Magic as applied to Medieval battles

[Arashikage]

Magic is an interesting topic, one that is talked about and talked about and applied to many fantasy worlds. Does it really exist? Not in the way it's portrayed, there's always an explanation in real life which ruins the magic part.

Anyway, on to the subject at hand. Magic: If Medieval battles used it, how would things go over? What are your thoughts on what might cause it, how it might go over, how it might work? Would magic users be considered powerful weapons for wartime, or would they be crushed by the massive Catholic following?

If used in the battle, what might provide sufficient protection? Would it be a new element? Would it simply harness the elements that already exist? Please, explain your thoughts here.

[The Shaper]

Now is this before or after the Witch Hunt?

[ballisticwaffles]

Sit down children, and allow me to educate you all.

PREFACE:

To argue about something as it pertains to IRL, then we must bring it to realities level. The laws of physics and thermodynamics and motion must apply.

We must also establish vanilla combat in the middle ages as to point out the differences that would occur. Lets do that now.

In the Medieval period, let us say at the cusp of the Black Death, The battlefield was dominated by heavy cavalry. With a few notable exceptions, the battle of hastings comes to mind, the more knights you had the more you won. This however was balanced by the fact that pike men and crossbows could do away with the advantage. And those two in turn could be taken down by lighter cavalry and basic infantry. And those could be taken down by knights. It is a circle, as most things are, of balancing that made fighting more of a reliance on the discipline of the men and the generalship of the commanding officer. Although it does sound like a video game more than it does a reality, having a balanced army was vital to its success.

Thus to add a fourth peg would only lengthen the chain. A Crossbowman took a few weeks of training to be proficient with his weapon, a spear man about the same amount of time. A Mage, like his knightly counterpart, would take a life time of training and conditioning to produce an able warrior. The Mage would have to be able to counter some sort of attack or cause enough destruction that his value on the battlefield would be secured. A shield spell to render arrows moot or a lightning spell that could fry a few men at a time. Note that this is not a singular man. Most likely a unit of magi would be trained to act as a unit. A single man throwing bolts is cool and all, but when 15,000 men are staring him down odds are he is going to drop a load and cheese it.

And again, a circle. The Magi most likely will not be mounted due to the fact that their role would primarily be defensive. As i stated above, shield spells would render arrows moot. Moot for the units around the magi at least. A mage cannot "Just" do something, there must be limitation, so we must assume the average to make assumptions. therefore a mage would be most useful guarding your troops against casual ranged attacks. By casual i mean if they lob a trebuche load at a unit, odds are the mage will explode from effort at the giant rock hitting his shield, but i digress. In turn the unit or units would need to protect the magi with their entire being. thus the counter against a mage would be dependant apon the units guarding him. You cannot fire out of a sheild without hitting the shield, so archers would be right out. Cavalry would be more suited to attacking rather than staying put to ward off agressors, so the magi would be most dependant on infantry, who we previously established to be vulnerable to cavalry and archers, who have been negated by the mage's shield. It adds nothing to the medieval combat, other than an additional factor for a commander to worry himself over.

The invention of casted Cannons, that is cannons made from the process that made church bells, would invalidate magi on the medieval and imperial battlefields. The same reason walls fell into disuse, if one could simply point a big gun at a mage and blow him to tiny bits (in thy mercy) there wouldn't be much of a point in having him, or them.

On the religious side of the argument Witchcraft, not wizardry, is a nono, therefore only men would be able to practice it. Remember Arthurian tale''s Merlin was a good guy (Presumably catholic Wizard) vs Morgona (Presumably Satanic Witch)

TL:DR To hell with your magic missile i have Catholicism!

[Thu'um]

What type of magic are we talking about here? In theory could a magician just clip a single blod vain to the brain or stop the heart and it all be over? it really depends on the flexabilty and power of what we are talking about. Projectile magic may find its self no more useful then a peasent armed with a bow.

And how easy is it to cast. From where is it drawn? how long does it take to learn?

[Arashikage]

Let's go with the Paolini definition of magic. Okay, keep rolling your eyes, but I actually liked that definition. You can control it if you know the word for it in the ancient language of the Elves, but on top of that, you need to be strong enough to handle it. For example, when Eragon used the fire spell for the first time, he passed out because he couldn't yet control it. It could have been worse but he had a plot shield.

Let's also say that you can not do things that are too complicated, unless you're willing to speak an entire sentence or two, in which time you might just be beheaded or something.

The magicians were not as prevalent in battle as cavalry or pikemen or swordsmen, but they had an advantage, control over magic, the ability to heal, place wards, protect, or attack.

[ballisticwaffles]

Paolini doesn't understand how war works. FTLOG you do not just pick up a shield and know how to use it. Shields are heavy hunks of metal made to protect you from harm, you cannot just pick one up and use it proficiantly. And WTF was they Empire using Seige weaponry? The fact that they lugged that heavy equipment just to fire at a stationary army is ridiculous, you would kill more of your own men than the other sides. and dont get me started on the fact that 100,000 men is a ridiculous number throw. Rome at its height had a tad over a million people in it. Thats 10% of rome packing up and skipping off to war, and rome was the largest city of its time. even in teh later periods

The battle of hastings had from 3000 to 30,000 men on each side. This has nothing to do with the menpower available, but the feasability of supply lines and equipping and feeding your men when there was barely enough to go around. Paolini doesnt understand how war works.

As for a paolini Mage running around, i point to my circle above witha few adjustments. If the magic were to run off of the user or the energy a user could gather, then a viable limit is established to the length of time that shield that was protecting the men from arrows is established. Meaning that all a commander would need to do is park his men outside of attack range, and have his archers go to town on the shield. Have his men surround his bowmen to protect them, and watch for magic possession, and woosh bam thank you ma'am the shield is done with. As to the viability of having a squad running around casting fire bolts, i point again to the life time of magic usage to be proficient at it. These men would not be used to cause great death to your enemies, that would be a waste of their potential. One of the limiting factors in war is the amount of casualties your side takes. War has never ever been about killing everyone on the other side just because, its all about destroying the will of the fighters. A few notable exceptions aside, Hannibal Barca, Magi would be best used to prevent damage to your own forces.

As to Paolini's depiction of war once more, Infantry do not make up the bulk of an army because they fight the cooliest. They do so because of the astounding variability they can bring to bear. An Archer is an archer, no matter what kind of bow you put in his hands. Cavalry is split into two, heavy and light, with Knights wielding lances and specialized swords for swinging atop the horses. infantry can hold spears, swords, axes, you name it. Pikemen can ward off cavalry, both kinds mind you. Swordsman and basic infantry can hold the center while the cavalry does its fancy flanking things. They are to both protect and to hold the line. Paolini just... augh.

[Faisul]

While BallisticWaffles' contributions to this thread are a pretty interesting read and the thread topic itself was one that stood out to me immediately as one I would like to participate in, you really have to take a step back and make sure you have a clear idea of what's being discussed before you start talking about what would happen should a hypothetical and nonexistant 'force' of 'magic' find its way into medieval warfare. This might get a little wordy and theoretical but bear with me since if we don't demarcate some clear lines of definition we'll be essentially discussing who would win in a fight between Superman and Goku, which everyone knows would be pretty boring.

First of all, what is meant here by 'magic?' As the word carries different meanings to pretty much everyone (and has itself referenced wildly different things throughout history and from culture to culture) it could refer to something as banal as summoning rabbits from a hat to awe-inspiring, transcendent, indescribable feats of cosmic profundity. Since magic clearly does not exist, at least not in the fantasy definition of 'a force wielded by bearded old farts wearing pointy hats,' we are free to interpret is as we will, thereby giving it very little significance to what we're discussing. For instance, if wizards did exist in the Medieval period, why even bother with armies? Why bother fighting wars? The wizards could just summon up any quantity of money, food or resources for their masters to ensure a post-scarcity society with no need to fight over land, the dominant concern of the aristocracy at the time.

Sure, you could limit their destructive (or constructive) capability by saying that they have a mana pool that would be expended through the use of their magic, then someone else could place an arbitrary limit on their power so as to reserve some relevance for mundane armies of fighting men slogging it out, but as I intimated earlier, this discussion would ultimately be dependent on your definition of the kind of magic in question. So unless we come to some kind of accepted standard of magic, we won't be discussing much else than how cool it would be if Harold could shoot lasers out of his butt and how super boned William the Conqueror would be.

Secondly, though much more of a nitpicky aside for my part, 'Medieval battles' could be referencing a lot of things. The Medieval period lasted between 500 to 1000 years, depending on which historian you ask. Some people use the fall of the Roman Empire as a starting point and the Renaissance as an end point, others use completely different milestones (such as the period in which models like 'feudalism' or the 'manorial system' of economics and society was in practice and even that is debatable). So if we run with what seems to be the traditionally accepted timeframe, approximately from the 8th to the 15th century, there are a lot of things happening in between, not least within military technology. How battles are fought and what kind of kit shows up in them are not only dependent on time period, but also in what region these battles are fought.

So let's take one of BallisticWaffles' examples, the Battle of Hastings. This was fought between two quite different types of armies, one being based primarily on foot soldiers, and the other utilizing a sizeable contingent of what we today refer to as knights.

Harold of England's army, having just won a very close victory at Stanford Bridge against the confusingly named Harald of Norway, had been exhaustingly force-marched south to East Sussex to fend off William of Normandy and was, as a consequence, immediately at a disadvantage. As to its composition and fighting style, it was probably built up with a lot of soldiers with combined arms, like axes and spears (readily available to commoners) and swords (available only to the rich), including armor ranging from pretty much nothing to elaborately and exquisitely wrought chainmail and embroidered leather, and beautifully decorated round shields, depending on the wealth and status of the person that wore them. Harold's army was mainly composed of Saxons and descendants of Viking invaders, and would probably have fought much like those invaders, in shield wall formations, using strategies aiming to punch through massed ranks of similarly armed men to get at their leaders. The Saxons as a rule used cavalry only sparingly in fights, because horses were prohibitively expensive to purchase and keep, not to mention the kind of horses suitable for use in war - which I think was never really bred by the Saxons anyway for reasons of expense and lack of familiarity.

William's army on the other hand had brought along a large number of horses and the people with enough skill and equipment to use them effectively in war. We mustn't forget where William came from - the Continent - a place where constant warfare brought on many changes in how wars were fought and with what gear than in England or Scandinavia, which had begun to lag behind at that point in time. A very crucial piece of kit that really allowed knights to begin to rule the battlefield was the stirrup, which permitted the rider to use both a shield and a spear (or sword) reliably while also steering their horses around on the field, but even this advantage never really assured William's victory anyway - a series of tactical blunders by Harold (and his death from an arrow to the goddamn FACE) during the course of the fight assured his victory more definitely than anything else. It was a risky gamble by William, but as history shows, it really payed off in the end.

TL;DR for the above part: An example of two vastly different armies fighting each other while coming from two very geographically close places

Conversely, put one army from the 11th century up against one from the 12th and those fancy stirrups won't save you when a half-ton monster of plate armor, horse and lance comes thundering after you at 50mph. Then again, heavily armored knights could be a liability as well as an advantage - when the English turned the tables on France during the Hundred Year's War at Crecy and Agincourt they did it with a bunch of dudes with longbows and bodkin arrows (designed to penetrate heavy armor), making sure to shoot down the big hulking knights where they'd become an obstacle for subsequent horse charges up the hill they camped like a bunch of noobs.

So yeah that was a massive digression but do make note that the above, all coming from northern Europe, living in the same place in time and having similar(ish) societies, both England and France fought very differently and had a range of equipment to bring to a fight that was dependent on many factors - and to add to the confusion, the above took place roughly within a 100 years, so that's about 600years of advancement in military technology I haven't addressed, if we accept the historical definition I put forward earlier. So to come to the point:

What kind of magic, and in what kind of medieval battle, are we essentially talking about here?