tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post4186084872237648990..comments2024-03-28T15:13:59.703-04:00Comments on Grim's Hall: The Reading Summer DanceGrimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-62809146926195517742012-07-30T12:14:28.086-04:002012-07-30T12:14:28.086-04:00There's always a huge dispute about the number...There's always a huge dispute about the numbers involved in battles in this period and earlier; as you probably well know, it's a subject of some pretty hardened schools as to what is possible.<br /><br />What might be worth noting is the size of the fleets that bore the armies. When we are given numbers for what is represented as a powerful detachment (though not a complete army), we see numbers between forty and sixty ships by the <i>Chronicle</i>. <br /><br />Now, a ship can be bigger or smaller, and there's some dispute about how many men would be carried by a ship; if a common longship had sixteen pairs of oars, for example, that doesn't mean it wouldn't carry additional men beyond the rowers, especially if it were being used to carry an army to war. Etc.<br /><br />Still, even acknowledging all those concerns, it puts brackets around what we're talking about. A powerful detachment might approach several hundred men, but not much more than a thousand even if you assume these ships were packed to the gills. A whole army is thus going to be a small multiple of that, I would guess.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-83992033244257551602012-07-30T12:04:03.459-04:002012-07-30T12:04:03.459-04:00I'd be curious to see what the numbers of the ...I'd be curious to see what the numbers of the 'armies' were, for that year. <br /><br />They don't call Alfred "the great" for nothing, but still.Eric Blairnoreply@blogger.com