Quote:
Originally Posted by Feuerbach
Hello Spongegod,
in the 14th century Dimitrij Donskoj lead an army of 70,000-120,000 men (this numbers are reported by different historical sources) to beat the Tartars, that had an army of also more than 100,000 men. But you can assume that far more than the half of his men were peasants recruited by force.
As much I remeber this was by far the largest army in medieval times.
I'm not an expert, but 400,000 men seems to me unrealitically high concerning Rome.
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That is actually probably a bit low at its height. During the Early Imperial Augustus had nearly 50 legions at the end of the war with Mark Antony. Thats 256,000 Legionaries, but does not count auxiliary troops. If each legion had on average just 3000 auxiliary troops (total 8156) thats 407,600 men under arms not counting the navy. At one point at the battle of Actium, August could field 400 warships (300 men on average each for a Liburnian) plus 16,000 legionary marines and 3,000 archers thats at least another 139,000 men. not counting transports and the inflated numbers from the bigger galleys.
So at its height Rome probably fielded closer to 600,000 or 700,000 troops in all services. Out side of China we would not see Armies like that until Napoleon.