Chuck Bies
In order to use battle to bring an enemy to heel, the losses have to matter. In Westeros the losses not only do not matter, but they do not threaten power structures. Therefore, the tactical level of war in Westeros is divorced from the strategic level of war. Dead peasants and sellswords matter little in the game of thrones. For battles to matter, they must be a part of a coherent operational and strategic approach that hits the enemy where it hurts and destroys either their will or means to continue fighting. The only leader that seemed to intuitively understand this was Tywin Lannister, and though “The Rains of Castamere” survived him, the lesson that it taught did not.
Tyrion: “Rain fire on them from above” . . . you’re quoting father, aren’t you?
Cersei: Why not? He has a good mind for strategy, doesn’t he?
Tyrion: Call it tactics, not strategy, but yes, he does have a good mind for it. The best mind some would say.1
During the above brother-sister discussion prior to the Battle of the Blackwater, Tyrion was exactly right. In Westeros even the greatest military minds lacked an understanding of what tactics, operations, and strategy are, let alone how they must be employed in concert to achieve victory in the game of thrones. This is not just a matter of nuance or semantics; it is also the reason why warfare in Westeros is seemingly endless and endemic.
To ensure common understanding, it’s worthwhile to explain what we mean by the different levels of warfare: the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war. Executed correctly, there are linkages between the three that will all but guarantee the success of a war; one or two battles will all but guarantee success. Executed incorrectly and the balance sheet of battles won and lost loses relevance, and the conflict becomes an unproductive and costly grind.
Despite its imprecise nature, the operational level of war is essential to connecting the tactical level of war to the strategic level of war. A battle fought without the context of an overarching operational approach is just that—a battle. On its own, it will not yield the decisive results necessary to achieve the strategic objective. Similarly, a strategic framework, no matter how well constructed, will not translate to success if there is no operational approach to translate national-level means to the tactical level; the best strategy cannot assure victory on the battlefield without an operational approach to mass resources to support the tactical engagement.
History provides several examples of where commanders and leaders succeeded or failed to employ these levels of war in concert. One of the most striking examples of success is Napoleon Bonaparte’s Ulm Campaign during the War of the Third Coalition from 1803–6. Over the course of the Ulm Campaign, Napoleon skillfully maneuvered his corps around the Austrian army led by General Karl Mack von Leiberich; he used small tactical engagements to fix portions of the Austrian host while he maneuvered his corps around the Austrian flanks. After a few weeks, Mack found himself isolated from allied support and was compelled to surrender his army. This knocked Austria out of the coalition as a credible opponent, enabling Bonaparte to focus his efforts against the rest of the coalition. To quote Napoleon, “I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches.” A few months later, he annihilated the Russian army at Austerlitz, ending the coalition against him. This was a shining example of the operational level of war to achieve coherence between tactics and strategy.5
An example of where the operational level was neglected was World War I from 1914 to 1917. During this bloody four-year period, national strategies on both sides failed because the operational level of war was absent and tactics were able to trump strategy. Despite local successes, neither side possessed the strength to capitalize on those victories and achieve a breakthrough. The two sides were too evenly matched, and neither could exploit those local successes. The strategies employed by both sides—whether opening additional fronts or “bleeding France white” at Verdun, in the words of German general Erich von Falkenhayn—failed because neither side was able to expand success beyond the immediate battle, destroy the enemy or their will to continue fighting, or appreciably erode the enemy’s resources.6
In Westeros few leaders and commanders truly grasp strategy. An example of this is during Tyrion Lannister’s war council with Daenerys and her allies—the Martells of Sunspear, the Tyrells of Highgarden, and the rogue Greyjoy flotilla. Tyrion outlined a coherent strategy at this council: the Martells would attack the Stormlands from the south to pull Cersei’s forces away from King’s Landing, the Tyrells would attack King’s Landing from the southwest to seize the capital, and Daenerys’s army of Unsullied and Dothraki would seize Casterly Rock to neutralize the Lannister alliance’s source of power.7
It quickly became apparent that few of the participants at the meeting were capable of thinking strategically and were focused at the tactical level of war. Yara Greyjoy focused on using dragons against King’s Landing—a narrow and tactical approach that, as Daenerys pointed out, would result in her losing the support of the people and, therefore, the war. Daenerys had no intention of being the Queen of Ashes.
Lady Olenna and Lady Martell were focused on the combat between their armies and the Lannisters and failed to grasp how they fit into supporting and shaping the larger strategic and operational goals. They resented that their armies would be used for lengthy sieges while Daenerys’s would not. The only two people in the room who seemed to understand the bigger picture were Tyrion and Daenerys. They not only had a clear visualization of their end, but they understood that their means could only be employed in specific ways. Though the Unsullied and dragons presented an overwhelming advantage, they could only be employed against armies in the field and away from the Seven Kingdoms’ seat of power. They lacked the resources and allies to fight a war of either attrition or exhaustion. They had to dismantle Cersei’s alliance piece by piece in order to stand a chance of winning, and to do so, they had to draw the Lannister armies into the field, where they could be annihilated. Though they succeeded in destroying a significant portion of the Lannister army, it was, ultimately, Daenerys’s alliance that was dismantled.
What of the Lannisters? Their objective was to remain in control of the Iron Throne; their means for doing so were the Lannister army and diplomacy with key players. By season 7, the Lannisters had only two allies remaining, the Greyjoys and the Tarlies. Though they dispatched most of their enemies, they were surrounded by threats; the Starks to the north, the Martells and Tyrells to the south, and the Targaryens and the Iron Bank across the sea to the east. They managed to subdue the Tully threat from Riverrun, and the Arryns to the north remain a wild card. But most of their key allies, specifically the Boltons and the Freys, had been dispatched. By ruling the seas and holding a central position, their strategy was to use their opponents’ inability to concentrate against them to take on their opponents in series. They succeeded in destroying the Tyrells, but in the process, they lost their Tarly allies, Casterly Rock, most of their army, and most importantly the gold they needed to settle their debts with the Iron Bank. True, the Martells remained uncommitted, which resulted in the Lannisters’ southern flank becoming more secure, but the Lannisters now face an increased risk of the Iron Bank hiring every mercenary company in Essos against them.
This illustrates why Daenerys and Tyrion, by the end of season 7, had failed and the war remained suspended in stalemate. Instead of focusing on isolating the Lannisters from their allies and annihilating both them and their allies in the field to set conditions to attain the Iron Throne, their strategy was to defeat the Lannisters so that they could seize King’s Landing. They failed to appreciate that the strategic value of King’s Landing is little more than a pile of rocks. Seizing the Iron Throne itself does not equate to seizing the power of the Iron Throne; the Targaryens, Baratheons, and Lannisters were able to rule the Iron Throne because they annihilated those who challenged their rule and subsequently assumed the Iron Throne, not because they had possession of it. Even after losing Casterly Rock, the Lannisters still retained the ability to effectively prosecute the offensive, as evidenced by their capturing Sunspear’s leaders and sacking Highgarden.8 The Lannisters removed the threats to their south, and their adversaries remained unable to concentrate against them. As long as the Lannister army survived, Cersei and Jaime would continue to rule. Though Tyrion and Daenerys’s strategy was coherent, it was still flawed.
In comparison, Robb Stark’s (earlier) war against the Iron Throne was doomed to failure. He won multiple battles against Tywin Lannister’s alliance, but in the end, these battles didn’t matter. Without being able to cut out what was then the Lannisters’ true source of power, their allies and their money (which, according to Littlefinger, were little more than just numbers on paper), any victory over the Lions of Casterly Rock was temporary, since the Lannisters were able to hire new hosts to replace their losses in the field.
The lack of appreciation for war above the tactical level appears to be common throughout Westeros. Early on in the War of the Five Kings, we see Robb Stark admonish his uncle Edmure Tully after an engagement with Ser Gregor Clegane’s army. Edmure Tully was focused on his victory over Clegane at the Battle of the Stone Mill; he saw Clegane’s host, engaged it in a costly battle, and won. At the tactical level, this was a success.9
At the operational level, this success was pyrrhic. Robb intended to lure Clegane into an area where he could be fixed, isolated, and ultimately killed or captured along with his army. Battle with Clegane was a means to an end, not an end in itself. When Edmure prematurely engaged Clegane’s army and defeated him, he compelled Clegane to retreat, unraveling Robb’s plan to trap Clegane and either ransom or kill him. Edmure’s failure to appreciate warfare above the tactical level was a costly setback for Robb Stark.
When battles have effects that extend beyond the tactical level out to the operational and strategic levels, they are known as decisive battles. This extends far beyond a simple rout or bloody engagement; decisive battles change governments, language, and history. The quintessential historical example of a decisive battle is the Battle of Hastings. William, the Duke of Normandy, invaded England to challenge King Harold’s succession to the English throne and met Harold’s Anglo-Saxon army at Hastings. Harold was killed late in the day during the battle, causing the Anglo-Saxon army to break and the Norman invaders to annihilate it during the pursuit. William, later crowned as the Conqueror, subdued remaining resistance in the vicinity of London before some of Harold’s surviving loyalists fully capitulated, but the true victory had already been won at Hastings. Hastings had effects so far reaching that it put a Norman on the English throne and went so far as to change the English language for centuries to come.10 Though the term “decisive” is used frequently, in history they are in fact rare.
If decisive battles are few and far between in reality, in Westeros there are even fewer. Prior to the events of the series, the only decisive battle of note was the Battle of the Trident, wherein Rhaegar Targaryen was killed by Robert Baratheon; it resulted in Robert Baratheon becoming the king of the Seven Kingdoms but did nothing to quell the violence, rebellion, and infighting endemic to Westeros. In the series, there are only two major battles that come close to being decisive: the Battle of the Blackwater and the Battle of the Bastards. However, even in these two battles, the tactical success failed to yield strategic and operational success.
In the Battle of the Blackwater, Stannis Baratheon besieged King’s Landing with his army, using the pirate Salladhor Saan’s fleet to transport his host to the city walls. Tyrion Lannister employed wildfire against the encroaching fleet and succeeded in destroying many ships but not enough to stop Stannis, who succeeded in reaching and breaching the city’s walls. Only the timely arrival of Tywin Lannister at the head of a Lannister-Tyrell army saved the city from being sacked. His army broken and his fleet in shambles, Stannis was sent back to Dragonstone to recover. Stannis failed to take King’s Landing and would never be able to attempt the feat again; instead, he turned northward to answer Jon Snow’s call for aid. A Lannister king remained on the Iron Throne.11
On its surface, this seems decisive, but in truth it was not. Cersei Lannister and her progeny remained set upon by enemies, and the Seven Kingdoms remained engulfed in war. The Lannister alliance, though still strong, was eventually weakened as they were abandoned by Highgarden and Sunspear, the Vale under Petyr Baelish threw its support behind Jon Snow to destroy the Boltons, and Walder Frey was assassinated. Winning at King’s Landing did nothing to secure peace for the Lannisters. An analog to a more modern conflict would be the Brusilov Offensive during the First World War—a catastrophic success for the Russians that ended a German onslaught and broke the Austro-Hungarian Army’s back. Ultimately, Russia could not recover from its losses, and the cost of success set conditions for the Bolshevik Revolution.
Similarly, the Battle of the Bastards, fought between Jon Snow (born Aegon Targaryen) and Ramsay Bolton (born Ramsay Snow), did not do much to alter the strategic prospects of either Jon Snow or Westeros as a whole. True, the defeat of Ramsay Bolton effectively destroyed the Dreadfort as a power in the North and returned the Starks to Winterfell. But little changed to enhance Winterfell’s strategic outlook; the North was unable to project its power southward against the Lannisters, more so than when Robb Stark remained alive. Instead of leading a campaign to avenge Eddard Stark and the North, even with the support of House Arryn, the best that Jon Snow could do is forge an alliance with Daenerys Targaryen to combat the undead hordes north of the Wall. The North remained at war with the Lannisters and no viable prospects of securing victory over them.12
In review, strategy is combining ends, ways, and means to achieve an objective. Throughout the War of the Five Kings, all of the combatants have employed similar strategies: create divisions within enemy alliances to weaken the main adversary and then use an army to fight the enemy’s army in order to seize the enemy’s castle. Assassination and arranged marriages are often used as tools to shape the diplomatic landscape to facilitate these military ways, and these tools are often creative. But ultimately, there is not much variety beyond sex, murder, and war.
This is important. A key element of a strategy to achieve a specific end is the way the means are used. In other words, when you change what you target with your means (the “ways”), then you are changing your strategy. In almost every case, the feuding lords use their armies to target other armies and military apparatus (fortresses, castles, etc.).
This begs the question of who or what was being targeted during the War of the Five Kings. What was the connection between Westerosi soldiers and their lord? This is the core problem of why, in Westeros, there were neither decisive battles nor lasting victories, because at its core there was no real allegiance at any level. The great nobles constantly shifted their alliances for their own benefit, and the houses themselves enjoyed no loyalty from the peoples who fell under their dominion. Targeting lords produced no effect on their people, and vice versa.
Much like in medieval Europe, Westerosi “soldiers,” in most cases, just happened to live on the land owned by the lord. They fought because their feudal lord called them to fight. They fought for the false promises of adventure and glory. They fought for coin. They fought because they had no other prospects. Make no mistake, none of the “soldiers” who fought in this war were citizen-soldiers with a vested interest in their lord’s success. One lord is the same as another; victory or defeat, their lot in life remained constant with the change of one banner to another. Modified to fit the screen and presented in season 6 by Brother Ray, the “Broken Man” speech from the books best explains the lack of connection between the soldiers, their lords, and their wars as a whole.13
Unlike the knights they served under, Westerosi “soldiers” lacked training. Training does more than just teach a soldier how to wield a weapon; it teaches them how to steel their resolve in the face of death. Training teaches soldiers to bury their fear to perform effectively, especially when they are so scared that their hands are shaking. Training teaches soldiers to stand their ground, especially when it means protecting their friend next to them. Westerosi soldiers had none of these things. The reward for success in battle and surviving and staying with the army was fighting in more battles. These soldiers had more incentives to desert and loot corpses for valuables than to pursue a defeated enemy.
This was the nature of battle in Westeros. The fighting continued until one side’s morale broke and they fled, and the “winning” side was too exhausted and content to pursue their enemy’s destruction. As a result, battles fought between Westerosi armies could not be decisive. Few armies were annihilated outright, the lords prosecuting the war did not lose their stomach for war, and there were always more men willing to fight.
None of this is to say that the lords of Westeros would have been better off targeting civilians as an element of their strategy. The people of Westeros suffered enough already, and no one wants to be the king or queen of ashes. Rather, the key point is that the leaders of Westeros generally failed to think beyond individual battles, and even Westeros’s most brilliant military minds failed to grasp alternative strategies beyond simply engaging the enemy’s power in combat. For battles to be decisive, they have to be nested within a larger campaign, and the ways and means must be appropriate for achieving the end. Operational art was either beyond understanding or too impractical to execute given the shortcomings of subordinate commanders.
There was no sense of citizenship, and both peer and peasant alike knew that loyalty would be mercurial. In comparison, in the modern era, wars are fought and peace is won with soldiers who are also citizens.14 Originally articulated by Machiavelli in The Art of War as “civic virtu,” when soldiers are intrinsically motivated rather than extrinsically, the state can expect them to fight harder and without as draconian measures of control. In return, the state must not waste their sacrifices and must offer them a measure of franchise during peacetime. Strategies that target these soldiers and seek decisive battle hold the potential for victory in the modern era because these soldiers are part of the state.
The key reason that strategies failed and combats meant little in Westeros is the soldiers employed to fight in them. War, as a tool of politics, was focused on killing people who did not matter to those prosecuting the wars. As Tyrion reminded Daenerys, “Killing and politics aren’t always the same things.”15
1. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “A Man without Honor,” season 2, episode 7, dir. David Nutter, Game of Thrones, aired May 13, 2012, on HBO.
2. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Terms and Military Symbols, Army Doctrine Reference Publication 1-02 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, November 16, 2016).
3. Here, “ends” refers to the objective—the desired outcome, or the “what” of the strategy. “Ways” refers to the “how” of the strategy and how the strategy will achieve the desired ends. “Means” correlates to “with what” and refers to specific things, like armies, navies, and diplomatic and economic resources.
4. A strategy of attrition aims to erode the enemy’s means to continue resistance until those means are reduced to the point that the enemy must capitulate. An exhaustion strategy, also referred to as a Fabian strategy, aims to reduce the enemy’s resolve to continue fighting over time; whereas an attrition strategy targets means and resources, exhaustion seeks to sap will and morale. Strategies of annihilation seek to neutralize an enemy’s means and will to resist in a short time frame, generally over the course of a single battle or campaign.
5. For a study of Napoleon Bonaparte and how he made war, there is simply no finer English study, or history book in general, than David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: MacMillan Company, 1966). It went out of print many decades ago, so if you have the means to acquire it, this author recommends you do so immediately.
6. Erich von Falkenhayn, General Headquarters, 1914–1916, and Its Critical Decisions (London: Hutchinson, 1919), 286, https://archive.org/details/generalheadquart00falk.
7. Bryan Cogman, “Stormborn,” season 7, episode 2, dir. Mark Mylod, Game of Thrones, aired July 23, 2017, on HBO.
8. In this sequence, even Jaime Lannister himself tells the soon-to-be-dead Lady Olenna Tyrell that “Casterly Rock isn’t worth much anymore.” David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “The Queen’s Justice,” season 7, episode 3, dir. Mark Mylod, Game of Thrones, aired July 30, 2017, on HBO.
9. For the discussion between Robb Stark and Edmure Tully, see David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “Walk of Punishment,” season 3, episode 3, dir. David Benioff, Game of Thrones, aired April 14, 2013, on HBO.
10. The linguistic aftereffects of Hastings and the Norman rule of England are evident today in the culinary world. Livestock is so named after the English words: chicken, cow, pig, lamb. However, the food products from those animals take on their French origins: poultry (poulet is “chicken” in French), veal (veau is French for “calf”), pork (porc is “pig” in French), and mutton (mouton is French for “sheep”). The English took care of the animals, while their Norman lords enjoyed the culinary by-products of said animals.
11. This battle served as the centerpiece of George R. R. Martin, “Blackwater,” season 2, episode 9, dir. Neil Marshall, Game of Thrones, aired May 27, 2012, on HBO.
12. This battle is the focus of David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “Battle of the Bastards,” season 6, episode 9, dir. Miguel Sapochnik, Game of Thrones, aired June 19, 2016, on HBO.
13. This speech can be found in George R. R. Martin, A Feast for Crows (New York: Bantam, 2005), 533. “They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe. They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names.”
14. I am purposely avoiding use of the term “citizen-soldier,” because that term implies a lack of professionalism either in leadership or in soldiers. What is critical is that whether professional or amateur, soldiers bear a responsibility to the welfare of their regime.
15. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “Hardhome,” season 5, episode 8, dir. Miguel Sapochnik, Game of Thrones, aired May 31, 2015, on HBO.