Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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ContinuityNewTimes: Dec 30, 2010; Я выдуман напрочь

We should have stirred it up and then left the mess for everyone else. Responsible policy.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 08:19

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# ? May 26, 2024 18:48

Ataxerxes: Dec 2, 2011; What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?

TaurusTorus posted:

Tossing poo poo out a window: still the best means of conflict resolution.

Serve your nation through defenestration.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 08:42

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Don Gato posted:

He had a very long article on BBC's website that can be summed up as "Britain should have stayed out of WWI and if it did it would be the biggest superpower evar", and in general he has a massive boner for the British Empire. Not sure about hating brown people in general but it wouldn't surprise me.

Also one of HEYGAL's friends tossed all his poo poo out of a 3rd story apartment.

i read some sort of disclosure by him where he said that he did what he did because the money was good, which means he doesn't even have honor

# ? Aug 21, 2017 12:47

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

HEY GAIL posted:

i read some sort of disclosure by him where he said that he did what he did because the money was good, which means he doesn't even have honor

You mean he... he engages in trade?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 13:40

TerminalSaint: Apr 21, 2007; Where must we go...

we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?

Grand Prize Winner posted:

From what I can tell the degree is optional

Yep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies

# ? Aug 21, 2017 14:03

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

Randarkman posted:

This is from a few pages back but I will say that that is an extremely simplistic view of things. First of all it should be stressed that good numbers aren't always easy to come by for medieval battles, especially earlier ones. Second that it really depends on the situation which side will benefit and in that case superior or inferior numbers may not count for as much. The best example of that would be when Saladin was defeated at Montgisard as a couple of hundred knights came upon Saladin's larger force in narrow quarters (and I think under heavy mist so were essentially undetected) and shattered it with their charge, an example of the Muslims (Saladin) blundering and being handed a crushing defeat. Hattin (where the nunbers were in the Muslims' favor but not vastly so, though Saladin had many more mounted men) would then be an example of a Frankish blunder and subsequent defeat.

Of all the Crusades it was only really the First Crusade that was truly successful and in many of its earlier battles the First Crusaders significantly outnumbered their foes, at least until they had crossed Anatolia. After the battle of Dorylaeum Frankish accounts are full of praise for the Seljuk Turks they fought there, who were outnumbered by the Franks and seriously threatened Bohemond's forces, though Bohemond kept his army together until the rest of the Crusader forces arrived (undetected by the Turks who thought they faced the main host, again an example of a blunder leading to a defeat) and scattered the Turks. Then at the battle of Antioch it seems like the various Turkish rulers who showed up essentially fough each other when they were besieging the Crusaders and were then swept aside when the Crusaders emerged from the city as a unified force.

The last point goes a long way to explain early Frankish success as there was no unified Muslim response to the Crusades for many years to come. The Seljuk empire had essentially broken up into a bewildering array of successor states in Syria, Iraq and Iran, in Egypt the Fatimid Caliphate had essentially become a highly unstable military dictatorship that was further weakened by having the Kingdom of Jerusalem on its doorstep. Figures such as Saladin, Nur al-Din and Zengi did reintroduce jihad (maybe even reinvent as it was now to reclaim lost Muslim sites) to fight against the Franks, but all of these actually spent more of their time fighting against other Muslim states than they did fighting the Crusaders. Their domestic situation was also pretty tenuous, they depended militarily mostly on elite Turkish slave soldiers and a military aristocracy associated with these, in the absence of victory a ruler could quickly find himself in a dangerous position as regards his army (eventually Saladin's dynasty, the Ayyubids were overthrown by their Turkish soldiers and officers).

As for the Crusaders they seem to have known that the odds were against them should the Muslims make common cause against them. They couldn't necessarily divide and rule very effectively as they weren't quite so powerful to make use of this, but at times they did ally with weaker Muslim states against the more powerful ones, though at other times they tried to pounce on the weaker ones such as Damascus during the Second Crusade which ended in a disaster. For the most part the Franks saw that giving battle to the Muslims was simply to risky and they basically resorted to positional warfare. Using fortified castles to take and hold ground and to tie up and pin down invading Muslim armies rather than engaging them directly. When an army besieging a castle was met by a relief army (and at its height Jerusalem could field a respectable, though not very large army) it usually retired rather than risk being caught between the castle and the army. This cautious nature of the Franks is noted by Muslim writers who considered it both a weakness and a strength as it made the Franks difficult to decisively defeat but it also meant that the Franks very rarely managed to seize upon their victories against the Muslims because of the risks involved (Hattin demonstrates the disaster of losing the army).

I'm sorry if this isn't a straight answer to your question other than a way to say "things were a bit more complicated than that" in way too many words.

This is an awesome answer. I realize the question was an obnoxiously simple one.

That being said, is there a good primer on the various kinds of soldiers who fought the Crusades? This book I just finished was a good political/strategic primer but there was very little on the dudes who actually did the fighting (I realize this is another really broad question). Bonus points if it is on the internet and provides some sort of useful comparison in capability between the various populations.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 14:25

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

Grenrow posted:

But I am talking about interpretation, not fabrication. Interpreting "soldiers doing a war cry to get hyped up and scare the enemy as they move forward" as some kind of distinctive Southern tradition is taking a common military thing and turning it into something so unique people are speculating about whether they got it from the Jacobites. Most of these sources I'm looking at about it are from people decades after the fact. It seems like any times Southern soldiers ever shouted, cheered, or whooped, it gets elevated and described as "The Rebel Yell," which is supposedly a singular tradition that was known and performed all across the disparate regions that made up the Confederacy. Again, I'm not trying to argue that there were no Southern war cries or that you can't find civil war accounts of Union troops saying "we were scared when the enemy was yelling at us." But these sources alleging that it's this completely unique thing are all looking like poo poo written or recorded decades after the fact. That video you posted is from the 1930s. Those guys are at least in their seventies by the time this video was made.

There was definitely a distinct battle cry that the CSA soldiers did, that was recognized by both sides as a unique thing to the CSA armies, and it almost certainly sounded similar even between armies operating in very different parts of the country. It certainly isn't deserving of any sort of mystical status but it is a kind of neat thing that adds some humanity to our study of the joes on the ground then.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 14:33

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Wait, if the crusades happened in the day of levying peasants for 40 days or whatever before the gently caress off back to work, how did the crusaders have enough professional soldiers for expeditions?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 14:46

Jamwad Hilder: Apr 18, 2007; surfin usa

Peasant levies and professional soldiers are two different things. If I remember correctly, crusader armies were typically knights and their professional retinues. Due to a lack of food, water, and other supplies, they tended to lose a lot of horses anyway, so their infantry was mostly dismounted knights/other soldiers.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 14:57

Randarkman: Jul 18, 2011

Here's the thing though. Peasant levies or peasant conscripts never really made up a significant portion of medieval armies (there are exceptions such as the Anglo-Saxon fyrd or the later armed yeomanry of England). "Levies" will usually refer to the nobles, the knights and their retainers who under the various variations of the feudal system (whether there was a definitive "feudal system" at all is also debatable) who were obliged to fight and provide soldiers for a set number of days yearly as commanded. If a campaign lasted longer then usually something like mercenary contracts would be offered for the continued service of these feudal levies. Mercenaries throughout the middle ages made up an ever more increasing portion of armies, especially royal armies once the kings became more powerful and they became more adept at things such as taxation (mercenaries in general were thought to be more reliable than the feudal levies of your vassals, many later knights and sergeants, "men-at-arms", were mercenaries).

As for the Crusades. At least the First Crusade was just the collection of a bunch of retinues of various nobles from northern, eastern and southern France (including parts that were then part of the HRE), nothing like a royal army with a centralized command, though a set of leaders did emerge somewhat naturally under way. As for the financial details of how they were paid, it simply has to be understood that going on crusade was a ruinously expensive affair and very few of those involved ended up gaining much materially from the whole endeavor. You should not here look away from the importance of faith in keeping these armies together. Also remember that the payment offered for many soldiers in history wasn't necessarily always a regular salary but often could be the opportunity to loot cities, castles, battlefields and capture prisoners for sale as slaves (admittedly this part was not that important in Medieval Europe, but was important in for an example the Islamic world) or ransom.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 15:35

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

JcDent posted:

Wait, if the crusades happened in the day of levying peasants for 40 days or whatever before the gently caress off back to work, how did the crusaders have enough professional soldiers for expeditions?

Manorial systems had household troops once you got above a certain size. If you went Crusading, as a low-level property owning noble, you usually brought some quantity of your household troops. Maybe it's just a squire or two and a key retainer, if you have a small holding. If you have a large holding with lots of troops, you probably brought some percentage of your household troops (those that wanted to go, limited so that your lieutenant can still hold your property or so that you can provide your obligations to your liege in the event that a real war breaks out).

There's a reasonable argument that part of the whole thing (or at least a nice side benefit) was to get rid of a bunch of landless professionals who were second/third/eighth sons with no chance to inherit and desires above their station as retainers.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 15:41

Elyv: Jun 14, 2013

JcDent posted:

Wait, if the crusades happened in the day of levying peasants for 40 days or whatever before the gently caress off back to work, how did the crusaders have enough professional soldiers for expeditions?

The 40 day thing was specifically the Albigensian Crusade I think.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 15:45

Power Khan: Aug 20, 2011; by Fritz the Horse

Crossposting:

JaucheCharly posted:

Btw, I finished that other ottoman quiver

Copied a 3 part strap system on the back from the old originals, it's pretty ergonomic. Doesn't dangle around and gets into the way when you walk or run

That weird discoloration on the frontbag happened when wetforming, it seems the wooden pieces that I used to stretch it reacted with the antique

It's my paraphrase of a museum piece. A bit scaled down, as I'm not carrying +50 arrows for target shooting. In the original, the main bag would have been filled with broadheads. The front bags were used for specialized arrows like bodkin points. Ottoman and Mughal bodkin heads were usualy not barbed, but filed flat at the corners, so that they could be drawn out of these front pockets without damaging the quivers.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 16:11

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

That's gorgeous.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 16:19

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Looks awesome. How did the Ottomans typically use archers in combat and how did that interact with firearms use? I know they were fairly early adopters of gunpowder stuff.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 16:20

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

Jesus that quiver owns

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:02

Power Khan: Aug 20, 2011; by Fritz the Horse

Light and heavy cavalry carried bows. One book quoted that it was the Sipahi who resisted the use of firearms the longest for reasons of traditionalism and "it would get their fancy clothes dirty" (lol?)

Early modern turkish armies usually used a Laager in the center of their setup. This is where you find their foot archers. The german sources call this place a "Sultansschanze", which evokes pictures of earthworks, but it's actually a collection of carts bound together with chains and ditches with stakes, artillery pieces enfilading.

Interestingly archery seem to have been the staple of the ottoman navy for quite a long time. Officially, the emphasis on archers was dropped after the battle of Lepanto in favor of firearms, but you still see large quantities of archers by the end of the 17th century.

Ottoman armies of this era were huge and very fast moving. Look at the 2nd siege of Vienna, when they started off and when they reached Vienna. Compare that with the speed of Hegel's armies. The downside was, that they're mostly made up of ragtag dudes. Ottoman commanders said that their men have "sharp eyes and swift feet" - that was a completely ironic statement. They were too well aware that they'd loot everything that wasn't nailed down and run at the first sight of a proper enemy.

I think it was Wallenstein who set out with 30.000 men to counter an advance of an ottoman provincial bigwig with 200.000 men under his command. This force was enough to give the ottoman second thoughts and he turned around and went home without giving battle.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:23

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

There's a reasonable argument that part of the whole thing (or at least a nice side benefit) was to get rid of a bunch of landless professionals who were second/third/eighth sons with no chance to inherit and desires above their station as retainers.

I would say that sounds like one of those just so stories that explains something after the fact, but this problem stayed around for a long time. The Hussites were able to, for example, get a lot of professional soldiers from the landless nobility(Jan Zizka was one of them). I would go so far as to say, for much of the medieval period, landless nobles provided the bulk of the manpower.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:36

Jamwad Hilder: Apr 18, 2007; surfin usa

JaucheCharly posted:

Crossposting:

Extremely bad rear end.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:47

Power Khan: Aug 20, 2011; by Fritz the Horse

Thank you all.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 17:55

Friar John: Aug 3, 2007; Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night
Have my old feet stumbled at graves!

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

There's a reasonable argument that part of the whole thing (or at least a nice side benefit) was to get rid of a bunch of landless professionals who were second/third/eighth sons with no chance to inherit and desires above their station as retainers.

This is definitely not the case, cf. Jonathan Riley-Smith's work on the First Crusaders. The folks he found were doing the crusading were not the landless, because they couldn't afford to make the trip. It was the heads and heirs of large, wealthy families, who sold their lands and various rights off to get the cash necessary to actually transport themselves and their followers to the Holy Land. And not only that, but it was generally the same families who kept sending soldiers East, generation after generation.

The Marxist position that it was landless sons looking to strike it rich is pretty definitively dead, imo.

And that is a pretty awesome quiver, nice job!

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:22

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

http://deremilitari.org/2013/06/the-byzantine-background-to-the-first-crusade/

This is an alternative first crusade take.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:24

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

JaucheCharly posted:

Ottoman armies of this era were huge and very fast moving. Look at the 2nd siege of Vienna, when they started off and when they reached Vienna. Compare that with the speed of Hegel's armies. The downside was, that they're mostly made up of ragtag dudes.

did your guys fortify their camps? what was their baggage like?

quote:

I think it was Wallenstein who set out with 30.000 men to counter an advance of an ottoman provincial bigwig with 200.000 men under his command. This force was enough to give the ottoman second thoughts and he turned around and went home without giving battle.

was that one of his first battles? i know he was at sablat

very cool quiver btw

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:49

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Friar John posted:

This is definitely not the case, cf. Jonathan Riley-Smith's work on the First Crusaders. The folks he found were doing the crusading were not the landless, because they couldn't afford to make the trip. It was the heads and heirs of large, wealthy families, who sold their lands and various rights off to get the cash necessary to actually transport themselves and their followers to the Holy Land. And not only that, but it was generally the same families who kept sending soldiers East, generation after generation.

The Marxist position that it was landless sons looking to strike it rich is pretty definitively dead, imo.

And that is a pretty awesome quiver, nice job!

thanks for the information! it did seem a bit too tidy, post facto.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 18:52

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

HEY GAIL posted:

was that one of his first battles?

Yeah, sometime between 04-06 when he fought for Hungary.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:00

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

What's with this weird trend to dismiss religion or ideological commitment to an idea as a motivating factor?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:00

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

OwlFancier posted:

What's with this weird trend to dismiss religion or ideological commitment to an idea as a motivating factor?

Very short version:

Marxism gave everyone in every social sciences materialism and they decided to turn that in to a hard orthodoxy that nobody does anything for ideological reasons.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:03

bewbies: Sep 23, 2003; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

What's with this weird trend to dismiss religion or ideological commitment to an idea as a motivating factor?

It seems like in my very limited scholarship that this trend has been pretty emphatically reversed which is probably a good thing.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:34

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

Depends on the field but it's definitely declined in history since the 80's.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:36

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

WW2 Data

Part 2 of the US High Explosives Inventory is up. Which explosives are planned for use in the future?! Which one is planned for use in larger General Purpose bombs for its "maximum blast effect"? What is the main disadvantage to Mercury Fulminate? All that and more at the blog!

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:50

Mr Enderby: Mar 28, 2015

Squalid posted:

That quote's implication that HIghland culture was more 'individualistic" than English is making me inordinately mad. Prior to 1715 and even for some time after the fifteen much of the land in the highlands was governed by the custom of duthchas, in which Clans owned territory collectively. Many feuds are also attributable to to the inherent collective tendencies of extended kinship systems. If someone in your clan murders a neighbor, in a legal sense you are equally responsible, even if you had nothing to do with it. Similarly any affront to your Clan is an affront on yourself, and you are expected to behave as such.

It's also a bit rich to talk about Celtic pastoralists and English arable farmers, when those highlanders who ended up in the US would mostly have been tenant farmers who had been evicted by English landlords to make way for sheep.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:54

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Disinterested posted:

Very short version:

Marxism gave everyone in every social sciences materialism and they decided to turn that in to a hard orthodoxy that nobody does anything for ideological reasons.

I feel like there's something funny about an ideological commitment to materialistic historiography but I'm not sure how to articulate it.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 19:56

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

This is made worse by modern cynicism about religion and, to a much lesser extent, politics as something worth fighting and dying for.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 20:59

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I suppose I just can't imagine how you can look at history even as close as like, the cold war, without considering ideology to be a factor. I mean it still goes on today but the latter half of the 20th century is not exactly a million years ago.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 21:02

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

OwlFancier posted:

I suppose I just can't imagine how you can look at history even as close as like, the cold war, without considering ideology to be a factor. I mean it still goes on today but the latter half of the 20th century is not exactly a million years ago.

It's super easy to not think about the cold war overly ideologically actually since it's two competing economic systems.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:08

Hazzard: Mar 16, 2013

OwlFancier posted:

I suppose I just can't imagine how you can look at history even as close as like, the cold war, without considering ideology to be a factor. I mean it still goes on today but the latter half of the 20th century is not exactly a million years ago.

I think it's connected to the modern trend of many people refusing to admit modern terror organisations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda are driven by religion. One of my American friends, who I would consider to the Democrat equivalent of the Tea Party, claims it came from the American Religious Right refusing to admit to being similar to the Islamists.

I think this stems from Nietzsche being right on "God is Dead and we have killed him." Religion gave way to idealogy in the 20th century, in the West and we haven't swung back the other way yet.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:15

the JJ: Mar 31, 2011

Disinterested posted:

Very short version:

Marxism gave everyone in every social sciences materialism and they decided to turn that in to a hard orthodoxy that nobody does anything for ideological reasons.

Thank god some one dug up Gramsci and now there's a way to talk about that in a Marxist framework. A sort of Cultural Marxism if you will. It's a global phenomenon.

I think it's pretty great that the genius for that was Gramsci sitting in a jail cell going "... so what did we miss?"

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:21

Randarkman: Jul 18, 2011

You can't not analyze each and every part of the human experience through the lens of marxist materialism and class struggle. There is no way this will give you a flawed and simplistic view of human history and society.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:33

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Disinterested posted:

It's super easy to not think about the cold war overly ideologically actually since it's two competing economic systems.

Both heavily driven by ideology, however?

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:36

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# ? May 26, 2024 18:48

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

Hazzard posted:

I think this stems from Nietzsche being right on "God is Dead and we have killed him." Religion gave way to idealogy in the 20th century, in the West and we haven't swung back the other way yet.

I'm not sure this holds up in the specific case of Cold War America tbh.

# ? Aug 21, 2017 22:51

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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