Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
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Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#2I am designing a long term early edition d&d sandbox (Delving Deeper rules) and I have found this series and ACOUP’s other worldbuilding very helpful in shaping my thoughts and filling in the edges of procedurally generated stuff.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#3I've just spent an hour reading these words, and am having my mind expanded much further than I expected.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#4acoup with yet another excellent blog
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#5If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#6If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
There are those who make strong arguments for the opposite.
Once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#7If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
There are those who make strong arguments for the opposite. Once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.
Once you pay an army, you accept the army can take you over, internal or external.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#8If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
> If you can afford to pay an army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead.
Aside from all questions about how such an agreement is to be enforced once you no longer have the money but the invaders still have their weapons, the article shows very clearly that this is not true. Early states are seriously cash-strapped, and rarely pay their armies in easily portable goods. They can "afford" to raise armies consisting of soldiers who bring their own weapons and, by-and-large, their own food. That does not make for good tribute and so, in fact, they cannot afford to pay off an invader.
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are those who make strong arguments for the opposite. Once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.
Once you pay an army, you accept the army can take you over, internal or external.
That is indeed one of the many hazards and risks which pre-modern states seemed to have grappled with, according to the linked blog series. You may find the series to be an interesting read to see one historian's overview on how pre-modern states were to varying degrees exposed to, managed, and suffered the consequences of, said risk!
Re: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It
#10If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
> If you can afford to pay an army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. Aside from all questions about how such an agreement is to be enforced once you no longer have the money but the invaders still have their weapons, the article shows very clearly that this is not true . Early states are seriously cash-strapped, and rarely pay their armies in easily portable goods. They can "afford" to raise armies con…
You are right in the longer term but surely wrong in the shorter term since history records The Byzantines paying off Attila the Hun from the 430s to the mid 440s, so a 10 year window.
The Danegeld lasted over 150 years. It undoubtedly failed in the end, but it certainly worked in the short to medium term.
The Sassanid and Byzantines paid off each other for ages. The persians paid tribute for a long time to border states.
The pre-french kings paid off The tribes who eventually became the Normans.
It's a shit long term strategy. Doesn't mean it didn't work in the short term for the states using it.
Remember, these tributes were clearly liquid cash, or equivalent. When they ran out of money it seems to turn into land. The implication they could NOT have been used to raise forces internally begs questions. The counter argument I suggest is that you raise an army (that you don't have to pay) when you CANNOT pay off the other side, or don't want to cede land.
Perhaps where we meet is that history records states doing it but it didn't work in the medium-to-long term. Did it happen? Yes. Did it work? "no" for a long term view but the immediate effect, for some period of time? Depends how you view it.
The same might be said for the condottieri. Groups like the English "white company" in the extended wars of europe in the middle ages. Paying them to switch sides might be more effective than putting up your own guys to fight them.
[Edit: I invite people to think about the average lifespan in role of ancient leaders, and what a decade or a hundred years means for "success" or "failure" against those measures. Bear in mind that most modern democratic states operate on a change of leadership in a 4 to 6 year timescale, with some cycling much faster and some cycling much slower, and it is rare for a successor leader to entirely endorse his predecessors choices. Now cast that into pre democratic times and ask yourself what success looks like.]