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Kassad posted:Yup, it says: Kaşık = spoon. Bir kaşık yok. Zopotantor has a new favorite as of 19:02 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 19:00
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| # ? May 28, 2024 11:12 |
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That french is just saying he's a captain within the janissaries, not the head guy of all of them. Basically what Kevin said. (Rank) des (whatever) is the french equivalent of calling someone an infantry captain or a cavalry sergeant. The leader of the entire corps was apparently called the ağa, which means literally means uncle or elder brother but in languages like ottoman turkish, crimean tatar, etc is more like just sir. Reminds me of how modern indians and pakistanis will use "uncle" and "auntie" for people that aren't literally that to them.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:31
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Kassad posted:
Yeah, that worked out great for the romans
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Mar 24, 2020 20:35
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And an Aga is also a fancy-pants gas stove in the UK. It's all connected! Or maybe I need to go for a walk.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:35
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To be fair it would have worked out for the Romans if they would have integrated them instead of doing the absolute stupidest thing possible at every opportunity
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Mar 24, 2020 20:46
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The Mamelukes were also foreigners because the egyptians sultans thought that that would make them more loyal. And that didn't turn out great for the sultans.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:58
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It works for a while but it’s a stopgap that always ends up becoming permanent. Same thing happened to the Arabs with the Turks. Eventually the new group who does the heavy lifting wants to have a voice in the decisions being made. You either let them have that voice or they take it by force
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Mar 24, 2020 21:01
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While it's useful to have people who don't have local loyalties people tend to refuse to give up their original loyalties, especially once the paychecks stop coming. This was a massive problem for the Roman Empire when it started falling apart; it turned out the foreigners that got recruited into the legion could get a better deal out of joining the incoming raiders and pillaging the land they were supposed to be defending so guess what they did. This was especially true if they paychecks started coming late. There was also the issue that taxes got so high on a lot of the areas outside of Rome that people just plain abandoned their towns as it was impossible for them to pay their taxes and simultaneously not starve to death. That led to fewer Roman soldiers and more foreign recruits who may or may not just switch sides to the invaders because, well, those are my guys anyway. This also led to a situation where the people started just telling the invaders that they were in charge now because lol gently caress Rome in a lot of areas. Life didn't meaningfully change for much of the peasantry at that point regardless of if it was a Roman or a Goth in charge so they just went with whoever had the lower taxes, which would frequently be the invaders.
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Mar 24, 2020 21:40
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It seemed like it worked for the Byzantines for a while because they specifically recruited people from far away who didn't have any stake in local politics besides getting paid, and the Emperor was presumably the highest paycheck, and they were also regularly rotated. I've heard there was a tradition where a Merovingian Guard who'd completed their duty could take as much gold as they could physically carry out of the treasury. Some countries do more or less the opposite with the inner circle being made up of a minority group that the leader is a member of or sympathetic to.
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Mar 26, 2020 10:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I've heard there was a tradition where a Merovingian Guard who'd completed their duty could take as much gold as they could physically carry out of the treasury. Harald Hardråde (Harald the Hard Ruler) did the same thing when he was a member of varangian guard and completed his duty. Of course, he poked out the emperor's eyes first.
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Mar 26, 2020 11:15
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Alhazred posted:Harald Hardråde (Harald the Hard Ruler) did the same thing when he was a member of varangian guard and completed his duty. Of course, he poked out the emperor's eyes first. You have to do that so you can stash all the gold in the eyes and then walk out unencumbered.
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Mar 26, 2020 11:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It seemed like it worked for the Byzantines for a while because they specifically recruited people from far away who didn't have any stake in local politics besides getting paid, and the Emperor was presumably the highest paycheck, and they were also regularly rotated. I've heard there was a tradition where a Merovingian Guard who'd completed their duty could take as much gold as they could physically carry out of the treasury. I mean the bulk of the Byzantine army was either local or traditional mercenaries. They didn’t have anything approaching the mamaluks or even the federated troops
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Mar 26, 2020 14:26
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean the bulk of the Byzantine army was either local or traditional mercenaries. IIRC this kind of bit them in the butt in the long run, but there's a reason Byzantine is a byword for overcomplicated to the point of nonfunctional. Not sure how much of that was propaganda, but then again, we've certainly seen plenty of modern equivalents.
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Mar 26, 2020 16:01
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Alhazred posted:Harald Hardråde (Harald the Hard Ruler) did the same thing when he was a member of varangian guard and completed his duty. Of course, he poked out the emperor's eyes first. "Alright, take your gold but remember: ONE armful. I got my eyes on you."
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Mar 26, 2020 19:19
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Ghost Leviathan posted:But there's a reason Byzantine is a byword for overcomplicated to the point of nonfunctional. Turns out civilization is incomprehensible to a pack of violent barbarians who jam their unwashed hands into communal food dishes because they're baffled by forks.
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Mar 26, 2020 19:40
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One king that definitely needed a personal guard was king Zog of Albania. He became king in 1928 and by the end of his reign he had survived 600 bloodfeuds and 55 assassination attempts. At one point he even drew out his own gun and fired back at his would-be assassins.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:21
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Byzantine posted:Turns out civilization is incomprehensible to a pack of violent barbarians who jam their unwashed hands into communal food dishes because they're baffled by forks. But enough about americans and their disgusting love of Golden Corral
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Mar 26, 2020 20:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:IIRC this kind of bit them in the butt in the long run, but there's a reason Byzantine is a byword for overcomplicated to the point of nonfunctional. Not sure how much of that was propaganda, but then again, we've certainly seen plenty of modern equivalents. Rome was extremely organized and the Byzantines followed suit. They were just...uh...more Byzantine about it.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:27
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Byzantium survived for centuries and had to reform their entire structure multiple times. The fact some systems overlapped and caused confusion isn’t to shocking
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Mar 26, 2020 20:31
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Rome was extremely organized and the Byzantines followed suit. They were just...uh...more Byzantine about it. There was no Byzantine Empire. It was the Roman Empire.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:43
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Alhazred posted:Harald Hardråde (Harald the Hard Ruler) did the same thing when he was a member of varangian guard and completed his duty. Of course, he poked out the emperor's eyes first. So that's where skyrim got the idea
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Mar 26, 2020 20:45
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ChubbyChecker posted:There was no Byzantine Empire. It was the Roman Empire. They called themselves that, but they're pretty clearly distinct from what most of us these days think of as Romans.
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Mar 26, 2020 21:06
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:They called themselves that, but they're pretty clearly distinct from what most of us these days think of as Romans. but they werent.
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Mar 26, 2020 21:17
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The Byzantine distinction was made up from pissy Germans It’s only still around because historians like to break history into periods but if you look at it as a whole it’s kind of an arbitrary cut off
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Mar 26, 2020 21:28
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Alhazred posted:One king that definitely needed a personal guard was king Zog of Albania. He became king in 1928 and by the end of his reign he had survived 600 bloodfeuds and 55 assassination attempts. At one point he even drew out his own gun and fired back at his would-be assassins. I'm still amazed that "King Zog" was the name of a person who existed in real life and not in, like, a low-budget fantasy movie from the '80s.
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Mar 27, 2020 00:14
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Alhazred posted:One king that definitely needed a personal guard was king Zog of Albania. He became king in 1928 and by the end of his reign he had survived 600 bloodfeuds and 55 assassination attempts. At one point he even drew out his own gun and fired back at his would-be assassins. Sounds like he got along fine without a personal guard. 
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Mar 27, 2020 01:25
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Blues Hammer posted:I'm still amazed that "King Zog" was the name of a person who existed in real life and not in, like, a low-budget fantasy movie from the '80s. King Zog: 
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Mar 27, 2020 07:32
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Angry Salami posted:Sounds like he got along fine without a personal guard. He actually failed to shoot any of them. Part of Zog's success at surviving was that he recruited guards from his own tribe that had 400 years of history with Zog’s family.
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Mar 27, 2020 11:06
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During the 70s and 80s, the GCP (German Communist Party) - a strict Marxist-Leninist group in West clandestinely led by East German intelligence - was active even in the most unlikely spots, one of those being the village of Reichertshofen in south -eastern Bavaria, i.e. one of the most conservative and Catholic places in the entire country. In the early 70s, they even convinced many local farmers to take part in a tour to East German farming collectives so that they could see first-hand how socialism was the better alternative. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work out - at the state parliament election in 1974, the party got only ten votes in Reichertsheim, two of those coming from elderly ladies who afterwards proudly stated that they had voted for the "German Catholic Party" 
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Apr 20, 2020 19:27
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System Metternich posted:During the 70s and 80s, the GCP (German Communist Party) - a strict Marxist-Leninist group in West clandestinely led by East German intelligence - was active even in the most unlikely spots, one of those being the village of Reichertshofen in south -eastern Bavaria, i.e. one of the most conservative and Catholic places in the entire country. In the early 70s, they even convinced many local farmers to take part in a tour to East German farming collectives so that they could see first-hand how socialism was the better alternative. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work out - at the state parliament election in 1974, the party got only ten votes in Reichertsheim, two of those coming from elderly ladies who afterwards proudly stated that they had voted for the "German Catholic Party" I heard this as the old lady saying they voted for the "communion" party.
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Apr 21, 2020 16:26
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https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/1252963563674783744?s=21
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Apr 22, 2020 17:13
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In Soviet Russia, you disappear... Stalin?
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Apr 22, 2020 17:37
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Trabant posted:In Soviet Russia, you disappear... Stalin? He/the party was very keen on keeping his image in a certain way. In this case I guess it was that you can't project the image of wise strong and kind father soviet if you look like a young secretary extra not worthy of being mentioned by name in the credits. I think he also had pockmarks from that was removed from all public images of him.
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Apr 23, 2020 16:19
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I don't know the full story here, but Stalin died in '58 and his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, was notable for his policy of de-emphasizing Stalin's influence on the Soviet government. I'd bet he ordered whoever was in charge of reissuing the film to remove as much of Stalin as possible from it.
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Apr 23, 2020 16:36
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Yeah, that's not a case of Stalin ordering his own younger self to be hidden but Krushchev trying to erase all memories of his predecessor. Stalin died in 1953 and not in 1958, btw
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Apr 23, 2020 17:14
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System Metternich posted:Yeah, that's not a case of Stalin ordering his own younger self to be hidden but Krushchev trying to erase all memories of his predecessor. Stalin died in 1953 and not in 1958, btw
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Apr 23, 2020 18:06
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Imagine being the actor playing Stalin and seeing that version. According to wikipedia since the film was made during Stalin's reign he was portrayed in the film as having been a much more prominent figure in the revolution than he actually was. FreudianSlippers has a new favorite as of 02:45 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 02:42
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I've been trying to do a little personal genealogical research but my surname, as rare and strange as it is in Canada, is quite common in Eastern Europe. I was able to narrow my family history to (and I'm being precise here) some sort of Slavic, probably Czech. So I did what anyone would do and research the history of that area and man, let me tell you guys about Samo.  Samo In the 600s, the Slavs were a loosely organized nation, suffering from attacks by the Huns as civilizations did back then. A Frankish merchant named Samo made his way to the Slavic area and decided to help them fight off the invaders who were basically like the mafia, providing "protection." Chronicle of Fredegar, Book IV, Section 48, written circa 642 posted:Each year, the Huns [Avars] came to the Slavs, to spend the winter with them; then they took the wives and daughters of the Slavs and slept with them, and among the other mistreatments [already mentioned] the Slavs were also forced to pay levies to the Huns. But the sons of the Huns, who were [then] raised with the wives and daughters of these Wends [Slavs] could not finally endure this oppression anymore and refused obedience to the Huns and began, as already mentioned, a rebellion. When now the Wendish army went against the Huns, the [aforementioned] merchant Samo accompanied the same. And so the Samo’s bravery proved itself in wonderful ways and a huge mass of Huns fell to the sword of the Wends. Samo, the Frankish merchant, became the first king of the Slavs by popular vote. Yes, you read that right. He was voted as king. In the thirty five years that Samo reigned, he defeated many invading forces including that of his own Frankish Royal Army led by Dagobert I, mainly in the Battle of Wogastisburg. To this day, no one knows where this city was, or if it even was a city at all. Samo sired many children, but for some reason none of his sons took his title as king, and the Wends went back to being a loosely organized nation. That's all fine and good right? A foreign merchant being elected as king and totally dominating any invader while getting laid by at least 12 different women? It gets better. Legend has it that when the Czech Republic is about to be destroyed, the statue of Samo in Prague will come to life and once again lead his army to victory.  That is Venceslav Cerný's painting of the army, which still sleeps under Mount Blaník, being led to battle by Samo himself. And then there's King Wenceslaus I. Yes, THAT King Wenceslaus. But he's a topic for a future post.
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Apr 24, 2020 11:56
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Interesting stuff, there’s an obvious parallel to the legends of King Arthur in Samo, a ‘sleeping’ king who’ll rise again when their country is in need to defeat its enemies.
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Apr 24, 2020 12:02
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I've never heard about Samo being the leader of the knights waiting in Blaník. It's always St. Wenceslaus, on account of being the patron saint of Bohemia. The painting you attached is also of St. Wenceslaus.
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Apr 24, 2020 12:32
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