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What do the locals make of it when/if you return from being a mercenary? Do they hate your guts?
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May 31, 2017 13:09
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HEY GAIL posted:and the answer, i think, is "figure out who's recruiting and where and just show up" Do I need to bring my own weapons? If so, what's the easiest way to get some? (I currently possess: a wooden mattock and half a mule)
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May 31, 2017 13:22
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Not too familiar with reddit. What does that mean? Were all but one responses super racist? Or was only one response super racist enough? AskHistorians is very tightly moderated. Unless you have a thorough answer with sources, your comments will be deleted. If you want low effort garbage posts, you'll find plenty of those in r/history.
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May 31, 2017 13:26
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It's basically a subreddit of history effortposts, so it's worth a look even when reddit keeps asking stupid questions.
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May 31, 2017 13:57
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HEY GAIL posted:varies wildly by century, early 17th century officers can beat you or order you to do something that may result in your death but they drink in the same bars and sleep in the same rooms (sometimes) as their men, and duel them, while I talked to trin about this once and he said early 20th century officers aren't supposed to associate with the dudes like...at all With British Officers especially the 19th century it is complicated. Basically even amongst officers and NCO they had class divisions and worked together professionally on the job or in the barracks but socially when letting their hair down they rolled with their own in their own messes. In the 19th century the British Officer was going through a weird transformation along with pretty much else in the country along with the introduction of the growing middle class that sort of bridged the gaps between the higher born men and the soldiers they commanded. Being an officer in this era unless your family was well off was a financial burden due to the purchase system (unless Nepotism or war happens) so many of the lower officers had to script, scrape and starve just as much as the men they commanded. Respect is easily won on a personal level during combat or just how an officer treated his men. In letters of Private Wheeler he fondly remembers the first colonel he encountered with his regiment after he transfered from the Militia as he was a down to earth sort of fellow who he first encountered out of uniform on horseback during his travel to his newly assigned regiment. In the Memoirs of Rifleman Harris during the retreat to Corunna apparently Robert Crauford witnesses one cheeky officer sneaking a piggy back on a ranker during a river crossing and proceeded to order said officer to stop that poo poo and endure the suffering with his men. Then you have men who were raised through the ranks due to duty or the need for somebody who knows how to soldier and this met with mixed results. Some of these men flourished in this strange world with their new peers and kept the respect of their men whilst others due to some reason or other were blanked out and never made it any further in the ranks. SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 14:47 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 31, 2017 14:45
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spectralent posted:Maybe a weird question but since someone mentioned it: I'm aware officer/enlisted fraternisation is a thing and most militaries try and avoid it, but what is the officer/enlisted relationship actually like (or supposed to be like), then? I'd assume leading a group of guys would involve some degree of those guys having confidence in you, and it feels like it'd be hard to have much confidence in someone you never see except for when he's telling you to get shot at. In a modern professional army it really shouldn't be all that different from a typical supervisor/subordinate relationship in a civilian environment. You have to build relationships and you have to build trust; as an officer you do this by being competent, by putting your subordinates' needs ahead of your own, and by effectively balancing subordinates' needs with mission/job requirements. So, you want to be the guy who they call when they're in trouble, you want to know their families, you want to know them in social settings outside of work. However, you don't want to be best-buds - not because this necessarily bad, but because you don't want to show favoritism. The relationship between officers and their senior enlisted folk is different - I almost always had absolute poo poo NCOs and so never actually experienced the whole "officer/senior NCO team" thing that is supposed to happen, but ideally you've got a mentor/confidant/etc in your platoon/first sergeant, and so naturally that relationship is more intimate than what you have with the rest of your unit.
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May 31, 2017 14:59
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The French in the Napoleonic wars uniquely operated an almost entirely merit-based promotion scheme. I think that it helps explain some of their successes.
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May 31, 2017 15:02
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nothing to seehere posted:It's basically a subreddit of history effortposts, so it's worth a look even when reddit keeps asking stupid questions. There's a bit of a leeway regarding extra stuff you can add (and a lot of people add extra stuff since we're all nerds who can't shut up), so even answers to banal questions can be interesting.
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May 31, 2017 15:04
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i read one set of witness statements to a fight that ended in a death, and one of the witnesses said that he froze up when the fight started and blamed himself for the death. crossreferenced him and it turns out it was his colonel who was interrogating him, and i assume that's why this witness was so open about his feelings, and so much more open than the other witnesses. edit: On the other hand, nobody loving liked Camargo (dude who killed his wife). loving nobody. Except for Felix Steter. Guess douchebags stick together. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:26 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 31, 2017 15:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:AskHistorians is very tightly moderated. Unless you have a thorough answer with sources, your comments will be deleted. If you want low effort garbage posts, you'll find plenty of those in r/history. To elaborate on this, /r/askhistorians has required that you have sources and know your subject for its entire existence. And in response to every single loving question posted, there will be 15 people going "WELL ACCORDING TO THIS HALF REMEMBERED ANECDOTE I HEARD ONCE, (bunch of bullshit that can be proved not true with five seconds of google)" It's amazing.
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May 31, 2017 15:43
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The Lone Badger posted:Do I need to bring my own weapons? Front or Rear half?
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May 31, 2017 16:42
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HEY GAIL posted:probably the first lol I just re-acquinted with an old reenactor friend today, she sperged for 30 minutes straight about how dashing outfits you can make if you go Landsknecht 
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May 31, 2017 17:09
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Boiled Water posted:/r/askhistorians does it again. For the question "I'm a restless German peasant with violent tendencies in 1520. I hear about the Landsknechts and other mercenaries, and being a professional solider sounds more interesting than working the farm. How could I become one?" every comment except one has been removed. lol I don't follow that Reddit but i noticed it while I was browsing all this morning. I do follow history to see when interesting event anniversaries are or when news stories come up but I never ever read the comments (surprise, there's a lot of wehraboos and confederate lost causers)
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May 31, 2017 17:25
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/r/history is really bad because its threads show up on the frontpage and it's reddit. If reddit is supposed to be a cross-section of white america, well, things don't look good.
Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 17:58 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 31, 2017 17:55
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I don't know, I just quickly browsed r/history and it didn't seem as bad as all that.
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May 31, 2017 19:07
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reddit history stuff is pretty bad in my admittedly very limited experience with it. I'm not an internet expert but I think the voting thing is what really screws it up. Its fine for pictures of cats and memes and stuff, but when you're trying to have a semi-serious semi-academic discussion, correctness and popularity are frequently at odds with one another. So, the posts that either have the most commonly held interpretations, or those that are popular with that particular population of people get voted up regardless of actual validity. Length/complexity is also kind of a factor - like this thread loves effortposts but there they seem to get ignored sometimes, I assume because people don't want to actually put in the time to read them.
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May 31, 2017 19:18
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Mantis42 posted:I don't know, I just quickly browsed r/history and it didn't seem as bad as all that. Oh God! His suit's ripped, someone contain him!
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May 31, 2017 19:19
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bewbies posted:reddit history stuff is pretty bad in my admittedly very limited experience with it. I'm not an internet expert but I think the voting thing is what really screws it up. Its fine for pictures of cats and memes and stuff, but when you're trying to have a semi-serious semi-academic discussion, correctness and popularity are frequently at odds with one another. So, the posts that either have the most commonly held interpretations, or those that are popular with that particular population of people get voted up regardless of actual validity. Length/complexity is also kind of a factor - like this thread loves effortposts but there they seem to get ignored sometimes, I assume because people don't want to actually put in the time to read them. I'm sorry, but I don't agree with your post and I've checked your posting history and you're obviously a troll and therefore all your posts should be hidden.
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May 31, 2017 19:21
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I posted in r/WarCollege once and it turns out that everyone's posts are hidden by default and then approved by a moderator.
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May 31, 2017 19:57
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HEY GAIL posted:I talked to trin about this once and he said early 20th century officers aren't supposed to associate with the dudes like...at all In the interest of accuracy, what I actually did was that I got out my copy of Maximilian Mugge's book and read out this bit quote:I object to discipline that is insane. I object to the god-like distance of the officers towards the men. I acknowledge the danger of too frequent and promiscuous intercourse. Intercooooooooooourse...
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May 31, 2017 20:26
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Trin Tragula posted:In the interest of accuracy, what I actually did was that I got out my copy of Maximilian Mugge's book and read out this bit also the lawsuits, the neverending lawsuits
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May 31, 2017 22:11
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bewbies posted:reddit history stuff is pretty bad in my admittedly very limited experience with it. I'm not an internet expert but I think the voting thing is what really screws it up. Its fine for pictures of cats and memes and stuff, but when you're trying to have a semi-serious semi-academic discussion, correctness and popularity are frequently at odds with one another. So, the posts that either have the most commonly held interpretations, or those that are popular with that particular population of people get voted up regardless of actual validity. Length/complexity is also kind of a factor - like this thread loves effortposts but there they seem to get ignored sometimes, I assume because people don't want to actually put in the time to read them. Most Reddit history is quite dreadful, but r/askhistorians is pretty great because all the poo poo answers get deleted and only the effortposts remain. The Landsknecht quiestion has a pretty good effortpost attached to it now.
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May 31, 2017 22:13
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HEY GAIL posted:i wonder what he'd think of my dudes' officers, who both sleep in the same room with them and beat them/threaten to beat them when they're in a snit? The discipline is violent and indiscriminate but the men have almost certainly seen their colonel drunk, crying, happy, or loving Dude, are you ever going to do a novel( or better yet, a CYOA) about trying to survive pikes, chronic alcoholism and eternal German lawsuits? If people are even half as much into this poo poo as we are itt you're made.
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May 31, 2017 22:35
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I've got a question. Why were early firearms adopted? The early ones, like handgonnes thru, I dunno, matchlocks, what advantages do they have over crossbows? I know bows take a lot of training, but isn't the crossbow easier to train with? Like, what makes a Landscknect use a matchlock instead of a Was it that cannons were useful for sieges, and small arms development and adoption was an offshoot of artillery?
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May 31, 2017 23:19
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Rockopolis posted:I've got a question. Why were early firearms adopted? The early ones, like handgonnes thru, I dunno, matchlocks, what advantages do they have over crossbows? I know bows take a lot of training, but isn't the crossbow easier to train with? I'm sure Hey Gail will be around with a better answer in a second, but it's a whole combination of things. 1) cost - early firearms are generally simpler to make and cost less than a quality crossbow 2) penetration vs. armor - even primitive gunpowder weapons quickly surpassed (most - see below) crossbows for punching holes in plate You also have to remember that this isn't a static system. Crossbows are still in use for a long time and there are efforts to improve them. The problem is that those efforts mean increasing the draw a LOT to be competitive with a firearm as far as penetration and lethal range goes. This is where you start seeing metal crossbows where you have to wind a windlass to cock them. Of course, this also means they quickly become less wieldy and take longer to reload after firing. Meanwhile the improvements in guns is moving them in the opposite direction - easier to aim, easier to handle, quicker to load, more reliable, etc. I don't know about whether early crossbows were cheaper than later ones, but guns tended to get cheaper as time went on. In the end it's the difference between the amount of energy you can store chemically vs. with a physical spring and how much easier it is to transfer that energy (pouring in powder vs. using muscles to cock).
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May 31, 2017 23:27
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Also while you can make a mega cool siege crossbow that can blow someone's head off at half a mile, you can make an even better gun within those size constraints.
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May 31, 2017 23:38
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Is there anyone here who understands why Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond gets the hate that it does? I understand the main criticism that it isn't particularly rigorous and tends to get a lot of little details wrong; but I feel like those sorts of criticisms get in the way of the reason why GGS is so compelling, to a layman nerd like me, people whose formative science fiction is Foundation with the idea that with a formula you can predict human history, GGS seems like the only academic-level work that tries to answer "Why/How did Europe/the West 'win'* at Real-Life Civilization?" Like, even if it has its flaws, from a certain perspective it's really really cool and interesting and yet it seems to be hated to the point of irrationality because when CPG Grey talked about it on his podcast the amount of personal attacks Grey got (albeit on a different subreddit) seemed quite staggering and broadly seemed to miss what I feel his point was.
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May 31, 2017 23:47
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I never got the extreme hate for it; it is pop history, so, temper your expectations accordingly, but as far as a layman's book from Barnes and Noble it could've been a lot worse (ie, Bernard Lewis or Ambrose or Manchester, who I'm sure are all still there). There are a lot of works out there that tries to explain European global dominance and a lot of it is very good, but most of it is very academic in nature and you can't expect your average suburban dad to be on google scholar or pay whatever to get access to JSTOR.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:03
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Questions like 'why is X hated so much' tend to get bogged down in the question of how much is an appropriate amount to hate something. Anyway I dislike GGS because it ignores the recurrent role of random chance in human history. It's a just-so story, basically.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:15
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The biggest flaw is that it suggests Europe was inevitably going to come out dominating in the end. This is dumb, because history isn't over. Europe dominated recently, but now it's the US. The time for global superpowers even being possible is very short, and in that small time Europe is already no longer king. Prior to that, there have been cool and powerful civilisations basically everywhere, Europe was rarely in the lead in terms of culture and technology. The civilisation(game) view of history is dumb and problematic anyway. As fangs said, the book is ignoring the fact that actually human history does have a lot of random chance. The foundation formula isn't real Splode fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 00:30
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Part of it is also the fact that it is utilized by some of the worst idiots as "academic proof" that the west is inherently better. Grey doesn't argue that, but I've seen it used to prop up a LOT of arguments that boil down to "Western Christian Europe > everyone else." It's not quite fair to tar him with that brush, but it's still part of the knee-jerk reaction a lot of people give it.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:36
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Wow, I'm surprised by the crossbows vs firearms answer. I think I'm too used to thinking of new gear being much more expensive, and looking at gun vs crossbow prices today. So they pack more of a punch, they're cheaper, and was it just one of those things where even with the old hand cannons people could see that guns were going to be the new hotness?
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Jun 1, 2017 00:42
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And much like the crossbow it devalues men on horses in expensive armour who train in murder for a lifetime.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:45
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Splode posted:As fangs said, the book is ignoring the fact that actually human history does have a lot of random chance. The foundation formula isn't real How do you know that? Did you go back and run history again and everyone was speaking Nahuatl?
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Jun 1, 2017 00:53
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Raenir Salazar posted:Is there anyone here who understands why Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond gets the hate that it does? I understand the main criticism that it isn't particularly rigorous and tends to get a lot of little details wrong; but I feel like those sorts of criticisms get in the way of the reason why GGS is so compelling, to a layman nerd like me, people whose formative science fiction is Foundation with the idea that with a formula you can predict human history, GGS seems like the only academic-level work that tries to answer "Why/How did Europe/the West 'win'* at Real-Life Civilization?" GGS oversteps, like every other grand theory of history. Diamond has a good point in connecting animal domestication and the North-South continental axes with disease immunity, but he has very bad points whenever he talks about actual history. He takes primary sources at face value, and ends up rehashing arguments from a previous century of historiography. It's very shallow. For that, GGS isn't an academic level work. Historians don't like GGS either, and you should be addressing the complaints that professionals have put out instead of the bandwagon of internet randos.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:55
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Front or Rear half? That's embroiled in a complicated lawsuit at the moment. I say that i own the rear half and my brother owns the front half. He claims the opposite. In the meantime neither of us is feeding it because that would involve de facto taking responsibility for the front half.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:18
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Disinterested posted:And much like the crossbow it devalues men on horses in expensive armour who train in murder for a lifetime. Most of the men with guns also trained in murder and were professionals- basically armor was in fact getting better as metallurgy improved. It never truly went away, regardless- many Napoleonic cavalry did wear armor and it had some effect.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:22
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Wearing your hair braided and having your greatcoat worn slung around you also helped alot. I imagine many a saber was caught in a sabertache or pelisse too. Not against a close ranged musket ball though. That'd still kill your mounted tightly breeched behind dead.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:30
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I misread that as saber 'stache, and was disappointed that my initial vision of sword blocking mustaches don't exist.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:33
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Disinterested posted:And much like the crossbow it devalues men on horses in expensive armour who train in murder for a lifetime. This isn't true at all. Where does this bullshit myth even come from? Crossbows existed for hundreds of years alongside dudes with arm and they didn't change jack poo poo about the social system.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:37
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