a travelling HEGEL posted:

...maybe they're about to advance and have not yet fully closed?

quote:

Note this well just here, that when you let your pikes fall in a Compagnie, they should fall delicately and orderly, one rank after another, so the first row first, then the second, then the third, and so along until the end, which must not only be done gracefully, but also comfortably, as when, as it were, the pikes fall through one another....

quote:

Note right here, just as you let your pike fall one rank after the other, that's the way you should pick up and set down your pike; pick your pikes up one row after the other. That is to say that the last row, as it was the last to let them fall, should be the first to pick them up, thereupon the first row right after the last, and so on, right up until the first row again. Note this well--it is very graceful and comfortable.

Slavvy posted:

It's reasonably well thought-out, I guess. The idea is the aliens are very slow and cautious in their social development and assume everyone else is the same. They send a probe which takes 500-odd years to return to their planet with data. They see that earth is basically in the middle age and assume nothing will change in the brief timespan of several centuries it takes them to get here. Bringing gulf-war-era weaponry and tech is, from their standpoint, being extremely over-cautious and over-prepared.

Hogge Wild posted:

Was it Turtledove that had a book about South African whites conquering whole Africa with their Spartan like society?

Hogge Wild posted:

Was it Turtledove that had a book about South African whites conquering whole Africa with their Spartan like society?

EvanSchenck posted:

No, that was S.M. Stirling.

Hogge Wild posted:

Was it Turtledove that had a book about South African whites conquering whole Africa with their Spartan like society?

Mitsuo posted:

Kind of a fan of 1632 though

Grand Prize Winner posted:

I like the fat dude who's had his breastplate let out in the second picture.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Speaking of German armor:


Kurfürst August von Sachsen, by Zacharias Wehme, 1586. Commissioned upon Elector August's death by his son, Christian II von Sachsen.

Edit: And this is Christian II.

Hogge Wild posted:

Can a Polish Hussar achieve a take off if you put him on a conveyor belt?

Hogge Wild posted:

Can a Polish Hussar achieve a take off if you put him on a conveyor belt?

Grand Prize Winner posted:

I like the fat dude who's had his breastplate let out in the second picture.


that's actually Eric Flint, probably the closest person to a leftist that Baen ever published.

edit: what's the most recent military use of an ancient fortress? I heard some of the FSA holed up in Krak des Chevaliers last year.

Mitsuo posted:

Oh yeah, I know it isn't Turtledove. I was pretty happy to find Flint after a bad string of randomly picking stuff at the half-price bookstore that led to Heinlein-Card-Goodkind

Seconding that Draka series was pretty lovely, but at least they were depicted as objectively awful and not some apologist poo poo (assuming I remember it right, it was a quick read years ago)

George T. Dennis, S.J., Catholic University of America posted:

THEOPHANES, The Chronicle of Theophanes: An English Translation of anni mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813), trans. Harry Turtledove. (The Middle Ages.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Pp. xxiv, 201. $25 (cloth); $8.95 (paper).

THERE ARE periods in Byzantine history for which there is more than one narrative source, and the historian must compare their data. For the early centuries, though, there are not many such sources or, indeed, much writing of any sort. For most of these years the chronicle of the monk Theophanes is our most accurate and often our only source. Yet these were incredibly critical years in the history of mankind. Half of the Roman Empire was being ruled by barbarians. The eastern half was just barely hanging on and was soon cut in half again. The remainder was under relentless pressure, at times even overrun, by Slavs and Bulgarians to the north and west and by Muslims to the south and east. If the empire had gone under, as it very nearly did, so would Europe have gone, and the western civilization we know would have been grossly deformed or simply aborted. While the empire did find the resources to hold off its external foes, it was nearly torn apart by a conflict within, the struggle over religious images, iconoclasm. The empire survived and came to prosper, but it had been profoundly transformed. In 602 it was recognizably Roman; in 813 it called itself Roman but it was clearly Byzantine. The chronicle of Theophanes, sometimes sketchily, sometimes in detail, records what happened during these
obscure but formative years.

Theophanes strove for chronological accuracy and set a model for subsequent chroniclers. His coverage of events in the Arab world is surprisingly exact. While he proposes to report the facts, his own feelings, particularly on iconoclasm, are not hidden. He never, for example, mentions the name of the iconoclastic emperor Constantine V without some such qualification as accursed, wretched, enemy of God, bloodsucking wild beast, and he delights in retelling the unpleasant incident at his baptism which earned him the sobriquet of Copronymos. Nonetheless, he also records things which put Constantine in a favorable light, such as his military victories. The reader gets the impression that, whatever Theophanes' own views, he can be trusted in recording the events of his time. It is only recently that this important history has been translated, part of it into German in 1957, and the present translation into English, which covers the years 602 to 813 A.D. or, since the Byzantines dated from the creation of the world, the anni mundi 6095-6305. Undergraduates
and scholars as well now have access to a first-rate source for an otherwise obscure period.

The translation impresses this reviewer as quite accurate. It is generally easy to read, although some of the phrasing sounds a bit awkward, but then, the original is no literary masterpiece. Turtledove's introduction is short, informative, and to the
point, and there is a good index. Brief explanatory notes accompany the text, fortunately at the bottom of the page. Some additional notes, however, might have been useful, for example, on towered ships (p. 8), a heresy concerning fasting (p. 48), the covered Hippodrome (p. 173). Some may find the transliterating of names slightly overdone: Nikaia, Kilikia, Kappadokia. One word which should have been transliterated, though, is the vestment worn by the patriarch, the omophorion, as it is usually called; it should never have been translated as surplice (pp. 100, 129), a strictly western garment worn by everyone from altar servers to bishops. The organa
which Irene transported to Thrace (p. 143) may have been musical organs, as in the German translation, and not tools. Stoudion (p. 162) should be corrected to Stoudios. Apart, then, from one error regarding ecclesiastical dress, there is nothing serious to fault in this translation. It is a good piece of work which makes a significant source available to all of us. To give the press its due, I should add that the book is quite nicely presented, and its price is reasonable.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

He's fat, but that's not his gut--that bulge was super fashionable around the late 1500s/early 1600s. Note here, under Kurfürst August's sash:


It's a lovely piece of detail, since by the time people would be wearing those shoes, collars, and breeches, that breastplate would be distinctly retro. Like the VCR in your dad's den, it's from the 1580s, while it is now 1613. Dork.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Rabhadh posted:

I assume greater integration of firearms into the pike block over the century lead to the thinning out of the formation?

quote:

I also like your point about dropping the pikes rank by rank when moving into to combat. It looks tiring to hold the pike on the diagonal for a long period like this, unless its anchored in the ground that is.

quote:

Was the "pikes help deflect missiles" thing ever mentioned with regards to early modern pikemen or does that reference only apply to classical phalangites?

a travelling HEGEL posted:

I don't remember anything about that--good luck parrying a bullet or a crossbow quarrel, bro.

veekie posted:

Wasn't the potbelly design used for practical reasons? It helps with defending against gut attacks, by encouraging any blade or point to deflect away from vitals.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Ah wonderful plenty of space to maneuver.

uPen posted:

They already (almost) made this movie.



Ask Us About Military Alt-History: Here Be Dragons

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Yeah, every other word out of Wallhausen's mouth when he's talking about pikes is some variant on "precise." "Fine," "delicate," "graceful," "orderly." It's not a shoving match.

Edit: And then he says you shouldn't pay pikes double because they work much less hard than musketeers.

Hogge Wild posted:

One of the reasons Swedish army had pikemen for so long was that they were conscripted, and thus paid the same.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

I think we've already established that the Swedish human rights record is Extremely Problematic

a travelling HEGEL posted:

Yeah, every other word out of Wallhausen's mouth when he's talking about pikes is some variant on "precise." "Fine," "delicate," "graceful," "orderly." ("Fein ordentlich," which I'm not even sure how to translate since it would sound like gibberish in English. "Delicate-orderly") It's not a shoving match.

ArchangeI posted:

"well ordered" probably comes closest.

Frostwerks posted:

What the gently caress is going on in this poster? Is that the nimitz in the foreground with some even more super super-carrier in the background? I'm really trying to figure this out. What is the height of a ship from the waterline called? Or even from the keel for that matter? I found something that says it's 20 stories about the waterline. That thing in the background looks like it's at least a thousand feet tall conservatively.

a travelling HEGEL posted:

I love the word "fein" in this context though, and I would want to preserve something of that flavor in the translation. "Delicately ordered," "finely ordered." That's the same "fine" of phrases like "a fine distinction."

InspectorBloor posted:

I don't know what kind of german you speak, but "bequem" is still "comfortable". It just doesn't mean lazy. The old translation for zierlich is simply "looking good" or "looking sharp"

InspectorBloor posted:

I don't know what kind of german you speak, but "bequem" is still "comfortable". It just doesn't mean lazy. The old translation for zierlich is simply "looking good" or "looking sharp", while the common use of "zierlich" is used to denote something delicate, petite or daintly, like you said.

InspectorBloor posted:

You can imply that this has something to do with being lazy, but the word means comfortable in its foremost use.

As in: "Warum nehme ich Moskau nicht ein? Ich mache es mir bequem. -40°C machen mir nichts aus."
Or try: "Diese Schuhe sind bequem."

Context and all that. Do you know any martial art, where it's encouraged to act lazy?

Perestroika posted:

I'm used to it in the way of e.g. "Er könnte jetzt rausgehen, aber er ist sich dazu zu bequemlich.". Appparently it seems to be a local thing from where I grew up, though (lower saxony).