is the word. There are no doubt certain shared characteristics between most or all military campaigns, but sometimes it does feel as if one could just as easily be another, which could potentialy lead me to wonder why I'm bothering to read about it. Then again, I adored Erikson's military campaigns, those on the whole didn't *feel* samey to me, and I guess I'm just not so anal about the facts and figures behind them.

 

[Rane Longfox]

Well, Thad, Bakker's series is about a Holy War, so what did you expect?

Personally, I enjoy military epics, as long as they're realistic. Too much of the "took huge losses but still managed to pull through against insurmountable odds" stuff does get annoying after a while.

 

[Thadlerian]

Well, Thad, Bakker's series is about a Holy War, so what did you expect?

Umm... not sure. Anything, really. Everything. We're talking about the book coming after The Darkness that Comes Before here, after all

I think i expected less of the "eye-in-the-sky" battle descriptions, and more character action. Bakker does have some magnificent characters, he could easily stay afloat on them. The first half or so of the book was great in this respect.

 

[Karsa Orlong]

I actually found Bakker's detached narrative perspective of the war quite refreshing - I think he has said in interviews that he wanted to present the war almost as a living, breathing, evolving entity, and I think he captured that very well at times.

 

[Thadlerian]

I actually found Bakker's detached narrative perspective of the war quite refreshing - I think he has said in interviews that he wanted to present the war almost as a living, breathing, evolving entity, and I think he captured that very well at times.

Oh well, if that's what he wishes, what can I say?

It's just that he does characters so amazingly well. He has made his characters "living, breathing, evolving" entities, on a level which no Fantasy writer (that I've read) has done before. You know they say, "stick with what you're good at." This is rubbish of course, you should always try new stuff, but the point remains: He wrote tDtCB with almost no physical action, only characterization and philosophy, whereas war stories like the one in tWP feel like something I've read countless times before. How much can Bakker really do better his competitors in the game, no matter how well he writes?

 

[Karsa Orlong]

You know, I pretty much agree with you - whilst military campaigns are up my street, there has to be at least something different and new about them for there to be any point in reading. Bakker, I think, has the skill to write them differently to an extent, but maybe not to enough of an extent? It's debatable, at least, whether he's playing to his strengths. I found the massive flood of barely recognisable names in those detached omniscient sections almost unfollowable - in a way this stopped me from feeling involved, though in other ways it was, as I say, a refreshing way of doing it.

As an aside, Stephen Donaldson's still well ahead of the game for me as far as character depth is concerned, though Bakker's certainly strong (at least with certain main characters).

 

[Werthead]

You did kind of defeat your own point by mentioning Deadhouse Gates, since the army indeed fights against overwhelming odds and wins, taking heavy losses, then they do it again, then again and then...they all die. Surely that should be an example against your point rather than one supporting it?

With Bakker, it's down to the ludicrous size of the Holy War: 300,000 men. By the time of the final battle at Shimeh it's been wittled down to about 30,000 or 40,000 capable of action, so they have suffered ridiculous losses along the way (nearly 90% of the army has been wiped out). But agreed, that final battle in The Warrior-Prophet outside Caraskand when the entire army has been starving for weeks, but basically wins because Kelhus makes a rousing speech (which I and other Babylon 5 fans refer to as 'The Sheridan Effect') was rather implausible.

The question is whether it was any more implausible than Napoleon's Grand Army still winning several major skirmishes against the numerically far superior Russians on the retreat from Moscow, or the British army surviving despite heavy losses whilst escorting ten thousand civilians in the retreat from Kabul in 1842, or Leningrad and Stalingrad holding out against ridiculous odds in WWII?

A point could be made for saner army sizes in fantasy fiction. In real life medieval armies generally were a few thousand strong at most. Armies didn't regularly hit the tens of thousands until the Renaissance or later, and not the hundreds of thousands until Napoleon or later (with occasional exceptions, such as the Mongol hordes). The only author I know who uses these 'saner' medieval sizes is Kate Elliott in Crown of Stars.

 

[Karsa Orlong]

You did kind of defeat your own point by mentioning Deadhouse Gates, since the army indeed fights against overwhelming odds and wins, taking heavy losses, then they do it again, then again and then...they all die. Surely that should be an example against your point rather than one supporting it?

Ha, yeah, didn't even think of that!

 

[Thadlerian]

You did kind of defeat your own point by mentioning Deadhouse Gates, since the army indeed fights against overwhelming odds and wins, taking heavy losses, then they do it again, then again and then...they all die. Surely that should be an example against your point rather than one supporting it?

Not necessarily. My issue is with the process, not the result. As you say, the army in DHG ends up being eradicated eventually, but not until almost all of the book has passed; the part for which sake I found it progressively harder to willingly suspend my disbelief, for the reasons I mentioned in my initial post. How it ultimately ends is not my concern; that is a completely different matter. What I'm talking about in my initial post is how the story gets there, how the writer deals with this, and here, it seemed to me, DHG was hardly different from W-P or IES.

 

[Somebloke]

Firstly, while medievil armies were small, they were largely dependent on the nobility to function as a core and could not draw too heavily on the peasantry, as they were desperately needed for land use. Pre-medievil wars, however, were a different matter; Rome at it's height was meant to have half a million trained soldier-citizens, working on a conscription scheme and a slave economy. The Persian empire during the attacks on Greece could apparently afford to send a quarter of a million men as an expeditionary force. Granted, it took them ten years to accomplish this, and they had to withdraw most of the army when their fleet was crippled, cutting their supply lines, but this is still an impressive number. In China, similar numbers are mentioned; Sun Tzu's Art of War is full of well-trained, well equipped armies numbering in the tens of thousands. The Malazan empire in The Deadhouse Gates is an Empire built on warfare; it is clear that it's soldiers are well-trained, well equipped and come (mostly) from the lower or middle classes, so parallels to China or Rome are more than appropriate. Their enemies-the Dog-Slayers- come from the bedouin tribes that are native to the area; comments made earlier about the Mongol hordes may not be far off.

As for the whole, "small but determined army defeats much larger one" problem, there are dozens of examples of where a morale, training and above all positioning have enabled this to happen. Morale is an especially important factor; most battles end with a rout rather than troops fighting to the bitter finish. Typically, a battle is decided once one side takes the initiative, until the other army decides it is beaten. Again, we see this in the Malazan gates; the army wins battle after battle because the troops are disciplined, dedicated, possess better armaments (mordath munitions and superior armour) and above all possess a commander who can gain the momentum in each fight through ingenuity and cunning; however, at the very end, tactical constraints (getting the chain of dogs to safety) sheer exhaustion and the fact they are cut off from re-stocking and re-enforcing their numbers spells the end.

 

[hedgeknight]

Just another reason not to waste your time reading this type of s**t. Impossible scenarios are ridiculous and insulting, whether they be based on global war or individual heroics.
-g-

 

[Somebloke]

Just another reason not to waste your time reading this type of s**t. Impossible scenarios are ridiculous and insulting, whether they be based on global war or individual heroics.
-g-

I'm not so sure that the British at Rourke's drift would agree with you there.

 

[hedgeknight]

I assumed we were discussing scifi/fantasy (seeing as this is a scifi/fantasy forum) and not actual history.
-g-

 

[Somebloke]

I assumed we were discussing scifi/fantasy (seeing as this is a scifi/fantasy forum) and not actual history.
-g-

Just pointing out that these 'impossible' scenarios do occasionally happen in real life. Minus the magic and death rays mind.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I assumed we were discussing scifi/fantasy (seeing as this is a scifi/fantasy forum) and not actual history.
-g-

It would be a genuine shame if it could be said that SFF couldn't connect at all with real life in anyway - especially attempting to bring some degree of realism to war-based narratives.

 

[Lirineth]

The same as Thadlerian I am not very good at reading war campaigns, after the second page of soldiers, horses, weaponry, mud, blood, more blood, more mud, my very fragile attention span collapses, and it is then that I start asking myself prosaic question such as: where do they get enough water for the soldiers and the horses, very seldom there are rivers nearby or how do they relay information from the head of the line to the back of the line (some poor sod galloping up and down delivering and fetching orders and counter-orders?) what about even more prosaic matters such as toilet facilities , because lets face it, the first 50 would be kind of OK but what about sergeant Skippy in position 800, down the line. Because although the very well trained and honourable warriors are somewhat delicate and caring regarding the subject, what about the horse?

And speaking of which, where do you shop for 2000 hungry men and their mounts because even in the more highly populated counties there is never going to be enough villages to pillage in order to finding food for the soldiers and the horses. And that goes without saying about the weapons, the tents, all the goodies that go inside the tent, the servants, the cooks, which incidentally, how do you set camp and cook for 2000, do you have many cantinas spread out the camp, because there is a limit to the dry-salted-meat that you can carry and eat as it makes you very thirsty and water is never in aboundance, which means that the armies also had to carry their own cattle, which (mind you) adds considerably to the problem of the toilet facilities, and how do they manage the killing and preparing of the cattle to feed the army? By the way, how do they cook? Do they have to carry coal or wood and pots and pans to prepare the food or is it always barbecue throughout the campaign?

And what about the sick, the wounded and the disabled? Do they carry them along, do they leave them behind, do they do the ‘mercy killing thingy’. And if finding food is somewhat of a monumental task, what about medicines, bandages, carriages to carry all the hospital goodies and the hospital staff. And I know this is not very important but lets face it all the books tell us of the bright and wonderful uniforms that shone in the sun and the shine of their bronze armours put the fear of God (or whichever is the deity of the moment) in the hearts of the enemy. Which brings me to my next question, how do they manage this miracle of cleaness, because let us not forget the mud, the blood, the sweat, the lack of washing facilities and last but not least the toilet problems. So you see, that is my problem, and that goes without saying about the morale of the 2000 or so who except of those rare occasions where they got to pillage an unsuspecting village and go through all the females there, the daily reality on that front leaves a lot to the imagination, even of those with strong convictions as to the sanctity and knightly behaviour of all those 2000 soldiers. Which leaves me wondering how do they manage?

And these are just a few of the many, many questions that I have but funny enough I never read a book that gave two thoughts to all these, as Thadlerian says the everyday problems is something not only not worth mentioning but also because they don’t stop even for a moment to consider it the plot looses credibility. I know that putting all those details in a book would make trilogy into two trilogies, but can we compromise at least a little?

 

[Pyan]

, or the British army surviving despite heavy losses whilst escorting ten thousand civilians in the retreat from Kabul in1842...

At the risk of being pedantic, I wouldn't personally consider one survivor a successful retreat, or for that matter, an escort.


First Afghan War - Battle of Kabul and Retreat to Gandamak


A Walk in the Dark, a trilogy by Alison Spedding that narrates an alternative-world version of Alexander the Great, has just about the closest tackling of the whole supporting-cast-that-enables-the-war-to-be-fought thing that I have read. Mud, excrement and foraging galore.

 

[Urien]

If we're talking technology. Roman and Chinese battles frequently had armies of 100,000 or more.

Though I agree the size of some fantasy armies is way too large for the tech level and could not be supplied. Stephen Donaldson and Terry Goodkind I'm looking at you.