>>/40686/
> Nope.
Yes, it would, you don't need camp followers to fight some peasants a few miles away.
> European campaigns are literally what I wrote. Check 100 years of war for example (or any other wars). Their chief modus operandi was this.
You are aware that you can't stroll to France from England and that it's also more than just a couple of miles away right?
> You mean the poor ass peasants of medieval Europe? Their own lords did the same with them.
I'm not even going to humour this.
> When steppe people moved their troops to foreigners lands they did that to follow the principle Sun Tzu also put to paper (and you can find it in his book): you don't feed your own army (which makes you poorer), take the food from the enemy.
Maybe the fact has escaped you but for the principal to make sense you have to actually be fighting a war, these nomads were not peacefully passing through some other land to graze their horses. They were invading places for pillage and tribute in the first place.
> The armies of steppe people rarely were ad hoc scraped thugs, like the medieval levy was.
Medieval levies were on the same level as your average nomad tribesman, most tribesman just raise livestock and hunt, practising when they can, most peasant levies just farm and practice when they can as well, the difference being that most levies had a minor role or never fought to begin with, they were primarily there to defend but as I said, nomadic armies were tribes on the move, so more of the average folk participated. Both peoples however have professionals, you mentioned the hundred years war before, you are aware that basically the entire army on both sides in most battles was not made up of levies but professionals right? Look at any of the famous battles and who do you actually see participating for the most part? Knights, Men at arms, Longbowman and mercenaries. Sure the French had levies but they didn't actually contribute all that much(well urban levy did in sieges). It takes a while to learn to shoot from horseback sure but then it takes a while to shoot a proper longbow as well and knights also trained from a very young age. Yes these tribesman had a good understanding of formations and movements due to the fact they often held large scale hunts and other exercises that honed this and again these only goes to support my point about nomadic armies being whole tribes, it was just a matter of what the particular tribe was doing at the time, whether it was migrating across the steppes holding a few groups hunts and other exercises or weather it was on a campaign.
>>/40687/
> The armies of the steppe people did not have camp followers.
Yes they did, as a I keep saying, there armies were whole tribes and everything that entails.
> They would have slow the going down (just how their families would have if they were with them on campaigns).
And it did, as I said.
> The "train" was the spare horses who served as fresh saddle horses, arrow haulers (they brought massive amount of arrows, there's data how much the Parthians used at Carrhae, another homework for you to find it), loot haulers, and occasionally if need be, walking foodsource. During battles they left behind comparatively few men who could herd the whole thing.
Well they had all of that as that was all part of the tribe that was coming with them.
> A stationary camp with families would have been extremely vulnerable even to a small amount of enemy horsemen (enemy steppe people) and would have distracted larger amount of warriors to guard them, probably in vain.
All logistics and supply trains are vulnerable but usually they stay well behind in the case of an actual battle and being a nomadic army of horseman it really isn't the most taxing or difficult thing to protect. They aren't in a shortage or horseman to act as scouts and locate enemy movements and they are also quite able to react to any movements they do come across.