![]() ![]() However, the advent of railroads changed the pace and the span of warfare. This led to a slow, ponderous kind of warfare where armies would move short distances and then pause to set up new depots. But that meant that armies couldn’t operate more than 40 or 50 miles from their depots, or the draft animals would eat all the food they were hauling. The safer alternative was to draw supplies from fixed depots, which sent supplies to the troops via oxen- or horse-drawn wagon. The problem is that once the local food supply has been depleted, armies have to move to a new area or starve. Troops could either forage (a polite word for looting) for food in an area, as did Napoleon’s armies, and Union troops during Sherman’s March to the Sea in the American Civil War. ![]() More importantly, the pre-locomotive era tied armies to short supply lines. For millennia, armies could march no faster than a human could walk. But historically, railroads revolutionized warfare beginning in the mid-19th Century. Military railroads seem an almost quaint concept today, like a scene in an old movie. ![]()
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