Ensign Expendable posted:

Gay? The military? Why I never!

Waci posted:

The Fall of Rome, one of the greatest atrocities committed in the ancient world.

Number of gay people killed by nazis: eh, less than 16 so who cares

Also interesting which groups of people get a "their own records say X, but we'll go with the higher number from an unspecified source" and which get "this number is controversial, but we'll go with the lowest count".

Looks real nifty, though.

OwlFancier posted:

Really? I would argue that's probably one of the things it does best, a strict visual scale allows a more intuitive comparison than numbers do, and starting from things that the audience is probably more familiar with (the stuff they make war movies about) helps to illustrate the sense of scale of the parts that tend to be glossed over.

Elyv posted:

I haven't looked at this site yet because phone, but how do they even define the Fall of Rome? Is there an accepted definition of that?

P-Mack posted:

I guess look at old documents and check the date when references to the city of Rome stop showing up.

Have archaeologists found the exact site of Rome yet or are they still looking?

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

I hope you have good Quebecer patois because most of the sources that I've found are in Canadian French. This is a good quick overview of prewar organization of the militia et al: http://www.militaryheritage.com/nfrance.htm

quote:

For more than 150 years from 1608 to 1759, France had to resist military efforts from many enemies, ranging from the English, the Dutch, and the various Native Tribes in order to maintain a North American Colony, New France. The defense of this country rested on three major pillars: The Millita, the Compagnies franches de la Marine and French regular regiments. In this article the French organisation for the defense of New France will be described.

Early Efforts

From 1634, the French colonists had to face Native Americans. In 1651, the governor d'Ailleboust created an organised defense unit in Trois-Rivières. Twelve years later, Montreal followed that example by creating "The milita of the Holy Virgin". Notably, each of these units elected their own commander, and these units were not adequate for the needs of the colony.

In the early 1660s, the Iroquois confederacy became a pressing threat, and the King of France decided to send the Carignan-Salières regiment to pacify the natives. The 1000 man regiment arrived at Québec in the spring of 1665, comprising 20 companies with a captain, a lieutenant, an ensign, two sergeants, three corporals, five ansepassade *seems to be a spear carrying guy?* and forty soldiers. This regiment is one of the first in French history to wear a standard uniform.

The Carignan-Salières regiment successfully fought the Iroquois as well as the Dutch from Schenectady in modern day New York State. In 1667 peace was established in the region. The soldiers were therefore offered land on the banks of the Saint Lawrence river if they wished to establish themselves as farmers. More than 400 of them accepted to stay, becoming a large cohort in the ancestry of modern day French Canadians. Their names and family names are found everywhere in French Canada. Upon entering the French Army, a soldier was given a surname based on appearance, previous employment, origin or character, which is why we find soldiers with names like Berthiaume dit Legros (The fat), Asuch dit l'épicier (The grocer), Another dit le Parisien (obvious) and of course the Soldieriest Soldiers: Sanspeur (Fearless), Sanschangrin (without remorse), Lavictoire (Victory) and Prêtaboire (Ready to get drunk (Top that HeyGal)). The ancestor of the author was named Chabaudier dit Lépine (The pine tree).

The Canadian Milita

In 1669, Louis XIV instituted the official chartering of the milita. There are no longer any regular troops in the colony but a large part of its population has previously served under arms. The martial spirit is still present. All the male inhabitants of the colony from age 16 to 60 are divided into companies under the orders of a captain, lieutenants and ensigns. Under these, there are sergeants and corporals. The militia companies meet up once a month to drill. Once or twice a year all the companies in a region are united for larger exercises.



The officers wear, with their saber, a gorget made of gold tinged copper, worn on the chest at the base of the neck as the mark of their authority. Milita captains didn't only have military functions: in many Seigneuries (Administrative units in New France, sorta like a barony but with more social mobility), given the absence of other representatives of the Crown, they commanded their men for other tasks: Public works, troop transport, provisioning in goods and food, mail delivery and carrying out of ordonnances.

The troops were responsible for arming themselves and always having a good supply of lead, powder and fuse. The Intendant supplied firearms to those who had none, but the militiamen were responsible for returning them at the end of each expedition. The militia did not have a uniform, but the men were supplied with part of their clothing during each campaign, usually receiving shirt, hat, loincloth, mittens, mocassins and a blanket.

Quickly, it became evident that European military tactics were fairly useless in a North American context: No large battlefields with large lines of sight, no moving in columns. War is carried out in forest raids and canoe born river raids. The Canadian militia quickly copies native tactics, attacking villages in the Northern areas of the present day US via quick snowshoe expeditions and rapid retreat to their starting points in Québec, Trois-Rivières or Montréal.

The militamen typically eat what they can forage in the woods; if no game is found, pemmican is substituted, or a gruel named soupane that the french soldiers nickname "glue".

The effectiveness of the Canadian milita quickly becomes renown with its enemies. Canadian militiamen often engaging in join expeditions with their native allies, they quickly learn new tactics and improve their own. The Canadian "Habitant" can legally be called up twice each year to engage in "Little War". Thus New France is truly a colony of Farmer-Warriors.

The Compagnies Franches de la Marine

The Canadian militiamen, despite their effectiveness, cannot meet all the military needs of the colony. In 1685, the French authorities therefore decide to permanently send 28 companies of a détachement of the Troupes de la Marine. They are commonly know as the "Compagnies Franches de la Marine". This unit had been created in 1674 by the department of the Navy as a means of defending French ships and overseas colonies. The majority of their manpower was recruited from the Navy.

Each company was independent, answering to the Governor-General of New France. Each Captain was responsible for recruiting fifty French soldiers who signed a contract of six years of service. After this period the Marines had a choice of returning to France or staying in the Colony.

As there are no barracks for soldiers until 1750, the soldiers were quartered with local inhabitants, who received a certain sum for the care of their guests. Canadian winters being quite long, these soldiers were forced to spend long hours chatting by the fire with pretty Canadian girls. So it's no surprise that there was an exceptionally high rate of Marriages between Marines and the daughters of local Canadian "Habitants".

Around 1690, officer positions in the Troupes de la Marine become open to Canadian nobles. These openings, however, are limited to one officer per company. These positions were seen as quite advantageous, and in the 1690s, a quarter of the officers of the Compagnies Franches de La Marine are locals. By 1720 they formed half of the officer corps, and in 1750 three quarter of the officers were Canadians.

Much like the militia, the Compagnies Franches de la Marine adopted the tactics of "little war". According to Captain Hertel de La Fresnière (Of the Strawberry field), the best unit for local warfare would be composed of Canadian officers with good knowledge of the area, a core of elite soldiers, a larger group of Canadian milita used to the climate, a few canoe handlers and some native allies. These last are helpful for logistic purposes but also for terrorizing any American colonists that might be encountered.

In 1754, an expedition of 800 men, comprised of soldiers of the Compagnies Franches de la Marine and militiamen from the Montréal, Québec and Trois-Rivières descended the Ohio river valley to confront the troops of the American colonies. Quickly 132 American militiamen encountered this force at Fort Necessity. These Americans were commanded by a certain lieutenant colonel George Washington, age 22, future big deal.

During the skirmish, the Americans, outnumbered, take refuge in the fort and are quickly surrounded by the Canadian milita. After parley, George Washington capitulates and agrees to sign a surrender, making him the only President of the United States ever to capitulate to an enemy.

In 1755, 250 Canadians and 600 Native allies annihilate the 1500 strong army of Edward Braddock. This defeat was part of the series of events that led to the Englishdeclaring war on France in 1756. This war, usually named the Seven Years War, marks the end of French power in North America.


The English conquest and the return of regular troops.

During this war, New France is led by a Canadian governor, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, who is well aware of the strengths of the Troupes de la Marine and the milita. However, he has to do so against the vision of the Marquis de Montcalm, who is in command of the French Troops that are sent by the government. Montcalm has little confidence in his local troops. He reasonably argues that a Canadian militiaman is worth three French soldiers in the bush war, but in a line of battle, a French soldier is worth farm more than three milita men fresh from the farm.

The Canadians don't appreciate working with French officers, who find that the Canadian way of warfare is primitive. They find it difficult to carry their own luggage. Strangely, when they force a Canadian to carry their luggage across a river, the Canadian often seems to trip and drop their luggage into the bottom of the river.

During joint expeditions, French troops march directly on the road, the native allies moved through the woods to the right of the column and the Canadians move through the woods on the right. The French soldiers prefer confrontation on open ground whereas the Canadians and Natives prefer ambush warfare in the forest.

During the siege of Québec, Montcalm could count on a military force of 15,000 men versus James Wolfe's 8,500 men. The French defeat on the plains of Abraham cannot be attributed to the weakness of Canadian troops, but rather on Montcalm who was not able to wait for the opportune moment to use the strengths of his forces. Asking his Canadians to fight like Frenchmen was not something they were trained or prepared to do.

For the entirety of the French period, New France was able to defend itself and even to carry out attack against its enemies. It owes much of this success to the Milita and the Compagnies Franches de la Marine that were able to adopt effective tactics for North America.

Copyright 1997: Luc Lepine

Endman posted:

References to Rome never stop. The "Fall of Rome" is generally assumed to be when the Ostrogoths took over the place in the late 5th century, but the city was still renowned all over the place.

Also Rome is where Rome is now, there's bits of it still there you can go and see.

Endman posted:

Julius Caesar's Dictatorship was the real death of Rome as something to aspire to, and even then it was a barely functional Republic.

OwlFancier posted:

Really? I would argue that's probably one of the things it does best, a strict visual scale allows a more intuitive comparison than numbers do, and starting from things that the audience is probably more familiar with (the stuff they make war movies about) helps to illustrate the sense of scale of the parts that tend to be glossed over.

Ensign Expendable posted:

I guess, but they only show the scale for Axis military casualties and then scroll up on Soviet ones and show the number there. They don't even show the bars at the same time in that segment, which would be something you'd expect to gauge a sense of scale.

What they do display over the Axis minors is a swastika that looks like it's drawn in MS Paint in case... I guess we forgot what side they fought on?

Nenonen posted:

P-Mack posted:

I guarantee the average American has no loving clue what side of the war Romania was on.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Yeah, it's trying to convey a sense of scale to a non-expert audience. I'm even willing to roll with their choice in statistics for that, since the over-all intent is to create an impression of the magnitude of the casualties.

I've done something similar in Holocaust classes i've taught, going really in depth on one person's life story so they get involved and have at least some emotional reaction when they find out they died, then talking about how many people from that person's village died, how many were killed in the action she died in, how many similar massacres happened that year in Eastern Europe, and then stepping it up to total dead in the Holocaust. If you just start out with "Six Million" people can't wrap their skulls around it, but if you step it up starting with units that they can grasp the enormity slowly trickles in.

Nine of Eight posted:

For the fun of it, here's a quick translation

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

I hope you have good Quebecer patois because most of the sources that I've found are in Canadian French.

quote:

This is why we find soldiers with names like Berthiaume said Legros, Doe said the grocer Another told the Parisien and of course the soldiers Sanspeur, Sanschagrin Lavictoire and pretaboire.

Jamwad Hilder posted:

I'd be really interested to hear more about how you do this, like a specific story.

JcDent posted:

The spirit of German kitbashing lives with... whatever this is.

my friend translated this for me posted:

[here] we can see the most interesting instances - Air Defence Missile System"Kvadrat" mounted on the chassis (export model of ADMS "Kub"), 85-mm Zenith cannon KS-1 and a 100-mm KS-19. Looks pretty apocalyptic, just like from "Red Alert". In the background, if my eyes are not deceiving me, there are two more KS-19s, but on truck chassis, ZSU-57-2, wheelbarrows with different weaponry, and I think, couple of "Gvozdika". In the next picture, 85-mm up close.

in a message to Hogge Wild posted:

My friend hasn't gotten back to me yet, but it seems someone took the TEL (learned a new acronym today) from this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K12_Kub
and put either KS-19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_m...ey-haosef-3.jpg
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/85_mm...ense_gun_M1939_(52-K)
on it.

The gun shield looks very much 52-K, but - I'm gonna get technical here - the gun breech (?) in the second picture in Livejournal looks very much like KS-19, however the hybrid mount doesn't have the two torpedo-looking thingies going through the the shield. Maybe it's a part that's not too important for the operation of the gun, I dunno.

It's definitely more 40K than Red Alert 2. The Flak track is a transport and AA vehicle. Meanwhile, these guys probably ran out of missiles/lost the radar/didn't have people who knew how to operate this this, but they did have passable drivers, gun operators and enthusiastic guys with blowtorches. So sorta like 40K, where they keep forgetting how to make or operate things.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Not much Quebecer in that text, though, so not sure why anyone said that

HEY GAL posted:

if that's tilly, chances are the guy is supposed to be from Spain, where there were a bunch of darker skinned people--either slaves or otherwise.

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

If Queen Anne of Denmark can have a black attendant in 1617 Tilly can have a black soldier in 16fuckety-five or whenever imo.

Siivola posted:

It never stops catching me off guard how there were Japanese and Korean slaves in Portugal in the late 1500's. They are on entirely opposite sides of the world, you're not supposed to cross hemispheres like that!

Fangz posted:

How many samurai does it take to beat a tercio?

Fangz posted:

How many samurai does it take to beat a tercio?

FAUXTON posted:

How many samurai you got?

P-Mack posted:

I remember it was mentioned a while back that Japan independently came up with countermarching pike and shot tactics at the same time as in Europe if not earlier.

The way world history is all tied together is something I wish schools and pop history would do a better job of conveying, but I dunno how to do it.

P-Mack posted:

I remember it was mentioned a while back that Japan independently came up with countermarching pike and shot tactics at the same time as in Europe if not earlier.

The way world history is all tied together is something I wish schools and pop history would do a better job of conveying, but I dunno how to do it.

DiHK posted:

Just Tom Cruise.