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Fangz posted:How effective was privateering at intercepting Spanish shipments? Not very. Once everyone figured out that the Spanish treasure ships were like a great big pinata to smack open the Spanish started moving in treasure fleets, big rear end convoys. Only once was the whole fleet taken (the Dutch), and the Brits managed to take four galleons individually. They also got caught and torched at port once or twice I think, but the Dutch capture in 1628 was the only really big blow. e: General raiding in the Caribbean was a different story, but the big gold and silver shipments moved in convoy. Double e: Oh, and Drake caught a few ships on their way to Manila, because he was a special snowflake and went around the world. the JJ fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 17:26
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Fragrag posted:Thanks, that was the one I was looking for! You don't get stuff like that on SA anymore. Just bought it, this was fantastic. Do you have any idea how hard it was to read this without forum subscription? No bookmarks for you, sir!
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Jun 21, 2014 17:32
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Happy Operation Barbarossa day!  Oh come on, you almost forgot, right?
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Jun 22, 2014 18:42
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I'm sorry, did you say Bagration 70th anniversary? 
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Jun 22, 2014 18:59
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CoolCab posted:You know speaking of, working for the enemy either openly or through espionage in my mind was always associated with a death sentence. Is my assumption correct, and if so, has that always been the case? I understand during the Cold War there were prisoner transfers, and these days lots of places these days frown on capital punishment but were there other examples? Spying is bad, but deserting from your own employer to fight with their enemy if you know they are better supplied or payed is common (I read an Articles of War once that said this was forbidden and then it said "When you come back, you will be punished," which goes to show how expected it was), and if you're taken prisoner it's common to enlist with the people who capture you. Peter Hagendorf didn't seem to care, but on the other hand, Monro mentions having enlisted some Bavarians into his regiment (which worked for Gustavus Adolphus--and those guys did their jobs for ideological reasons) and as soon as everyone reached Bavaria they all deserted, so some people definitely cared. Anyway, this entire weekend I wanted to make jokes about "piquing peoples' interest" or doing things "in a fit of pique," but none of the other reenactors speak English so I couldn't. ArchangeI posted:Look, the Swedes got her a better deal. Business as usual, don't make this weird. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 19:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:This was not helped by the Thirty Years War. The impact of that can not be underestimated. Basically all of Europe trampled all over the region and settled their dynastic, religious, and political disputes in someone else's back yard for a change. Given the way that campaigning - and especially the provisioning of troops - worked during this period that was a real problem for the people who lived in the area. It was a demographic, cultural, and political disaster that probably compares better to something like the loving Black Death than just about any other pre-industrial war.
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Jun 22, 2014 19:20
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Nenonen posted:I'm sorry, did you say Bagration 70th anniversary? Heard you guys say 'The most awesome and most decisive offensive operation of all time.' e: This gets me every drat time. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 19:44
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So how does the 30YW reenactment crowd look like?
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Jun 22, 2014 19:49
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JaucheCharly posted:So how does the 30YW reenactment crowd look like? Edit: First person reenactment is much less common, which disappointed me because that's what I did when I was an ACW reenactor and it's really fun, but it's not unheard of. There's a Czech dude out there with a really bitching Wallenstein presentation, for instance. Edit 2: A wide and exciting variety of regional dialects were on display. Turns out I cannot understand Bavarians, even when they speak Standard German. (Our enemies, who would have been Bavarians in real life, were played by Bavarians this weekend.) On the other hand, listening to a Saxon dude getting mad at his kid for wandering too close to the fire was hilarious. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 20:20
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Raenir Salazar posted:Heard you guys say 'The most awesome and most decisive offensive operation of all time.' Is this a good documentary, by the way? Production values seem good at least, or is it a History Channel-level production?
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Jun 23, 2014 02:59
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HEY GAL posted:Edit 2: A wide and exciting variety of regional dialects were on display. Turns out I cannot understand Bavarians, even when they speak Standard German. (Our enemies, who would have been Bavarians in real life, were played by Bavarians this weekend.) On the other hand, listening to a Saxon dude getting mad at his kid for wandering too close to the fire was hilarious. Speaking of Saxons, how much do the Saxons that you study have in common with the Saxons that invaded sub-Roman Britain a millennium or so earlier?
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Jun 23, 2014 04:25
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Azran posted:Is this a good documentary, by the way? Production values seem good at least, or is it a History Channel-level production? It's seemed like a good documentary to me, it pairs up well with the Pobedeteli site.
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Jun 26, 2014 05:04
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Radio Talmudist posted:So I'm reading about the Spanish Civil War (primarily Orwell's memoir about it) and I've got a few questions: I can expand on this a bit, most of what I know on the subject is from Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust, so it may not be an unbiased account though. And I read the book months ago. It's very good though, so if you want to learn more about the atrocities of the SCW it's a very good source on that. Preston basically writes "Both sides were bad, but the Nationalists were worse." His book is a two-pronged approach: 1. Delineate the atrocities of both sides, to show just how brutal a war this really was (he essentially says that Franco's forces intentionally waged a systematic war of extermination against leftists, along the lines of the Nazis, in order to pave the way for a postwar dictatorship); and 2. Debunk the Francoist myths, which still persist today, of both sides being equally bad, or of the heroic Nationalist forces. Using recent research work, if I remember right he puts civilian or non-combatant casualties of the Republicans at about 50,000, and of the Nationalists at about 200,000. On a region-by-region level, the only place in all of Spain where the left wing's body count matched or exceeded the right's was in Madrid, where fear of Franco's fifth column led to a lot of atrocities and mass killings. Breaking down those numbers, on the Republican side you have to remember that the left in the civil war was nowhere near as unified a force as the right was, and a lot of the Republican killings were done by smaller groups, including anarchists, that were condemned by the central government and Republican authorities. Some of them were just based on sheer stupidity, too, like idealist anarchists releasing literally everyone from prisons because they thought that crime stemmed purely from circumstance, and that now that the former convicts lived in the wonderful anarchist utopia they would no longer commit crimes, which was not true. Importantly, the central Republican government actually endeavoured to account for killings committed by its forces and at least tried to hold to account people who killed civilians, prisoners, or non-combatants, even if they didn't do a very good job of it. Franco's forces, on the other hand, didn't give a poo poo if you murdered civilians, that was totally cool with them and there was no chance you'd get punished, and even very little chance that the murders would be recorded by any kind of authority. Incidentally, this is one reason why Franco was able to get away with claiming that the Republicans were more brutal than his own forces for so long, because deaths at the hands of his own forces were concealed while deaths at the hands of his enemies had often been recorded at the time. In terms of actual activities, my memory is a little fuzzier but certain things which are considered iconic images of Republican brutality remain in popular memory thanks to Franco's enduring narrative but without very much actual evidence of them happening, or at least of them happening in large enough numbers to be noteworthy. Rape of nuns, for example. It's an enduring image of the out-of-control anarchists that they burned down churches, killed priests, and raped nuns. And while there was a concerted assault on the church, which was seen as complicit or actively participating in the right-wing movement, actual confirmed cases of anyone raping nuns are limited to a handful of incidents. But it was an excellent propaganda opportunity that Franco didn't pass up. A lot of the Republican body count were prisoners who were executed, often in retaliation for atrocities they heard about Franco's forces committing. You hear that Franco's forces have executed some of your men who were captured, so in retaliation you execute some of your own prisoners. Another confirmed case was prisoners who were executed in retaliation for Nationalist planes conducting bombing runs on Republican cities. These cases don't account for 50,000 deaths, though, and there were certainly cases of anarchists just killing people because they thought they were on the wrong team. The moral of Preston's book, though, is that aside from Madrid, where Republican forces were just as brutal during the siege as Nationalist forces were, for the most part Republican atrocities were sporadic (accentuated by the chaotic, disorganized nature of the Republican forces) and discouraged by the leadership by means of recording the dead and attempting to punish the perpetrators, while Nationalist atrocities were systematic and encouraged by the leadership, who had seen how effective extreme brutality and mass murder could be in pacifying a population in Morocco, and actively inflicted a campaign of that nature on the Spanish left as they advanced through the country. Then, because they won, they got to hush up their own atrocities while exaggerating those of their enemies.
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Jun 26, 2014 14:26
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Speaking of Saxons, how much do the Saxons that you study have in common with the Saxons that invaded sub-Roman Britain a millennium or so earlier? Different location, different ethnic group, same name because ??? Old Saxony is different from where I live, which used to be called "the march of Meissen." (Meissen was the original seat of the Wettins, Electors of Saxony, frat-boys all.)
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Jun 26, 2014 17:29
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I just picked up Robert Kann's A History of the Habsburg Empire at a yard sale for 50 cents. Anyone read it? Should I have saved the quarters for a pinball machine?
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Jun 27, 2014 00:41
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P-Mack posted:I just picked up Robert Kann's A History of the Habsburg Empire at a yard sale for 50 cents. Anyone read it? Should I have saved the quarters for a pinball machine? Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaann! 
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Jun 27, 2014 00:46
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Looking for books about the Napoleonic era ideally something that a university library would have, if I need to make a specific subject probably the peninsular war. Also I kind of want to read a decent history book on china or failing that japan before 1900.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:20
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A thing I learned this weekend: Even a chest-deep wet moat is a loving pig of a job if you have a pike in your hands. Edit: Turns out I have a really entertaining fear of drowning that I never fully explored until a root or something grabbed my feet and I thought I was going under, with a bunch of my poo poo on me (no breastplate, thank God). Which makes me think: did anyone ever put pits in their wet moat, like twenty feet deep? You could place them to funnel people under your fire when the survivors start avoiding them, or only have one but make everyone paranoid once they see someone go under. I don't know, maybe it would be too much trouble to dredge. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 14:30
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Actually, I took a pciture for you at Stubentor, which has one of the last surviving section of Vienna's city wall. I must have deleted it from my cell though. Since it's at a subway station, right next to some stairs, you can go down the bottom, to where the base of the moat was. There's a section with glass where you can see what was down there. People used the moat to dump their poo poo and their trash down there, although it was most likely forbidden. There's clay bottles all over, all kinds of plates, etc. Everything that you can imagine. When the Turks came a 2nd time, the city's commandantur shat their pants, because the moat was all filled up. It took some weeks to fix that. The 2nd siege of Vienna is a good read. I need to spend some time on that, and also on the campaigns and tactics of Prince Eugene of Savoy against the Turks.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:30
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JaucheCharly posted:When the Turks came a 2nd time, the city's commandantur shat their pants, because the moat was all filled up. It took some weeks to fix that.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:49
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That and demolishing the suburbs. Really alot of work if you have to do that by manual labor.
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Jun 29, 2014 19:04
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JaucheCharly posted:That and demolishing the suburbs. Really alot of work if you have to do that by manual labor. You'd think that's what these fancy cannons are for 
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Jun 29, 2014 20:32
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ArchangeI posted:You'd think that's what these fancy cannons are for They'd get pissed off if you try to do that, the ingrates. I mean, who is going to all the work to clear a field of fire here? Ugh, it's enough to make you want to recalculate your interest rates.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:41
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The cannons are for removing kebap, not for shooting holes into the walls of your fellow citizen's dwellings. Although the additional holes would probably make them less smelly.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:37
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Was Robert E. Lee being sarcastic when he described McClellan as the best Union general in the civil war? I'm no historian, but from what I've read his habit of grossly overestimating Confederate numbers and general incompetence needlessly lengthened the war by a few years.
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Jun 30, 2014 01:34
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He was a good general when it came to setting things up and preparing for a campaign. Anything outside that area, well...
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Jun 30, 2014 01:43
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If there was one thing that McClellan DID do, it was to turn the Army of the Potomac into an actual fighting force. After 1st Bull Run and McDowell, the state of the Army was pretty bad and it was directly thanks to McClellan that it was possible for the Army of the Potomac to return to being a fighting force and make it even possible for the Peninsular Campaign to even happen. It is true that in the field and when actually coming into contact with the enemy, McClellan did not do well and he was very hesitant when attacking if he did not have perfect intelligence (like he did at Antietam, although he still bungled that battle), but you have to compare him to other generals that Lee faced. Pope was hated in the south for a variety of reasons, Burnside was incompetent (and partially unlucky) and made the Army of the Potomac fight in one of its worst battles of the war (Fredericksburg) and 'Fighting Joe' Hooker was also not seen in a very good light after his failure at Chancellorsville. Meade, although capable, was never really that great a general and didn't inspire the sort of devotion that McClellan inspired. Although he nominally stayed in control of the Army of the Potomac afterwards, he was pretty much a second in command once Grant entered the scene. So that leaves Grant, but Lee didn't see Grant as the dynamic fighter that he was in the Western theatre, but as a sort of 'butcher' that sent his men to die against entrenched positions at Cold Harbour. This is why his opinion of Grant was so bad and why he claimed that McClellan was the best general he met. He never met Sherman either, although I'm not sure what his opinion of him would be.
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Jun 30, 2014 01:47
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I'm working through Foote's trilogy and regarding the peninsula campaign, which is probably McClellan at his worst, it really comes as that he wants to win battles and the war through extensively planned maneuver campaigns. He just never realized that you can't fight a maneuver campaign slowly, the original plan for the Peninsula Campaign is to trap the confederate troops camping at the Manassas battlefield but he takes so long to get moving, the confederates withdraw. McClellan tries to make the best of a bad situation and land in a slightly different spot so as to cut off and force the surrender of the confederates. But once again he moves too slowly and the confederates relocate to where they can't be cut-off making the whole campaign pointless. Another problem with McClellan's style of strategy is that he was in charge of the Army of the Potomac and there are so many rivers and creeks in northern Virginia as to make flanking as hard as possible. Had he been put out west he probably would be remembered as a much better general.
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Jun 30, 2014 01:56
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It would make sense that Lee's favorite General was the one he abused the most.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:02
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I've always been politically unsure about McClennan as well. It always sounds like he never wanted to win decisively in the first place. Though of course that's my view as someone who doesn't know all that much about the ACW or mid-19th century America. If the political argument against McClellan is overblown, somebody please enlighten me.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:23
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Darth Brooks posted:It would make sense that Lee's favorite General was the one he abused the most. Except he wasn't; McClellan beat Lee in West Virginia, and very nearly caught him with his pants down in the Peninsular campaign. Lee may have won there, but took huge casualties during the seven days, and he was unable to smash the Union army like he did against Burnside and Hooker later. But yeah, that doesn't even get into the whole "building the Grand Army of the Republic" into a real army, which he did. Twice. The 1864 presidential campaign has no doubt tarnished him in the eyes of historians, but Lee wouldn't be thinking about that. Also, I guess Lee didn't know about McClellan's crippling unwillingness to risk battle or his credulity when it came to Pinkerton's intelligence reports.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:38
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PittTheElder posted:I've always been politically unsure about McClennan as well. It always sounds like he never wanted to win decisively in the first place. Though of course that's my view as someone who doesn't know all that much about the ACW or mid-19th century America. If the political argument against McClellan is overblown, somebody please enlighten me. I'm not an expert, but I recently finished reading Battle Cry of Freedom (good recommendation, guys, by the way), and it touches on this a little. It mentions that McClellan was more interested in a "limited war," where the Union would rough up the Confederacy just enough to convince them to enter into talks that would lead to the Confederacy peacefully rejoining the Union. This was in opposition to the doctrine of total war - the idea that the Confederacy needed to be attacked and destroyed on every level to bring about peace. From a certain perspective, McClellan seems reasonable and even humane - after all, the whole point of the war was that the Union considered the Confederates to be lawful Union citizens, so it would be barbaric to fight the war on the basis of killing as many of them as possible, and odious to deal with other people on the basis of forcing them into total subjugation. Better to lead them into a situation where they were dealt with fairly and peaceably after demonstrating the error of their violent ways, and then building a compromise that everyone could live with - less bloodshed during the war and less bitterness afterwards, surely, and after all even if the South didn't have a right to secede, did the North really have the right to impose its views on the South? The problem is that McClellan didn't realize how fundamentally opposed abolitionism and pro-slavery were - there wasn't really any compromise possible that wouldn't have just delayed things until the next outbreak of violence. He also underestimated the will of the Confederacy to fight on - as it was, they resisted almost to the last drop of strength. Ultimately there needed to be a total war or no war at all, which made McClellan's goal of limited war pretty much the worst of both worlds, being not one thing nor the other. Again, not an expert, this is based on a single reading on a single book, so more educated folks can probably correct me.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:43
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It's also good to note that McClellan never really lost an engagement to the same level that most of the other general of the Army of the Potomac did: even in the Peninsular Campaign he was able to withdraw without having his army get routed (which was partially due to Stonewall Jackson not attacking at a crucial time). I think McClellan was more motivated by not having 'his boys' get hurt rather than an actual, political attempt to hurt the Union War Effort, because really he saved the Union by reforming the Army of the Potomac. He was just way, way too cautious. I mean, he did side against the administration after he was dismissed, but when he was in command he wanted to win (as seen by his decisive actions when he found the orders during the famous cigar incident), but he was so fearful of screwing up that he never took the chances he needed to take in order to win. e;fb
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Jun 30, 2014 02:43
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Thanks for the replies! I've always found McClellan to be an endlessly fascinating person and his motivations always perplexed me. Anyway, I found this dope rear end quote from Sherman to a southern colleague before the war ever started: The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared. . . . At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane He said this in 1860 and it struck me what an astute observation it was.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:16
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Tekopo posted:I mean, he did side against the administration after he was dismissed, but when he was in command he wanted to win (as seen by his decisive actions when he found the orders during the famous cigar incident) I think that the cigar incident perfectly encapsulates McClellan as a general. He built a wonderful army from scratch that was capable of amazing things, but even when they hand-delivered him a perfect opportunity for an attack he sat around politicking and "preparing", when he needed to be on the move. 18 hours later, when he finally began deploying his army, it was too late and Lee had found out that his plans were discovered. The man simply didn't have the temperament for a field command. And politically he wanted to be president, and he was far too sympathetic with the cause of slavery. It's a good thing that he never reached that office, for he would have been all too happy to call for "peace in our time". Sherman never had particularly good words to say about the man, and neither do I.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:21
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Because it never happened but it's a decent question anyway, wouldn't armor so heavy as to necessitate the use of a crane to saddle up be dangerously heavy in case they were unhorsed or fell. Like, that's a lot of mass to impact the earth. loving Superman broke his neck after falling off a horse with no armor.
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Jun 30, 2014 08:50
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Frostwerks posted:Because it never happened but it's a decent question anyway, wouldn't armor so heavy as to necessitate the use of a crane to saddle up be dangerously heavy in case they were unhorsed or fell. Like, that's a lot of mass to impact the earth. loving Superman broke his neck after falling off a horse with no armor. Surely you'd be better off falling from your horse well armoured, in particular protected by a helmet designed to withstand some brutal blows, than unprotected?
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Jun 30, 2014 09:04
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Frostwerks posted:Because it never happened but it's a decent question anyway, wouldn't armor so heavy as to necessitate the use of a crane to saddle up be dangerously heavy in case they were unhorsed or fell. Like, that's a lot of mass to impact the earth. loving Superman broke his neck after falling off a horse with no armor. Also, guess what, turns out that, among other things, the captain of Blackwater tried to make his employees swear an oath to him personally. That's a great sign. It amuses me that a company that was so immoral was also run terribly and that Prince is having so much trouble now. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 09:10
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Nenonen posted:Surely you'd be better off falling from your horse well armoured, in particular protected by a helmet designed to withstand some brutal blows, than unprotected?
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Jun 30, 2014 09:56
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:A lot of falling injuries have to do with the position of your body and such and the impact, and while protection is very good and you should always have it, its not a 100% guarantee. In terms of falling from horses, people like the Superman actor are outliers. If you do fall from a horse in battle, you should assume that you will be more or less fine and try to get back up as quickly as possible (and fight or run). If you are wounded by whatever brought you down, and you are wearing armour, then you're absolutely hosed. It's hard enough to get back up with regular armour. Wearing very heavy armour (and armouring the horses) made such combatants very, very slow. Wearing so much armour that you need to be placed on your mount would exhaust the horse quickly. And whoever was wearing it, it was a bitch to move in regular armour, let alone whatever needs a crane.
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Jun 30, 2014 10:00
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