"How severe were the casualties in ancient/medieval battles?" Topic

Interesting thread here…

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Amicalement
Armand

strategy and tactics magazine had a list of battle (medieval) and the casualties

shame it never made it into the wiki

It depends on the battle. Hastings, Hattin, almost any lost battle against the Mongols: casualties were massive. Roman casualties against Hannibal were very heavy. "5%" doesn't come remotely close. I'd say outright 25% dead in any of the above historical situations. Probably higher in most of them. Hastings, for instance, eliminated c. half of the thegns in one single day; and virtually all of the housecarls; that's because other than a few hundred housecarls in the other earldoms, all of them were at the battle; and the bulk of the thegns as well; and there was that still existing battlefield ethic of the "Teutons" which said that the warrior should not survive his lord on the battlefield: all the Godwinson brothers were dead and the warrior classes fought and died where they stood: only the rustics ran away.

Usually low but if defeated very high

My view has always been that many more die in the rout than the battle but that can vary greatly with circumstances.

At St.Jacob-En-Birs in 1444, there was no rout, the Swiss just went all 'Alamo' at the end and had to be winkled out of a hospital and killed.

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Barry