Easterling Border Forts

I would say that there would be a full 43 forts on the frontier. That way, a full mobilization of the legions and deployment to the frontier could be accomplished. Granted, this would most likely not be needed – but a society like the Easterlings would probably be prepared.   An interesting element would be the staffing of arms manufacturing facilities by soldiers in the camps like these by the real life Romans. The perioeci class would be the people I suspect would be handling normal manufacturing, manning forts and would get government contracts. The auxilia units they would form would be mainly part time. It seems to fit perfectly that this same weapons production system would be carried over.   So, this would mean 17 full scale legion base forts on the border and 26 on the interior. This alone would mean an invasion would probably get harder as you move to the Easterling core areas. The Auxilia would occupy the other 26 border forts. These would be much more scaled down affairs. They would need to be kept up with and provisioned in case of mobilization in their area. However, they would not need to support the larger legion full time, which means less impressive fortifications. Roman fortifications were also mainly earth and wood construction, though stone was used for longer term and more important areas. We can expect the auxiliaries to use the wood while stone would be reserved for legion headquarters.   This also means that while there are more auxiliaries, they would be more scattered along the borderlands. An invasion force would probably hit a few of the active duty auxilia at the border. Then it would have to march all the way in to the area more populated by the elite heavy infantry – the whole time the auxilia would be mobilizing across the whole territory and concentrating where the invasion force is. Rome also built long walls like Hadrian’s Wall in the UK, smaller forts for smaller sub units, signal and watch towers and so forth. Easterlings can be expected to do the same. We would then expect the mobilizing army would be probably know exactly where to go.   Now, as these forts seem to be a good starting point for discussing the Easterling logistics, lets look at the details of this system. A legion of 6,000 men (including all the support staff) would need 15 tons of food – per day. The 429,440 army of the Easterlings would need 1,073.6 tons per day. That is not counting the fodder for horses. A wagon in the Roman army could carry 1,433 pounds – meaning 1,498 wagons would be needed to carry all that food. Each of those means 2 oxen (and thus more fodder) and 1 driver (which needs wages if free labor) per wagon. Meanwhile, the oxen would be limited to 9 miles a day. This is also why the Romans preferred to use ships, with their 20 crew being able to transport 200 tons of food 62 miles in a day.   This is why I suspect that the main supply depots would be the border forts. Meanwhile, there appears to be no real river network in reach of much of the Easterling’s eastern borders. Well, there is if one wishes to invade Dale (as is done in the books), but that does not help us get the Easterlings into Gondor. Now, once they got into Gondorian territory, rivers become possible. But, the oxes would have to be used before that. While they would not have to worry about attacks on their baggage trains before rivers become available, reliance on oxen would essentially half the distances that could be covered per day, adding to the amount of food and fodder needed to march.   Now, there was an ethnic group of Easterlings called Variags of Khand. They are described as "Easterlings with axes". The real life origin of the Variag name comes from a real life ax wielding group called the Varangians. Basically Vikings who settled in Russia, who were described as "ax wielding barbarians". Or they could have been Slavic people living in the same area. Basically there is debate on that subject. But, due to Tolkien's description of the Variags fits more closely with what I know of the Vikings, I'll apply the former interpretation here. So, we can assume that this Easterling ethnicity would be land based vikings. So I will refer you to the Corsair section for how viking land combat occurred. But I suspect that this group would be the main garrison force for these border forts.   Why do I think this? Well, the brutal hand to hand fighting that Vikings are adapted to would be great for the close quarters fighting defending walls and fighting inside. Axes are known for their powerful downward strikes. Thus, A solid Dane Ax would be perfect for a group whose whole professional purpose is to stop people from scaling walls. Also, the border forts would be the center of local anti- bandit and revolt suppression actions would be based. As would the cross border raids of a forward defense. All of these actions would call on a highly mobile and hard hitting force, which the vikings provide a model for.   I did say that the Auxiliary would be the garrisons. How do we get around this? Well, possibly the Variags could be the in universe name for the perioeci. We know that part of the evolution of the Spartan class structure was the elite Spartans subjugating neighboring groups. This is not an unreasonable assumption. Armies made up of well trained, disciplined and supplied will typically win against armies who lack those things. Even if the individual soldiers in the disorganized army are far superior on an individual basis in terms of raw skill. Especially over the long term - a few brutal tactical successes will merely delay eventual strategic defeat. This is a feature that appears well ingrained in Easterling Society. So the name Variag started off as a name purely a tribal name. Then it could have evolved over time to mean a class or role originally dominated by that ethnicity after the tribe was conquered.   The designation of "of Khand" could reflect this. If the Variag name was purely an ethnicity, then geographic designation would be a little redundant. Not that redundancy in language is not common. But is also would make sense that the "Variags of Khand" name means "people from the Khand region from a class that traditionally was dominated by the Variag people". For our purposes, the name is likely to be more of a designation of Auxilia troops assigned to and trained and outfitted for garrison duties. It might be that the perioeci from the Variag ethnic group out of respect for tradition or unit cohesion.   Such interpretations also fit with the Persian Takabara I use to inform my discussion of the Auxiliary parent formation. Like I stated in that discussion, both were garrison units. But among the weapons used was the Sagaris. Some depictions show an ax head on a long shaft. Others replace the ax head with a hammer head with a sharp ice pick looking thing on the other side. Either weapon keeps in line with the roles of the relevant formations and the roles I apply them to.   Valerii P.Nikonorov, The Armies of Bactria 700 BC – 400 AD (Montvert Publications, 1997).   Generally, daily life in Roman forts was dominated by chores, such as cleaning. Garrisons would also be required to maintain the fort and work in its workshops making or repairing weapons, armor and equipment. High levels of personal hygiene was demanded. An ever present demand was getting food. As much as possible was gained locally and the rest imported. Outside of this, they were made to go on patrols or continue weapons training. This meant full scale mock battles. Every 10 days full marches were done. Frequent inspections occurred carried out by high ranking officials.