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Azran posted: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? After the melee troops joined battle, the archers engaged in cheerleading of a scale and professionalism that is not seen in the modern world. The famed Persian archers were mostly known in the ancient world for their rousing chants, oratory, and (in the most critical battles) feats of impromptu stagecraft that would halt battles with their dramatic impact. The Mongol Horse Cheerleaders were nearly as feared in their day for their amazing horseback acrobatic routines, mastery of pyrotechnic engineering, and musical talent as their deadly marksmanship. Perhaps most famously, at the Battle of Mohi Subutai's mounted orchestra so captivated the Hungarians that they failed to notice the Mongolian soldiers crossing the river Hernád and were slaughtered in the most hardcore musical and pyrotechnic display until the advent of Death Metal. That's how they were used.
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Jun 18, 2013 07:15
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veekie posted: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. It would be reasonable to come up with plate armor first, and certain ancient Mediterranean cultures certainly did come up with it (maybe near/far eastern cultures had the same idea, I don't know) but that still left the issue of attaching it to the body and to itself. To get properly articulated coats of plate, you need to have the idea of the sliding bolt and to know exactly where to put it. To build a coat of maille, all you need is the knowledge of how to make the links and of how to make it into a shirt shape. The Greeks certainly had solid chest and back armor, and solid armlets and greaves and helmets, but they did not have an effective way to cover the gaps. Maille allows for full coverage at the expense of worse protection compared to solid metal, but at the time of its introduction by the Celts it was still cheaper than solid bronze armor (and solid iron plates were still a significant challenge). So as smiths figured out how to create larger iron pieces, they wove them into the then-popular maille. As time went on, armorers figured out ways to make solid plates more flexible through the use of arming doublets and work with specialized hinges. Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Jun 18, 2013 |
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Jun 18, 2013 07:22
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No ponyman, it is not easier to make a big metal plate than it is to make a lot of little metal rings. It is more labour-intensive to link all those rings together, but it takes less expertise. You don't just put big sheets of metal on people, it needs to be shaped to be useful. Otherwise, knights would look like cardboard box robots.
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Jun 18, 2013 07:26
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Is it really more difficult in man-hours? It may take more expertise, but it seems like it'd take less time.
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Jun 18, 2013 07:33
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That's what I said, kinda, full articulated plate grew from the simple solid pieces like breastplate, greaves, bracers and helmets to gradually expand coverage as they worked out how to join metal together without losing freedom of movement. Until they got there it's supplemented with leather and mail to get at least some protection. Also the pony was a prank avatar, didn't mind it enough to remove it.
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Jun 18, 2013 07:34
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This came up in the thread before and the explanation that sounded best to me was: chainmail is labor-intensive but requires little capital plate armor is capital-intensive but requires little labor Economic conditions tend to determine the nation's preference, so in the 2nd century golden age of Rome with manufactories popping up everywhere, the slave population shrinking because of extended peace, and lots of wealth, plate (loricum) armor is most the most efficient production choice. It also happens to be better. In medieval fiefs with poor access to human and physical capital but a huge forced labor pool, chainmail is the most efficient production choice.
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Jun 18, 2013 09:58
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Arglebargle III posted:This came up in the thread before and the explanation that sounded best to me was:
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Jun 18, 2013 10:21
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:The European population went down during the "fall of Rome" though, and it also nosedived from the late 1300s into the 1400s, then increased again, then fell again during the 17th century crisis. Right but also the population was not engaged in anywhere near as diverse of a set of occupations after the fall of Rome in the west. You still had a huge amount of serfs who you could train to make chainmail for little to no cost.
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Jun 18, 2013 16:56
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veekie posted:That's what I said, kinda, full articulated plate grew from the simple solid pieces like breastplate, greaves, bracers and helmets to gradually expand coverage as they worked out how to join metal together without losing freedom of movement. Until they got there it's supplemented with leather and mail to get at least some protection. One plate of metal is not equal to another plate of metal. A forged of sheet metal from the classical world may look similar to a late medieval sheet of metal, but thats where the similarities end. Metallurgically, the late medieval sheet is way more technologically advanced. Over the centuries certain processes had been discovered that led to sheets of increased strength and flexibility. And making those sheets uniform in strength and flexibility was another challenge. Lorica segmentata looks more advanced when everyone else is using chain or bronze armours, but Roman metallurgy was typically rather crude, especially the mass produced for the army by slaves stuff. Think of fields of slaves manning bloomery furnaces, producing ingots of iron, not uniform in quality. This production method made it cheaper than chain armour. Thats basically the reason why chain armour was the most popular choice for 2000+ years, no other state could marshal the resources for mass production like that.
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Jun 18, 2013 17:26
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I like to imagine it came about when some ancient dude said "Man, this stupid shield is so heavy. I wish I could just attach it to my chest and be done with it." So he grabs himself two ropes to hang the shield off his shoulders and turns himself into a walking sandwich board guy with a spear.  Granted, I don't know if the shield is a later development than the idea of body armor, but at that point we might be better off moving to the Ancient Greek history thread.
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Jun 18, 2013 17:46
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Rabhadh posted:One plate of metal is not equal to another plate of metal. A forged of sheet metal from the classical world may look similar to a late medieval sheet of metal, but thats where the similarities end. Metallurgically, the late medieval sheet is way more technologically advanced. Over the centuries certain processes had been discovered that led to sheets of increased strength and flexibility. And making those sheets uniform in strength and flexibility was another challenge. Point. Basically evolution in quality and coverage, but not so much in nature?
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Jun 18, 2013 18:42
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veekie posted:Point. Basically evolution in quality and coverage, but not so much in nature? From what I gather, the evolution in quality made certain things more or less viable, hence the cycle from bronze sandwich boards to segmented to rings to plates with ring filling to articulated plate.
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Jun 18, 2013 19:17
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Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html It's not perfect (and I'll expand a bit on some of its points when I get time) but it's 1000x better than the Goon Theorizing that's going on now.
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Jun 18, 2013 20:24
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html So from the 1200s to 1400, they were supplementing mail with breastplates, vambraces, and greaves until the first full suits of plate showed up around 1400? Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jun 18, 2013 |
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Jun 18, 2013 20:58
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html
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Jun 18, 2013 21:11
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Hey, my Goon Theorizing was pretty choice, thankyouverymuch. You are certainly right that firearms got more powerful. The transition from serpentine to corned powder in the 16th c. was particularly massive.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:26
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:You are certainly right that firearms got more powerful. The transition from serpentine to corned powder in the 16th c. was particularly massive.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:53
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Did the mixture vary due to like local weather patterns or was it just a cultural thing?
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Jun 18, 2013 21:59
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Rabhadh posted:Did the mixture vary due to like local weather patterns or was it just a cultural thing?
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Jun 18, 2013 22:15
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[quote[Other factors that need to be considered include technological innovations in mass production, namely the water-powered trip hammer and the blast furnace. These technologies enabled iron plate to be manufactured in much larger quantities and much more cheaply than previously. In addition, labour costs dramatically increased after the Black Death (14th century), and the technologies previously mentioned meant that mail actually cost more to produce than all but the finest of plate armour. Williams compares the cost of 12 oxen for a 9th century helmet, mail and leggings with the cost of only 2 oxen for horseman's plate armour at the end of the 16th century.111 At Iserlohn in the 15th century, a mail haubergeon cost 4.6 gulden while plate armour only cost 4.3 gulden.112 Kassa's archives (Hungary 1633) record a mail shirt costing six times that of a "double breastplate." These records also indicate the huge difference in labour involved. The mail required 2 months to be completed while the breastplate, only 2 days. If plate armour was cheaper, quicker to produce, and offered better protection than mail, one could argue that it would have become popular even if weapons such as longbows, crossbows, and lances never existed.[/quote] Ohhh yeeah I was partly right!
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Jun 19, 2013 00:34
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How did pikes influence the reduced popularity of plate armour? I've heard that guns alone weren't enough to end the era of heavy armour, but the combination of "pike and shot" made plate mail knights obsolete on the battlefield.
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Jun 19, 2013 09:00
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Chamale posted:How did pikes influence the reduced popularity of plate armour? I've heard that guns alone weren't enough to end the era of heavy armour, but the combination of "pike and shot" made plate mail knights obsolete on the battlefield. Pikes kept people on horses away from the gunners while they reloaded, which lead to the decline in horsey knights doing their thing. Men on horses also started carrying guns themselves sooo... yeah. I don't think pikes had any particular armor piercing qualities that lead to a decline in plate armor.
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Jun 19, 2013 13:03
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Chamale posted:How did pikes influence the reduced popularity of plate armour? I've heard that guns alone weren't enough to end the era of heavy armour, but the combination of "pike and shot" made plate mail knights obsolete on the battlefield. Pikes first started getting used in the 1300s (apart from antiquity). Plate armor reached its zenith in the 1600s.
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Jun 19, 2013 13:38
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Pikemen also wore plate, too, although not the full shebang. The purpose of the pike square is primarily to guard against cavalry, and it led not to the eclipse of cavalry, but to new cavalry tactics--eventually, they all start carrying pistols or carbines. the JJ posted:Pikes kept people on horses away from the gunners while they reloaded... HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jun 19, 2013 |
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Jun 19, 2013 22:00
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html I'd be interested in hearing your input, if you're still willing. I've read that article before and I'm curious about your take on it.
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Jun 25, 2013 02:36
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I had a quick question myself, and more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. Why, exactly, were the Vikings so successful at what they did (Raiding, pillaging, etc)?
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Jun 25, 2013 09:33
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GunganRevenge posted:I had a quick question myself, and more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. Strategic mobility?
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Jun 25, 2013 12:20
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GunganRevenge posted:Why, exactly, were the Vikings so successful at what they did (Raiding, pillaging, etc)? Not an authority on the subject, but based on what I read it essentially boils down to the fact that they were fast and had a large degree of mobility. Their longships could travel both on the open ocean and in shallower waters, which was a huge advantage. Raiding wasn't a new thing for most people to deal with, but if you're preparing for ocean raiders then generally you're going to focus on protecting the coasts, the Vikings could bypass coastal defenses if they wanted to and head towards less protected areas by traveling on the rivers. That's not to say they didn't raid the coast, because they did, but it gave them more options. When they actually hit their target, the general goal was to kill what little resistance there was, grab as much loot and slaves as they could, and get out of there before organized military resistance showed up. They were also very good at terrorizing people and then making agreements with the victims to pay tribute instead of being raided again in the future. Throw in a warrior-oriented culture and it's a recipe for success. I think another factor is they generally raided in smaller groups. It's not very often that you'd see large scale invasions by Norsemen, and in those cases it was generally for actual control of territory rather than a simple smash and grab. Smaller numbers made them harder to anticipate and stop. One exception I can think of to this is in 885 when several hundred longships carrying thousands of raiders (sources aren't really great on exactly how many) sailed down the Seine and besieged Paris. While they were besieging the city a good chunk of the main force got bored of sitting around and raided all along the Seine instead. Vikings weren't really accustomed to drawn out sieges, and about a year into the siege the Frankish king showed up and persuaded the Vikings to leave by giving them 700 pounds of silver and convincing them to go raid Burgundy instead.
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Jun 25, 2013 14:00
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Pikemen also wore plate, too, although not the full shebang. The purpose of the pike square is primarily to guard against cavalry, and it led not to the eclipse of cavalry, but to new cavalry tactics--eventually, they all start carrying pistols or carbines. Didn't the Swiss start having their pikes charge instead of just fend off cavalry, and freak out the French and/or Austrians?
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Jun 25, 2013 15:33
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canuckanese posted:I think another factor is they generally raided in smaller groups. It's not very often that you'd see large scale invasions by Norsemen, and in those cases it was generally for actual control of territory rather than a simple smash and grab. Smaller numbers made them harder to anticipate and stop. One exception I can think of to this is in 885 when several hundred longships carrying thousands of raiders (sources aren't really great on exactly how many) sailed down the Seine and besieged Paris. While they were besieging the city a good chunk of the main force got bored of sitting around and raided all along the Seine instead. Vikings weren't really accustomed to drawn out sieges, and about a year into the siege the Frankish king showed up and persuaded the Vikings to leave by giving them 700 pounds of silver and convincing them to go raid Burgundy instead. This sounds suspiciously close to the tactic of ordering a whole bunch of pizzas to somebody you don't like's house.
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Jun 25, 2013 21:19
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Frostwerks posted:This sounds suspiciously close to the tactic of ordering a whole bunch of pizzas to somebody you don't like's house. Especially because Burgundy was in revolt at the time.
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Jun 25, 2013 21:29
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tweekinator posted:Didn't the Swiss start having their pikes charge instead of just fend off cavalry, and freak out the French and/or Austrians?
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Jun 25, 2013 21:31
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Is it true that the government of France literally couldn't mint coins fast enough to pay off the Vikings at the peak of their raiding in France? I read somewhere that they completely ran out of coinage at one point but I don't remember where.
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Jun 25, 2013 23:05
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Luigi Thirty posted:Is it true that the government of France literally couldn't mint coins fast enough to pay off the Vikings at the peak of their raiding in France? I read somewhere that they completely ran out of coinage at one point but I don't remember where. I think that may simply be related to the story I told earlier, but I haven't read anything about running out of coinage actually being true, if you or anyone else has a source for that I'd be very interested. The peak of Viking raiding in France was the mid to late 9th century, at which point "France" wasn't even a thing but rather a collection of territory loosely held by the Franks. The Carolingian Empire broke up in 843, so the Viking raids coincided pretty well with a century or so of disorder in the area. This period of raiding ends around 911, when Rollo besieges Paris again. Charles, the king of the Western Franks granted him land they had previously conquered in what became known as Normandy in return for fealty, to stop further raiding, and if they agreed to help protect them from any future raids by other Vikings.
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Jun 26, 2013 00:34
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To what extent did the crusades influence military fortifications like Chateau Gaillard and others?
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Jun 26, 2013 03:02
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Well, in order to understand the Crusades' impact on Medieval Europe as a whole, one must first understand that many innovations that came to medieval Europe were less "crusade ideas", and more "Byzantine Ideas". Many things that the Crusaders brought back included the Trebuchet, and a variety of other technological innovations involving fortifications, especially those who saw the Theodosian Walls in Constantinople on the way to the Holy Land. Considering that Constantinople was a major travel hub on par with O'Hare Airport back in that day, pretty much most Crusaders passed through it.
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Jun 26, 2013 04:25
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I hadn't thought of those other areas. Although I think there would be more emphasis on strictly military buildings and their effect on the local region. Like Krak des Chevaliers for example.At least in regards to Chateau Gaillard. I guess the question I should ask is, following the crusades were military strong points more stressed for defense/offense? Where before some rinky dink motte and bailey would suffice for a region like Normandy. Then you have more emphasis placed on regional strong points. Was that something that was a take away from the crusades or was it more in line with the evolution of medieval military warfare? Or maybe a combination of the two? What do you think gungan? bres0048 fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 04:38
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My personal opinion? The development of castles coincided with the beginnings of centralization of power in the feudal system. The Crusades may have influenced fortress design and technology for the positive, but even without the Crusades, they would've started developing larger and more fortified castles due to a need to have a place from which the ruler can project power. In modern times, projection of power is a relatively easy feat: You go out, you lay down some bombs, you're good to go. But in the medieval times, projection of power was far more construction-based than force-based. Castles were a means of establishing dominance over an area, such as in Wales, where the Welsh Rebellions were pretty much finally crushed due to the fact that there was a fully-staffed castle with knight and retinue approximately 5 miles from any village, or some silly number like that. They were built both offensively and defensively, in that respect.
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Jun 26, 2013 06:15
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canuckanese posted:One exception I can think of to this is in 885 when several hundred longships carrying thousands of raiders (sources aren't really great on exactly how many) sailed down the Seine and besieged Paris. While they were besieging the city a good chunk of the main force got bored of sitting around and raided all along the Seine instead. Vikings weren't really accustomed to drawn out sieges, and about a year into the siege the Frankish king showed up and persuaded the Vikings to leave by giving them 700 pounds of silver and convincing them to go raid Burgundy instead. Sounds like the Vikings got the best of that deal. Raid and loot until you get bored, and then raid the surrounding areas, and THEN they pay you to go raid a new interesting person.
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Jun 26, 2013 08:28
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bres0048 posted:I hadn't thought of those other areas. Although I think there would be more emphasis on strictly military buildings and their effect on the local region. Like Krak des Chevaliers for example.At least in regards to Chateau Gaillard. I guess the question I should ask is, following the crusades were military strong points more stressed for defense/offense? Where before some rinky dink motte and bailey would suffice for a region like Normandy. Then you have more emphasis placed on regional strong points. Was that something that was a take away from the crusades or was it more in line with the evolution of medieval military warfare? Or maybe a combination of the two? What do you think gungan? It's funny you bring up Normandy, because the Normans built tons of stone castles as a way to control the countryside and as regional strong points, especially in England since they were the minority ruling over the Anglo-Saxons. I was under the impression that a lot of the changes to castles that resulted from the Crusades were related more to design and how they were built, rather than where they were placed and what their function was.
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Jun 26, 2013 14:00
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