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Can you tell me about the Islamic conquest of Iberia in the 8th century? I remember reading about it on the forums a long, long time ago and people mentioned that the Visigoths had spent so much time embroiled in a succession crisis that they practically welcomed the Muslim rulers. Even if that's not true, Spain has historically been a major pain in the rear end to invade, so I'd still like to know how they did it.
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May 30, 2013 00:37
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Let's talk infrastructure! Who built and maintained the roads in medieval Europe? I get the impression that the old Roman paving was frequently torn up for building materials, but what about the roadbeds themselves--Who kept them navigable? At which point after the fall of Rome did people start maintaining and building them again, and how was that organized? I know very little about this. I do know that Alfred the Great maintained the Roman roads in his domain, but beyond that I honestly cannot tell you! The sources I deal with do not often mention roads explicitly.
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May 30, 2013 02:16
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:A as in apple Another variation of it is Azincourt, which is more or less the same but with a Z. I think that is the original French version. gyrobot posted:Ah Dunning Kruger, older that dirt. Not so much. Catapults really just lobbed great big boulders in the air and let gravity do the rest. If you threw a mass of pebbles with it you would annoy people rather than rip them to pieces. Randarkman posted:This is from way back, but I'd like to just bring it up to give it fleeting mention, as I have read Usamah ibn Munquidh's book and found it quite interesting and entertaining. I wouldn't really say that Kitab al-l'tibar is a sort of poem/tale, it's pretty much his memoirs; a story of his exploits (mostly killing lions, worth mentioning that lions in Syria were hunted to extinction by the 13th century or so) and he intends them to be entertaining yes, and he also inserts his own poems every once in a while. But I'd say the primary reason that the story about the Frankish physician who cuts a cross into a woman's skull to cure her is unreliable is not because of the prose of the text or such, it's mostly that its flat out stated that this is a story that Usamah heard from a friend who knew a guy who was there, which is always kind of unreliable. And immediately following this story are two others about Usamah himself personally witnessing Frankish physicians and medicine actually working rather well. Kitab al-I’tibar was part of a literary genre called adab, I call it poem/tale for convenient translation, the basic point I was making is that his work was not intended to be strictly accurate. Carole Hillenbrand basically described it as dangerously misleading to take at face value. Munqidh tended to emphasise differences between Franks and Arabs, very likely to the point of exaggeration. But thank you for pointing out the greater context of it, the fact Munqidh brings up successful Frankish physicians immediately afterwards implies he was skeptical of the account he was given. Amyclas posted:Question: What was life expectancy like for common folk in the early to high middle ages? Estimates differ, mostly because of the conditions being accounted for. Do you account for disease? Accidents? War and raids? Crime? What counts as infant mortality and so on? One estimate by (Home Office Lancaster, though I have not been able to track it down to my satisfaction) estimated that if you reached 21 then your life expectancy was up to a total of age 64. However, this was more wealthy than the peasants (it is harder to get reliable figures for them since they leave fewer records). From one graveyard dating back to the 1000-1100s around 94% of the bodies were aged less than 45. Though other figures suggest in other parts of England 9% of the dead lived to age 60 or more. It could be that the area of London had a particularly low life-expectancy, or it could imply that the 50s was a relatively safe age – that if you did not die of disease or accident before 40, your chances of reaching 60 were reasonable. Source - http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/11633.ch01.pdf Trust it, don’t trust it, I am not sure how I feel about it. Another source I found on the subject was this - http://www.localpopulationstudies.org.uk/PDF/LPS37/LPS37_1986_45-52.pdf I think the mortality levels should be approached with a bit of caution, but the general trend I notice is you get a lot of people dying before 35, some deaths from 35-50, but of the people who make it past 35 quite a few made it past 50. The point being there seemed to be high risk periods in early adulthood. Possible reasons for that could be that young men might take more risks in the name of becoming financially independent and young women had to deal with the hardcore killer called childbirth. During the 6th, 7th & 8th centuries there was the Plague of Justinian lowering life expectancies as well. I expect that would lower the average quite a bit, considering it wiped out virtually half of Europe’s population. Around 1000 AD, changes in diet and cooking meant that puberty started sooner (according to Dorsey Armstrong, puberty started around 16-18 previously) which might have impacted the life-expectancy. If women started puberty later, then presumably, hopefully, they were having children later, which might have cut down on deaths by childbirth. On the other hand, puberty being so late implies a measure of ill health, which might have made women more vulnerable to childbirth deaths. Grand Prize Winner posted:Let's talk infrastructure! Who built and maintained the roads in medieval Europe? I get the impression that the old Roman paving was frequently torn up for building materials, but what about the roadbeds themselves--Who kept them navigable? At which point after the fall of Rome did people start maintaining and building them again, and how was that organized? My apologies for being Anglocentric, this is just the sources I have the easiest time finding. http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/traveling-on-medieval-roads/ What interests me is the Domesday survey was keeping track of the condition of roads, which tells me that the king had an interest in keeping them intact. However, I think you have come across an understudied subject. I did find a list of laws in England requiring the maintenance of roads. • In 1140 king Stephen ordered that the lord of each manor had to ensure that all the highways passing through their estates had to be kept open at all times. • In 1278 Roger Mortimer was charged by Edward I to widen all the roads and passes entering Wales to assist with the king’s campaign against the Welsh. • In 1285 King Edward I ‘Trench Act’ was passed to ensure that any road passing through a wooded area should be kept clear of undergrowth for a distance of at least a 60 foot on each side. • King Edward I also passed laws ensuring that the principal Roman routes were to be kept clear from sea to sea. • In 1293 Statute of Winchester ensured that all highways passing from one market town to another had to be cleared of dykes and undergrowth to a minimum of 200 feet on either side of the road (the distance that a crossbow bolt could cover). However, Graeme White in The English Medieval Landscape points out that many of these roads were earth tracks or dirt paths and could happen semi-organically where enough people using that route wears out a natural path. A preview from the book can be found here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...20roads&f=false Jabarto posted:Can you tell me about the Islamic conquest of Iberia in the 8th century? I remember reading about it on the forums a long, long time ago and people mentioned that the Visigoths had spent so much time embroiled in a succession crisis that they practically welcomed the Muslim rulers. Even if that's not true, Spain has historically been a major pain in the rear end to invade, so I'd still like to know how they did it. I am not sure. I will make sure to research it further but I am seriously behind on sleep and I think I reached my limit for now. What I would point out is Spain became very difficult to invade partly out of the aftermath of the Reconquista, which created a hyper-Catholic and fairly militaristic culture. One suggestion I have heard to explain the Conquistadores is that after the Reconquista Spain had more of an army than anything else.
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May 30, 2013 03:14
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Railtus posted:• In 1285 King Edward I ‘Trench Act’ was passed to ensure that any road passing through a wooded area should be kept clear of undergrowth for a distance of at least a 60 foot on each side. Anti-banditry measure, maybe?
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May 30, 2013 04:28
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Railtus posted:Another variation of it is Azincourt, which is more or less the same but with a Z. I think that is the original French version. French spelling wouldn't be anything approaching standardized for another half a century : that's just people writing things down differently and not them being pronounced differently. I could find you a minimal pair, if you wanted. Although, there might be some dialectal effects or some kind of interference from, say, Occitan. I'd have to do some digging to be definite ; I don't really do Romance linguistics.
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May 30, 2013 05:05
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Obdicut posted:Anyway, neat and purty. It reminded me that there's a few citations of the Mongols using devices that created really bad smells that disoriented people. Anyone have any clue what that was? Just burning a bunch of poo poo (maybe literally) to confuse the enemy, or was there something particular that was used for noxious smokescreens in medieval warfare? One of my fave quotes. By a Japanese soldier present at the FIrst Mongol Invasion of 1274. quote:The commanding general kept his position on high ground, and directed the various detachments as need be with signals from hand drums. They sent iron bomb shells flying against us, which made our side dizzy and confused. Our soldiers were frightened out of their wits by the thundering explosions, their eyes were blinded, their ears deafened, so that they could hardly distinguish east from west. Not specifically about the smells, but speaks to the disorientation. I imagine if your society isn't used to gunpowder the smell would be downright awful and totally discombobulating.
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May 30, 2013 05:28
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Speaking of Agincourt, is this song period? If not, when was it written? It's pretty rad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK16e-Emrms
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May 30, 2013 05:34
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Frostwerks posted:Anti-banditry measure, maybe? Very likely. Xiahou Dun posted:French spelling wouldn't be anything approaching standardized for another half a century : that's just people writing things down differently and not them being pronounced differently. I could find you a minimal pair, if you wanted. Without standardised spelling, I lean towards phonetic interpretation. I decided to take another look and I came across it being listed as Aisincurt in one case, so I am cautious about accepting the J/G sound. I tried checking the pronunciation guide and got: Short A as in bad. z/s as in pleasure. K as in kind. Short oo as in foot. R as in rye. Thanks for making me take a second look though. The times I learn the most is when I question the things I think I know. HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Speaking of Agincourt, is this song period? If not, when was it written? It's pretty rad. I couldn't tell, sorry. Music is not my forte. It is certainly a pleasure to listen to though.
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May 30, 2013 12:07
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Speaking of Agincourt, is this song period? If not, when was it written? It's pretty rad. It definitely sounds like it could be medieval. (The actual vocal part, that is; the instrumental introduction is a modern addition.) If it's not from the medieval era, it's definitely written by someone familiar with medieval forms and composition styles. ninja edit: Wikipedia seems to think it's legit. Check out the sheet music link in the External Links section. Penguissimo fucked around with this message at 17:18 on May 30, 2013 |
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May 30, 2013 17:15
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Railtus posted:
 Where on earth are you getting this? That's not how reconstructed phonology works at all, and it's miles off for what Old-Middle French sounded like. If nothing else they still had coda-final consonants for god's sake. Using very, very broad transcription it should be something like [ćʒɪŋgʊɾt]. There's probably an epenthetic vowel that I'm missing and I'm not 100% if there would have been the place assimilation on the nasal yet, but that's my best stab without double-checking my notes. And to my knowledge no Romance language has ever had the Germanic-style [ɹ] (your "R as in rye"). Maybe Romanian at some point, maybe? Seriously, what the hell source are you getting this from. It's terrible. (No offense, I love the thread, but that poo poo is just straight up false.)
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May 30, 2013 17:34
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Jabarto posted:Can you tell me about the Islamic conquest of Iberia in the 8th century? I remember reading about it on the forums a long, long time ago and people mentioned that the Visigoths had spent so much time embroiled in a succession crisis that they practically welcomed the Muslim rulers. Even if that's not true, Spain has historically been a major pain in the rear end to invade, so I'd still like to know how they did it. And on the other end, I read that in later periods the Muslim rulers of Iberia were hesitant to call in help from North Africa because they considered themselves modern, cosmopolitan, and tolerant while the people on the mainland they considered backward fundamentalist assholes. Is this true?
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May 30, 2013 19:41
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Penguissimo posted:It definitely sounds like it could be medieval. (The actual vocal part, that is; the instrumental introduction is a modern addition.) If it's not from the medieval era, it's definitely written by someone familiar with medieval forms and composition styles.
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May 30, 2013 19:45
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Jabarto posted:Can you tell me about the Islamic conquest of Iberia in the 8th century? I remember reading about it on the forums a long, long time ago and people mentioned that the Visigoths had spent so much time embroiled in a succession crisis that they practically welcomed the Muslim rulers. Even if that's not true, Spain has historically been a major pain in the rear end to invade, so I'd still like to know how they did it. I think the historical record is a little hazy on exactly what happened, but some things are known in a general way. The Catholic Church assumed many of the functions of government, it was not uncommon for kings to be deposed, and they seem to have struggled with rebellions. For example, coins recovered from this period demonstrate that there were often multiple claimants to the throne minting currency in their own name. After conquering North Africa the Muslim Arabs and Berbers would have seen the weakness and division among the Visigoths as an opportunity for raiding. There are suggestions that they were actually invited to invade by a pretender to the throne who had been defeated and forced to seek refuge in North Africa, and that they exploited this to take over altogether. I don't think that's established for certain and may just be a legend. The invasion may also have begun as a raid, but which was so successful that it quickly spiraled into a full-scale conquest. Or they may have planned an invasion from the start. At any rate, a relatively small force (actual numbers unknown) invaded Hispania by sea and defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Guadalete. The king was killed on the field, supposedly along with most of the Visigoth nobility. The lack of leadership and the loss of fighting men explains the ease with which the peninsula was conquered, after the arrival of further reinforcements from North Africa. The Visigoths had also viciously persecuted the substantial Jewish population, who may then have made common cause with the invaders against their oppressors. Luigi Thirty posted:And on the other end, I read that in later periods the Muslim rulers of Iberia were hesitant to call in help from North Africa because they considered themselves modern, cosmopolitan, and tolerant while the people on the mainland they considered backward fundamentalist assholes. Is this true? Roman Hispania was probably the most Romanized in culture and society of any province of the Empire save Italy itself, and it's also supposed to have retained a lot of the Roman infrastructure and wealth into the period of Visigoth rule. The Muslims are supposed to have been quite impressed by the pillage from the campaign. Islamic Spain was notably wealthy and urbanized by comparison with the rest of Europe--around the 10th century the capital at Cordoba was probably the largest city in the world. By comparison North Africa would have been poorer and likely more backward, but then again so was most of the world. I think the more salient issue is that the western end of the Islamic world, in North Africa and Iberia, had a lot of problems with political instability. Part of this came from conflict between the two major ethnic groups, the Arabs and Berbers. The Arabs were more predominant in urban areas and tended to control commerce, the trades, and the good farmland, making the Berbers a kind of underclass. There was also a substantial population of nomadic Berbers in North Africa, and tensions between sedentary and nomadic peoples were a common theme in many parts of the Islamic world. The Berbers were also divided into tribes of their own, some of which converted to Islam at different times. Muslim Spain had a tendency to fragment into small independent emirates, called taifa, which were notably unsuccessful in wars with the Christian kingdoms. At around the same time North Africa was taken over by a couple of religious movements. The Almoravids were based in a Berber tribe that had converted relatively recently so their religious zeal was still fresh, so to speak. They struck out and conquered the Maghreb as a reaction against the decadence and weakened religious practices of mainstream society. Considering their background and the particular subjects of their complaints, it's likely they were also animated by anger over the one-sided distribution of wealth. After the Almoravids took over North Africa, the taifa emirs asked them to come over and save them from the Christians, which they did, but immediately following that they conquered Spain. In their turn they were replaced by the Almohads, who were an even more strict sect which had emerged from a different tribe of Berbers. The Almohad Caliphate finally collapsed after a massive offensive by the Christian kingdoms drove them out of Spain, and then revolts throughout North Africa broke up what was left.
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May 31, 2013 04:18
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How did people in medieval times react to beached whales? It seems like it happens fairly often in the modern age, so they must've encountered some. Did they know about whales, or did they make up crazy stories to explain it?
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Jun 5, 2013 03:08
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I hate to pull a Wiki on you, but medieval coast-dwellers probably knew what a whale was. Humans have hunted whales for a long drat time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_whaling.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:14
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Jesus, I never knew that whaling went back that far.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:22
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That reminds me of the part in 13th Viking where Ibn Banderas sees a whale the Vikings all tell him its a sea monster and act super scared and then have a good laugh at his expense when he is genuinely frightened. Then they're all like "it's a whale you doofus." In Jared Diamond's book Collapse he mentions that marine mammal bones are conspicuously absent from the Norse colonies in Greenland. Nobody knows why, but apparently they didn't take advantage of that abundant food source while the Inuit around them did. The Norse colonies died out while the Inuit thrived in the same environment. It's odd because the Greenland Norse's ancestors certainly hunted whale. Narwhal ivory was a major export of Iceland until the end of major hostilities with the Muslim world re-opened Asian and African elephant ivory trade. I've heard that whale tastes bad. The Japenese government with subsidized whaling fleet apparently can't sell enough of their catch so they put it in school lunches and students hate it. I would take that with a grain of salt though because one, overproduction is a common problem with subsidized industries regardless of their product, and two Japanese kids bring their lunch from home.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:24
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Arglebargle III posted:I've heard that whale tastes bad. The Japenese government with subsidized whaling fleet apparently can't sell enough of their catch so they put it in school lunches and students hate it. I would take that with a grain of salt though because one, overproduction is a common problem with subsidized industries regardless of their product, and two Japanese kids bring their lunch from home. A Faroe Islander I spoke to said it tastes fine, though he had a hard time describing it. Different whales, of course. Part of the problem of whale meat these days is that it's got a lot of mercury in it. SlothfulCobra posted:Jesus, I never knew that whaling went back that far. The blunted swords used in tournaments were sometimes made out of whalebone, so even dudes who'd never been to the coast would at least have a conception of what a whale was.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:31
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Hey I was hoping I could get some book recommendations that go in-depth about how/why certain medieval armies developed the way they did. For example, why heavy cavalry flourished in Western Europe, or how the Dutch, Italians, and Swiss came to field pike formations while their neighbors didn't. Stuff like that.
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Jun 5, 2013 04:01
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Rad. And I'm familiar with medieval composition since the college I went to made us all take a year of early music (it ruled), I just didn't know if this was the real thing or not. Thanks! e: I'm trying to find a good performance of "Sumer is icumen in" (fun and even older) but every video on youtube blows. Post 'em if you got 'em Anne Whateley fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 04:29
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i like nice words
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Arglebargle III posted:Japanese kids bring their lunch from home. No they don't, or at least not during compulsory education at public schools (age 15). The history of whaling in Japan goes back a fair bit (thousands of years if you count aboriginal groups), though the meat was rarely eaten outside of coastal areas due to the difficulty of preserving it. Whale oil, baleen, and whalebone were used for much the same purposes as they were in Europe. You didn't actually see people eat whale meat in large numbers until WW2, when you had a widespread threat of famine due to damage from bombing and cessation of trade, and afterward SCAP authorized the use of decommissioned cargo ships refitted for hunting and processing whales to solve the looming food crisis. Whale meat is considered by many of the war generation to have saved the lives of millions who would have otherwise starved to death. As a famine food, it's not particularly popular today, but for people who experienced the possibility of starvation, giving up all access to it is out of the question, even if they don't actually want to eat it. A lot of whale meat from catches is kept frozen, unsold, and it hardly ever shows up on school lunch menus unless the prefectural government feels like being dicks, like in Wakayama a few years back. EDIT: While I'm on the subject, famine foods are an interesting bit of medieval culture and warfare, because of frequent crop failures as well as sieges. Famine foods are usually not considered fit for human consumption, but when you've finished off everything else, you tend to broaden your horizons. Commonly referenced examples are cats, dogs, and rats, but people also ate grasses, tree bark, and wild root vegetables. When things got really dire during sieges, people would eat leather, wood, and in particularly extreme cases, human corpses. If anything, it's a testament to the durability of the human digestive system. Protocol 5 fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 04:42
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Anne Whateley posted:The song is legit but that arrangement is very modern. quote:This version is probably more appropriate (and much better imo), although still not all-male. Flippycunt posted:Hey I was hoping I could get some book recommendations that go in-depth about how/why certain medieval armies developed the way they did. For example, why heavy cavalry flourished in Western Europe... Basically, heavy cavalry develops in areas with very dense populations, because they have the resources necessary to support the number of people and animals that style of combat requires. quote:, or how the Dutch, Italians, and Swiss came to field pike formations while their neighbors didn't.  When I think "pikes," Italians are not the first group of people to come to mind. The Swiss invented the pike square, then the Germans pick it up, and both these regions shamelessly export people who know how to do this. Then everyone picks it up. I've heard that the Swiss did it because it's pretty cheap to field pikemen, and Switzerland is a poor and noble-free country. Most books on landsknechts or Reiselauefer will bring up halfassed explanations for why this came about in the first few chapters; I like the idea that it's a resource-light way to make war, and anything more elaborate than that (such as the idea that it appeals to their native democratic sentiments) is probably woo. (On the other hand, Swiss mercenary companies kind of organized themselves like tiny mobile cantons, so there is that.) Late medieval inter-Italian warfare is characterized by heavy cavalry (in fact, they used it a lot longer than other people did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri). I thought Mercenaries and their Masters was a good book about condottieri, but it's also pretty old (they are not my specialty). Pike combat is a huge deal during the Italian wars, but the people involved are Germans or Swiss, hired for the occasion, rather than Italians. The Dutch are not known for being especially good at pike combat; that's their great enemies, the Spanish. The Dutch did, however, develop/popularize a new (and possibly undeservedly prized?) style of pike and musket tactics in the late 16th/early 17th century, characterized by thinner lines and a more elaborate drill, which--at least in theory--allowed the combatants to use their firearms more effectively. EDIT: If you want to think about this sort of thing in general, rather than these specific questions, you should start thinking about it in terms of economics/society/infrastructure. That is what everything else is built on. It's not necessarily the reason why historical change takes place (cue decades of anguished Marxist sperging about this very question), but it's definitely a factor without which nothing else happens. So pick up some good economic histories or "global histories" (like Braudel) of the medieval West and go from there. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 05:05
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I should not have double-posted.
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 05:15
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The bit on clearing roads out to crossbow range made me wonder. What did effective weapon ranges and firing rates(allowing for aim of course, rather than just nocking and releasing as fast as humanly possible) look like back then? How far did a bow or crossbow reach relative to pikes and mounted charges?
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Jun 6, 2013 00:03
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Some amazing/silly stuff for you all. First up are the drawings of Onfim, a little medieval boy from Russia who was learning to write on pieces of birch bark. Sometimes he got a little bored.   An example of what the real thing looks like.  In the top right corner you see the first 11 letters of the alphabet, then a drawing of Onfim on a horse spearing an enemy. He signed his name next to it.   He wants to be just like his dad!  Pew pew! More of his drawings can be found here Parchment often has holes and tears because if the skin used had even a tiny hole (such as from a bugbite) the stretching process would stretch those wide open too. The holes were often sewn shut, but this one was embroidered with silk thread. Before conservation the thread was so fragile it disintegrated on touch, but check out those colours.     Cat lovers!  This is how cats walked over keyboards in medieval times.  Crazy cat guy wearing a cat hat  
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Jun 8, 2013 11:39
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Did the stiletto have any utility as an offhand dueling weapon or was it pretty much an assassin's weapon?
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Jun 9, 2013 08:40
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Not sure, but I think they were more for taking down a guy in armor after you wrestled him to the ground than for assassination. They were thin so they could be shoved through chain mail.
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Jun 9, 2013 09:04
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A lot of rapier era parrying daggers looked rather stiletto like but sure if that is to make it faster as a defensive tool or to so it would work like a stiletto also the rondel was a nifty weapon against armor that shows up in a lot of fight books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondel_dagger 
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Jun 10, 2013 03:21
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I thought the definitional part of a stilletto was the triangular cross-section, because gently caress you for wanting to staunch this bleeding. So it's pretty tits for everyone. But I'm just an rear end in a top hat, so maybe I'm retarded. (Also, Railtus, I still want to know where the hell you got those awful Middle French pronunciation.)
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Jun 10, 2013 04:41
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I'm confused about how plate armor became a thing. General articles on it seem to skip straight from lorica segmentata in the Roman Empire to the rise of articulated plate armor. Was the transition from mail to plate armor a relatively sudden innovation? All I can figure is that lorica segmentata was in use until about 400 AD, then mail was the best thing around for a long time, at some point in the 1300s brigandines start showing up, and by 1400 they were making articulated plate armor.
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Jun 18, 2013 02:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm confused about how plate armor became a thing. General articles on it seem to skip straight from lorica segmentata in the Roman Empire to the rise of articulated plate armor. Was the transition from mail to plate armor a relatively sudden innovation? All I can figure is that lorica segmentata was in use until about 400 AD, then mail was the best thing around for a long time, at some point in the 1300s brigandines start showing up, and by 1400 they were making articulated plate armor.
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Jun 18, 2013 04:12
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How, not why.
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Jun 18, 2013 04:29
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:I had always heard it was in response to firearms and crossbows. I'd heard it was in response to developing steels/weapons which could hold a fine point and would basically go through chain like it wasn't there, then it fell out of favor once firearms/crossbows became powerful enough to pierce it consistently.
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Jun 18, 2013 04:38
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Buried alive posted:I'd heard it was in response to developing steels/weapons which could hold a fine point and would basically go through chain like it wasn't there, then it fell out of favor once firearms/crossbows became powerful enough to pierce it consistently. This varies depending on which source you read, but a number of historians say that firearms could not pierce plate for a long time, which is why breastplates were often sold with dents in them where the armorer had shot them and the bullet hadn't gone through.
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Jun 18, 2013 04:59
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Weren't they just getting heavier and heavier in response to firearms development, until for reasons of cost of outfitting, changing battlefields and the scale of conflict relegated them to commander gear and later, putting the commander a good distance from where the bullets were flying. I dare say late era plate armor could probably still handle most firearms short of high power rifles(due to recoil, there's a practical upper limit to how much kick your handcannon could deliver). It just wasn't cost efficient.
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Jun 18, 2013 05:40
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Argh, I've been searching but couldn't find it. I remember talking with Alphadog about it a long time ago, where the real reason plate became popular (as big pieces of plate, not just small plates strapped to one another) was because of more advanced metallurgical techniques such as blast furnaces and water drop hammers) making these big pieces of plate more economically viable. Not to mention that making mail, which is very labour-intensive, became more difficult after half the population died of the plague.
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Jun 18, 2013 06:03
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I think Halloween Jack's referring to the mechanical development of plate armor, not the reasons why it developed. My spotty memory (please, please correct me) remembers something about middle-eastern or Turkic warriors (mongols, maybe?) having coats of maille with metal plates over the chest, which the Eastern Roman Empire (citation needed) adapted into their cataphract armor, expanding it in the process. As the European kingdoms expanded, they took the idea and ran with it as they developed weapons able to pierce maille. So it may have had little to do with classical Rome's lorica segmentata (citation needed).
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Jun 18, 2013 06:11
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veekie posted:Weren't they just getting heavier and heavier in response to firearms development, until for reasons of cost of outfitting, changing battlefields and the scale of conflict relegated them to commander gear and later, putting the commander a good distance from where the bullets were flying.
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Jun 18, 2013 06:12
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Regarding archers and crossbowmen. How were they used? I guess at first they'd be used to both screen their army and harass the enemy forces, and I've heard of archer duels before. But what about after the melee elements clash?
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Jun 18, 2013 06:28
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I think Halloween Jack's referring to the mechanical development of plate armor, not the reasons why it developed. My spotty memory (please, please correct me) remembers something about middle-eastern or Turkic warriors (mongols, maybe?) having coats of maille with metal plates over the chest, which the Eastern Roman Empire (citation needed) adapted into their cataphract armor, expanding it in the process. As the European kingdoms expanded, they took the idea and ran with it as they developed weapons able to pierce maille. Logically speaking, wouldn't it be actually simpler to come up with plate armor first? The basic components are ultimately large sheets of metal, which would seem to be fairly easy to forge, easier than mail even. Coverage would be limited of course, but the rest is basically increasing finesse with joining and working metal so that it could have enough flexibility in the right places. So a reasoned(but uninformed) guess would be the progression for plate went like: Chest/Head - Easiest to shape, protects vital areas which don't need much large scale flexibility either. Arms/Legs - Trickier on the shape, but protects the extended bits of the body. Securing full coverage would be hard, but if you go with bracers and armored boots you got SOME protection at least. Hands - Articulated plate gauntlets would be probably pretty hard to do. Joints - Pain in the rear end due to the necessary degrees of freedom. Putting those over parallel developments in leather/chain armor to fill in the gaps, it doesn't seem that you could nail the thing down to a specific period. They just filled in the gaps.
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Jun 18, 2013 07:05
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