Infinite Wisdom

"There's no sight more inspiring or heart-warming than troops marching out to battle when you ain't going with them."

La Triviata

• It’s likely that at the height of his empire, around the year 800, Charlemagne could call up as many as 35,000 mounted warriors and 100,000 foot soldiers
• In accordance with an ancient custom, at the Battle of Korti (November 4, 1820), the Shaigia, a tribe of the Sudan, were led into battle by a virgin, Meheira bint Abod of the Suarab, though her virtue did not prevent them from being defeated by a Turko-Egyptian army.
• When Messina, in Sicily, revolted against the Spanish Crown in 1674, the later promptly arranged a “subsidy” of 50,000 crowns a month to borrow the fleet of the Dutch Republic, which had itself only achieved independence from Spain a generation earlier.
• At a “Kriegsrat – War Council” meeting on December 8, 1912, Kaiser Wilhelm II and his principal military and naval commanders concluded that Germany had to be ready for a major war in 1914.
• In 1768 the Ottoman Army numbered 400,000 men on paper, but hardly 40,000 were actually available for service.
• During one of his tours in Vietnam, George S. Patton IV, reportedly based the evaluation report for one of his subordinates on comments about the man that were found in documents written by the opposing VC commander, who spoke highly of the officer.
• Although Napoleon called up some 936,500 conscripts, National Guards, and veterans between his disastrous defeat at Leipzig in late October of 1813 and his first abdication in early April of 1814, only about a third reported for duty, of whom only about third actually saw combat.
• During their protracted Siege of Plevna (July 20- December 10, 1877), the Russians lost an average of about 200 men killed or wounded daily in the trenches by Turkish rifle fire, even in “quiet” periods, for a total, including men lost in four attempts to storm the defenses, of some 35,000.

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