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Trin Tragula posted:
Owch, consider me loving owned.
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Jan 14, 2016 04:42
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xthetenth posted:Don't worry technical English is barely English. It's a real nice superset of most linguistic stuff you might want to convey meaning with though and there's a whole lot of needless stuff gone. Every so often a word makes its way from technical English to regular English, and has to be jettisoned from technical English to avoid ambiguities.
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Jan 14, 2016 05:09
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HEY GAL posted:everyone thought something really similar in the 17th century except for the part where they hated all of it and were terrified We live in a cyberpunk dystopia where hackers can steal Google credentials from your fridge and hack your car through wifi, the scifi horror future is finally here.
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Jan 14, 2016 05:27
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Ensign Expendable posted:We live in a cyberpunk dystopia where hackers can steal Google credentials from your fridge and hack your car through wifi, the scifi horror future is finally here. Yeah, basically cyberpunk dystopia 
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Jan 14, 2016 05:49
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Arquinsiel posted:Ubiquitous surveillance to the point that being off the grid is itself an identifying characteristic that allows tracking for the nefarious purposes of... selling us poo poo. Each of us assigned a number at birth. We participate gladly, and shame those who don't. We didn't stop making '80s cyberpunk because it wasn't realistic, we stopped because it became pedestrian.
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Jan 14, 2016 05:53
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Nobody cared about body odor until there was a product they could sell to you to prevent it. It's a conspiracy I tell you.  chitoryu12 posted:It's always nice to contemplate the era of history we live in now. Imagine being someone back in 1214 or something, living in the exact same world from the cradle to the grave. In the relatively short time I've been alive, I've seen the mass market transition from VHS to discs to totally digital media and seen the expansion of the Internet until it's so pervasive as to be practically invisible to us. At our current rate, the world when I die will have evolved in ways that I literally can't imagine. It's almost like God flipped a switch in 1900 that he just forgot to turn on before. I feel that there's lots of change that happens in people's lifetimes for every era of history, just we have very little perspective on what would've seemed like change to the people then. It's not like in the present day we have much of a perspective on adoption of better plows or improvements in milling technology. And of course, politics are always fluid. I can't think of much that would've happened in western Europe around that time, but in the east, it's the tail end of the crusades, Constantinople finally falls to invaders (sure the Byzantines reconquer it, but still) and the Mongols show up to wreck everyone's poo poo.
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Jan 14, 2016 06:23
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Re-read the Franco-Prussian post. I'm interested in stuff on tactical level, I guess, how the dudes were organized into units and how they fought. Talking about armies and collumns just makes me imagine colored blocks sliding on a map. Shako, if you want, you can go ahead and post about the excitement in Napoleonic warfare, I won't mind.
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Jan 14, 2016 06:49
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Random WWI question: before America actually entered the war, would an American have been able to travel to Germany, or would the blockade have made it impossible?
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Jan 14, 2016 07:06
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Jamwad Hilder posted:will you settle for Romans writing their insults on sling bullets? Ask Us About Military History - Hi Octavius, You Suck Dick.
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Jan 14, 2016 07:16
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HEY GAL posted:everyone thought something really similar in the 17th century except for the part where they hated all of it and were terrified That part about hating progress is still around if u consider republicans
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Jan 14, 2016 07:28
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Kanine posted:That part about hating progress is still around if u consider republicans
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Jan 14, 2016 07:39
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In terms of technology, the rate of change over the last two hundred years or so is unprecedented. But that's hardly all there is to life. Take the Roman Empire in 100 BC(E) and 100 AD. Tech is pretty much the same. But there are huge changes in politics, religion, economics, and society.
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Jan 14, 2016 07:40
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JcDent posted:Shako, if you want, you can go ahead and post about the excitement in Napoleonic warfare, I won't mind. Oh god you got me started. Heads up, words ahead! General pop culture seems to always confuse the constantly evolving nature of 18th century tactics and simplied it simply lines of clean looking well dressed dudes led by souless upperclass robots shooting at each other at point blank until one side gives up and marches off. Napoleonic battles were titantic affairs that I can only describe really as a rolling death parade of noise, armies were full of thousands of dudes most of which are either conscripted or volunteers and generals of the era were playing a game of cat and mouse seeking to cut the enemy off from retreat or their supply line and then force them into one big bloody decisive battle with marching and counter marching. Communcation between generals and regimental officers on the march was between couriers on horseback and basic esponiage or partisans could really gently caress up even the most basic of orders. Pop culture annoyingly misses out on the bad rear end nature of light infantry tactics, or the massed batteries of heavy guns that require crews of around ten men each to operate or the gutsy nature of cavalry trying to catch a column in the act of becoming a line and slaughtering them to the last man. Being bombarded by artillery was a terrifying affair, crude exploding shells, solid roundshot and canister which turns the artillery piece into a gently caress off shotgun that sprayed a cone of musket balls that was simply deadly up close. Being Artillery was just as risky, counter battery fire could easily cripple you as well as break your cannon. If you got caught by enemy cavalry and didn't spike your guns touch hole chances are your own soldiers will be bombarded with the same piece soon. Skirmishers usually probed ahead of the line seeking out, teasing and slowly bleeding an exposed enemy and harassing them with light musket fire to either distract or lure them closer towards friendly forces. Depending on their type, they were also trained to operate and fight also as line infantry. Some nations had specialists armed with flintlock rifles which were slower to load due to a leather coated musket ball but were viciously deadly outranging the smoothbore muskets easily making it a nightmare for some officer or nco trying to order his men on the field. Cavalry came in both light and heavy flavours, some still wearing light front and back armour as well as helmets. They scouted, raided supply lines, screened the movement of the line infantry, skirmished on horseback and in the case for dragoons acted as on the spot reinforcements. In this era as well, the Lance also regained popularity once more. Massed charges are a thing of the moment and are usually reigned in, but it was still an easy way to lose men and horses as both sides found out in Waterloo. When used right like always, the cavalry in this era was simply lethal. But when used or abused they and their trained bred horses would go to waste. Line infantry usually marched on the move in a column but was trained to disperse into lines when close enough to engage with musket volleys, the tightly packed formations of columns were great for keeping men together when marching in slow steady movement but only the men on the front rank could fire. Line Infantry were also drilled into forming a square (more of an oblong shape but eh that'd sound just silly) which was usually four outwards facing line of four ranks of men the 1st rank kneeling with muskets braced into the grount bayonets upwards, the 2nd line crouched and aiming their musket and the 3nd line presenting and ready to fire while the rest firmly stood shoulder to shoulder. Square like column could get mauled by artillery. Napoleon pretty much broke the Mamelukes early in his career in the Egyptian campaign by forming his forces into several massaive squares. A square isn't invicinble though. Eventually it could collapse if enough casulties are inflicted or somehow a side is brutally broken into but that was quite hard to time and very rare. Line infantry were armed with the smoothbore musket with the bayonet always mounted on it and all smoothbore muskets could fire in theory two or three rounds a minute thanks to their drill and training loading the things. Depending on experience and the nature of how the fight was going this could be a lot harder to do. Sometimes the flint could break or the barrel fowl up with black powder making the process much harder. Every tried pissing down a barrel of a firelock or changing a fiddly piece of rock in a tiny clamp when shoulder to shoulder under musket volley fire? Communication between line infantry and their officers was either in shouting distance, by courier or the most basic drill commands by drum, fife and bugle signals. Lower ranking officers marched with their men or near them usually mounted. Smoke for gun powder in this era got thick, and sometimes the bright uniforms and music might not be enough. Regimental and national standards made it easy for an officer or general to find a certain unit or for a simple soldier to quickly rally and around during the thick of the combat. These flags had an almost mystical air to some soldiers and were steeped in regimental history. Losing one was a disgrace, capturing one could give a man instant fame, fortune and promotion. Napoleon's infamous brass plated eagles in this era were the most valued of these. Standards were useful as hell, as it is hard to keep your uniform in order on campaign and the average soldier might be lucky to be still wearing his standard jacket and head gear. Some foreign regiments in service could also be wearing a uniform the same look or vague appearince as the enemy (Swiss soldiers serving for Napoleon wore read, the Dutch Grenadiers in service wore white) and you didn't want to get confused and fire on them now. Which happened. Quite a lot. And due to the nature of the politics of the time it could even be on purpose. During the muddle of the Battle of Nations the Saxon army broke away from the Confederation of the Rhine and joined the Coalition shooting their French and Bavarian allies in the back on the battlefield. Also, when you fight a war over two decades long military fashion and utility changes over time. At the start of Napoleonic wars soldiers were still wearing cocked bicorns, breeches and long tailed double breasted coats. At the end they wore shakos, trousers and either single or double breasted short tailed coatees. When lines engaged, it was a vicious slogging match and being shot by a musket ball was hardly pleasant as it usually took in some of your dirty barely clean uniform linen into the wound increasng the chances of infection. If you were hit in a vital place, you were pretty much dead even if you got to the surgeon now because of the medicine of the time. Sometimes to decide things during a brutal slogging match of gunfire between lines a bayonet charge is urged on and depending on numbers, morale the terrain it becomes a quick decider or a messy brutal melee where you can die just as horribly with a seven inch bayonet in your gut. If some men in the ranks are gunned down when the column is still moving, a NCO or officer calls for closing of the lines and the gap is quickly filled by the men to continue cohesion. The wounded are collected later by comrades or the bandsmen if they hadn't died and carried in makeshift stretchers that were usually just two muskets through the sleeves of a coat. The French actually had the best battlefield medicine and treatment of this era, even creating specialised mini carts that acted as ambulances and proper military hospital back home in France. Eventually one side would win as morale would collapse and the enemy would break and retreat, either to be coaxed back into line by the flat of NCO or officers swords and persuaded to have another go if they weren't too badly mauled or reformed to retreat if your side lost. The survivors would of course be dirty from the blood and other bodily fluids from their comrades skin stained by musket smoke and half deaf but petty much happy they weren't shot or bayonetted to death. Of course, many of them would be allowed to loot from the bodies and packs of their fallen enemies and capture what supplies they abandoned. I strongly suggest looking up some of the massive panoramic portraits of some of the bigger battles, as the scale of these clashes were huge and they would paint a picture (heh) of what I am trying to describe really much better. During the Battle of Nations AKA The Battle of Leipzig all the armies of central europe joined the fight either with or against France and Russia with almost 600,0000 men. Waterloo was much smaller but the casulties on both sides amounted to around 60,000 men. I wish somebody better than me can cover the Napoleonic Wars in this thread now properly, it is an exhaustive thing to try and cover. It was a brutal busy loud kind of warfare and I love it. SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 14, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2016 07:49
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Seems like the right place to ask. I'm thinking of picking up The War of Wars by Robert Harvey to get a better idea of Napoleonic warfare. How is it?
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Jan 14, 2016 10:29
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xthetenth posted:We didn't stop making '80s cyberpunk because it wasn't realistic, we stopped because it became pedestrian. It's interesting seeing what did and didn't happen. I mean, you see stuff like drones and so on written about in books from the 80s, and that pretty much straight up happened. Corporations didn't take over from states, though, they co-opted them instead. And apparently it's China that becomes the big new economic power not Japan. Also we still don't have arcologies or more than one space station 
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Jan 14, 2016 11:02
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HEY GAL posted:lines are lame, squares are cool. enjoy being flanked, dipstick Frederick the Great "solved" this problem by deploying his lines into being diagonal to his enemies' lines, so he could (theoretically) easily roll them up from the side. (In at least one battle this actually saved his rear end, because the Russian army he faced crashed into his lines in a frontal assault, which means without his lines being all wrong, they would have probably flanked him. Instead of an awful defeat, the battle ended in a bloody draw.) Of course this was never done again as far as I know, since drilling an army into a force able to do all this weird diagonal line poo poo without falling into total confusion is a lot of effort.
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Jan 14, 2016 11:14
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chitoryu12 posted:It's always nice to contemplate the era of history we live in now. Imagine being someone back in 1214 or something, living in the exact same world from the cradle to the grave. In the relatively short time I've been alive, I've seen the mass market transition from VHS to discs to totally digital media and seen the expansion of the Internet until it's so pervasive as to be practically invisible to us. At our current rate, the world when I die will have evolved in ways that I literally can't imagine. It's almost like God flipped a switch in 1900 that he just forgot to turn on before. 1900? You've, err, heard of the Industrial Revolution, right?
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Jan 14, 2016 11:15
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feedmegin posted:Europeans usually still learn British English, as I understand it, cos we're classier. For a long time I wondered why I was the only person on the internet who spelt it armour 
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Jan 14, 2016 11:38
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Arquinsiel posted:Apparently we get a lot of Germans coming here to improve their English because "Ireland is basically the same, right?" Only to discover that no, tisn't really 'tall 'tall ye gobshite. I have a Slovenian mate who moved to Scotland to learn English and now she has the biggest Scots accent ever it's the best thing
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Jan 14, 2016 12:04
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Rabhadh posted:I have a Slovenian mate who moved to Scotland to learn English and now she has the biggest Scots accent ever it's the best thing I'm sort of envisioning people moving to Glasgow to learn English and sounding like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yitrky1ZEMM
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Jan 14, 2016 12:15
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Empress Theonora posted:Random WWI question: before America actually entered the war, would an American have been able to travel to Germany, or would the blockade have made it impossible? Yes, it would have been possible before the US actually declared war on the US, though it probably would have been harder by the time tensions were ratcheting up. As has been stated earlier the blockade was a 'distant blockade', based around the mouth of the English Channel and the gap between the Orkneys and Scandinavia. If you were coming from the US the usual thing was to dock on a Southern coast port, have your cargo checked for contraband (a list that was gradually expanding from the start of the war) and be sent on your way once any offending items had been removed. Having said that, I don't know this but I would not be surprised if an American going from the US to Germany via the UK would be looked on pretty poorly from a potential espionage standpoint, and I would guess that might stand a chance of getting sent back to the US if the authorities thought you were up to no good.
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Jan 14, 2016 12:37
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feedmegin posted:And apparently it's China that becomes the big new economic power not Japan. that ain't looking so certain lately.
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Jan 14, 2016 12:38
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Man Whore posted:that ain't looking so certain lately. Oh definitely, they're not going to take over the world cyberpunk-style, but they still build a huge proportion of the world's stuff. Edit: quote:before the US actually declared war on the US  that one was about 50 years previously I think
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Jan 14, 2016 12:44
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Bij bolszewika! Episode 3: Rules of Acquisition Episode 0 Episode 1 Episode 2 Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, I've had a lot on my plate these past few months, and furthermore, I only have one book that describes this stage of the war in any detail, and it is written in a horribly confusing way that is next to impossible to follow. So, last time we talked about the Vilnius operation, which took the Soviets in Lithuania by surprise, allowing a rapid cavalry manoeuvre to penetrate their lines unnoticed, capture the city and hold it long enough for the infantry to arrive in a stolen train. Today we're going to talk about the consequences - political and military - of these events, as well as what came next. On April 21, Pilsudski entered Vilnius. For a man who considered himself the native of the land, this was a hugely important moment. He was greeted with jubilation on the part of the local Polish majority, a military parade, a celebratory High Mass and so forth. The news of the victory were received well by the politicians in Warsaw (notably less so by Dmowski's followers). All this in spite of the fact that the fighting for Vilnius was not actually over. The battle came as a shock to the Soviet command. The poltical consequences of the loss for the nascent Lithuanian-Belarussian Soviet Republic (abbreviated Lit-Bel, see below) would be dire, while the salient formed by Polish actions threatened to cut off the westmost Lithuanian Division of the Red Army and sever the direct connection to German troops holding what was still left of Ober-Ost. However, the Soviets were quick to respond. Jukums Vacietis, the RKKA commander-in-chief, made a special report to Lenin himself, promising to immediately dispatch five rifle regiments and artillery to retake Vilnius. He also petitioned for severe consequences for those responsible for losing it in the first place. The force totalled 5 000 people, 11 guns and one armoured car, joining with the 17th Rifle Division already operating east of the city and the Lithuanian Division forces recovering from the drumming they had received. Their orders, compiled in Directive no. 1893/op. on recreating the situation at Vilnius, were to retake the city at all costs and as soon as possible, executing a flanking manoeuvre from the northwest and north. The Polish estimates put the enemy force in play at 11 500 infantrymen, 3 000 cavalry, 45 cannons and 210 MGs, most coming from the east. The Polish main force at that point was about 6 000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, with 18 guns, but it also had some support from neighbouring formations. The Soviets did enjoy numerical superiority either way. But they were spread out on quite a large area. The forces that had retreated out of Vilnius were scattered, while the reinforcements were still en route. When they started to move, they did so - as per the plan - in three columns, hoping to envelop the enemy. But their communications were pretty much non-existent, and each group had a separate command structure. Rydz-Smigly quickly realised that he can beat the enemy with a decisive offensive action that would destroy the three groups in detail. Between the 23rd and 25th of April, the vanguards of the columns were defeated, but the Soviets continued to march on. The northern group encountered a Polish counter-attack and quickly started to cede ground, and by the 29th was no longer a threat to Vilnius. Another group came from the southeast, moving onto the route taken by Belina's men in their original advance to the city. This caused a scare in the city itself, with much of the Polish forces there moving to counter this development. The two sides fought a pitched encounter battle in the early morning of April 29. At first, the Soviets succeeded in flanking the Polish force, but were eventually thrown back, then pursued, although at a noticeable cost. Later that same day, the third Soviet force (or, rather, elements of it of unspecified size) entered Vilnius suburbs. The only troops the Poles could put in their way were about 200 men with two machine guns. The reinforcements were coming, but the Red Army had easily enough troops to overwhelm the defenders. The fighting started on April 30, with the Soviets managing to surprise the enemy with a night attack (starting about 2.30 AM) - something they never did before. They smashed the defenders' line, surrounding the force commander with a handful of men, who managed to break out of the encirclement at a huge cost. The road to Vilnius was pretty much open, now guarded only by 55 soldiers led by a Junior Lieutenant, while fresh volunteers from within the city were formed into a battalion-sized formation and told to stop the enemy from crossing the river Neris. Yet the attack did not come that night, and we do not know why. By dawn, a reinforcement battalion had already moved into the city, and the restarted Soviet counterattack failed to make any more headway (although it caused quite a lot of casualties). By 9.30 AM, the Polish forces in the city were numerous enough that the defence commander decided to form an ad hoc attack troup and strike at the Soviets. The fighting continued until midday, when the main body of the reinforcement force performed a surprise attack against the Soviet flank and threw the last enemy column away. Over the course of the following days, the Soviets retired, pressured by the Poles, until the front line had stabilised some 60 to 90 kilometres from Vilnius. The political aftermath on the Soviet side was a festival of shifting the blame. Alexander Miasnikian, one of the prominent local communist revolutionaries and member of the Lit-Bel Central Committee responsible for the military affairs, claimed that this was all a failure of the administration, which, with the absence of the CheKa, failed to prevent "a White Guard uprising" and a betrayal of the rail workers. The Lit-Bel prime minister, Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas, was more elaborate in his reaction to those accusations, and Davies extensively quotes his article "Reasons for the Fall of Vilnius", originally published in the Moscow Isvestia. Once I come home, I'm going to provide a back-translation into English of what Davies quotes, but I don't exactly have time for it right now. In any case, the main points Kapsukas makes are the following: - Political agitation on the frontline was not going to be relevant, if the army was exhausted and starving, - The rural populace did not take kindly to food requisitions, - The hostility of the locals prevented the reinforcement of the Red Army, and even where volunteers were found, there was nothing to equip them with, - The central government did not care for repeated alarms on the state of the situation, - There were no rebeliious White Guards, just a regular Polish force with nobody to stop it, - The Lit-Bel was going to mobilise Communists, Socialists, labour unions and youth unions to fight, but it was supposed to happen April 19, and the Poles entered the city that day, - The starving populace foolishly looked up to the Poles and Lithuanians as liberators. On the Polish side, one momentous event that took place after the fall of Vilnius was the publishing of the Proclamation to the Inhabitants of the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which Pilsudski announced on April 22. It was circulated around Vilnius in Polish and Lithuanian (again, will try to provide an English translation once I come home, although I am super curious if the Lithuanian translation is any good). In the proclamation, Pilsudski announces that he will not impose martial law on the city and that Poland will not pressure the locals when they make the decisions regarding their future. He also immediately introduces a civilian authority board, led by Jerzy Oszmolowski, promises to distribute food to those in need and conduct elections for some unspecified representative body. In general, it serves as a brief introduction to the goals and general ideas behind the Polish occupation of the area (although at the same time suspected Communists linked in any way to Lit-Bel were arrested, and any captured Lit-Bel officials were shot). However, its significance lies in something else. The text was published in Polish and Lithuanian. Looking at the map the way it is today, this does not seem like a big surprise. But in 1919, there were two ethnic and linguistic groups that mattered in Vilnius: the Polish majority and the Jewish minority. There were fewer Lithuanians in the city than there were Russians. This may suggest that the addressees of the Proclamation were not the citizens of Vilnius, or even the titular "Inhabitants of the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania", but the Lithuanian government in Kaunas. Pilsudski uses this as the first in a series of more or less veiled suggestions that he seeks to re-establish a bloc similar to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but better, which in his opinion was the only way to protect the nations of Eastern Europe from Russia and (less so in the immediate term) Germany, and believes that Lithuanians should probably join in. This may also hint at a profound lack of understanding of the ideals of the nationalist government in Kaunas, which formed much of the Lithuanian national identity on anti-Polish grounds, and a belief that the incredibly complex problems of Eastern European borders can be solved by political action motivated by good faith and adherence to the principle of coexistence of the various nationalities... of which, naturally, Poles would be the leaders, since they are so cool and good. The Lithuanian government was not going to acquiesce, and Pilsudski was not going to take "no" for an answer, because this simply wasn't a thing he did. Down the line, this would lead him to support a coup in Lithuania and talk one of his generals into rebelling and taking over Vilnius from Lithuanian forces. But more on that at a later time.
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Jan 14, 2016 14:30
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This stuff drove such a vedge between Lithuanians and Poles, I can get irrationally angry even today. As for previous Polish-Lithuanian bad blood... well, Poland-Lithuania is called that and Lithuania-Poland because we were slacking in development, cultural and otherwise. Poland got baptised in the 10th century, we at the end of 14th. We didn't get a book in Lithuanian until mid 16th century. When The countries were joined in a personal union, Lithuanian nobles fairly quickly took to emulating the Polish ones... including language and culture. So, when national identities started becoming a thing in 19th century, pushback against Lithuanians came from the foppish, Polonized nobles and the Russification efforts of the Czarist regime. So here's strike one. And then, after we got our independance after WWI, we had to spend time fighting White (OR WERE THEY GERMAN?) units under Bermont-Avalov, the Reds, the Poles... The Poles won in the end, then we had a stint with fascism...
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Jan 14, 2016 15:36
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SeanBeansShako posted:When lines engaged, it was a vicious slogging match and being shot by a musket ball was hardly pleasant as it usually took in some of your dirty barely clean uniform linen into the wound increasng the chances of infection. So what you're saying is, they would've done better if they fought naked.
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Jan 14, 2016 15:58
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SlothfulCobra posted:So what you're saying is, they would've done better if they fought naked. There was a military doctor who showed up for a duel and promptly took all his clothes off. His opponent asked him what the hell, at which point the doctor talked for a while about all the gnarly infections he'd seen. At that point the other guy decided he didn't actually want to duel anymore.
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Jan 14, 2016 16:02
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Man Whore posted:that ain't looking so certain lately. They're big and quite likely to stay big no matter what, but the cyberpunk superjapan model just doesn't work.
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Jan 14, 2016 16:08
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100 Years Ago It's the critical day up in the mountains of western Anatolia, and the Russians have it, the Russians have it. For once in this war, a general officer has used some initiative and it hasn't backfired on him and his blokes! The Ottoman Third Army now has a gigantic Russian boot taking a good square aim right up its arse; will they notice in time to prevent a Tannenberg-level disaster? Meanwhile: freshly-raised South African troops are now arriving in Kenya (yes, yes they are all virulently racist bastards, and now they're going to be fighting with the Indian Army and the King's African Rifles, more on that to come) as a storm blows up Commander Spicer-Simson's skirt on Lake Tanganyika. And the relief force in Mesopotamia has now arrived at Hanna, which gives me a chance to giggle at some silly military terminology, while Robert Palmer gets detailed to clean up the battlefield at the Wadi. Empress Theonora posted:Random WWI question: before America actually entered the war, would an American have been able to travel to Germany, or would the blockade have made it impossible? Liner to Scandinavia and then across the Danish border, or you could probably take a passage on a merchant who was allowed through to Scandinavia on that route. There were quite a few American industrialists getting rich by trading with Germany via the northern neutrals, either in commodities that weren't on the contraband-of-war list, or by convincing the enforcers of the blockade that their goods really were bound for neutrals, or by trying to sneak ships through the blockade regardless (which was tricky but certainly not impossible for a good captain, and the Navy couldn't exactly declare war on Juno's Widgets of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania).
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Jan 14, 2016 16:21
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Trin Tragula posted:and the Navy couldn't exactly declare war on Juno's Widgets of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania). Given that's an Amish town, I'm not sure they'd be much use to the German war effort. Artisanally hand-crafted wooden bayonets?
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Jan 14, 2016 16:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:So what you're saying is, they would've done better if they fought naked. I remember reading somewhere at some point during the Peninsula war that a group of French skirmishers were crossing down stream a river naked carrying their uniforms in their packs because fighting wet just really sucks and were caught short and forced into a skirmish action with British skirmishers. Also, not really. The gun powder stains would just make everyone look like naked hairy dudes instead of hairy dudes with slightly faded half regulation uniforms. Unless you could somehow identify your Gaulish wangs from your German, Iberian or Anglo-Saxon ones it'd be just as chaotic. Also, I typed that sentence. Also, hurray Tevery Best is back!
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Jan 14, 2016 16:59
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SeanBeansShako posted:identify your Gaulish wangs new thread title.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:14
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feedmegin posted:Given that's an Amish town, I'm not sure they'd be much use to the German war effort. Artisanally hand-crafted wooden bayonets? If that's not a thing, it should be! But the list of things that can be considered war contraband is approximately, well, everything.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:09
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Libluini posted:Frederick the Great "solved" this problem by deploying his lines into being diagonal to his enemies' lines, so he could (theoretically) easily roll them up from the side. I just love the fact the insane Russian 18th century cult of the bayonet just more or less completely ruined the plans and tactics of one of the more smugger generals of History.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:So what you're saying is, they would've done better if they fought naked. That would certainly make it a bit more challenging for any women who were trying to pass as men in the army Also you might have a little bit more trouble telling your dudes from the enemy. Unless they are still wearing clothes, in which case you have turned the Napoleonic wars into a massive playground football game of Shirts vs Skins. Congratulations!
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Jan 14, 2016 18:14
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MikeCrotch posted:That would certainly make it a bit more challenging for any women who were trying to pass as men in the army Can you imagine all the artists of the 19th century just throwing their hands into the air and exclaiming 'gently caress this!' after running out of several slightly different tones of pink and brown shaded paint?
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Jan 14, 2016 18:16
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SeanBeansShako posted:I just love the fact the insane Russian 18th century cult of the bayonet just more or less completely ruined the plans and tactics of one of the more smugger generals of History. Which one was that? I know it can't be Frederick II., since that guy left some really depressing notes after some of his battles. He was kind of moody, apparently.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:19
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Since SeanBean just did a post on the Napoleonic Wars, does anything know about the Chilean Revoloution? Played a game based on it and it looked like the Napoleonic Wars, except the officers used machetes.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:21
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Libluini posted:Which one was that? I know it can't be Frederick II., since that guy left some really depressing notes after some of his battles. He was kind of moody, apparently. I was talking about Frederick II, It might be just a case of translation from german but a lot of his quotes in english come off really smug now. At least to myself anyway. I mean, It wasn't his fault now if he was moody/smug or both. His gaybashing father murdering his supposed lover and all when he was a teenager wasn't really helpful when growing up.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:28
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feedmegin posted:Given that's an Amish town, I'm not sure they'd be much use to the German war effort. Artisanally hand-crafted wooden bayonets? Do the Amish not count as being part of the Pennsylvania Dutch? That was the joke I was hoping to arrive at...(slowly, on a horse and cart)
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Jan 14, 2016 18:46
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