Proposal for Support Units

[Gwrthefyr]

It's still relatively half-thought, but while I was trying to refigure out a good rule of thumb for starting armies, I had a vague idea - Train (sure) and Depot (less sure) units.

These would be moderately costly units with dreadful combat abilities, but they could be supplied as needed to avoid the pillage (pillaging would thus be more or less required for operations outside of the moving range of a unit, and I'm reconsidering its effects). A scout troop could be employed to stage an assassination attempt once they've been detected (but it might be possible to put guards with them, again, considering). In tandem, I'd say one each might be enough to keep the starting army of Avanil supplied during a campaign in a neighbouring state, possibly as far as three or four provinces away.

I assume about 240 men; however, all I have is 7YW data -
An army would require, in bread, 1,5 daily rations/soldier (accounting for horses and officers, these beasts need to be fed )
Each 200 pounds flour bag would be able to produce about 180 rations, so 6 months of campaignins would require as many flour bags as the daily rations.
The mobile military ovens (again, unlikely to be a fixture of militaries before about two centuries, but the production might still be worth noting) would produce groups of 500 rations; at some point, they were actually worked 17 hours daily for five groups, but let's assume a more leisurely pace of 14 hours for 4; the oven would have been serviced by 3 bakers and 2 assistants.
A bread caisson can carry 800 rations

Assuming an army of 5k
Daily Consumption of meat would be 40 beefs
The bread train would require about 50 caissons and 2.000 horses
A pint/day of beer or wine for infantry and dragoons, 1 1/2 for other cavalry
That's extrapolating from intendant de Beaumont's note on the army of Marshal de Saxe, again, the data is late.

Baking crew - 24
Train crews? - at that point, a 40 man company was assigned to 25 caissons, so the bread train alone would require 80, maybe up to 120 men.

It would probably need further discussion and reflexion, though (and if anyone has that sort of thing, older data).

[kgauck]

Good data only goes back a few more decades. Before the improved organization of logistics around the time of the great wars against Louis XIV, we simply lack records to tell us about logistics in a detailed way, because no records were created.