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The picture in the front of this website is of the guys involved, and we were doing something like this, but it's from a different year: http://www.cavalerie1588.nl/slag-om-noordhorn/
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Aug 31, 2015 19:52
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Jamwad Hilder posted:What? No it wouldn't. The entire French plan was to keep the tired, hungry, and outnumbered English in one spot until more reinforcements arrived and cut off their retreat. At that point the English would either surrender or be slaughtered. If the French archers out-range their English opponents, how do the English force the French to attack them without suffering losses they cannot afford to take? In the run up to the battle, Henry has his dudes pull up stakes and inch closer to the French because they're too busy loving around with the chain of command to attack. Like, it is difficult to overstate how bad the French command was at Agincourt. Even in this straight black Dauphin scenario, we've still got to account for the fact that the French aren't going to use their archers because it wouldn't be cricket or whatever.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:54
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That's definitely true, the French command was all sorts of hosed up. I still find it hard to believe that even in Gay Black Hitler territory they wouldn't agree to "maybe let's have our superior archers shoot at those guys"
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Aug 31, 2015 22:57
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HEY GAL posted:The picture in the front of this website is of the guys involved, and we were doing something like this, but it's from a different year: I've always appreciated that the Dutch (and German) word for "battle" is clearly related to the word for "slaughter".
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Sep 1, 2015 00:01
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Jamwad Hilder posted:What? No it wouldn't. The entire French plan was to keep the tired, hungry, and outnumbered English in one spot until more reinforcements arrived and cut off their retreat. At that point the English would either surrender or be slaughtered. If the French archers out-range their English opponents, how do the English force the French to attack them without suffering losses they cannot afford to take? I thought the English only had enough arrows for a couple minutes of volley fire, and the greater transgression was French pride in thinking they had an easily outmatched and outclassed opponent. Did the English really have enough arrows to force the French to close right then and there?
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Sep 1, 2015 15:02
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I've got some questions about the Genoese Crossbowmen during the early crusades era. Because it seems like everyone in the 11th/12th century is loving terrified of crossbows and they were basically the best at crossbows. How reliable/effective were they compared to other mercenaries at the time? Were they hired by the western princes, the Byzantines, or did they go on their own? I'm also a bit unsure about how they recruited. "Professional force" usually means "drawn from anyone who's good enough" to me but I have no idea if that was true back then.
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Sep 3, 2015 15:50
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How many troops tended to be in blocks/formations of pikes or bills or bows or men-at-arms or whatever? I'm sure it varies massively and a ballpark answer would be fine. If I need to narrow it down, let's say Wars of the Roses England and answer for dudes with polearms, dudes with ranged weapons, mounted knights, and dismounted knights. I'm sorry if this has come up before; I'm still working through the thread and haven't seen it yet. Sulecrist fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Sep 3, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 20:16
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DandyLion posted:I thought the English only had enough arrows for a couple minutes of volley fire, and the greater transgression was French pride in thinking they had an easily outmatched and outclassed opponent. Did the English really have enough arrows to force the French to close right then and there? Wouldn't they be more impetuous because of all of the money they could make from capturing and ransoming Henry and his close associates? Not to mention sacking the camp's baggage train.
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Sep 3, 2015 20:17
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The English didn't have to do anything to get the French to fight, they really wanted to fight. The hold up was because they realised the English were in too good a position, which is why the English had to advance and loose a few arrows to get the party started.
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Sep 3, 2015 20:51
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Sulecrist posted:How many troops tended to be in blocks/formations of pikes or bills or bows or men-at-arms or whatever? I'm sure it varies massively and a ballpark answer would be fine. If I need to narrow it down, let's say Wars of the Roses England and answer for dudes with polearms, dudes with ranged weapons, mounted knights, and dismounted knights. Armies at the time you're referring to aren't really organized and regimented in the way I think you're imagining. It's still mostly based on standing around with guys who are from the same area as you, and you're standing there because your lord is there, and he's there because that's where all of his lords retainers are standing, and his lord was told to stand in that part of the line by the king or whatever, etc. Your infantry formation is basically just going to be a big line, a few rows deep. Sometimes there are multiple lines. If you're an archer or mounted, you might be standing somewhere else by virtue of being in a more specialized (for lack of a better term) role, but even then it's not really broken into units with subordinate commanders or anything like that. Rabhadh posted:The English didn't have to do anything to get the French to fight, they really wanted to fight. The hold up was because they realised the English were in too good a position, which is why the English had to advance and loose a few arrows to get the party started. Well that and the French were waiting for more reinforcements. The French were pretty sure they were going to win, but recognized the defensive strength of the English position. They wanted to hedge their bets a bit by waiting for the rest of the French army to arrive. In hindsight it's hard to say if those extra men would have really made a difference, but Henry certainly felt he needed to goad the French into battle before their forces got any bigger.
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Sep 3, 2015 20:56
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Rabhadh posted:https://www.flickr.com/photos/98015679@N04/albums/with/72157634570914570 Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded.
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Sep 12, 2015 19:09
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. 
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Sep 12, 2015 19:17
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. Its not a tank destroyer
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Sep 12, 2015 19:20
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. I completely forgot to post it here too!
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Sep 12, 2015 19:22
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. We're still busy reading through it.
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Sep 12, 2015 19:32
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Too busy arguing about space warfare.
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Sep 13, 2015 00:59
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I saw it, but I didn't really have anything useful to say in reply. 
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Sep 13, 2015 15:49
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. This is good thanks Rabhadh
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Sep 13, 2015 16:00
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. awww man, I found out from one of the albums that the Higgins Armory museum in Worchester, MA closed. I used to love going there as a kid when we visited my grandparents. It was a really neat museum. I remember they had a section where you could wear reproductions of medieval armor as well, at least they did one time I visited. Somewhere my parents have a picture of a 7 or 8 year old me struggling to stand while wearing a barbute.
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Sep 13, 2015 16:17
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Sep 13, 2015 |
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Sep 13, 2015 19:18
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Were the people in that town in on the play, or are you a wanted person in the czech republic now?
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Sep 13, 2015 19:22
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JaucheCharly posted:Were the people in that town in on the play, or are you a wanted person in the czech republic now?
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Sep 13, 2015 19:24
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HEY GAL posted:I was busy this weekend: we came into a tiny city, threw Tilly's army out of it, brought the town council out and made them kneel to my captain, then tried to extort money from the city. When they said we didn't give them enough time and refused to give us anything we firing-squadded two guys, then we broke their priest's fingers trying to make him tell us where the church's money was. He wouldn't tell us so we threw him off the bell tower. Also I got a new breastplate and backplate, but the tassets are out for repairs. I imagine that anyone who lived through the 30 Years War would be pretty horrified that their descendants actually want to re-enact an extortion attempt - the civilians because it's horrible, and the soldiers because "Wait, you want to re-enact NOT getting loot? What the hell?"
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Sep 13, 2015 20:07
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Tomn posted:I imagine that anyone who lived through the 30 Years War would be pretty horrified that their descendants actually want to re-enact an extortion attempt - the civilians because it's horrible, and the soldiers because "Wait, you want to re-enact NOT getting loot? What the hell?"
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Sep 13, 2015 20:22
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Jamwad Hilder posted:awww man, I found out from one of the albums that the Higgins Armory museum in Worchester, MA closed. I used to love going there as a kid when we visited my grandparents. It was a really neat museum. I remember they had a section where you could wear reproductions of medieval armor as well, at least they did one time I visited. Somewhere my parents have a picture of a 7 or 8 year old me struggling to stand while wearing a barbute. The Worcester art museum apparently has a lot of the pieces from the Higgins on display these days, just so you know.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:56
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JaucheCharly posted:Dude posted this in the milhist thread, not a single soul responded. it was a cool post and i would have responded, but i was probated drat nice pics
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Sep 14, 2015 03:21
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So this isn't perhaps strictly a medieval question and most certainly isn't a combat question, but I'll ask it here anyways since the thread seems best-equipped to answer it - tell me about the way the Italian republics of the late medieval/Renaissance period were organized - Venice, Genoa, Florence, and all that stuff. In particular, I'm interested in the differences between the Italian republics and what we in the modern world would consider a "proper" republican government (i.e. not a veiled dictatorship or oligarchy). At its broadest, I'd be curious about what a time traveler would find most striking about the government if he were transported from modern America to, say, Venice in the 15th or 14th century, or vice versa. More specifically, I'm interested in the relationship between rulers and the ruled - was there any expectation that "Anybody can make it to the top, if they're successful enough"? Was there a serious expectation that those in power should care about the welfare of the poor? How exactly were the rulers of city-states nominated and elected to their position, and what sort of promises did they generally need to make in order to get elected? I'm vaguely aware that Venetian mobs in particular would sometimes riot and cause power shifts in defense of their "freedoms," but what exactly did they mean by that freedom? Anything at all on the subject would be helpful!
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Sep 15, 2015 08:06
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Tomn posted:So this isn't perhaps strictly a medieval question and most certainly isn't a combat question, but I'll ask it here anyways since the thread seems best-equipped to answer it - tell me about the way the Italian republics of the late medieval/Renaissance period were organized - Venice, Genoa, Florence, and all that stuff. In particular, I'm interested in the differences between the Italian republics and what we in the modern world would consider a "proper" republican government (i.e. not a veiled dictatorship or oligarchy). At its broadest, I'd be curious about what a time traveler would find most striking about the government if he were transported from modern America to, say, Venice in the 15th or 14th century, or vice versa. More specifically, I'm interested in the relationship between rulers and the ruled - was there any expectation that "Anybody can make it to the top, if they're successful enough"? Was there a serious expectation that those in power should care about the welfare of the poor? How exactly were the rulers of city-states nominated and elected to their position, and what sort of promises did they generally need to make in order to get elected? I'm vaguely aware that Venetian mobs in particular would sometimes riot and cause power shifts in defense of their "freedoms," but what exactly did they mean by that freedom? Italian republics were mostly oligarchic. Even at their democratic, the people involved in the process would probably amount to a few thousand men (and only men). And that's for the people in the city, which would act as a feudal overlord over the surrounding coutnryside. The masses would get involved through violence, such as in factional conflicts. The structures of the states can be described charitably as rudimentary. The bureaucracy was weak, and at least in Siena state offices were openly on sale. And government would be by the rich, for the rich. There were recurring conflicts between the people and the nobles, but "people" here generally translates to "burgher". And because civic culture was weak, these burghers sought to become aristocratic. So government was dominated either by nobility, or people trying to become nobility. Not anybody could make it up to the top. The common people would choose outsiders to offices to counteract the native oligarchies, and this often meant a feudal aristocrat. The process is a bit vague, but I presume it was voted on in assemblies or by popular acclamation. Initially these were Podestas (originally imperial governors), and then captains of the people. Genoa and Venice were exceptional, as they elected a Doge. e: As for what "freedom" meant, that's pretty simple according to one contemporary: the nobles wanted freedom to rule, while the people wanted the freedom to live. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 09:20
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Not anybody could make it up to the top. The common people would choose outsiders to offices to counteract the native oligarchies, and this often meant a feudal aristocrat. The process is a bit vague, but I presume it was voted on in assemblies or by popular acclamation. Initially these were Podestas (originally imperial governors), and then captains of the people. Genoa and Venice were exceptional, as they elected a Doge. I don't know much about them, but the Podesta are fascinating. I think for a while the use of foreigners as impartial governors created a class of professionals who would go from city to city in Italy. Also, for more radical but far shorter-lived late medieval Italian civic government, there's always the ciompi in Florence.
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Sep 15, 2015 12:29
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Tomn posted:So this isn't perhaps strictly a medieval question and most certainly isn't a combat question, but I'll ask it here anyways since the thread seems best-equipped to answer it - tell me about the way the Italian republics of the late medieval/Renaissance period were organized - Venice, Genoa, Florence, and all that stuff. In particular, I'm interested in the differences between the Italian republics and what we in the modern world would consider a "proper" republican government (i.e. not a veiled dictatorship or oligarchy). At its broadest, I'd be curious about what a time traveler would find most striking about the government if he were transported from modern America to, say, Venice in the 15th or 14th century, or vice versa. More specifically, I'm interested in the relationship between rulers and the ruled - was there any expectation that "Anybody can make it to the top, if they're successful enough"? Was there a serious expectation that those in power should care about the welfare of the poor? How exactly were the rulers of city-states nominated and elected to their position, and what sort of promises did they generally need to make in order to get elected? I'm vaguely aware that Venetian mobs in particular would sometimes riot and cause power shifts in defense of their "freedoms," but what exactly did they mean by that freedom? I know more about the period slightly before this, but: Honestly the biggest problem here is the fact that all of the republics (and by the time you're talking about, a lot of monarchies again) are all very different. By the time you're talking about you've already got a lot of monarchies back - a lot of the republics were so unsuccessful as republics that they turn to podestariates - in Italy in this time 'podesta' doesn't mean what it used to mean, it now means a magistrate capable of being hired from outside of the city who will come in and act as chief magistrate, often bringing his own staff and military forces with him, and then monarchies, or they're communes of various and bizarre types. But, in general, the following holds true: 1) Republican liberty is usually aristocratic liberty. A lot of these city states are following a classical example of republicanism which holds that freedom and human fulfullment come from involvement of the citizen in government, but where a condition of citizenship is being a property-owning male with sufficient free time, education etc. to participate in government. Likewise, republican liberty is also generally merely the liberty of the principle commune - if the city has an empire, like Venice or Florence or Genoa, it does not mean that the possessions are entitled to the liberty of the republics. 2) There are multiple factional lines involved, not merely class ones. For example, cities had popoli, organisations of the 'people' of the city, which tended to notionally claim to represent the people. The popoli, were, however, patronised by the aristocracy, who also supplied the popoli with the means to undertake military action (not uncommon in the cities - a lot of Italian cities had private fortifications within them owned by different groups and families. Most of these have been destroyed as relics of factionalism, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna  There is also the Guelf-Ghibbeline divide, between those who favour or disfavour imperial rule or papal influence, and also internal factions within these (for example, Dante was a Florentine white Guelf (an anti-imperial but not pro-papal)). It's misleading, though, to think what they say they're arguing about is what they're actually arguing about the later it gets. There's a lot more to say. But by the period you've asked about, republicanism in Italy is a largely failed experiment. You see with Machiavelli writing in your period the end to Florentine republicanism. It is widely supposed that republicanism fails for one main reason: it's consistently unable to provide justice impartially to political agitation. Typically the story in most republics like Florentine Italy is one whereby political losers in (sometimes violent) agitation not only lose political office but are also subjected to exile and total expropriation, which is a problem you can see the Italian lawyers (who have hugely revolutionised politics and law through the rediscovery of the corpus juris and the creation of schools of law at which glossators prepare commentaries on the law) wrestling with in this period with concepts like civtias sibi princeps - the city as prince unto itself. Where this is not so, like Venice, it largely seems to be because the constitution is designed to provide patronage to every group in the city, so that no faction is totally left out in the cold without a slice of government or sinecure, and thus there is no incentive to topple the ship - this impulse is more firmly hammered home by the fact that Venice is a big city on effectively an island, where civic strife has the potential to be much more harmful (e.g. if ships can't enter there is almost immediate famine) and its empire becomes impossible to administer. The perceived advantage of monarchy is that it's seen as less precarious and factional. As for what a modern observer would find surprising, probably they would find surprising how clearly personal lots of state authority is (it's not really an office that's seen to be really wielding power a lot of the time, and how that person might be employing private soldiers out of a private fortress in the city), and bizarre things like magistracies that are appointed out of a list of aristocratic families by the drawing of lots (e.g. Machiavelli's family, who were Gonfalonieres of Justice in Florence). But I'd also think they'd be surprised with the sophistication of the learned commentaries on liberty in this period and how seriously people take questions of political theory. Lastly, the immediacy between theory and practice - new ideas and concepts for how to govern and legitimacy are just constantly being worked on and tried out. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 12:53
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Phoneposting, but if I remember correctly, someone posted about the Venetian Doge elections sometime ago and the system was ridiculously convoluted to ensure an impartial result. Modern elections have an element of choosing the nominally best candidate, but Venice was more about ensuring that the result is as neutral as possible.
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Sep 15, 2015 13:20
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Thanks to everyone who responded, this is exactly what I'm interested in! Two follow-up questions: From the descriptions given, it seems like the main involvement that the average person living in a republican city-state would have with the governance of the city is by being part of some organization or other that is patronized by the aristocracy/elite of the city, correct? It seems like it's not really all that different from a feudal contract, exactly, except that the contract is bound by money rather than land. Would that be about correct? Secondly, if republican liberty was largely a matter of aristocratic liberty, and republicanism in general was regarded as a failed experiment, then how did such views apply to the Holy Roman Empire? It seems like the Empire was, in a sense, the ultimate expression of aristocratic liberty. Were there active parallels being drawn between the Empire and the failed republics? Lessons learned to try and strengthen the Empire against the problems that bought down the city-states? For that matter, from a non-contemporary perspective were there actually much in the way of similarities between the organization of the Empire and of any of the republican city-states?
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Sep 16, 2015 06:01
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Kemper Boyd posted:Phoneposting, but if I remember correctly, someone posted about the Venetian Doge elections sometime ago and the system was ridiculously convoluted to ensure an impartial result. Modern elections have an element of choosing the nominally best candidate, but Venice was more about ensuring that the result is as neutral as possible. The Venetian aristocracy were obsessed with preventing dynasties that would threaten their liberty. No member of the Doge's family could sit on any of the power-wielding sub-councils and committees of the legislature. And immediately after the Doge's death an inquiry was held into his conduct and finances. This, plus the complex election, meant there was pretty much no way that a relative or client of the Doge could seize power after the death. Also, Doges were kept under constant surveillance, had their correspondence censored, couldn't own property outside Venice, and could't leave Venice without the permission of the Great Council.
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Sep 16, 2015 10:01
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Tomn posted:
Venice certainly had a "house of commons" equivalent, and they're pretty common across Europe (Spain, France, and England all had non-aristocratic representation), so I wouldn't be surprised to see that they existed in other republics at other times. These bodies are either functionally powerless, or at least less powerful than the aristocratic part of the government. Bear in mind that the proportion of aristocrats to commoners is very high compared to modern Europe (England has a much smaller aristocracy but a much larger landed gentry, accounting for the growing political power of the lower house). Google is telling me that the mid 15th c population of Venice was around 170,000, and the grand council had over 2000 members, and peaked at 2700. So if you factor in blood relatives, servants, and employees, a large swathe of the city would have been quite closely connected to a council member. A lot closer than you are to your elected representative, I would wager. Obviously subjects of the Vento and the maritime empire wouldn't have felt that connection, and were much more like ruled subjects than participants in democracy. By the way, just to pick up on something from your initial question, it's worth stressing that the golden age of republican government was actually the high middle ages. Venice, Florence and Genoa were late survivals of the form, by which time most states had either developed stable ducal dynasties or fallen under the control of a state which did.
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Sep 16, 2015 10:36
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Tomn posted:From the descriptions given, it seems like the main involvement that the average person living in a republican city-state would have with the governance of the city is by being part of some organization or other that is patronized by the aristocracy/elite of the city, correct? It seems like it's not really all that different from a feudal contract, exactly, except that the contract is bound by money rather than land. Would that be about correct? Feudality is a messy concept and it probably does you no favours to try to use it here. To some extent ordinary people could participate in the government of cities. The entire concept of a fiat, for example, is a vote by yelled acclamation by the people of the city in the church square, which has now come to mean 'a decree', quite a commonplace occurance in a commune. But yes. If you're [relatively] poor and in a city it's likely your only shot at influencing politics is through the popoli and armed struggle in factionalism. This in any event obviously would not apply to the totally decrepit, or indeed to peasants outside of the city, etc. or people living in other cities governed imperially: part of the reason communes decline is just that small ones get swallowed by one of Milan, Florence, Venice, Mantua and Ferrara. Tomn posted:Secondly, if republican liberty was largely a matter of aristocratic liberty, and republicanism in general was regarded as a failed experiment, then how did such views apply to the Holy Roman Empire? It seems like the Empire was, in a sense, the ultimate expression of aristocratic liberty. Were there active parallels being drawn between the Empire and the failed republics? Lessons learned to try and strengthen the Empire against the problems that bought down the city-states? For that matter, from a non-contemporary perspective were there actually much in the way of similarities between the organization of the Empire and of any of the republican city-states? The two aren't really alike. Italy was very uniquely pre-occupied with republicanism in this period, and although there are burgher traditions in the rhineland and in free cities, elections and concepts of popular sovereignty are still largely part of the proto-concilliar theory to do with the government of the church. It's very noticeable that the Golden Bull of 1356 is explicitly a document designed to support the great magnates of the Empire in destroying civic governments, city-leagues, and uppity petty aristocrats. It's also worthwhile noting that a lot of the republicanism of the Italian cities comes explicitly from a desire to theorise a form of government that gets the empire the gently caress out of Italy. All in all, I think here you have a mistaken idea here. The aristocratic 'liberty' of the electors of the HRE is a largely practical thing - a lot of the emperors are simply too poor or too weak, like Louis the Bavarian, to attempt to govern such a large kingdom intensively. They're totally reliant upon coalition building, abusing their judicial offices to acquire more land during their period as emperor, and itineracy to communicate their power and build their position - but the Emperors are also expending their efforts on fighting the papacy for the right to govern as they please and the Italian cities for a return of northern Italy to the Empire. It's not based on theory, let alone republican theory, even though it does draw on classical examples e.g. acclamation of the emperor. Liberta of the Italian cities is as contrasted with tyranny, and it involves not being the subject of arbitrary power, guaranteed by your own right to participate in the ongoing administration of and works of government through office holding, and liberty from foreign domination. Mr Enderby posted:Google is telling me that the mid 15th c population of Venice was around 170,000, and the grand council had over 2000 members, and peaked at 2700. So if you factor in blood relatives, servants, and employees, a large swathe of the city would have been quite closely connected to a council member. A lot closer than you are to your elected representative, I would wager. This is a pretty big tribute to the perceived need to have a large bureaucracy so you could patronise anyone in all competing factions. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 12:17
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Communes and Despots: The City-State in Late-Medieval Italy[/quote posted:
An old paper but you get the idea. On the popoli, a rather confusing concept: quote:.But at no time did the popoloi include the whole people, or even the whole commune. Rather was it a 'party', the pars populi, for which the property qualification might be higher than that for the commune. The groups most powerfully represented were the richer trade guilds, especially the guilds of bankers, businessmen and industrialists - the popolani grassi. The point being made here is that communes, almost regardless of how they're structured, always wound up being oligarchies where political power followed money, and where the conflict was always more likely to be 'new money vs old money' or 'a large group of uppity aristocrats vs. the great magnates'. quote:At Florence in the 1330's over 70 per cent of all major offices were held by members of the three wealthiest guilds: Lana, Cambio, and Calimala. Then, in 1343, by a popular revolution, the full corporation of 21 guilds gained access to governing power. This still only made 3500 out of 80,000 people eligible for office-holding, and of these no more than 750 would be regarded as qualified (usually from the large guilds, often put up through client relationships with smaller ones). This was described by contemporaries as broad-based and democratic. Power always tended to concentrate in to the hands of a few hundred people deemed actually capable of wielding it. This oligarchy was what built the principalities of late medieval Italy, in the end - sometimes, even, by playing popular politics and being acclaimed signorie at the expense of the other oligarchs, but pretty much always and everywhere the people who really ran these cities saw themselves as natural rulers overseeing an inferior class of peasant morons. The humanist republican tradition is really what's happening on paper in this period. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 12:40
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Ok so i had a chat with some historian dude about the crusader era mamelukes, allow me to elaborate on these dudes in my amateurish style. Mamelukes: Emancipated Ghilman (singular Ghulam), the Ghulam formed the palace guard of the Fatimid Sultan, and they were literal slave soldiers brought up to fight and be loyal to the only "father" they know, the Sultan. After the Fatimids were dissolved by Saladin, he had them all emancipated, the term "Mameluke" became more popular to refer to these soldiers from there on because of that, the word literally means "formerly owned" or more accurately former slaves it was by no means the first time the term was used though. The catch to this is they had to still serve in a military capacity after the fact, so its still kind of slavery  but they were given the same rights as any other free person.Mamelukes formed a caste of their own, and were directly armed and armored by the Sultan, up until their take over of Egypt. During the Fatimid and then Ayyubid era the palace guard were called "Khassaki" they were the only individuals allowed to carry arms at all times within the palace, below them are Al-Halqa, which from my understanding were some sort directly paid troop or unit, a cut above other military personnel, so they were considered some sort of elite i say sort of because its never clear what sort of equipment they had, only fact is they imitated the mongols after Ayn Jalut and started going for a more spartan route (training mostly, neglecting armor). All Mamelukes were able to afford the best bits though, going all the way as to import their equipment from places as far away as China. During the butt end of the 14th century the term Mameluke become synonymous to an "Amir" in how wealthy they were, joining them also became voluntary by then.
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Sep 16, 2015 15:41
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Fizzil posted:Ok so i had a chat with some historian dude about the crusader era mamelukes, allow me to elaborate on these dudes in my amateurish style. Interesting. Do you know how the Mameluke caste sustained itself over the period? As in, were they recruiting from slaves, or did Mamelukes marry non-Mameluke women, and have Mameluke sons, or were there Mameluke women as well? Mr Enderby fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 00:46
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Mr Enderby posted:Interesting. The Mamelukes weren't meant to be celibate, but Mameluke status wasn't hereditary - since the whole point was their only loyalty was supposed to be to the Sultan, initially the sons of Mamelukes were prohibited from becoming Mamelukes themselves. This, obviously, broke down a bit once the Mamelukes gained power themselves and became effectively their own aristocracy, but still, the majority of Mamelukes were always first-generation slaves from overseas - mostly from Georgia and the Caucasus.
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Sep 18, 2015 07:50
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Sounds like the Mamelukes were somewhat analogous to the Ottoman Janissaries? Elite slave soldiers intended to be loyal only to the Sultan, but eventually accumulated a great deal of power themselves. Was bringing in foreign slave soldiers to serve as your elite personal troops a common thing in the Muslim world?
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Sep 18, 2015 16:22
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