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diegosimeone

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Oct 5, 2012
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Jolly good, I was looking for something like this. I wanted to know how fast ancient armies moved because I'm writing a low fantasy story where I need to find out how long it takes to march a distance equivalent to going from France to Syria.
 
Quite faster in the summer for almost any journey I tried to check, even in places where winter is not that bad. I'd also expect the summers of northern Africa to be harder to travel than the winters.
 
That's a very good site.

@ Lord Finnish, I copied down some information about that sort of thing a while ago from various websites, take a look:

Code:
[B]Distances a person walking can travel in one day (assuming 8 hours).[/B]

On Roads / trails
 Level or rolling terrain:		32 km (4.00 km/h)
 Hilly terrain:				23 km (2.88 km/h)
 Mountainous terrain:			15 km (1.88 km/h)

Off-Road (or unkempt trails etc)
 Level/rolling grasslands:		24 km (3.00 km/h)
 Hilly grasslands:			19 km (2.38 km/h)
 Level/rolling forest/thick scrub:	13 km (1.63 km/h)
 Very hilly forest/thick scrub:		10 km (1.25 km/h)

 Un-blazed Mountain passes:		10 km (1.25 km/h)
 Marshland:				 8 km (1.00 km/h)

Bonuses and Penalties:
 -25% for heavily laden people
 +25% for experienced and trained people
 +50% for exceptionally good and experienced hikers, but only for a few days
+100% for exceptionally good and experienced hikers, but only for a day and will be utterly exhausted
 -25% for poor weather such as wind and rain
 -50% for extremely poor weather such as snow or storms
 +25% for the best runners in 2 hours, but will be utterly exhausted

Code:
[B]Distances a person on Horseback can travel in one day (assuming 10 hours).[/B]

On Roads / trails
 Level or rolling terrain:		64 km (6.40 km/h)
 Hilly terrain:				48 km (4.80 km/h)
 Mountainous terrain:			32 km (3.20 km/h)

Off-Road (or unkempt trails etc)
 Level/rolling grasslands:		48 km (4.80 km/h)
 Hilly grasslands:			40 km (4.00 km/h)
 Level/rolling forest/thick scrub:	32 km (3.20 km/h)
 Very hilly forest/thick scrub:		24 km (2.40 km/h)

 Un-blazed Mountain passes:		16 km (1.60 km/h)
 Marshland:				16 km (1.60 km/h)

Bonuses and Penalties:
 -50% for Horses pulling carts or very heavily laden
 +50% for specially trained horses and riders, though only for a few days at the most
+100% for exceptionally good horses and riders, though only for that day
+150% for exceptionally good horses and riders in an emergency situation, though may kill the horses
 -25% for poor weather such as wind and rain
 -50% for extremely poor weather such as snow or storms

It's only rough estimates of course, but it might be useful to you.
 
Looks excellent :)
 
This is blood brilliant.
 
Awesome! :)
 
@ Lord Finnish, I copied down some information about that sort of thing a while ago from various websites, take a look:
Your figures look generally okay to me, but I think they exaggerate the speed of horseback travel a little - or at least, your numbers will apply to individual riders or small groups, but not to cavalry armies on the march.

Horses are much faster than humans over short distances, but they also get tired more quickly; so over long distances the humans will actually be faster. That doesn't apply if you are willing to ride your horse until it dies of exhaustion, but obviously that's not practical if you expect to need it later. It also doesn't apply if you have multiple horses and you switch to a different one whenever each gets tired. The Mongol hordes were famous for covering vast distances very quickly on horseback - but that's because each warrior had up to a dozen horses with him and could change regularly. Even then, a Mongol army performing a forced march would leave a broad trail of dead horses behind it.


For the record, the United States Army has formal regulations (published online) for how fast soldiers can march. Three miles per hour (5 kph) for 50 minutes, then a ten minute break; a longer break at lunchtime; walking for eight hours. That way, soldiers can cover exactly 20 miles (32 km) in a day. A trained, healthy solder can repeat that for multiple days while carrying full equipment. A forced march officially means marching for longer each day rather than faster: if you walk for 10 hours instead of 8 you'll cover 25 miles per day, but will be exhausted at the end of it.

As far as I know, Roman legions marched at pretty much the same pace. Such things don't really change.


Another factor to bear in mind is the availability of food and provisions. If you have depots - or inns - pre-positioned along the route to supply the marching troops and horses, they can keep going all day. Similarly if you have supply carts, or even better a fleet carrying provisions sailing parallel to the route of the marching soldiers. But if you have to keep on stopping to forage for food - or worse, to graze your horses - you aren't going to be travelling nearly as far that day.

Likewise if you have to look for a campsite instead of being able to check into a hostel every night - and especially if, like the Romans, you want to fortify your campsite against attack instead of just letting each group of soldiers pitch their tents wherever they like. Arranging that takes time.

In short, if you're an army on the march into unknown territory - even if it's friendly or allied - your speed is going to be probably less than half the speeds listed in that chart.
 
Yes, the figures I showed are purely for a single person or small group of people, it doesn't necessarily reflect the difficulties of moving whole armies and all their accompanying baggage.

A while ago I was watching a BBC documentary about the Anglo-Saxons and they mentioned this English army that set out from Winchester to go to Durham (I think this was in the early 10th century and they were attacking the Scots or something) and it took them 35 days to cross the approximately 500 km. That's an average of only about 14 km per day, and that's through their own territory, without encountering the enemy and (presumably) mostly by road (ok, there probably weren't many proper roads in the Dark Ages, but they would have been using well trodden, known routes). So yes, a whole army can take a lot longer to move somewhere then what a small group can do. Which is why I suppose cavalry scouts were so important, since they could easily be 50 kilometres ahead of the main force assessing the enemy and so forth.
 
Awesome discovery :D
 
Nice. I like it.

I have a question though; when selecting 'travelling at a brisk march' have they accounted for an army (of nondescript size, granted), or just a single person/soldier?
 
This is awesome thanks for posting this!
I also will be using this to help somewhat figuring out travel times for writing projects.
 
That is ridiculously pleasing for some reason.

I plan to one day travel from my home in the Netherlands to Rome on foot. If the Romans could do it in 2 months, so can I ;)
 
1 month from Rome to Braga? Seems quite reasonable given the technology of the time.