Deleted member 67076
Differences in logistics, need of upkeep and type of food consumed. You keep assuming this is a video game scenario where Spanish troops and Moroccan troops are functionally equal in their needs and have not hadOk so Spain can´t get food from there because arid land but there is a food surplus. I mean I get those are more expert on the surroundings but to a point where they can maintain foreign soldiers while Spain can´t get the same food otherwise used by them is odd.
Desert dwellers are considered very hardy due to being trained that way in an environment that is often short of food.
Then that just makes any invasion utterly worthless and would make the Spanish even bigger idiots than they were historically.Wait I thought we were talking about land raids on the coast, anyway I would think that instead of focusing on sieging inland forts they would try to destroy the Moroccan apparatus by destroying its cities, would that really be something impossible for the Spanish?
If instead of sieging and staying they just burned everything to the ground and retreated? I´m not talking about coastal cities but hinterland.
Why invade then? What is the appeal of taking the Maghreb then if you're not going to get anything out of it?
Like, even if the Spanish do this it would make their job harder in the long run since it just forces more people to become nomadic, where they cannot be monitored as easily and grants the resistance even more mobility.
I'm not being contradictory; you keep assuming Moroccan, Saharan and other Maghrebi troops = Spanish troops as if this was a video game.Because you say contradicting thing, first you say the advantage is that they can disperse and go back doing their stuff, now you say the food is enough for a foreign army to survive. Maybe it´s because we are talking on vague terms.
The guys the Moroccans are moving into their battlefields are other desert dwellers who are used to having less food, and have better techniques of preservation.
Asymmetric warfare bruh. The defending party on rough terrain with better mobility than the invaders needs less forces. But this assumes the Spanish would throw everything they have on the initial expeditionary force. That is very unlikely given shipping all those troops at once (as in, at one campaign) is a logistical nightmare and impossible to accomplish. To achieve near 100,000 men on the ground, the Spanish would need years of increasingly upping their presence in the region and devoting their economy to the upkeep of their military machine.But that´s going to be small compared to the supposed Spanish force(up to 100k), and if things don´t go as planned do they starve?
But this assumes that the Spanish would put on the field the needed amount of troops to make any conquest feasible. I disagree this would happen given its simply too much effort, and would bankrupt the state. But even before that, the Spanish would suffer enough losses that the cost/benefit ratio analysis would say its better to take the loss and move on.
If things don't go as well, the Maghrebis starve. Just like anyone else. But that's unlikely to happen given the Spanish will almost certainly get their teeth kicked in and leave soon enough.
If your homeland is being invaded, the loss of territories would cause an additional upswing in volunteers out of a mix of fear that you'd be next, and residual loyalties to the region and its inhabitants. Then it would decline as time passes and the effort doesn't seem to be worth it.So winning will cause propaganda boost but losing would mean that more people would support the Moroccans anyway? Is it realstical to assume that the same many people would fight after some lost battles?
However, if as time passes, your side is seen to have been increasingly victorious, then you will see another growth in recruitment and morale as the odds of winning look ever so closer to your favor, then more and more individuals will throw in your support.
Things need not happen at the same time.
Yes, Italy had become an economic backwater since the Holy Roman Empire's brief annexation of the region in the late 1200s.Dirt poor farmers in Late Medieval/Very Early Modern Southern Italy?
If they were not idiots, they would not invade the Barbary states. "Reconquista" isn't a good enough reason. Invading the Muslim states gave the Christian realms money, manpower, taxes, access to skilled labor, more territory to farm, new ports, new agricultural products, new technologies, security, the ability to project greater power in the Mediterranean and prestige.Because they were idiots, my entire premise is that they aren´t IATL. Also if we assume Italians still fight against the Ottomans why would the money not be present when the destruction of Barbary States would be of vital importance to them?
What does the Maghreb offer the Spaniards this? And to preemptively respond to you just repeating the above to me as an argument, none of that in the Maghreb is offered in enough quantities to be worth the fools errand of trying to conquer the place due to the myriad of factors I've previously mentioned that make conquest much harder to achieve in the region and the differences in setting from the Reconquista to the Renaissance that make applying the logic of the Reconquista to a Maghreb conquest difficult.
Now if they weren't idiots, the Spanish crowns would step up coastal patrols, establish a coast guard, a shipping convoy system and invest heavily in their Italian possessions of Sardinia, Sicily and Naples so the Italian possessions put in their share of work instead of leech off the Iberians. That would, after a century of work, give enough manpower, money and ships to cut a dent into Corsair raids. Wouldn't end them, but would reduce them. Trade would pick up drastically, the populations would be more willing to settle the coast, and the Spanish don't have to stick their fingers into the meatgrinder.
None of these are comparable to invading the Maghreb. Belgium is tiny, flat and the Spanish had legitimacy in addition to a massive garrison and local aid. The New world had no offensive technology to contest the Spanish (in comparison to the Spaniards) and was in the midsts of and economic, social and political collapse thanks to disease and the Philippines were drastically underpopulated in addition to having little infrastructure built by the natives due to said underpopulation. Even then, Spanish rule was very tenuous and relied on the good will of the local elites.The Spanish managed to retain Belgium in the Netherlands, expand in the New World and Philippines so they are not total idiots.
Spain has none of that here.
I find this to be highly unlikely. Austria's claim to the imperial title was heavily rooted in their Catholicism, and their legitimacy was very much rooted in attempting to be good, pious Catholics. That, combined with their military effectiveness (in comparison to other Europeans) means that there's little reason to yield to Protestants initially. And even if they lose out, the Austrian Monarchy were historically very stubborn people.At the same time Austria could have a different approach to the Protestant meaning less troubles north.
Al Andalus fell because of extreme political instability and using the Maghreb as a troop factory instead of building up their own native army. This forced them to rely on the Maghreb's military strength to intervene. This inadvertently backs up my initial points of the Spanish having a very hard time in the Maghreb because they had a history of being such excellent soldiers.You are implying this would mean endless flow of troops, if that was the case how did Andalus even fall? Southern Spain is also mountainous and climate similar to north Morocco.
The difference is the Crusades had been a thing and had been failing for well over 400 years now. The Muslim world's major military attacks with Ghazis had led to the fall of the Sudanese, the Byzantines, the rest of the Balkans, Georgia, opened up India for Muslim Conquest, had converted vast swaths of Western Africa, etc, etc.So defeating Crusaders means less people show up in the next but defeating Ghazis or Berbers means nothing for the Moroccans? And no, you are not talking about Muslim Crusades but the underlying idea is the same(helping same religion brothers)
The Mediterranean Muslim world at this time consists of the Ottomans and the Moroccans. Far easier to get to work together than the patchwork of states in Europe.I´m talking about the whole Mediterranean Muslim world and more uniting without any problems and acting as perfectly as humanly possible while you assume the other side can´t.
Took them until the 30 Year's War to have a semblance of a logistical systems. Why would here be any better?C´mon. So now the Spanish are blocked from learning logistics by magic? More so when where they live is not THAT far from Morocco?
Being closer means they'd be more reliant on shipping, which puts them at the greater mercy of Corsair raids.
Except all the revolts in the region during the 1500s?Why would it be better to put troops in the New World? There were no real treats outside those Comanches and Mapuche raids and I seriously don´t see why they would choose to fight them over the Barbary states just south of Andalusia.
Like how the Spanish were almost kicked out of Santo Domingo in the 1530s by Enriquillo? And incidents like Manco Inca's Revolt? Or the fact that the Mayans were subdued only until the 1700s and were a continuous pain for the Spanish? Or that many of their garrisons were pathetically small like Jamaica's 500 troops?
They'd be better served tightening their grip of the New World, settling the region even more, and using more troops on their Indian Ocean adventures.
How are they going to do that? Does the Spanish navy just grow to double the size of the Ottoman/Corsair navy or something? How are they then able to penetrate Ottoman waters and attack Libyan ports?Then the Spanish conquer all major ports until the activities ends, they conquered up to a dozen enclaves, if they can do more then you can´t just let the Barbary state use villages without infrastructure or move to Libya where it´s harder to sack the Western Mediterranean ports.
Nevermind that trying to attack all Corsair ports means stretching forces even thinner and now forcing the Ottoman sultan to directly respond due to his subjects and trade being attacked.
No, they don't. What proof do you have of the Spanish having the upper hand? How many troops can they possible marshal out immediately?I understand that but I´m trying to show that the Spanish already have the upper hand in immediate manpower and that they, like you say, need to know how to move and feed those but for some reason they can´t.
How would they change to allow them victory? What would cause change? How would such innovations be created, and would they be useful not just here in the Maghreb but elsewhere in Spain's ambitions? Can't just have one set of tactics for one region; that impedes the troop's and the commander's flexibility.Army doctrines can change, same with the other thing. If that was not possible in AH we would have way less "WI X won in Y"
And why would the Spanish be willing to put through all effort in one region when they can make so much more money for far easier abroad?
Army occupation first, then settlement.I see, but were settlers themselves the main part or was the capacity to have an army stationed there? Or both?