Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
We have multiple references in multiple books of "hordes of starving refugees" swarming over farmland like a plague of locusts. They stripped the countryside bare, eating absolutely everything with little regard for next years crops (in other words, they ate the seed which was supposed to be planted the following spring, thereby dooming hundreds of thousands, if not millions to death by starvation).
Given that environment, I doubt anyone would have been able to save many horses unless they rode them like the devil a few hundred miles through effectively hostile terrain to safety.
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Oh, to be sure. Especially in areas near urban masses and those that are "easy" to reach (ie along major road networks). Any farm within a hundred miles of a large urbanised area will be stripped bare, but the further out you get the more warning the farmers will have of what's coming and they will take steps to protect what's theirs. I tend to think that this is why there was any food available at all, and that doesn't count areas that have military units parked at, even at that early stage of the war, the senior commanders could see the train wreck coming and would take steps.