*****************************SPOILERS AHEAD*****************************

 

A military examination of the Battle for Winterfell in Season 6 Episode 9 of Game of Thrones

A few comments on the military aspects of last night’s episode of Game of Thrones. The Battle for Winterfell (and I’m not sure if that’s what it’s officially to be called) was a pretty good showing of what medieval/early Renaissance (pre-gunpowder) military combat was like. It had the spasms of action, quick, slow, quick, and the piles of gory bodies one might see on a battlefield of the period. However, I’m still left with a collection of big and small quibbles about how it was portrayed.

First was Ramsey’s decision to fire arrows on both his own men and Jon Snow’s. I understand this dramatically shows how cruel and callous he is but could a leader who depends on the loyalty of various other houses really do this and get away with it? It doesn’t show him as callous and smart, it shows him as callous and stupid. The other house leaders have already shown they will resist him to a point so I can’t buy this as a successful tactic.

Also, I can’t quite see how Ramsey effectively used his bowmen. If you expect the enemy infantry to line up and march on you then you can have your bowmen sit and exchange volleys with the enemy then retire when the enemy infantry is close. Or you can place them at the flanks or rear to do the same. If you expect a mounted shock charge then you just place them at the flanks or rear to fire on the charge until your own mounted cavalry charges in. But really this is a moot point since such a tactic is a waste of both cavalry forces.

You let the bowmen and infantry trade blows and once they’re locked in, the mounted troops should take the flanks. Then you have cavalry battles at the flanks and whoever wins that, if they still have strength and cohesion, rolls up on the sides of the enemy infantry flank or flanks and pushes them from the field. What Ramsey did was have his bowman shoot at Jon and then just fire into the cavalry pell-mell. Quite a mess of a battle but maybe he is stupid when all is said and done. He is supposed to be a tactical genius but this doesn’t show it.

As a side note here and in other such tv/film battles. What’s with the slow, nook and shoot thing? Once the bowmen start going they shoot fast and furiously at their target. That’s the point. Not to sit around waiting for the first volley to fall. But then when you really don’t have anything to shoot at I guess you can do the long dramatic thing.

On the other side, Jon Snow’s archers seemed fully ineffective. They just hung back and then charged at the end. I can’t quite understand what happened there. It makes Davos look kind of stupid actually. If the bowman had marched up and shot at the back of the shield wall that was formed things would have gone better for Jon.

Next quick quibble is the piles of bodies. I’m not contesting that a battlefield would have piles of bodies, which it would, but even with 9000 total men on the field, those piles seemed more like unbelievable flesh hills after a while. Again, not a problem to have piles of dead and dying men, but that was a bit much and overdone as far as the height goes.

Finally the shield and spear wall. As dramatic and scary as this looked, I didn’t believe it for a minute. First of all, what house supplied Ramsey with a well-trained force like that? Having so many men trained to such discipline to have perfectly formed shield walls takes time and money. That’s a professional force. As far as I know, the men of the North have other things to do to survive, like farming and trading and what not, and there’s really not much extra money to keep a force like this around. Small numbers of knights and masses of light infantry make sense. A professional force from who knows where does not.

Now apart from the training issue, the shield and spear wall seemed pretty ineffective anyway. Or should have been. If these spear-men were stacked 2 or 3 rows deep with 2 or 3 rows of spears bristling then I could seem them pressing Snow’s men back. But one thin layer of 8 foot long spears held steady and slowly moving forward? The best response by Snow’s confused men who all seemed to have lost their weapons would also be the least intellectual one.

Grab the damn spear shafts from behind the spear head and use your weapon to break the point off. Or jump on top of the spear shafts and push them to the ground. Or get under and shove them upwards. Or take bodies and throw them on the spears. The spears are too long for the men holding them to hold them up with more than a few pounds of weight at the ends. Those spears were just wiggling out there for anyone to snatch.

How would the spear holders react if the spears were grabbed or pushed up or down from horizontal? If they try to back up to re-position the spear to lower it back down or pull it out of the dirt they can’t. They have men behind them pushing them forward or at the least are in their way if they try to back up. They’re basically stuck and as they kept inching forward their spears would be more and more out of position to be useful. As the battle progressed we see Jon Snow’s men taking advantage of these limitations but I think these limitations are even greater than what we were shown.

Finally, the Vale has a crap-load of mounted knights. With a force that big, they’re not a supporting army. They are the army in charge of the region. I assume that next episode this dynamic may be explored. If not then we were given the standard ”fantasy lack of realism” – an impressive size force without any consideration of the political implications of having an army that big. But I do think the show will address it.

I read another article saying that the vale showing up when it did was a cliche “here we come to save the day” kind of charge. I think the Vale led by Littlefinger was hanging back the whole time and decided to enter the fray when everyone who could fight them later was badly torn up. Then they sweep in and destroy one side and gain the undying gratitude of their allies. And if you didn’t want to be the Vale’s friend, well you really didn’t have the troops to say otherwise.

Not much comment on the Battle for Meereen. Looks pretty clean to me. Dragons destroy a ship or two and the others are convinced to sail where Daenerys needs them to and their crew either signs up to join her or dies. I assume that’s what they’ll do. And to echo what another writer pointed out, what are a horde of Dothraki going to do once they get into Meereen? Could be ugly unless Daenerys gets them under quick control. I will add that if I were a sailor on one of those ships, I wouldn’t feel comfortable hauling balls of tar around and lighting them on fire in my ship to be propelled by a catapult that hopefully doesn’t break while the ball of fire is still sitting in the catapult cup.

Actually now that I am on the topic I will pick on the battle. I don’t have a problem with the catapults on the ship but looking back over the battle, their catapults were slinging balls of fire from a quarter to a full mile away it seemed. The best catapults of the ancient age were slinging stones 600 to maybe 1200 or so feet. That’s far short of what we were seeing at Meereen. So I guess the slavers had a bunch of super powered catapults at hand. Ironically their rate of fire was much better than those of Ramsey Bolton’s bowmen. So while the assault was believable enough, the effects were a bit overdone.

Still a fun episode and it’s nice to even have the opportunity and reason to address these topics.