By coincidence I've been reading a lot lately about early modern armies, and yeah, food was a major preoccupation. (As Napoleon remarked, an army marches on its belly.) Every man had a ration of a couple of pounds of bread a day -- which had to be provided, and transported either pre-baked or as grain+ovens wherever the army was that night. For an army of any size, that's a lot of food to carry around, not mention a lot of bakers, quartermasters, wagon-drivers, etc. to support it.
Even more important was providing food for the horses -- not just for the cavalry, but to haul all the wagons that carried the tents, the baggage, the tools, the bread, the gunpowder, the cannons (it might take 24 horses to pull just one of the big guns). Horses eat a lot. Lots of horses eat a whole heck of a lot. And it can't be all grass. Food for the men was provided or at least paid for by the military administration, but food for the horses had to be improvised locally via the army's own foraging parties, i.e. brigade-sized bands fanning across the countryside with scythes to harvest anything edible they could take before the local population hid it away. An army that didn't forage effectively would quickly find itself in real trouble, so foraging parties not only had to know what they were doing, but be able to defend themselves against the inevitable ambushes & attacks by the other side (which might be in competition for the same precious resource). And it was the need to forage that generally kept armies out of the field in winter.
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Even more important was providing food for the horses -- not just for the cavalry, but to haul all the wagons that carried the tents, the baggage, the tools, the bread, the gunpowder, the cannons (it might take 24 horses to pull just one of the big guns). Horses eat a lot. Lots of horses eat a whole heck of a lot. And it can't be all grass. Food for the men was provided or at least paid for by the military administration, but food for the horses had to be improvised locally via the army's own foraging parties, i.e. brigade-sized bands fanning across the countryside with scythes to harvest anything edible they could take before the local population hid it away. An army that didn't forage effectively would quickly find itself in real trouble, so foraging parties not only had to know what they were doing, but be able to defend themselves against the inevitable ambushes & attacks by the other side (which might be in competition for the same precious resource). And it was the need to forage that generally kept armies out of the field in winter.