???? A man on a horse has more than twice the target area of a man on foot
Only if he is attacked from the flank. Frontally his area is not so much bigger. Check:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 227AAD0U9y
Not all the Normans were "nobles" indeed his force had a fair number of mercenaries (not the most reliable troops when things start to go wrong by the way).
And mercenaries also didn't have farms. What they did for a living was war, not farming.
I've never read anything to that affect.
I've heard it (in a TV documentary). He already had problem with this after the battle of Stamford Bridge.
Soldiers from levy en masse (such as Fyrd) are typically not willing to stay in the field for long time.
If the military campaign is taking too long, they start to want to go back to their homes.
Especially during harvest (if they are peasants).
Given that William was burning and/or appropriateing the local crops I rather doubt it.
Harold's army at Hastings consisted of soldiers gathered from quite a large area of his country.
Not just from locals.
And also - regarding locals - the fact that someone was just burning your crops (and possibly killing your children and raping your wife) was an even better reason to quickly go home to save them.
from what I've read the Greeks were still outnumbered by more than 3 to 1 and perhaps even double
The Greeks maybe but alongside the Greeks were also Persians. It was a civil war after all.
and the Persians had something of a history of exagerating the size of their armies as well.
Maybe they had a habit of counting their "forces" in a similar way as later Ottoman Turks did.
Let me quote my post from another forum:
Peter K wrote:
Why Turkish Medieval / Early Modern Era armies were so massive (compared to their enemies) according to sources from that time?
Well, if you count camp followers you get enormous strength of armies.
For example the Turkish army in the battle of Vienna in 1683 had 50,000 horse-drawn wagons with it (and we must count one coachman and a few camp followers for each horse wagon). So apart from 150,000 soldiers the Ottomans would have probably 150,000 - 200,000 camp followers (including coachmen) with them at Vienna - and 50,000 horse-drawn wagons (one wagon for each 3 soldiers). The same would apply to European armies of course.
And it seems that Turks actually had a habit of counting also camp followers and even horses and camels as "army strength" in their official military documents. I guess it had some propaganda impact on their enemies.
But they didn't count camp followers and horses when counting casualties, on the other hand.
For example Polish 17th century soldier Jan Ostrorog commented the discrepancy in numbers given on Turkish forces in the battle of Khotyn in 1621. Turkish own counts said that their army at Khotyn in 1621 was 300,000 Turks and 100,000 Tatars - in total 400,000. While Polish envoy who was also acting as a spy during his mission to Turkish camp, wrote that there were no more than 150,000 Turks and no more than 60,000 Tatars. And in fact the first number most likely includes all men and horses and the second one probably includes all men (including camp followers).
And here is how Jan Ostrorog explains these great differences in numbers:
"(...) Sir Zelenski [that Polish envoy] counted their forces using Polish method, which is considerably different than Turkish method - in the Turkish army they count separately each living creature, for example if they have a mounted knight and this knight has another horse, or a mule, or a camel - then they count all of this separately, and that's why they get so huge numbers of their armies (...)"
And Ostrorog concludes:
"(...) That's why when there will be a 10,000 strong Polish force, there will still be more actual soldiers among these 10,000, than in a Turkish force which is said to be 20,000 strong, or maybe even in a Turkish force which is said to be 30,000 strong (...)".
Another Polish envoy - Krzysztof Zbaraski - who visited Turkey few years later, wrote:
"Forces of the Turkish tyrant are bigger on paper than in actual armies, because when they count strength of their forces, they count both men and horses"
If vollee fire at formations was being conducted possibly althoug probably not. If aimed fire then not at all.
Nobody aimed in a formation vs formation combat. They just "leveled", not aimed. And actually when you fire from bows or crossbows, you usually fire into the air (so that arrows fall on enemies from above, at some angle).
And even if they did aim, it could not be efficient. As I wrote you overestimate accuracy. Had you actually ever shot from a bow or crossbow? I did - and it's true that I'm not very good at it, but it is really very hard to shoot accurately from a bow when your taget is more than 20 - 30 m away from you. Experienced archer would do better, but not so much better as you claim. Crossbow was not more accurate than bow, it was just easier to use by inexperienced soldiers with similar efficiency / accuracy, while to be good at using bow you need years of training.
Especially that all the time many soldiers would aim at the same target. On the other hand, plenty of potential targets would remain untouched because nobody would aim at them and thus try to "touch" them.
You know what I mean? When 100 soldiers attack 100 archers, and archers somehow happen to conduct aimed fire (which, as I said, didn't happen often), it is not like each of archers would aim at different enemy. Some archers would aim at the same enemy soldier, while many of enemy soldiers would not be targeted by anyone.
I fully agree. So generalizations like "infantry > cavalry" or "cavalry > infantry" are not welcomed.
??? Then why did you make one?
??? I didn't. Actually other users claimed that cavalry will loose against steady infantry.
Hardly a surprise. Put in works or even just asked to hold a position a high moral unit such as the Hussars should do well unless out matched by their opposition in either equipment or numbers.
Yeap. And I don't claim that any infantry unit would do worse than them, in a similar situation.
Of course provided that this infantry would have a high enough morale, when facing such odds.
But Tatar cavalry was very light, it was unarmoured, armed mostly with bows (but in periods of crisis & poverty for the Crimean Khanate, many of its Tatars couldn't even afford a bow - some of them had just crude maces). Tatar cavalry was good for "hit & run" warfare rather than for besieging & capturing fortified positions.
I'm not sure if Tatars fought mounted or dismounted (or both) in that battle of Hodow, but it would make not much difference since they were light troops with light weapons facing well armoured enemies.
And as I wrote Hussars in that battle used long firearms (a bit shorter cavalry muskets, or arquebuses).
The entire siege of Pskov was tactically inconclusive, but it doesn't tell us anything about how successful was that particular assault (for example it could be successful but then Russians could regain the lost area as the result of counterattacks). I don't have any details about that particular engagement at the moment.
To balance that Harold had his Huscarls.
Yeap. But the bulk of his forces was Fyrd.
In that case they could have just let them go. They didn't. On the other hand they didn't necessarily want to kill them all, indeed they probably prefered to enslave them. Their activities however clearly showed that just getting them out of Persia was not their aim. Indeed the Greeks would have been happy to go peacefully.
Maybe because the Persians thought:
"Oh, the Greeks are retreating. Let's have some fun and shooting exercise at the same time and let's send a huge force of our horse archers behind them. We will suffer minimal losses and still kill some of them".
And maybe they wanted revenge for Cunaxa. Since they couldn't compete in a pitched battle, "hit and run" warfare was the best opportunity to take revenge and inflict heavy losses on withdrawing Greeks.
By the way they also wanted to capture some prisoners, as you mentioned.
I forget exactly where I read it but I remember reading that another group of the Fyrd had rallied at a town less than a days march away. Furthermore Harold had left most/all the Northumbrian Fyrd in the North in his hurry south. Exact numbers are hard to come by but given the nature of the Fyrd Harolds numbers would indeed grow substantially over time.
But the Normans also could bring in more reinforcements from Normandy, across the Channel.