The General

So you have decided to create a medieval fantasy novel and are trying to create a realistic kingdom/empire to set the story in. And since all good novels in the sword and sorcery genre involve a great deal of conflict, you want to bring the kingdom/empire’s army into the fight. But you don’t know how medieval armies are organized, you say? Well do not worry, for I am here to offer what help I can give in making sure you create a realistic fighting force with realistic characters.

Well, there is one piece of advice I can offer right off the bat, do not copy Christopher Paolini. I have read Eragon and Eldest and I am just starting to work through Bri-whatever you call it (when writing a story it is a good idea to give it an easy to pronounce title) and I have come to this conclusion: they contain some of the worst portrayals I have ever seen of medieval soldiers, warriors, and fighting forces. And Eragon is the most unrealistic warrior I have ever seen. Don’t worry, I will provide plenty of examples as to why this is.

First up is how quickly Eragon learns sword fighting techniques. Despite having never picked up a sword before the events of the first novel, he is still able to best Brom after a few weeks of training. Excuse me for a second, I have to go beat my head into a wall for a few minutes. I hear it helps with a stupidity infection. In case you are wondering why I feel this way, let me elaborate. Most sword fighters in history started training at a young age, I think the average starting age was around seven or eight years old. They would spend years learning the proper techniques, their counters, and at the same time would be building up the necessary muscle groups to put some force behind their blows; not to mention increase their endurance. It would take decades of training and experience for them to reach the point where they were considered experts.

Paolini manages to sidestep this by saying the magical bond of a dragon rider increases their ability to learn new information and at the same time it enhances them physically. This seems like a cheap cop-out, but it is a fantasy story so I will suspend my disbelief here. Still, even if I allow this explanation, there is no way that he should be able to best Brom in the time frame shown. Let me explain, Brom is an ex-dragon rider who had the same magical enhancements when he was young and has had a lot more training and experience then Eragon. To put it bluntly, Brom is an ex-super soldier that survived one of the most bloody wars in Alagaësia’s history, during which he took on and killed other super soldiers that were more powerful and ruthless then he was. Eragon beating him here and then Brom saying that Eragon has surpassed him in skill does not stretch my willing suspension of disbelief. Rather, it breaks it in half, throws it into the ground, and stomps on it repeatedly before spitting upon it.

Now let’s look at the beginning of Eldest where we see Eragon pondering the dead. There is a comment about how Eragon’s uncle had died a few months before and that it had helped prepare him for the aftermath of the battle. No, just no. One body that wasn’t that horribly injured does not prepare you for the image of a bunch of bodies hacked apart on a battlefield. I know this from experience, my grandfather died of old age when I was eleven years old and that was the first dead body I had seen. When I was nineteen I worked during the summer as day laborer at a construction company and one day a group of drunk teenagers wandered onto the site and decided to play chicken with a scraper pan. They lost. By Paolini’s logic, the death of my grandfather should have prepared me for the sight of three people getting crushed and ripped apart by a piece of heavy machinery. IT. DID. NOT!

I am not ashamed to admit that I puked my guts out and was shaking pretty bad for a long time afterward. I know what people feel like after seeing a person get killed in brutal fashion because I have experienced it myself and I can say that Eragon’s actions do not ring true here. He isn’t thinking of the dead or feeling sorry for them, or that he should have been able to have done something. Or that he should have been able to save them. Instead he is thinking of only himself, the fact that he has a minor wound, and that he needs more training. And then picks up a molar from the ground and plays with it….I am sorry, but there is nothing realistic in this scene. In fact, I nearly threw the book in the trash upon reading it, but I had promised a friend that I would read it and give her my honest opinion of it (that’s how I got to be reading the Twilight series as well). So I kept on reading, and didn’t take me long to find another item that shows Paolini’s lack of experience and research.

Shortly after the molar incident we see the rebel leader Ajihad die and in the aftermath we see the council and Eragon play at politics. For you to understand how unrealistic this scene is I have to explain to about the military mindset. It is very authoritarian, armies are not typically lead by democratic councils. They have a well defined chain of command with a very strict hierarchy of leadership; in this case Jormundur, Ajihad’s second in command, should have succeeded him with no questions asked. But then we wouldn’t have all this false tension and suspense.

Now, there are a few exceptions to the military/democratic council rule, like everything else. Some militia units around the American Revolutionary War era (it occurred a bit during the Civil War and the period leading up to it) used to elect their leaders. And so you had leaders that were chosen to lead not because of their leadership skills and military knowledge, but because they were popular. Want to guess what happened when they ran into regular, professional military units? If you thought something along the lines of ‘got pounded into dog meat’, good for you. So if Paolini shows one side’s military being led by a council and people being put in charge because they are popular or for political reasons, then that side should be the one that gets its backside handed to them. But that is what would happen in a realistic novel, which Eldest is not.

Next item I have a problem with is when Eragon reaches Du Weldenvarden and I am struck by Galby’s stupidity (I shouldn’t be by now, but I still am) in dealing with the elves. They live in a wooden city in the middle of the forest. Galby has access to two (his and Murtagh’s) biological, flying, flame spewing, main battle tanks. A permanent solution to his elven problem is very obvious to me, and should be obvious to Galby as well. After all, the guy was cunning and ruthless enough to kill all the other dragon riders and seize power for himself; he should be more then capable of incinerating Du Weldenvarden and everybody in it. Oh, but then Eragon wouldn’t have the little ceremony that turns him into Super Elf! Can’t have that now can we? I am not going to go into detail on the ceremony, suffice to say that the same problems that I had with Brom and Eragon’s training sessions are back in force along with a few new friends.

Then there is the entire deal with Roran and his exodus. In an effort to keep this article short, as I am about to go on a little rant about the Burning Plains, I won’t go into this part in detail and I’ll just point out a few things. 1) A wooden palisade will not stop a really organized and determined attack, it won’t even really slow it down. 2) Why does everybody listen to Roran? He is a nobody who hasn’t really done anything before this part. 3) Giving people a choice between enslavement or being killed and eaten and then walking off is the height of stupidity. Yeah, they are just going to sit around, not doing anything to avoid these fates and wait for you to come back. Then again, given how idiotic everybody in these books seem to act that is not outside the realm of possibility here. 4) Six trained soldiers are more then enough to subdue one civilian woman, in fact six is overkill as two would be sufficient. So how come Katrina is able to hold them off with no combat training and being outnumbered to boot? Come to think of it, how can six soldiers and a couple of demonic beings have this much trouble with a farm boy and his girlfriend?

Now for the Battle of the Burning Plains, the part that illustrates Paolini’s lack of experience, research, and / or common sense. First off this is not the type of terrain armies like to fight in. No cover or concealment, no ways to live off the land, fumes constantly choking the troops. Or they would be, but there seems to be something odd about the physics here. At the beginning of the chapter Eragon and his pet dragon dive through the layer of noxious clouds and the air seems to clear as they reach the ground. Excuse me, but the fumes are coming up from the ground, he should have had to deal with it all the way during his descent and the problem should have gotten worse the closer they got to the ground. Why do I suddenly get the feeling that my high school science teachers would have flunked Paolini?

Then we have the scene with the soldiers mistake Eragon’s dragon for Galby’s and fire upon it. This would be a fairly realistic part because the soldiers know the enemy has at least one dragon with them and will probably use it against them. The soldiers see one coming down at them, it might be on an attack run, and they react realistically by trying to shoot it down. But Paolini kills any potential this seen had when he says on page 582

“Fear made them ignore their common sense, and they released a flock of barbed arrows that arched up to intercept her.”

Excuse me, but they did act with common sense and their actions follow rationally with their current situation and knowledge. Personally, I think Paolini’s mental thought process here is something like this: Eragon equals his Gary Stu, anything that threatens him is therefore bad and not rational. Having him killed by friendly fire is therefore not going to happen.

And then when he lands, he is surrounded by admiring soldiers. In the little thing we like to call reality, people who almost accidentally kill somebody don’t stand around and admire them afterward. They either usually try and disappear from the person in question’s sight or try and apologize to them for starters. Then there is the scene were the officer reprimands the soldiers for their actions; in essence for doing exactly what they were supposed to which is to protect the camp from a perceived threat. In real life, the officer would probably have waited until Eragon was out of sight and then reassured the men they did the right thing.

And as for Eragon’s reaction here? He has never struck me as the forgive and forget type, especially when considering his actions with Sloan and Murtagh. I doubt he would have let the soldiers off that easily when I consider how vindictive he acts towards the two aforementioned characters. But as many other people have pointed out, Eragon’s less of a character and more of a robot that does whatever the plot demands. And Paolini wanted to show Eragon as being compassionate and understanding here, whither or not it matched up with the rest of his behavior.

Next we have Angela making poison. Enough poison, apparently, to affect all of Galby’s one hundred thousand man army…she would need a tanker truck to haul enough poison around to do that. And how does she plan to get past the enemy’s sentries and patrols? Details, details. Apparently Mister Paolini is firm believer in not sweating about the details. Do I even need to discuss the fact that people can taste the difference in between regular food and food that has had a little extra something added to it? Especially if they eat that particular meal a lot and army cooks are not generally known for diversifying what meals they serve?

Then there is the scene with the Imperial envoy and Saphira burning him to death. Which is a complete show of hypocrisy on Eragon and the Varden’s part. It reduces them to the same level as the Empire and their stunt with the severed head. Why are we supposed to be rooting for these people?

Finally we get to the fight itself and I can’t help but thinking the Varden deserved to be wiped out. They leave a secure and fortified position to engage an army that outnumbers them by a considerable margin in an open field battle. They might as well put up a big sign with the message Kill Us Please, We’re Idiots in bold red letters. Do I need to mention the part about the rags the Varden stuff into their armor to quiet their movements so the Empire won’t know they’re coming and how that doesn’t nothing about the sound of thousands of booted feet marching across hard ground? And when the fighting starts why does Eragon stay on the ground with Saphira? What he should be doing is flying in the air and making strafing runs on the enemy troops. But that would require brains, something Eragon lacks.

Then the Empire starts using its siege weapons to fire into the Varden troops. Which would not happen in real life for a few reasons. 1) Siege weapons took time to move and set up, it is doubtful the Imperial Army could have set them up that quickly in response to what is supposed to be a surprise attack. Must be the magic. 2) They were notoriously inaccurate and were typically used against big stationary targets that were hard to miss. Like fortresses. They wouldn’t be able to accurately target and track a moving force. 3) They would hit their own men in the process. Of course, Galby is supposed to be ruthless so I might have been willing to concede the last one; but I used up any charity I had with these books about sixty pages into the first one.

Then Eragon notices Roran’s ship, thinks that it might be enemy reinforcements, and proceeds to investigate. Why I do not know, as Galby already has an army a hundred thousand strong in the field and the most a ship the size of the Dragon Wing can carry is about two hundred men. And I should apologize to you because I just lied, I do know why Eragon goes to check the ship out: because it is what the plot demands, he is simply a robot who follows the plot without question, and Christopher Paolini threw realism in the trash when he started the rough draft of the first book.

Then we get to see Twins and Murtagh with his dragon in action. Why are they coming out so late in the battle for? Most real life military commanders tend to roll out the real heavy artillery in the open phases of the action and these guys are definitely the heavy hitters of Galby’s army. Really Paolini, you have already killed realism so is it really necessary to continue beating its corpse? The only redeeming feature of this entire battle is Murtagh gives Eragon a through kick in the hindquarters and that is not enough to make up for all the other stupidity we have seen.

And that my friends, concludes this article. So whatever you do in your stories, please don’t follow Paolini’s examples. Because, as you can see, he knows nothing about what war is really like or how people in it act.

Comment [19]

So you are about to write a fight scene in your story, but you don’t know anything about fighting? Do not worry friend, because The General is here to help you along. So let’s begin with the basics. You have a character that is about the enter a life or death combat situation, and one of the first things you should take into consideration is how the human body reacts when faced with this type of situation. One of the main things that happens is that the body releases Adrenaline and this in turn gives the person an enormous energy boost. So much so that the body’s appendages (hands, arms, legs) can and will start to shake due to the amount of excess energy that is flowing through the person’s veins.

Next, blood is withdrawn automatically from the less vital areas, like the face which causes it to turn white, so it can be used to overcharge more vital areas. Like the arms and the legs. And the body then tends to stiffen up. This is a natural response that we inherited from our ancestors and was originally used to resist puncture wounds that were made by the claws of predators. Unfortunately, this is a major disadvantage-as any martial artist will tell you-when dealing with a human opponent. They have to work to keep their body relaxed for the simple reason that a relaxed body is a looser body which in turn is a body that can react faster then one that is tense. Bear in mind that during sword and knife fights, the natural response is still in effect and the muscles around an area a blade has penetrated will go stiff automatically.

When injured in a fight, many people feel a numbness in the injured area. This is the body’s attempt to keep the person in the fight so that their opponent does not injure them any further. Though this does not always happen as sometimes the injury is so severe that the pain is instantaneous and also sometimes the nerve endings in the affected ending are so damaged that the person won’t feel any pain. Which can be a real problem, people have been know to have one of their arms blown off and not notice it for minutes afterwards.

I can now hear some people asking how can that be. Well, I have already explained about the part concerning the nerve endings and now I think I need to touch on the topic of tunnel vision. When confronted a major threat, a person’s field of vision will narrow and will focus completely on the threat. This is a major problem for two reasons. First, they are not likely to notice injuries as the ones I have just described. Second, they are not likely to notice other, less obvious threats; which is why soldiers are trained to check out their sides and rear in a fight. Sometimes they will forget, especially if the battle is intense enough or the first opponent is fearsome enough. It would be kind of funny if the heroes of a fantasy story die because they were focusing on the big dragon in front of them and failed to notice the itty, bitty little goblin about to shove a dagger in their back. (And now you know why people don’t like me to run their role-playing games.)

Now let’s talk about fear in a fight. It can be powerful motivator and offers some unique advantages when fighting. It can and will increase a person’s strength, reflexes, and their desire to survive. Not to mention it is a natural response like the body stiffening; a person that has no fear in a life or death struggle is either a) an idiot or b) has severely underestimated the situation he/she is in and its implications. No exceptions here. So please don’t make your heroes feel no fear because it is unrealistic, not to mention stupid. Oh, I need to add that sometimes fear can cause a person-especially if they weren’t trained or prepared for the situation beforehand-to become paralyzed and it can even kill them by inducing a heart attack.

You want an example? Okay,let’s say you are writing a horror story and let’s make it a werewolf story since Halloween just happened. Furthermore, let’s make your main character not so much a skeptic (which is a neutral position, the person doesn’t know whither or not werewolves exist and can be persuaded to change his tune) on the subject of werewolves, but a pseudo-skeptic (someone who has already made up their mind that werewolves do not exist and will not consider the alternative no matter what evidence comes to light while still calling himself a skeptic). Now in real life there are people who will take an idea-any idea, be it political, economic, religious, or even which sports team is the best-and make it so much a part of their world view and thought process that if you ask them to question it, it is like you are asking them to question their very existence.

And then at the climax of the story, the character sees a person change into a nine foot tall, furry death machine and rip into a bunch of people like a buzzsaw. He is much more likely to be paralyzed or drop dead of a heart attack here rather then benefit from his fear because his entire world view-everything he believed and took for granted-has just taken a torpedo hit below the waterline. He is having to deal with both one of his most cherished and secure beliefs being demolished in the most brutal way possible and the life or death situation posed by our berserker werewolf st the same time.

Speaking of this, when a raw recruit is confronted with a combat situation for the first time, the reaction that is most common is disbelief. “Is somebody shooting? Wait a minute, they’re shooting at me! They’re trying to kill me! There has to be some mistake here!” This goes double for newbie infantry troops under artillery bombardment. “They’re trying to kill me and I can’t even shoot back at them!” It is not at all uncommon to see green troops standing in the open looking confused for a few seconds as the enemy artillery starts to pound their position. Then the training will kick in and they will dive for cover. Or one of the veterans will pull them down into cover. Or they will die in the opening salvo of the bombardment.

To help counter this problem, military forces stress aggressive training. They will teach their soldiers that they are better then the other nation’s soldiers and that you don’t run from your inferiors. Instead you beat them into the ground and teach them a lesson for their insolence in attacking you. Note that aggressive here does not mean chagrining into the enemy ranks singing a song like the March of Cambreadth while swinging a sword above your head; its more like “How dare that bastard shoot at me, I am going to fix his little red wagon!” (I am keeping this at PG rated levels to comply with the article submission guidelines, just so you know.)

Another way for soldiers to overcome fear in combat is the Esprit de Corps, which is the knowledge that your fellow soldiers need you and you need them. That if you don’t fight they may be killed and vice versa. And if the unit is tight, as all good units are, it gives the troops a powerful leverage over their fear and is a great motivation force as well. Which is why you will get incidents like the Charge of the Light Brigade and not single soldier breaks ranks during it. Note that the average civilian character in your stories is not going to know about this concept and it may very well be an alien mindset to them when they first encounter it.

Also, as I have noted in one of my Eragon articles, the military mindset is very authoritarian. During peace time, soldiers are conditioned to obey orders from their officers and noncommissioned officers (Corporals, Sergeants; they are commonly referred to as noncoms or NCOs for convenience sake) without question. They will get used to it and this makes them much more suspect to this type of persuasion when they are scared because it is a learned habit. For this reason, boot camps are extremely tough on new recruits. The drill instructors will do their best to intimidate, demean, and scare the new troops. Not because they’re mean, but so the troops can get used to fear and pressure along with the idea of taking and carrying out orders from their officers/noncoms when they are scared and under intense pressure. Tough training makes for easy battles is the motto of all competent fighting forces in the world.

Now I want to touch upon the subject of bullies and people that have been bullied and how that relates to combat. This may come as surprise to you, but bullies are much more likely to panic under combat situations then the people they push around. You see, bullies are used to being the top dogs of the pack, the apex predator in their area, the…you get the idea. They are not used to the idea that there are bigger, tougher, nastier people out that can stomp them into the ground with ease. Or, as in the case of my artillery strike example a couple of paragraphs up, kill them with them without them even being able to fight back. They tend to react…poorly when confronted by this knowledge. The people they push around, however, have long been used to the idea and have an easier time adjusting to the new circumstances.

Now which troops do you think are the most aggressive and bloodthirsty? If you thought marines or special forces troops, you’re wrong. It is naval and air force personnel. Why? Because they never see the faces of the people they are killing or the bodies afterwards. They don’t even think about it most of the time because in their mind they refer to their actions as ‘sinking enemy ships’ or ‘shooting down enemy aircraft.’ They think in terms destroying objects, not killing people, as way to cope with how much blood they have on their hands. A submarine crew is cheering when they torpedo an enemy aircraft carrier because they have just sunk one hell of a prize. The fact that an aircraft carrier has a crew that can number in the thousands is not dwelt upon. The same principle applies to a fighter pilot who shoots down a transport plane loaded with a couple of hundred paratroopers. When they do dwell upon it, they usually develop physiological problems or suffer a nervous breakdown.

Now this is just a brief, a very brief, overview of how people react in combat to get you started on the right track. People can and have wrote entire books on the subject, Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society is an excellent one that I recommend you pick up and read for a more in depth look on the subject. Anyway, I hope this helps you and good luck in your story.

Comment [8]

So you have decided to write a fantasy/science fiction story (sometimes it is hard to distinguish the two, I am looking at you Anne McCaffrey) involving war, mighty armies, and impressive battle scenes; but there is a problem, you don’t know anything about the military, its organization, tactics, strategy, or the history of warfare. Some writers—Christoper Paolini springs to mind immediately—when faced with this problem will simply just wing it. I find this to be completely unacceptable, from both the prospective of a military history buff and an army brat. To help remedy the problem I have created this little starter kit to help any prospective writers out.

Now there is one important question you have to answer when writing your story: what is the national policy of the country/countries engaged in the conflict? You must answer this when telling about your fictional war. Bear in mind that there are five key elements that affect a country’s national policy. First is the country’s political leadership. Carl von Clausewitz—the Prussian version of Sun Tzu (whose book On War I would recommend you pick up and read if you want to write any type of military fiction)—defined war as continuation of politics by other means. Why do your country’s leaders want to go to war (saying they’re evil is not acceptable)? What do they hope to gain? More land, resources? Do they have an ideological agenda? Is it a preemptive strike? If you can’t answer these questions, I want to kindly suggest you stop writing and start thinking of answers instead.

The second is the economic status of the combatants. Wars are generally very expensive, you would be surprised how much money it can take to outfit a simple infantry battalion of a thousand men. Trying to maintain a large army, navy, and air force can easily bankrupt a country; which is why most countries tend to have a small permanent force during peace time and a larger reserve force that is inactive most of the time (Note: if you are writing a story set in medieval times, the countries during the time period have no concept of strategic reserves). So here is another set of questions for prospective writers to answer: How strong are the respective economies of the countries involved? How do they plan to finance the war? Higher taxes, taking out loans, looting conquered territories?

The next one is the size and condition of the military forces. How large is your army, what kind of equipment does it have, how well are the soldiers trained? These items are very important when designing the flow and ultimate outcome of the war. Take for example the Aztecs and the Spanish; the Aztec armies outnumbered Cortez’s Spanish expeditionary force by a considerable margin, but Cortez’s men had much better armor and weapons, not to mention they had horses and the Aztecs didn’t. If you don’t realize how much of a difference horses can, make please stop writing and do more research. Yet, superior weapons do not necessarily guarantee victory. Germany during WWII had the best weapons and equipment, but still succumbed to the Allies’ superior numbers and industrial base.

Also take into consideration the population of a country when deciding how large the army is. That is one of my biggest complaints with the Eragon books (I have a list of other complaints, and believe me it is a fairly long list). Paolini’s pseudo-Germanic wannabe Middle Earth country has at the most a population of ten million. Odds are its population smaller, somewhere around four to six million. And it apparently maintains a couple of field armies over a hundred thousand strong all the time. No, no, no, no, and for change of pace, NO! There is no way it should be able to support an army of that size, much less two or three, for any length of time.

Why, you ask? Well, lets look at what kind of manpower King Galby has to draw on and what hints are dropped in the books (there are a couple, believe it or not. Surely an oversight on Paolini’s part.) Note that for the sake of argument I am going to assume the country has a population of ten million, a nice round number. Our first clue is when Arya makes this wonderful little announcement:

Do not pamper me, human. Elves train both their men and women to fight. I am not one of your helpless females to run away whenever there is danger. (Eragon, pg. 477)

So now we can reasonably assume that Algaesian Empire does not use female soldiers. Fair enough, most medieval countries didn’t, but we have to factor that into Galby’s potential manpower reserves. Let’s say that women make up somewhere between forty-seven to fifty-three percent of the population and already you see the Algaesian Imperial Army’s pool of recruits has been cut in half. Next we have to weed out the people that are either too young (below the age of fourteen) or too old (over forty-five) to make effective soldiers. Making an educated guess, I figure that is somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five percent of the population. That pool of recruits just keeps dwindling, doesn’t it?

Now, let’s factor in people who are not physically fit for military service (five to ten percent), people who have skills or jobs that are vital for the civilian sector and are therefore exempt from military service (about two percent, give or take), outlaws and other criminals (also about two percent), draft dodgers (around one percent), slaves (I don’t know how widespread slavery is in Algaesia, the slave percentage of the population could be anywhere from five percent like medieval England to forty percent like Byzantium) and a few other things, like disease, that are entirely unpredictable. The end result is that the Algaesian Imperial Army has a pool of potential recruits of somewhere between two hundred to three hundred thousand.

Now I can just people going ‘HA, HA, you just contradicted yourself lulz!!’ But we’re not done yet. You see, this pool of recruits is also used to supply other important Imperial posts like the Imperial Navy, the local town watches and constabulary, border guards, bodyguards for important Imperial officials, prison guards, so on and so forth. The end result is that the Algaesian Imperial Army would be only able to support a field force of around forty thousand to seventy thousand men. And I realize I have gone off on a tangent and I apologize. Still, keep this example in mind when designing your fictional armies.

The next factor in your fictional war is geography. It can often play a decisive factor in a number of ways. For example, one of the reasons France became the leading nation in Europe during the Middle Ages was because the mountain ranges and bodies of water that make up its borders made it difficult for large armies to invade. A more recent example is that the People’s Republic of China would just love to invade Taiwan, but its navy lacks the capacity to move a large number of troops across the body of water that separates the two countries.

The last factor in a country’s ability to wage war is its national will: how the people feel about the war, their leaders, and how far they are willing to support them. The US lost the war with Vietnam not through military defeat, but because the American people refused to support it any longer. And here is where the Eragon books run into another major problem. According to the narrator, the common people hate King Galby. So how is he able to continue fighting the Varden? He should be having desertions from his army left and right, people refusing the call to muster, people should be refusing to pay taxes to finance the war, etc… Yet, we don’t see this. There is word to describe this kind of oversight: pathetic.

Another important part of wars authors tend to ignore is logistics. Logistics is the fine art supplying the army in the field; soldiers can’t fight without ammunition, food in their belly, or boots on their feet. You want a prime example of how important this is, take a look at the Confederate Army towards the end of the American Civil War. In fact, there is a saying that you should memorize here: Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. A one hundred thousand strong army should have a large and well developed supply train. I could go into another tangent on Eragon here, but I have already done that enough. And that, ladies and gentlemen, should be enough to get you started on the right track.

Comment [32]