Talk:Battle of Camlann
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Erm. 10,000 on one side and 100,000 on the other? Where's that from? If Arthur had been able to round up 10,000 warriors, he would definitely have left more historical mark! If Mordred had managed 100,000, who, don't forget, he would have needed to be able to feed!, he would have been able to conquer Western Europe, let alone Britain. In these times, a few hundred men was considered an enormous force! Whole kingdoms couldn't muster more than a couple of hundred fighters, largely because most people were farmers and couldn't just nip off for a bit of armed conflict in distant parts of Britain when they felt like it. You cannot seriously suggest that there was a battle in Somerset involving more armed men than existed in the whole of Britain at that time, who would have all had to travel to that spot, and no one paid enough attention to the passage of the army to have noted it, named anything after it or to have remembered its passage in any way at all. And no one on the continent heard anything about it! The largest battle of its age and no one bothered to comment? The problem with Arthurian studies is, and always will be, that there are not enough sources and what there is is half-legend. A battle of this magnitude would have left a mark, but a small clash, like many, many others in its day, would have only left ripples in the oral tradition that was the history of the day.
This article is written as though the Malory tradition of Arthur is actually historical. It's not by any means. There are Welsh traditions of Camlann that really are much more likely. A local quarrel between war-bands, leading to a vicious clash with a fair bit of slaughter. Each leader brought his retinue and slugged it out, probably fairly close to home for both of them. That's what we know happened in the dark ages, not huge dynastic disputes over who ruled "Britain". People wielded personal power, supported by friends. There were no nationalists as such. The few sources that we do have, in particular Gildas, lament their lack. Grace Note 01:58, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Arthur had banded together many clans and forts so would have many men, but not at all of that magnitude. There was no king arthur, but in fact Arthur the Dragon Cheif who was a 5th or 6th century chieftan.
__________________________________________ I used to have a machine for detecting opinion or theory presented s fact, I found it very useful with anything even vaguely related to Arthur. I say used to, because when I ran it over the previous unsigned comment, it exploded.
Obviously 10,000 vs 100,000 isn't accurate but I think armies in the thousands is more than feasible. Caesar bought 50,000 foot soldiers and cavalry to Britain hundreds of years before the battle of Camlann and the force under Cassuvius was said to be even larger. If we don't even accept the Roman records then we might as well just make it up as we go along. Restepc
