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HookedOnChthonics posted:close, but wrong order—charles martel got the carolignians into power, then his son pepin the short was the castellan who and then the next thing you a know a certain Hugues Capet is lying to the pope about crusading expeditions and holy gently caress, I guess this is France now
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Mar 7, 2021 02:07
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'd the merovignians, then his son was charlemagne, who was the first carolignian to inherit the throne
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Friar John posted:To add to this, even in the Nara and Heian periods, actual control of the machinery of government was held by the Senior Ministers. The Emperor spent most of his time engaging in various rituals - sutra readings, races, shrine and temple visits - meant to ensure the safety of the realm. That was the sine qua non of his rule - if he didn't do those things, he wasn't ruling Japan properly. He didn't really have the time to make sure his officials were doing what he wanted to do, and many of these Emperors' entire reigns were in their childhood and teenage years. Even when the Imperial Court had its burst of energetic leadership, it was the era of *retired* Emperors who, after doing their job in the ritual seat, then took over the machinery of government on behalf of their heirs.
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Mar 7, 2021 02:28
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think France wound up in a similar situation through the seventh century where the mayors of the palace became the power behind the throne despite not being kings. Charlemagne conquered Italy to get the pope to say it was okay for him to take the crown. It’s before Charlemagne. Pepin I, Charlemagne’s father, mayor of the palace and dux Francorum, sent a pleasant letter to the pope asking if it was really a good thing that someone called the king of the Franks had no real power. The pope saw an opportunity to win a powerful ally and replied that it wasn’t. Therefore Pepin packed the king off to a monastery and replaced him, knowing the pope would commit to it. Charlemagne’s Italian conquest was what happened when a later pope called in this debt when the Lombards gave him trouble.
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Mar 7, 2021 02:57
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HookedOnChthonics posted:then his son louis the pious has just an absolutely insane reign. truly one of the greats, from a standpoint of ruling, especially in the succession-issue area Who? I know the first 3, but whose this guy? Please go into some detail.
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Mar 7, 2021 03:14
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 first of all, louis the pious's appellation is not a meaningless or ironic nickname. he was deeply, deeply into christianity (which at that time was both totally alien to anything wed recognize today and also not yet the sole undisputed owner of europe). several times during his reign he made some seriously bad decisions for spiritual reasons. so louis the pious inherits a fairly freshly and strongly consolidated territory from big chuck, who has also stopped the former merovignian practice of itinerant kingship in favor of a capital at aachen and a nascent imperial bureaucracy to help tax up some support for his military activities. the inheritance laws stipulate that everything is divided up evenly between the inheriting children, who are crowned as subordinate kings of italy/francia/whatever under charlemagne. but charlemagne ends up predeceased by all his other inheriting sons so louis gets the whole thing. one day, he's hanging out at the castle in aachen getting ready to go hunting, and a colonnade collapses and takes out some of the hunting party, nearly missing him. he becomes very mortality-focused though and sits down to figure out his own succession (a word about carolignian christianity here: it retained the early-christian death fixation very strongly; religious life was a lot about using your very brief and inevitably lovely time on failing, awful, decrepit planet earth to successfully negotiate your entry to the next and ensure that people would be praying for you after). he sits down to draw up a succession plan about how things will be split between his sons. this is a very complex, contentious, and legalistic process that goes somewhat poorly and causes his nephew, who charlemagne had made a subordinate king of italy, to revolt. louis puts this down fairly easily, offs nephew, then feels incredible religious guilt and does public penance, voluntarily doing that one scene from game of thrones to himself in a way that the frankish conception of power and authority didn't really gel with then his wife dies and he marries again and everything goes to poo poo. one of the best primary source documents i got shown in the course of studying this stuff was a letter from one of his courtiers complaining that louis used to be a good king, very christian, but now only spends his time banging his hotwife and making people swear contradictory oaths instead of doing the reconquista like he was supposed to, lol. they have another kid and all of a sudden that big contentious succession plan is thrown to the wind again, and the other sons argue that the hotwife is clouding his judgement and making him unduly preference that son, so they all decide to go to war. here's where the life of louis the pious basically turns into a keystone kops routine. he attempts to challenge his sons but is outnumbered and captured. then the entire party runs right into an even bigger loyalist force and he is freed and the sons humbled. he basically says no harm no foul though, and thus ends civil war 1. so a couple of years go by and the sons are stirring poo poo again. louis is kind of over it and the inciting incident this time around actually seems to be around one son coming to visit the capital and getting given lovely guest accommodations. war is in the air and louis tries to avert things by promising increasingly larger shares of the empire to the other sons to not rebel, but they don't bite. this time around the sentiment is mostly against louis for how poorly his son-having has gone and on basically the eve of battle his entire army deserts (he tells the last few loyalists to leave too and spare themselves in a world-historical display of imperial sad-sacking). this event gives the location the fairly over-bombastic name the field of lies to this day so the sons nab louis and this time he has to do that one game of thrones scene completely involuntarily. they tonsure him and basically intend to totally mark him as disqualified for rulership, but it doesn't stick. over the next two years various hilarious and petty misfortune befalls all the major players behind the rebellion while louis quietly re-consolidates power and eventually just holds a big religious convention to re-crown himself and annul the previous penitence. he continues to rule over a contentious and unsettled powderkeg of a succession question with a huge and unrepentant bias for his one kid with Judith vs the 3 from the previous marraige, managing to fit in one final civil war on the issue when a bunch of nobles basically try to call foul on giving *all* the land to the kid, supporting one of the other sons instead. The warring also picks up in intensity once he dies, with the sons going at each other until they finally settle into stable seperate territories of west, middle, and east francia and that's why france and germany are different countries now! HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Mar 7, 2021 |
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Mar 7, 2021 03:20
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Mar 7, 2021 03:53
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Didn't Athens go out of its way to ally with democracies and pressure their allies into going democratic? Wasn't the proximate cause of the Peloponessian war Athens sailing to defend a fledgling democracy? They just wanted them to give all their money to Athens. Democratically.
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Mar 7, 2021 04:12
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cheetah7071 posted:Wasn't the proximate cause of the Peloponessian war Athens sailing to defend a fledgling democracy? The proximate cause was the Megaran Decrees, a bunch of trade sanctions placed on Megara for a few main reasons....accusations that the Megarans trespassed in a sacred grove, the murder of an Athenian emissary, and Megara harboring escaped Athenian slaves. Megara, which was a Spartan ally, complained to Sparta about it, and Sparta declared war. (That was just the last of a bunch of issues between the two)
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Mar 7, 2021 05:25
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Athens very frequently overthrew oligarchic governments that were rebelling or looking to rebel in the Delian League and replaced them with pro-Athenian democratic governments. After Samos rebelled in 440, the oligarchs of the city were thrown out and replaced with a democratic government that was pro-Athenian.
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Mar 7, 2021 05:57
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cheetah7071 posted:Wasn't the proximate cause of the Peloponessian war Athens sailing to defend a fledgling democracy? I'm not sure what you are referring to. In addition to the Megaran decree, the other two proximate causes for the Peloponnesian war would be the battle of Sybota and the siege of Potidaea. The battle of Sybota occured after Athens agreed to an alliance with Corcyra, a polis based on the island of Corfu in the Ionian sea. Corcyra was at war with Corinth at the time over control of the city of Epidamnus, which was a colony city that could trace its origins back to both Corcyra and Corinth. To my knowledge, no source attests to Corcyra being democratic, but you may be thinking of the government of Epidamnus. The war between Corinth and Corcyra started when a popular and possibly democratic revolution occurred in Epidamnus, throwing out the ruling oligarchs of the city. The now exiled oligarchs allied with some Illyrian tribes in the area to raid and attack Epidamnus, hoping to restore themselves to power. The new government of Epidamnus appealed to Corcyra for aid, but was refused. They then asked Corinth for aid, and they received it. This led to a war between Corinth and Corcyra, with Corcyra aiding the exiled oligarchs, and Corinth aiding the new government. Athens ultimatley comes in on the side of the Corcyrans, so in this sense they are actually backing the oligarchs of Epidamnus, although they were not motivated by concern for Epidamnus. After initial Corcyran victories, the Corcyrans became concerned that Corinth was going to overwhelm them with its ability to call on allies for aid and resources. Corcyra then reaches out to Athens, the biggest naval power in Greece, for aid. Corinth tells Athens not to help Corcyra, as this would upset the fragile balance of power in Greece and violate the treaty that Athens, Corinth, and Sparta had signed 12 years prior, ending their previous bout of war. Athens ignores Corinthian warnings, enticed by the offer of allying with the powerful Corcyran fleet, and agrees to aid Corcyra in its defense against Corinth. In the ensuing battle of Sybota, Athenian ships join Corcyran ships in fighting the Corinthian fleet that was sailing towards Corcyra. The Corcyran fleet suffers terrible losses, but with the arrival of additional Athenian reinforcements, the Corinthians flee. Athens claims they have not violated the treaty, since they were acting only in defense in an ally, which was explicitly permitted in the treaty. They let the Corinthian fleet withdraw without pursuing it, and Corinth's war with Corcyra ends. However, Corinth is outraged at Athens, and believes that Athens's intervention in the war with Corcyra was a violation of their rights under the treaty to punish their own allies, because Corcyra was itself originally founded as a colony of Corinth. Shortly after this battle, Athens becomes very suspicious of the city of Potidaea, a member of the Delian League located near Macedonia. Potidaea was a colony of Corinth, and maintained close relations with the mother city. Potidaea had Corinthian magistrates that helped run the city, and lots of Corinthians lived in Potidaea. I am not aware of any details of the government of Potidaea, but we can reasonably assume that Potidaea was also not a democracy, since they received Corinthian magistrates and Corinth itself was not a democracy. Believing Corinth and the Macedonian King to be plotting to foment revolt in Potidaea, Athens demanded that Potidaea expel Corinthian magistrates, tear down their walls, and send hostages to Athens. Potidaea refused to do so, and reached out to Sparta and Corinth for support. A small Corinthian army travels to Potidaea to aid the Potidaeans, and Athens lays siege to the city. Both Athens and Corinth accuse the other of violating the treaty, Athens arguing that as a Delian League member, Potidaea was theirs to deal with as they saw fit. Corinth argued that Potidaea was their colony giving them rights to it, and that the city had large numbers of Corinthian and Peloponnesian citizens trapped by the siege. War doesn't break out immediately after these two events, but not that long after the siege begins, when the war conference of Sparta and her allies is called, the Corinthians loudly call for war, saying that Athens has been violating the treaty and trampling on Corinth's rights. However, at no point in here is Athens defending a fledging democracy. There may have been other events going on I am not including, but I don't think there were any other major proximate causes to the Peloponnesian War that would involve Athens defending a fledgling democracy.
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Mar 7, 2021 06:45
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I think I was misremembering the Corcyra stuff. It's been a while and all the details got mixed up in my head.
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Mar 7, 2021 06:49
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cheetah7071 posted:I think I was misremembering the Corcyra stuff. It's been a while and all the details got mixed up in my head. That makes sense. There may have been a fledging democracy involved there, although I don't think its actually explicitly stated in any source. All Thucydides says occurred is "the expulsion of those in power by The People (demos)," which could mean they set up a democracy, or it might mean they set up with a new set of better-liked oligarchs, or even a tyrant, although if they had a tyrant Thucydides probably would have mentioned it. Regardless, Athens was on the other side, so it doesn't matter that much for the question.
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Mar 7, 2021 06:55
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Man, file the serial numbers off the Louis the Pouis saga and sell that poo poo to netflix / hbo / amazon, that is amazing.
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Mar 7, 2021 16:45
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HookedOnChthonics posted:
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Mar 7, 2021 21:19
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The problem with Louis the Pious is that it looks so good written down, you want the words to sound the same, but they just don't.
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Mar 7, 2021 21:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:The problem with Louis the Pious is that it looks so good written down, you want the words to sound the same, but they just don't. his real name is Louis le Pieux anyway, not the same but a good rear end flow
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Mar 7, 2021 21:57
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Beamed posted:I love this post. The Carolingian attempts at turning a bunch of hyper Germanic warlord states into a centralized, Christian, bureaucratic empire is fascinating stuff, as much for the failures as the successes. The culmination of Otto III moving the capitol to Rome and immediately dying too is just Haha what he immediately died?
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Mar 7, 2021 22:27
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:his real name is Louis le Pieux anyway, not the same but a good rear end flow My non-French brain really wants to pronounce that like Pepé le Pew.
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Mar 7, 2021 22:39
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Omnomnomnivore posted:My non-French brain really wants to pronounce that like Pepé le Pew. Good news, that’s pretty much correct
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Mar 7, 2021 22:44
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CommissarMega posted:I remember reading in this thread that the ancient Assyrians were massive assholes, but looking back through a bazillion pages for Assyrian stuff seems to be a job for actual archaeologists. Could I have the CliffNotes on their history, or at least a few YouTube videos I can listen to while I play Civ? There were three different Assyrian empires, some worse than the other. From my memories: -The Assyrian kings were constantly boasting about how many people they butchered, even more so than other contemporary civilizations. -For the longest time, Assyrians had the reputation of being undefeated on the battlefield, mostly by actually training soldiers. (The oldest Assyrian empire overlaps with a weird time in Human history where most "battles" were basically either nobles dueling each other, or effortlessly mowing down hapless peasants. If a side brought more nobles and their guards, they tended to win by default. Seriously, some of the earliest armies were armed primarily with bows. At the same time, there were gruesome punishments for non-nobles using bows, so in wartime the amount of people who could actually use their weapons was very low.) -If you compare Assyrian laws to other contemporary laws, they seem even more harsh, which is quite an achievement considering e.g. Babylonian laws contained stuff like "if you break into this house, you will be killed and buried below the entrance" -The story of how the Assyrians dealt with Tyre, during a time when Tyre was the most important city of the Mediterranean: When they asked for stupendous amounts of tribute, Tyre surprised the Assyrians by actually giving them what they wanted. But as time went on, the Assyrians made more and more obviously unreasonable demands, forcing Tyre to essentially impoverish itself to prevent war. When it became to much, Tyre rebelled and it turned out it was all a hosed-up long-term plan as the Assyrians crushed them with ease and razed Tyre to the ground. From that point on, Tyre was only a shadow of its former self and the Phoenician civilization entered a long period of decline. For the more, I recommend Wikipedia. Or Hans Nissen's "Geschichte Alt-Vorderasiens", though that book is very dry to read and also not available in English. I recommend learning German, too. Random googling also revealed this new book from 2021, that may also be worth a dime or two.
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Mar 7, 2021 22:59
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Friar John posted:
Emperor Komei being assassinated was actually a very popular conspiracy theory among Korean nationalists in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the man who killed Ito Hirobumi claimed that one of Hirobumi's crimes was assassinating the emperor and to help an imperialist government take over and then invade Korea. I'm not saying it was an internally consistent idea but the conspiracy that the radical shishi unleashed a plague of smallpox on Kyoto to kill/cover up their killing of Emperor Komei shows up in the weirdest places.
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Mar 7, 2021 23:11
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The Assyrians are also antagonists in the bible so a lot of their reputation comes from that.
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Mar 7, 2021 23:37
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Cyrus was an ally in the bible as well and look how western culture treats his boy Xerxes.
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Mar 7, 2021 23:46
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Phobophilia posted:Cyrus was an ally in the bible as well and look how western culture treats his boy Xerxes. As a jew I must insist you blame the greeks for that, not us
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Mar 7, 2021 23:58
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Libluini posted:There were three different Assyrian empires, some worse than the other. butchering is a bit of an understatement, they were very inventive with their tortures and very vocal about how they'd kill you by peeling off your skin, then hang the bloody strips from their city walls
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Mar 8, 2021 00:37
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Tunicate posted:butchering is a bit of an understatement, they were very inventive with their tortures and very vocal about how they'd kill you by peeling off your skin, then hang the bloody strips from their city walls They also were into making pillars of skulls outside city gates and apparently the royal palace involved walking through a gallery of the flayed skins of enemies in order to see the king. The Assyrians didn't gently caress around.
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Mar 8, 2021 01:34
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The best part about the Assyrians is how they kept precise records about exactly how many people they killed, how many skins were flayed, and how much plunder they took from the people being flayed and killed.
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Mar 8, 2021 01:39
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the hallway of flayed skin must have smelled awful
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Mar 8, 2021 01:41
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cheetah7071 posted:the hallway of flayed skin must have smelled awful "It smells like... Victory!"
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Mar 8, 2021 01:49
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I'm no expert but the impression I get is that "awful" was the default smell of ancient cities.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:27
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Did they just have raw unprocessed skin rotting on the walls? I'd imagine tanning it would be more practical and hygienic even if it's a bit more labor and time intensive
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Mar 8, 2021 02:29
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I'm sure it was taxidermied, not just fresh dripping skin. You want it to keep, after all.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:31
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FreudianSlippers posted:I'd imagine tanning it would be more practical and hygienic Tanning is super duper gross. Brain, liver, fat, salt rubbing gross. Modern tanning is even grosser. “Wet Salted Hides” are shipped internationally by vessel unrefrigerated. The 40’ containers leak rotting salted blood.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:37
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm sure it was taxidermied, not just fresh dripping skin. You want it to keep, after all. Eh, there was plenty more where that came from.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:40
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Deteriorata posted:Eh, there was plenty more where that came from. You go through all the trouble to kill and flay one specific enemy ruler who was pissing you off, you can't just replace that.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:42
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Grand Fromage posted:You go through all the trouble to kill and flay one specific enemy ruler who was pissing you off, you can't just replace that. Assyrians were really good at getting rulers to pss them off.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:45
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Tanning is super duper gross. Brain, liver, fat, salt rubbing gross. There are different tanning methods and not all involve the use of organs but all do involve general skin processing like removing the fat and excess poo poo.
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Mar 8, 2021 03:17
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They’re basically all super gross though.
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Mar 8, 2021 03:52
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Bar Ran Dun posted:They’re basically all super gross though. I guess? I mean it's processing skins so there's some inherent fleshy grossness I guess but for vegetative tanning you basically toss it in a pit or barrel and gently caress off for a bit.
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Mar 8, 2021 03:58
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Tanning is super duper gross. Brain, liver, fat, salt rubbing gross. Sure, but the poors get to do it in the stank part of town, so the palace can smell of rushes or incense or whatever the gently caress
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Mar 8, 2021 04:10
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