Cannibalism a significant boon for logistics?

[KraytKing]

Looking at a medieval fantasy world, similar to LOTR or some interpretations of D&D. Not necessarily cannibalism, but if you have an army of, say, orcs, and they're willing to eat the villages they conquer. Would this have a significant effect on the cost of raising an army? How much of their food would historical armies of this technological and societal level bring with them, rather than steal? Obviously, it would absolutely devastate the region being conquered, but if orcs are conquering then in all likelihood it was going to be depopulated in a few years.

How much of an economic benefit would this bring overall? Was cattle a significant prize in historical analogues? If so, I imagine sapients fit for consumption would be similar. Is this another boost to orc or goblin armies, or is it insignificant in the grand scheme?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Didn't pretty much all armies in that period (and up until fairly recently) "live off the land"? anyway? If so, this wouldn't really reduce the amount of food they'd need to bring with them.

And, also, if it's an army of orcs eating villagers, surely it'd only be cannibalism if the villagers were also orcs, otherwise it'd just be...predators eating prey animals.

[KraytKing]

And, also, if it's an army of orcs eating villagers, surely it'd only be cannibalism if the villagers were also orcs, otherwise it'd just be...predators eating prey animals.

Yeah I know, but "predators eating prey animals a significant boon for logistics?" is too long and doesn't catch the eye the same way.

[Imperial Overlord]

Its potentially useful under specific situations (see R. Scott Bakker's Aspect-Emperor series which is also fucking awesome) but generally it isn't going to be useful. It requires a situation where there is an abundance of people to eat, but extremely limited alternative food sources which raises the question what do all those people you're going to eat subsist on?

[loomer]

It only requires an absence of other food sources if it's a last resort. If it's a first resort, it's just bonus food.

[FaxModem1]

Didn't the Warcraft movie have that as a part of the plot, in which they were kidnapping villagers to power their gateway to let in the rest of the Orc army?

[Esquire]

Not really significant. In weird edge cases you get a bit of extra marginal logistical capacity, in exchange for guaranteeing that nobody will ever surrender to you under any circumstances - this is not going to be a good deal on balance.

[Imperial Overlord]

It only requires an absence of other food sources if it's a last resort. If it's a first resort, it's just bonus food.

Bonus food that will now resist you to the death, is no longer generating an economy you can take advantage of, and is no longer a conscriptable labor source. That's not really an advantage unless you really need the food. So, again, only really unusual edge cases.

[Broomstick]

This is a variant on human armies arriving in a village and trying to decide whether it makes more sense to eat the horses they find or use them for transport?

Do the humans have use other than as food? Then it might make more sense to keep them alive. If the orcs have no use for humans then there is, in a sense, no reason to not use them for food. Except of course the fighting even more desperately part which, depending on the capabilities of the respective groups, may or may not be of particular importance.

[Zor]

Cannibalism is a good way to build up Prion diseases.

Zor

[madd0ct0r]

Cannibalism is a good way to build up Prion diseases.

Zor

Fortunately, magic is a prison disease...

[Coop D'etat]

There's going to be a whole lot of it depends here, with the biology of your attacking army being the most significant factor.

If your "orc" is roughly human in their biology (i.e. a 100-300lb ommivore), eating people is going to be a fairly marginal increase in "foragable" foodstuffs availible. The greater advantage is that an army intent on depopulation can loot all the food availible and leave nothing for the inhabitants. That kind of an army will have a higher carrying capacity on the march than its equivalents, at the cost of creating a wasteland that will be effectively untraversible to any army that can't carry its food with it (which is most pre-industrial armies). This kind of an army is on top of facing the problems discussed above will have even greater issues with the typical pre-industrial army's need to keep moving or starve. That might be a good story telling hook, your outnumbered band of heroes might win against dire odds just by virtue of stopping the horde at a bottleneck long enough for the enemy to disintigrate.

Now, if your orc analogues are to some degree obligate carnivores, that might be the point of the conflict in the first place. Carnivores don't get the benefits of farming like humans do, at best they can be pastorialists. As such they would be severely underpopulated against farming humans, but might be naturally more individually dangerous in combat. So a logical development might be that your orcs get pressed into marginal land by expansion of farmland, suffer overpopulation as a result and band together in a horde to solve their hunger problem by eating people. This is in effect a fantastic hyperbole of the historical farmer/nomad dynamic.

With acknowledgements to Bakker and to a certain extent Tolkien, your orcs might not be a natural species but specifically bred by magic/science as a weapon species and their may be a biological drive to eat people that motivates them (Bakker's horrifying innovation was that it was also tied to the sex drive for the sranc).

So it comes down to the rules of how your fantasy world works. If you want this to be a story element, you can write the rules of that world to make it make sense under the circumstances. If the rules are preexisting and you're operating under them, its going to depend on what they are whether or not armies eating people makes rational sense or not.

[Jub]

I think Coop D'etat nailed it but there's one other advantage to using other sentients as a food source, you can use them as forced labour until you eat them. Much like with the other parts of your baggage train any sentient that's unneeded, troublesome, slow, weak, etc. can be culled at the next stop. The issue is that unlike with livestock sentients will need guards to prevent revolt, but in practice, this would likely only require a few extra guards with the baggage train to keep manageable.

[Lord Revan]

Didn't the Warcraft movie have that as a part of the plot, in which they were kidnapping villagers to power their gateway to let in the rest of the Orc army?

Sort of yes, granted it was because the fel energy powering the portal needed souls to power it rather something they could have done any other way.

As for the OP, a major problem that as mentioned before your potential recruitment pools for hard labor will now fight to death if at all possible and might even employ scorched earth policy in a way that makes settlements that can't resist you useless to your.

So I'd say no, it's not gonna be boon for logistics as they issues it will cause out weight the potential benefits.

[loomer]

These arguments all hinge on the idea that the existing peoples are to be put to work or allowed to fight for you, not exterminated on the principle that they are suborcish scum.

[Imperial Overlord]

These arguments all hinge on the idea that the existing peoples are to be put to work or allowed to fight for you, not exterminated on the principle that they are suborcish scum.

Sure, if you're going to slaughter them all immediately instead of say enslaving them all Spartan style or Nazi style working them to death then cannibalism becomes more practical.

[Jub]

As for the OP, a major problem that as mentioned before your potential recruitment pools for hard labor will now fight to death if at all possible and might even employ scorched earth policy in a way that makes settlements that can't resist you useless to you.

That assumes that word gets out and is believed before your army arrives and consumes/enslaves the next town on your march. That wasn't a given even in the early days of the telegram let alone to a medieval tech level peasant village.

[Imperial Overlord]

Armies are (comparatively) slow. Getting a several thousand people (let alone tens of thousands of people) organized and moving with all their shit is hard even when you aren't scurrying the countryside for as many peasants as you can catch and then going through the process of butchering them. News of the army's atrocities will rapidly outrun it.

Unless you have the later season Game of Thrones army teleport hack. Then you're good.

[Lord Revan]

As for the OP, a major problem that as mentioned before your potential recruitment pools for hard labor will now fight to death if at all possible and might even employ scorched earth policy in a way that makes settlements that can't resist you useless to you.

That assumes that word gets out and is believed before your army arrives and consumes/enslaves the next town on your march. That wasn't a given even in the early days of the telegram let alone to a medieval tech level peasant village.

As it was stated armies are slow relatively speaking and there's bound to be survivors (either prisoners who escaped or people who got lost in the chaos of battle), not mention that even a minor defeat for the "orcish" force would lead the word to be spread as some supplies would have to be left behind in a retreat.

Also it doesn't really if it's "killed and eaten" or "killed and left to rot" the people being attacked by the "orcs" would fight like men posessed as they would know that surrender isn't an option and honestly mere rumors would enough to cause this, which is one the reasons why wars of extermination are quite rare in history, in most cases they were more problems then they were worth.

EDIT:remember that armies aren't just the fighting force but also the logistics, even a pre-industrial army would have things like blacksmiths, carpenters and so on in them.

[Jub]

Armies are (comparatively) slow. Getting a several thousand people (let alone tens of thousands of people) organized and moving with all their shit is hard even when you aren't scurrying the countryside for as many peasants as you can catch and then going through the process of butchering them. News of the army's atrocities will rapidly outrun it.

Unless you have the later season Game of Thrones army teleport hack. Then you're good.

As it was stated armies are slow relatively speaking and there's bound to be survivors (either prisoners who escaped or people who got lost in the chaos of battle), not mention that even a minor defeat for the "orcish" force would lead the word to be spread as some supplies would have to be left behind in a retreat.

Also it doesn't really if it's "killed and eaten" or "killed and left to rot" the people being attacked by the "orcs" would fight like men posessed as they would know that surrender isn't an option and honestly mere rumors would enough to cause this, which is one the reasons why wars of extermination are quite rare in history, in most cases they were more problems then they were worth.

EDIT:remember that armies aren't just the fighting force but also the logistics, even a pre-industrial army would have things like blacksmiths, carpenters and so on in them.

That's a job for your outriders and scouts as they can move significantly faster than the main body of your army. They wouldn't stop word indefinitely but unless every city that does get word sends along riders carrying the word I suspect you could still catch many towns unaware. If the humans do start to fight back with a greater elan that's probably all the better for you as most Orcs seem to enjoy battle and this gives them that. So morale might rise as there's more meat to eat and more fighting to be had.

There's also the upshot that perhaps it benefits you, or your master if the Orcs aren't an independent force, to have mass panic spread every time you even start to marshall your forces. If you gather an army and suddenly every village between you and the nearest castle is depopulated as people flee you could make the job of sieging the enemy all the easier.

[Imperial Overlord]

Sending your scouts and outriders to hunt down every single refugee is a colossal waste. Their job is to find where the enemy is and bring back information or to frustrate the enemy's scouts.

And you don't need to be cannibal assholes to cause villagers to run for the safety of fortifications. Regular medieval armies could manage that. Apparently the idea of being raped, plundered, and being the victims of violence for sport wasn't appealing.

[Lord Revan]

The thing to remember here is scale a villager running for their lives will not pick just few small and easily searched areas but runs to which ever direction they think is the best meaning your search area is a circle around the village and a circle that keeps growing longer the search takes. Also the area near a village is probably not gonna 100% flat plains with only short grass on them, but rather fields and forrests that would provide plenty of locations to hide from your scouts and outriders.

Another thing to consider that in pre-industrial age most towns would be walled (town walls slowly faded away when cannons made them obsolete but that wasn't a quick process).

Also sieges tend to a long time and the defenders aren't really dependent on the nearby villages for suppplies (in fact IIRC it was common practice for people unwalled villages to flee to a nearby town or castle when an enemy came near and castles and towns tended to stack reserve supplies in case they got besieged) while the besieger would be dependent and sieges lasting months or even years were not unheard of.

[KraytKing]

If you can force people to become dependent on the castle's siege stocks without actually laying siege, that's an advantage. As Jub said, an army known for eating the conquered may cause mass panic the moment it begins hosting. The enemy's economy is disrupted before you even move out. By the time you lay siege, stocks may already be low. Or the local lord fears just such an occurrence and forces subjects back to their farms, and then you go and eat them. Breeds distrust of the nobility and also, y'know, destroys their economy for decades.

[Lord Revan]

The thing is that especially in pre-industrial times the logistical advantage was on the defenders, also since the settlements aren't sieged the local lords are free to harass your foragers and raid your supplies (or did you think only attacking forces had scouts and outriders). The attacker's supplies are gonna end way sooner then the defender's and any successful lord would know this. The defender's advantage was the very reason why sieges were so common in Medieval times, as defenders wouldn't commit to a field battle.

What you're suggesting is essentially what Hannibal and Pyrrhus of Epirus did and both cases they failed due their supplies running out, (also in the case of Pyrrhus his troops as well there's a reason he's the namesake for pyrrhic victory after all)

[madd0ct0r]

The thing to remember here is scale a villager running for their lives will not pick just few small and easily searched areas but runs to which ever direction they think is the best meaning your search area is a circle around the village and a circle that keeps growing longer the search takes. Also the area near a village is probably not gonna 100% flat plains with only short grass on them, but rather fields and forrests that would provide plenty of locations to hide from your scouts and outriders.

Another thing to consider that in pre-industrial age most towns would be walled (town walls slowly faded away when cannons made them obsolete but that wasn't a quick process).

Also sieges tend to a long time and the defenders aren't really dependent on the nearby villages for suppplies (in fact IIRC it was common practice for people unwalled villages to flee to a nearby town or castle when an enemy came near and castles and towns tended to stack reserve supplies in case they got besieged) while the besieger would be dependent and sieges lasting months or even years were not unheard of.

If a seige is going on so long, why would the attacking forces bother? Why not just move on while the besiege d forces are immobilised and ineffective?