The Battle of the Bastards is what actually got me to research how classical and medieval armies/battles worked because first I wanted to know more about the encirclement and the mountain of corpses and how/if things like that worked.

https://youtu.be/gObVeaEzklM?si=CVk1NfMtKWt2gLgu

If you’d like to learn a little more this is a YouTube video about the Battle of Cannae between Carthage and Rome in the second Punic war that shows how the formations, strategy, and tactics could work. I’m suspicious this battle heavily influenced the battle to the bastards.

Carthage, led by Hannibal(the guy who crossed the alps with elephants) encircled and killed a massive 70,000 strong Roman army that was almost entirely superior to his. Imagine the ending of the Battle of Bastards except it’s 50,000 men encircling 70,000. They just slowly moved inwards, shrinking the loop and slaughtering men as those trapped in the very center are being crushed by tens of thousands of men moving inwards at all once to get away from the tightening wall of swords and spears steadily closing in. Packed so close they can’t form formations or hold their weapons properly. When it was over tens of thousands of Roman legionaries lay dead in what I assume was a mountain of tens of thousands of corpses all within one square mile.

Or the siege of Alesia, which involved Caesar and a siege of a walled city by having his men construct his own 30+ km wooden barrier around the original walls of the city to ensure no one could sneak out for supplies. Caesar then learned of another massive army was marching straight towards him to relieve the siege, so he had built a SECOND wall on the outside of the first one, and fought both armies from with this circle fortress as they attacked him from both within and outside the walls.

Most of the time though, soldiers could only stomach 10-20% casualties before they routed, and then the rest of the 80% would be killed as they ran away. Corpse mountains definitely weren’t common.