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Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

Hey just want to say thanks for answering my questions and the others, this has been a really great thread and you really know your poo poo!

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ScottP
Jul 22, 2008
Excellent thread already, thanks!

What sort of lifestyle would the average member of a mercenary troop in the early medieval era (let's say pre-1100) have? Was it common to be a professional, "full-time" mercenary, always under some lord's contract, or did mercenary bands often have to resort to brigandage?

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
To expound on a couple things about the so-called Dark Ages, it's actually incredible how non-innovative the Roman world was. I mean there were some pretty impressive engineering achievements, but the Romans were basically cribbing things off the Greeks and improving their deployment, and peoples' accesses. They weren't actually inventing new things wholesale. In fact, it's not entirely unfair to view a significant portion of the Roman period as relatively stagnant in terms of technological development. In some sense, the "Dark Ages" were actually significantly more inventive, although access to technology and information was definitely curtailed compared to Rome.

Apollodorus
Feb 13, 2010

TEST YOUR MIGHT
:patriot:
What's the name for those big centre-grip shields with the spiky ends from the Talhoffer fechtbuch?

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Railtus posted:

Others, like cartwheels in armour, are easy. Overall I suspect those exact feats were not uniformly expected (I doubt the training knights received was regulated enough for that), just that these feats were examples of how a knight or squire should train.

They are.

I can barely do a cartwheel normally, but a cartwheel in a properly fitted and strapped mail shirt presented no extra problems beyond "it's heavy, so it's harder". I did smash the hell out of my chin trying to somersault in a coat-of-plates, but that had far more to do with the armour being poorly made (since I made it out of mild steel and canvas) and riding up than it did with "you can't do this in armour".

It's pretty easy to dispel myths about the heaviness and clumsiness of armour by simply putting some on and trying to do stuff.

I have a mail shirt from my reenactment days. It's made out of thicker than historical rings because those were what I had. It weighs just under 19kg, or about 42lbs. It turns out I can swim in it. Not very far, and probably not with the padding, but I won 50 bucks off a friend who said there's no way whatsoever it could ever be done by anyone.

And I'm an unfit fat gently caress. If you trained in this stuff every day, I don't imagine marching, running, climbing, etc, would present you any problems at all.

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

Earwicker posted:

Hey just want to say thanks for answering my questions and the others, this has been a really great thread and you really know your poo poo!

You are welcome! Thank you for the kind words.

ScottP posted:

Excellent thread already, thanks!

What sort of lifestyle would the average member of a mercenary troop in the early medieval era (let's say pre-1100) have? Was it common to be a professional, "full-time" mercenary, always under some lord's contract, or did mercenary bands often have to resort to brigandage?

Glad you enjoy it!

Most information I have on mercenaries is towards the later period, because the growth of urban centres meant more and more warriors were independent the rustic feudal economy. The condottori of Italy grew out of the 1200s and became big around 1400, the landsknecht were from around 1490, the Swiss Reislaufer emerged from around 1300, etc.

Earlier than that, mercenaries only show up occasionally. Norse and Saxon peoples (including King Harald Hadrada) tended to travel all the way to Constantinople to serve in the Varangian Guard, which hints to me that the opportunities for mercenary service in North and West Europe were probably not that reliable. If you entered under some lord’s contract, you were expected to stay on as his household warrior more or less indefinitely.

From what I can tell, formally recognised mercenary companies were rare, although centralised authority was so weak in places that lords might sell military support to foreign powers. So a mercenary might be a lord’s warrior or a bandit, but whichever he was, he was that thing first and a mercenary second.


KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

To expound on a couple things about the so-called Dark Ages, it's actually incredible how non-innovative the Roman world was. I mean there were some pretty impressive engineering achievements, but the Romans were basically cribbing things off the Greeks and improving their deployment, and peoples' accesses. They weren't actually inventing new things wholesale. In fact, it's not entirely unfair to view a significant portion of the Roman period as relatively stagnant in terms of technological development. In some sense, the "Dark Ages" were actually significantly more inventive, although access to technology and information was definitely curtailed compared to Rome.

The Romans cribbed off everybody. Mail was copied from the Celts. The favoured form of steel was Noric steel from Austria. I think the gladius hispaniensis was originally Spanish, and the pilum was based on the soliferrum.

Apollodorus posted:

What's the name for those big centre-grip shields with the spiky ends from the Talhoffer fechtbuch?

The only name I have found for them is duelling shields, or judicial duelling shields. The idea behind them was to be as strange and unconventional a weapon as possible. That way, a duel is a “fair fight” because neither combatant is expected to be skilled with that particular weapon.

AlphaDog posted:

I have a mail shirt from my reenactment days. It's made out of thicker than historical rings because those were what I had. It weighs just under 19kg, or about 42lbs. It turns out I can swim in it. Not very far, and probably not with the padding, but I won 50 bucks off a friend who said there's no way whatsoever it could ever be done by anyone.

Is your mail butted or riveted? I notice modern mail tends to be heavier, probably because with butted mail it needs thicker wire to hold its shape and structure.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

What are your thoughts on how average people constructed national/tribal/ethnic identities in this time? I understand that in general "nations" as we know them today did not really exist and it was instead a system of land belonging to various lords who swore fealty to nobility and royalty, but I'm wondering more how people thought of themselves. Did people typically think of themselves as Saxons and Jutes for example or are these tribal identities something that modern historians use to talk about these times, and maybe the people just thought of themselves as living on Lord So-and-So's land? It seems like a time when a lot of these things were sort of in flux

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

Earwicker posted:

What are your thoughts on how average people constructed national/tribal/ethnic identities in this time? I understand that in general "nations" as we know them today did not really exist and it was instead a system of land belonging to various lords who swore fealty to nobility and royalty, but I'm wondering more how people thought of themselves. Did people typically think of themselves as Saxons and Jutes for example or are these tribal identities something that modern historians use to talk about these times, and maybe the people just thought of themselves as living on Lord So-and-So's land? It seems like a time when a lot of these things were sort of in flux

All of the above.

In England, a Norman/Saxon divide existed up until the Hundred Years War, when a concept of "Englishman" was created to raise support among the French... despite the fact the English crown was fighting the war on the grounds that they were the rightful heirs to the French throne. However, that the English people bought the notion of "Englishman" tells me that maybe Norman/Saxon tension was already on the way out by this point.

In Spain, people thought of themselves as not-Moors & Moors, since the Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal) was ruled by African Muslims between 700 & 1000 AD. During the Reconquista, religious identities were the most important, which was probably why Spain became such hardcore Catholics - I sometimes joke that Spain was the most Catholic place in Europe, followed by the Vatican. That said, Spain also developed a concept of racism around 1350-1400, since a lot of Moors who "converted" to Christianity to avoid discrimination remained Muslim in secret, and soon dark skin became a mark of Muslim sympathies.

In Germany, people were very divided. To some extent there was a sense of being Bavarian or Franconian etc, but they seemed to organise themselves more into Leagues. You would get Leagues of Knights, Leagues of Cities, etc.

France I know less about. I have heard that Parisian French only became the dominant language in the rest of France much later, and there are references to the Flemish, Burgundians & Normans as a distinct group. However, there also appeared to be something more of a shared Frankish identity as well.

Italy never existed as a political body at the time, each city state was very independent, so there was a clear sense of being Venetian or Milanese.

So England had a concept of race or ethnic group, Italy identified by city-state, Germany identified primarily by their local political body, France was a mix of the lot, and Spain identified primarily by religion. These are generalisations, but it seems to be the trend.

GyverMac
Aug 3, 2006
My posting is like I Love Lucy without the funny bits. Basically, WAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHH
One thing I've always been curious about, is the armour of the Normans when they invaded england. On the bayeux tapestry they are all shown to wear scale armour, but that was probably just due to the fact that depicting chainmail would be really hard on that particular medium. So i assume they used chainmail, but was it just the nobles that used it? Or did the entire army use it?

gyrobot
Nov 16, 2011
So what led to the trend of "lightly armored warrior with either a hulking sword or is a brilliant duelist" can easily overwhelm men in armor? The Barbarian simply just use sheer strength to overwhelm the guy without armor to weight him down while the guy who is a duelist can outfence the guy with a sword and broad before striking him down with a knife in the throat

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...

gyrobot posted:

So what led to the trend of "lightly armored warrior with either a hulking sword or is a brilliant duelist" can easily overwhelm men in armor? The Barbarian simply just use sheer strength to overwhelm the guy without armor to weight him down while the guy who is a duelist can outfence the guy with a sword and broad before striking him down with a knife in the throat

I, too, would like to know at which point medieval combat became video games.

e: actual question -- how exactly did fencing develop? Was it basically just the sportification of the increasingly obsolete art of fighting with a blade?

Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jan 25, 2013

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

GyverMac posted:

One thing I've always been curious about, is the armour of the Normans when they invaded england. On the bayeux tapestry they are all shown to wear scale armour, but that was probably just due to the fact that depicting chainmail would be really hard on that particular medium. So i assume they used chainmail, but was it just the nobles that used it? Or did the entire army use it?

First things first, yes it was probably mail. To me it looks like rings sewn too large since depicting every individual ring would be ridiculous. Another thing is the Bayeux Tapestry was made by lots of people; some sections were even stitched by children, so the many different people working on the Bayeux Tapestry may have chosen to different ways to show mail-armoured knights.

That said, scale armour was known. Not common or popular, but known.

Not the entire army used it; you can see a lot of guys in the Tapestry on horseback carrying spears and shields but only wearing what looks like a cloth tunic. Knights would wear mail, so would some of the more well-off serjeants (the word coming from “to serve”), although most of the others would wear cloth armours often called gambesons.

gyrobot posted:

So what led to the trend of "lightly armored warrior with either a hulking sword or is a brilliant duelist" can easily overwhelm men in armor? The Barbarian simply just use sheer strength to overwhelm the guy without armor to weight him down while the guy who is a duelist can outfence the guy with a sword and broad before striking him down with a knife in the throat

A few misconceptions led to those ideas being popular. First of all, in the 1600s heavier suits of armour were made for cuirassiers (pistol-armed cavalry) to better withstand the more powerful firearms of the day.



The dent in it is a “proof mark” to show it can stop a bullet (whether pistol or musket is unknown). Anyway, these armours might weigh 80-100 lbs, whereas medieval plate armour was typically around 60 lbs for everything. So this gave later people an inaccurate idea about armour.

Second is jousting armours were routinely heavier than battlefield armour, for obvious reasons. All you are doing is staying on a horse, so mobility is less important. And you are intentionally crashing at 50 mph (assuming both horses charge at 25 mph) which means thicker armour is more important.

Between these two factors, later people overestimated the weight of medieval armour, and therefore its effects on mobility.

As far as I know, the barbarian image was based on later media surrounding Conan the Barbarian. Not the original media, since in the Robert E Howard stories Conan would wear armour whenever possible. It is also worth pointing out that in every real “barbarian” culture, whether Goths, Celts, Saxons, Vikings, Gauls, their elite warriors would almost invariably favour the most extensive armour they could find.

As for the brilliant duellist, this was caused in an imbalance between military and civilian swordsmanship. Battlefield swordsmanship became less and less important by around 1600 when guns were the dominant weapon on the battlefield. Meanwhile, civilian swordsmanship based around the rapier was still practised, although it got less and less realistic over time as it became more a sport and less a method of self-defence (rapiers in the 1500s were for street-fighting, not polite duels).

By the 1700s, medieval-style swordsmanship designed for the battlefield was largely unknown, and 1700s-era fencing simply did not work with older medieval swords that were never designed to be used that way. With the cultural supremacist attitude typical of the Enlightenment era, the fencers of the 1700s assumed that medieval warriors had no skill or technique to their fencing. It was the same arrogance that promoted slavery and colonialism being applied to their past.

I should mention rapiers rarely saw use in battle. Even in the 1650s, soldiers preferred wide-bladed cut-and-thrust swords. One reason is rapiers were poor against armour. Another reason is a rapier had less stopping power, a stab that kills someone does not necessarily kill them quickly enough to stop them from taking you with them. Wider-bladed cutting swords could leave a larger stab wound or chop off limbs, giving them less chance to kill you before their wound kills them.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Railtus posted:

Is your mail butted or riveted? I notice modern mail tends to be heavier, probably because with butted mail it needs thicker wire to hold its shape and structure.

Butted. But made out of thicker rings than even normal modern butted mail. My friend has a shirt that's the normal modern thickness and weighs 16kg. Another guy I knew had a rivetted shirt that only weighed 14kg. Mine's 19kg.

Butted mail is surprisingly easy to make. Rivetted isn't much harder once you learn how to peen the rivets properly. The only hard parts are the armpits.

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:
Very interesting thread here, so keep going. :)

Railtus posted:

For example, Duke Albrecht V ordered in 1421 that of every 20 men, there should be 3 handguns, 8 crossbows, 4 pikes & 4 war flails. It also tells us something about Duke Albrecht’s maths (3+8+4+4=19, not 20).
Maybe he was just a cool dude, allowing some of his men to really express themselves?

Railtus posted:

France I know less about. I have heard that Parisian French only became the dominant language in the rest of France much later, and there are references to the Flemish, Burgundians & Normans as a distinct group. However, there also appeared to be something more of a shared Frankish identity as well.
Well, the Flemish are Dutch and the Normans descendants of the Vikings, so it makes a lot of sense that they would be identified as distinct groups. The Burgundians of that time I know little about, but being in the border region between Germany and France could have given the place a more German character. (Or just been identified as different because the Franks conquered their kingdom.) Then there's southern France, which seem to have been much more similar to Catalonia than northern France for a long time. As to the French identity in general, you're right about Parisian French being very recent, only being forced on the rest of France from 1870 or so. That's not to say that the idea of a French people did not exist long before however, it was just one where there was much more diversity in the language. (And even today you have people speaking a German language identifying as French, so the French identity seems less focused on language than many others.)

And since you didn't cover Eastern Europe, I thought I would mention national identity in the area around Russia. As far as I know, for the longest time most people would basically have answered that they were Orthodox if you asked them what nationality they were, so intertwined had identity become with the Orthodox faith. It's really only rather recent that the various Ruthenians started identifying as Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and so on. That's not to say the Russians didn't use that term before that point, but it was perhaps not as tied to nationality at that point so much as the state and the early Kievan Rus. (Which some Ukrainians are kind of pissed about it seems, arguing that the Russians basically appropriated their legacy.)

(Fair warning, I have no formal education on the subject, this is basically just stuff I've absorbed from people who do.)

Balqis
Sep 5, 2011

This is a wonderful thread.

While I don't have a claim on a degree, I am a medieval history buff. I sing Gregorian Chant and know way too much about manuscript art. Crusader castles in the Holy Land are a real turn on. So if anyone has any questions about medieval art and cultural history, particularly in France, I might be able to answer them, although I don't mean to steal any of Railtus' thunder.

I guess one thing you have to keep in mind with the Middle Ages is where the origins of many of the common misconceptions. Many of these were formed during the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment, as they attempted to distance themselves from a past they deemed barbaric and chaotic. The myth of Primae noctis has already been mentioned, but there are others:

-"Gothic" architecture was only labelled as such during the Renaissance, being synonymous with "barbaric"
-"Medieval" torture devices, commonly associated with items like the Iron Maiden, were often products of the Renaissance, as people began to reanalyze Roman law and re-implement torture as an interrogative tool. Torture did exist in the Middle Ages, of course, but its use wasn't systematic by the courts, and they didn't develop too many elaborate devices to dole it out.
-Due to a rediscovered idolization of classical realism, the abstract figures and skewed perspectives often favored in medieval art were relabeled as inferior works, as if art had taken a significant step backward rather than simply following a different trend for ideological reasons or cultural tastes.
-The still predominate view that the Byzantine empire was in a perpetual state of decay after Justinian, which glosses over 1000 years of history with a wave of a hand (EDWARD GIBBON :argh:).

Aiding in the warping of the medieval image was the 19th century trend of romanticism, which took an almost idyllic look at the Middle Ages. That's where you get the perception of knights as chivalrous warrior, women as demure maidens in willing subservience, and ill-starred, chaste romances. This actually influenced 19th century attempts to restore Gothic cathedrals, too. Rather than restoring a structure like Notre-Dame de Paris to a previous incarnation, attempts were made to create its "ideal" form. They did this by putting a poo poo ton of gargoyles there, because The Hunchback of Notre Dame had just been published, and that was the image in people's minds. Despite the fact that the original structure had very few to begin with.

Both of these trends worked to create a barrier of separation between the Middle Ages and the modern day where one didn't necessarily exist at all. In fact, there's more continuity than one would really think, but I have the feeling the thread will delve into that later.


Unrelated: Labyrinths were a thing. A wonderful thing.


Labyrinth of Notre-Dame de Chartres


Labyrinth of Notre-Dame d'Amiens

312
Nov 7, 2012
I give terrible advice in E/N and post nothing worth anybody's time.

i might be a social cripple irl

THE LUMMOX posted:

Gonna jump in on this one although it's by no means a definitive answer.

Something I learned from Ken Burns' awesome Prohibition doc as well as A History of the World In 6 Glassses is that the ABV% was really low. Like beer was 1-3% and wine was watered down. Then the industrial revolution happened and suddenly you had cheap 30% ABV distilled alcohols but people didn't change their drinking habits to reflect this. So whereas having a beer at breakfast was normal and basically of no consequence (and in fact an important calorie supplement) suddenly they were drinking whiskey and everything got hosed up.


AlphaDog posted:

As far as I know, what they were talking about was "small beer" - beer with very very low amounts of alcohol. You can make small beer at home pretty easily, and it comes out to around 0.5% alcohol (you can do this by accident when you gently caress up your homebrew process). You'd have to drink 10 pints to get as much alcohol as a single pint of normal beer.

The safeness probably had much more to do with the fact that the brewing process involves boiling the malt and water than with "alcohol kills germs".

Again, I could be completely wrong, since I'm in no way a historian.

What happens is when you have a mash (150 degree water + crushed grain) you can run water through twice- the first is going to get a super high concentration of sugars, but the second running is only going to get a minimal amount. While Alpha dog is correct that boiling had a lot to do with killing off initial bacteria, it stayed clean because of the alcohol and hops. There were also some other things used in place of hops till they became common place (1500's iirc), so there was a while when ale and beer were distinguished by whether hops were used, or instead a mixture of plants that also bittered beer called gruit. Gruit was made of ivy's, mugwort, heather, and things like that. In 1516 germany passed their beer purity law which required beer to be only hops, barley, and water- many countries including britain followed this example. (yeast wasn't discovered till much later)

Calling it watered down isn't exactly correct because it's the same exact process, you're just getting less sugars each time you run water through a bed of mashed grains. Alchohol of the bigger beers was also not meaningfully less than today's normal sized beers, but they didn't have the yeast technology to reliably make the 10%+ beers that are common today. (in fact yeast wasn't even known as an ingredient in alcohol production till much later) Really the primary reason the strength was often less was a simple fact that they separated the available sugars into two beers rather than just combining it into one. Technology also played a role as well.

e: the most common thing today is to just combine the first and second runnings, though sometimes when efficiency isn't a concern you can just ignore the second running which some say improves the beer flavor.


http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/2021-parti-gyle-brewing-techniques

quote:

The traditional approach was to conduct separate mashes on a given parcel of grain. The first wort would be completely run off, then the grain re-mashed with hot water and the second wort completely run off, and so on for a third, and even sometimes a fourth mash. It was customary to make strong ale from the first wort (sometimes combined with the second), and to produce a much weaker “small beer” from the remaining worts. It seems that this practice may have changed in the first quarter of the 18th century, when porter came onto the English brewing stage. London brewers came round to the idea of combining all the worts from separate mashing so as to make one beer, known as “Entire,” or “Entire-Butt,” and later becoming porter.

312 fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jan 26, 2013

goodnight mooned
Aug 2, 2007

Are there any movies or shows with accurate depictions of medieval combat?

ookuwagata
Aug 26, 2007

I love you this much!
In most museums I've seen with displays on Medieval and Renaissance armor, you see a lot of ornately designed parade and festival armor, which while impressive looking, doesn't seem terribly practical for actual combat, (the giant protruding animal or monster faces from the faceplates of grotesque armor, for example). What would an upper-class (who could afford to buy custom-made armor) wear to a real battle, and how would the decorative details differ from the armor for show?

Or did they actually wear those fancy armors in battle?

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

ammo mammal posted:

Are there any movies or shows with accurate depictions of medieval combat?

A few have made token efforts.

Ironclad with James Purefoy uses half-swording (where you grip the blade with one hand to use the sword as a spear) at one stage and a mordhau (where you hold the sword by the blade and use the handle as a club), and has armour actually make a difference when hit a few times. However, the bulk of the fighting is clearly not done with historical techniques. Which might not be entirely unrealistic (no one has perfect form in a real fight).

Kingdom of Heaven has a scene where Balian uses posta de falcone or a Vom Tag (overhead stance), although Godfrey's advice to "never use a low guard" is inaccurate and a bad idea. It also shows armour actually making a difference.

Those are about as good as it gets. The bar is pretty low.

ookuwagata posted:

In most museums I've seen with displays on Medieval and Renaissance armor, you see a lot of ornately designed parade and festival armor, which while impressive looking, doesn't seem terribly practical for actual combat, (the giant protruding animal or monster faces from the faceplates of grotesque armor, for example). What would an upper-class (who could afford to buy custom-made armor) wear to a real battle, and how would the decorative details differ from the armor for show?

Or did they actually wear those fancy armors in battle?

It depends a lot on the period. Armour design progressed a lot, and most of the decorations were actually defensive features as well. I will give you examples:

Transitional armour from around the 1350s:



This is called transitional because it is during a transition between mail armour and plate armour, so it is somewhere in-between. That canvas-looking apron actually has metal plates bolted onto the inside. Decorations for the wealthy are likely to be such things as a velvet cover for the coat-of-plates, or gilt & latten for the studs sticking out of the front. However, a knight might also just wear a surcoat over the top. Decorations are pretty limited at this point.

Now for a fairly decorated suit of plate armour from maybe 1380-1420:





The gold or brass trim around the edges of the plates is actually quite ornate by these standards. The full mail shirt is still needed at this point, since the breastplate is fairly limited in coverage. Plainer examples will just miss out the gold trim. However, that would be just fine as a field armour.

A later Milanese plate armour from around 1450-1500:



Not many examples of decoration, although imported Milanese armour is a big enough symbol as it is.

A decorated German gothic armour from 1450-1500:



Gold trim. The fluting looks decorative, and you might see it on more armour, but those beautiful looking ridges are actually to reinforce the steel. Think of I-beams, the shape is supposed to give structural strength. This allows you to get similar results without making the armour as thick all the way across (saving weight).

The pointed shoes are intended only for horseback combat.

A later Maximilian (German) armour from around 1500 and later:



Again, more fluting. This was intended not as an upgrade from earlier armours, but to emulate the fashionable clothing at the time, which tended towards pleated looks.

An English armour from around 1590:



These were Royal Armours, Queen Elizabeth would award licenses to nobles allowing them to have splendidly decorated suits of armour. This has black-oxide which may or may not help prevent rust, and it is also gilt with a thin layer of gold. This would still be a fairly functional fighting armour.

Metropolitan Museum of Art has a good resource on the subject here:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dect/hd_dect.htm

Generally, battlefield armour treated decorations as superfluous, though. The stuff is beautiful enough without the extra help. The main rule is practical armour for a real battle clearly looks like armour. If it looks like anything else (most faces for example, or a lion's head, a beard etc) then it is probably parade or ceremonial armour. Another thing is parade armour could often be heavier, it might be bulkier or the body shape is blocky enough to make the arms look as though the shoulders are constantly drawn back. Parade armours typically show more engraving, enamelling, stamped or pressed patterns, cutting into the edges of the plates.

The main warning sign of a parade armour is anything that compromises the shape. Being rounded provides structural strength, which is one reason early breastplates could be pot-bellied, since it was a strong shape and the bulbous shape was a glancing surface to make weapons skim off without a solid hit. Others would be pigeon breasted with a point at the front, again to make sure an attack from the front would glance off.

Railtus fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jan 26, 2013

space pope
Apr 5, 2003

Railtus posted:

All of the above.

France I know less about. I have heard that Parisian French only became the dominant language in the rest of France much later, and there are references to the Flemish, Burgundians & Normans as a distinct group. However, there also appeared to be something more of a shared Frankish identity as well.


Some scholars have argued that French did not become the national language until after WWI and that a lot of regional dialects like Occitan persisted until then. Although semi-fictional The Life of Simple Man shows that in many areas there was little if any sense of being "French."
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Simple-Man-Emile-Guillaumin/dp/0874512468

Heck, Breton was very prevalent until after WWI.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Then there's southern France, which seem to have been much more similar to Catalonia than northern France for a long time.

Yeah that was Occitania (where people spoke a few different dialects Occitan or "langue d'oc" ), it had a somewhat distinct cultural identity and included most of modern southern France, and parts of Spain and Italy. The French rather aggressively stamped it out, but there are a few Occitan speakers today and you'll see street signs in Occitan in some cities there. I used to work doing reconstruction on a medieval castle there (in Gascogny), I don't know that we were doing the most historically accurate job as none of us there were historians but luckily most of the older structures were intact and we could more or less follow the style. There is a lot of interesting poo poo to see around there if you have any interest in medieval warfare or castles in general, as it was where much of the Hundred Years War and Albigensian Crusades were fought, there are towers and keeps and larger castles everywhere

Earwicker fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jan 26, 2013

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

space pope posted:

Some scholars have argued that French did not become the national language until after WWI and that a lot of regional dialects like Occitan persisted until then. Although semi-fictional The Life of Simple Man shows that in many areas there was little if any sense of being "French."
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Simple-Man-Emile-Guillaumin/dp/0874512468

Heck, Breton was very prevalent until after WWI.

Frankish is a little bit broader than French. 12th century texts like Gesta Francorum or Historia Francorum were not shy about referring to people from all over the Kingdom of France (and a bit beyond) collectively as Franks or Frankish. It also included parts of Germany, but it was distinct from other ethnic groups like the Lombards or Saxons.

Railtus fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jan 26, 2013

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Just for the record, Occitan isn't a variety of French. It's its own full on language.

Not like saying, no, it's a real language, man : it's actually about as similar as Spanish is to Italian.

Also, Breton isn't dead.

Yet. :sigh:

Sevron
Jul 4, 2007

Nobody of consequence
Speaking of accurate sword fighting, what do you think of this project? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

This seems like a very neat idea. I kicked in a few bucks to it and was glad to see it get funded. They are trying to make as accurate a sword fighting game as they can/

indoflaven
Dec 10, 2009
Where did they fail? They seemed to be on top of things for a while.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.
Fantastic thread Railtus. I was wondering what you thought of some of the ideas that this guy comes up with in his video series, for example his theories about how pikes were used in the renaissance period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbhANeJL_T4

Railtus posted:

A more complicated version is called Nine Mens Morris. I cannot remember what the basic version is called. I am listening to Dorsey Armstrong, the Medieval World (the Great Courses are awesome), to find out what the game was (she was my source).

Nine Men's Morris was also called Merrelles, and it was actually a Roman game! There was a bunch of different versions, with the simplest one being Noughts and Crosses and continuing to be popular to this day. It got featured in the latest edition of Assassin's Creed, which is why I found out about it. You can actually play it against the computer here (where it will proceed to make you feel like a fool over and over again): http://merrelles.com/English.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Morris

quote:

My suspicion is the modern man would become a beggar. Look at the conveniences we are accustomed to? Our futuristic knowledge is mostly theoretical, I know gunpowder is a mix of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur, but that does not mean I am in any way qualified to make it. I know adding carbon to iron produces steel, but that does not mean I could use it effectively. Maybe being literate would help? Although even that would need adapting. I think the best chance for a modern man would be the monastery.

Well I think that you might be surprised at how much you know. Even if a modern person had no real scientific or engineering background, they still would be extremely well educated in comparison. If nothing else, virtually every modern person would be a better doctor with a fuller understanding of curative treatment than anyone prior to the American Civil War (excepting Roman surgical prowess).

Kaal fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Jan 26, 2013

cargo cult
Aug 28, 2008

by Reene
I haven't even made it through the OP yet, but thank you, just thank you.

Pimpmust
Oct 1, 2008

You brought up the Gambeson, but whenever someone talks about this era it's always about Chainmail/Plate (Knights) vs "Leather Armour" (which every fantasy/RPG every seem to mimmick).

But just how common was some sort of Padded Cloth armour (Gambeson) vs Leather ...stuff? And what was the perks/drawbacks of such armour?

Morholt
Mar 18, 2006

Contrary to popular belief, tic-tac-toe isn't purely a game of chance.
Crossposting some questions I asked in the general Military History thread.

I've been reading about the battle of Grunwald (or Tannenberg) and had some questions about late medieval combat.

Several of the estimate suggests that both forces were mainly composed of knights - is this realistic? When 10000 knights charge 10000 knights would the combat be more like 10000 duels or a hoplite-style pushing match? In lots of accounts I've read about knights charging over their own infantry, did this actually happen and if so was it a deliberate tactic?

In Grunwald the commanders of both armies were standing on hills overlooking the combat for most of the battle. Did commanders have some kind of tactical control on the battlefield or was it just a matter of cheering on the knights as loudly as possible? Was the actual melee very deadly in itself?

The bombards employed by the Teutons were apparently not very effective. Could artillery in 1410 actually be expected to be effective (ie kill dudes) or was it more of a terror weapon? I've read some suggestions that those guns were actually hand cannons since it would be unreasonable for a fast-moving army to bring 100 full-sized cannons, what would you think?

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Railtus posted:

Frankish is a little bit broader than French. 12th century texts like Gesta Francorum or Historia Francorum were not shy about referring to people from all over the Kingdom of France (and a bit beyond) collectively as Franks or Frankish. It also included parts of Germany, but it was distinct from other ethnic groups like the Lombards or Saxons.
The Franks are of course also a group Germanic invaders, so confusing them with the later French identity might be a mistake. The Langobards/Lombards were as well, but were likewise assimilated into the local population. That both grups placed themselves as the ruling class of an ethnically different population probably makes it even harder to figure out identities I suppose, as the ruling classes have a tendency to not care particularly about anyone but themselves.

Kaal posted:

Well I think that you might be surprised at how much you know. Even if a modern person had no real scientific or engineering background, they still would be extremely well educated in comparison. If nothing else, virtually every modern person would be a better doctor with a fuller understanding of curative treatment than anyone prior to the American Civil War (excepting Roman surgical prowess).
As far as I know, the Egyptians were pretty skilled as well, doing stuff like plastic surgery. Besides curative treatment, most modern people should also be well aware of basic stuff like separating poo poo and drinking water, which seems like it could be pretty useful to the people of the age. Then there's stuff like the printing press, which history has certainly proven to be useful. None of that is going to make you the Great Inventor Emperor of Europe and Beyond though, at best you could be rewarded with a cushy job working for a king/emperor doing "science". Really, there are plenty of things we take for granted nowadays that would blow people's minds back then, not to mention the stuff people know that's not general knowledge/skills. It's more a matter of actually making it useful and accessible I think. Which might also have been the case for inventors in the time period? What was the scientific environment like at the time?

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

Sevron posted:

Speaking of accurate sword fighting, what do you think of this project? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

This seems like a very neat idea. I kicked in a few bucks to it and was glad to see it get funded. They are trying to make as accurate a sword fighting game as they can/

CLANG sounds excellent! I have seen beautiful motion capture in Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade (although not the first one). I would really like to see a CLANG based fighting system in a game. I really loved the sword-armlock they showed.


Kaal posted:

Fantastic thread Railtus. I was wondering what you thought of some of the ideas that this guy comes up with in his video series, for example his theories about how pikes were used in the renaissance period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbhANeJL_T4


Nine Men's Morris was also called Merrelles, and it was actually a Roman game! There was a bunch of different versions, with the simplest one being Noughts and Crosses and continuing to be popular to this day. It got featured in the latest edition of Assassin's Creed, which is why I found out about it. You can actually play it against the computer here (where it will proceed to make you feel like a fool over and over again): http://merrelles.com/English.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Morris


Well I think that you might be surprised at how much you know. Even if a modern person had no real scientific or engineering background, they still would be extremely well educated in comparison. If nothing else, virtually every modern person would be a better doctor with a fuller understanding of curative treatment than anyone prior to the American Civil War (excepting Roman surgical prowess).

Thank you for the compliment!

I really like his videos in general, I am considering making similar videos when I get comfortable with the technology. I think he normally makes good points, he is intelligent, entertaining, he looks at things from a realistic angle.

You have probably guessed by now that I disagree with him about pikes.

Pikes did clash and there was carnage. Sources refer to it as Bad War. The Swiss used extremely aggressive tactics, so did the Scots. There are occasions when formations of knights charged all the way through a Swiss pike block and came out the other side (and the Swiss reformed!).

What I would do if back in the medieval age is find a monastery. I know they were the social support systems to the poor, I know they valued literacy and education, and they would be the best place for a modern man to survive while adjusting to the new environment and also find a way to apply his knowledge.


cargo cult posted:

I haven't even made it through the OP yet, but thank you, just thank you.

You’re welcome.

Pimpmust posted:

You brought up the Gambeson, but whenever someone talks about this era it's always about Chainmail/Plate (Knights) vs "Leather Armour" (which every fantasy/RPG every seem to mimmick).

But just how common was some sort of Padded Cloth armour (Gambeson) vs Leather ...stuff? And what was the perks/drawbacks of such armour?

Cloth armour was worn by virtually everyone in battle. Even the guys wearing other armour had relatively thin cloth armour as well. It cushioned the armour so it does not chafe, acts as a shock absorber for blows that struck the armour. Another thing was it often had cords on to help attach plates on so the weight of the armour is spread out across the body more easily.

Crusader knights were noted by Baha al-Din to wear a vest of felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that Saracen arrows made no impression upon them. One reason for this is the arrows that worked well against mail (narrow spike-like arrows) were very different to the arrows that worked well against dense fabric (broad cutting-head arrows). By combining mail with padding, neither arrow gest through.

Thicker gambesons would be worn by anyone who could not afford metal armour. Sometimes “armour of jerkin” is mentioned, although I expect that to be padded rather than leather. I have worn an arming coat, and the amazing thing is how well it breathes, so on a hot day it actually felt quite cool. I have tried stabbing through the armour with household knives and stuff, though with no one inside it at the time (may affect results), and while I scratched up the fabric a little I did not pierce through.

Main advantages are that it was fairly effective armour. It could work quite well against dull blades, although a sharp blade can slice through very easily. This means if the opponent’s sword or “knife” gets nicked or damaged in the fighting that armour will save you, and depending on the spearhead or arrowhead the armour would stop you being skewered. I am not sure how it would perform against maces or warhammers though.

Disadvantage is it is ablative. Arrows stick in and tear into it. Slashes that fail to get through will leave gashes that would be vulnerable to the next attack, and the next, etc. Thicker padding could be only slightly lighter than metal armours, and relying on thickness can give the padding a bulk that metal armours do not have.


Morholt posted:

Crossposting some questions I asked in the general Military History thread.

I've been reading about the battle of Grunwald (or Tannenberg) and had some questions about late medieval combat.

Several of the estimate suggests that both forces were mainly composed of knights - is this realistic? When 10000 knights charge 10000 knights would the combat be more like 10000 duels or a hoplite-style pushing match? In lots of accounts I've read about knights charging over their own infantry, did this actually happen and if so was it a deliberate tactic?

In Grunwald the commanders of both armies were standing on hills overlooking the combat for most of the battle. Did commanders have some kind of tactical control on the battlefield or was it just a matter of cheering on the knights as loudly as possible? Was the actual melee very deadly in itself?

The bombards employed by the Teutons were apparently not very effective. Could artillery in 1410 actually be expected to be effective (ie kill dudes) or was it more of a terror weapon? I've read some suggestions that those guns were actually hand cannons since it would be unreasonable for a fast-moving army to bring 100 full-sized cannons, what would you think?


Both forces would be mostly professional warriors, but knights are unlikely. At Grunwald/Tannenburg, one side was the Teutonic Knights, and their armies were certainly not mainly composed of knights. Looking at the casualty figures will tell you that – 8000 dead for the Order, including 200-400 knights. To be honest I doubt the Teutonic Knights ever had around 8000 knights.

Another example is either Mohi or Legnica (I cannot remember off the top of my head), when the Templars lost 500 men, including 3 knights, 2 serjeants and 9 brothers. If we interpret knights, serjeants and brothers all as heavy cavalry, that is still only 14 out of 500. That said, it should be noted that the armies that met the Mongols in Poland and Hungary were some of the most slipshod rabble possible.

Knightly units, called Lances Fournies, or Gleven, were more likely. These were units consisting of a knight, a secondary horseman, and an archer. Those units would make a good chunk of the forces. Then add militias. Then add mercenary companies.

I doubt knights vs knights would resemble duels or pushing matches, although I am not entirely sure how to describe it. Personally I think it depends on which formation got the worst of the lance charge, and then that determined which side was more likely to get mobbed.

The only reference I have to knights trampling their own men was at Crecy, when the Genoese crossbowmen mercenaries retreated. I might find other examples if I looked but I think that was just the French being very disorganised at the time.

By 1410 there was definitely tactical control. The position on the hill allows the commanders to see how the battle was progressing from above and know where to commit reserves, or where to concentrate archery support and artillery. A problem did exist of calling back men once they were committed, and there were cases of cavalry chasing off the enemy for miles and coming back to find the battle lost. How well a commander had tactical control could dictate the result of the battle; the Scottish won Bannockburn because they had greater tactical control of their schilltroms, able to deploy and attack faster than the English could adjust (read: pull the knights back and let the archers pincussion them).

Artillery in the 15th century was certainly common enough to be of importance. The Hussites used it to good effect from the Laager or wagon-forts. Artillery trains were brought at Barnet, and the Yorkists stayed quiet when Warwick bombarded the wrong location, which tells me the effects of having artillery aimed at them were taken seriously. In my mind, the advantage of artillery is you can force the enemy to move; holding position under a sustained artillery barrage is going to get your army shot to pieces.

That is why I would expect artillery rather than handguns, apparently the Teutons wanted to provoke the Polish-Lithuanian forces into advancing, rather than trying to chase them.


A Buttery Pastry posted:

The Franks are of course also a group Germanic invaders, so confusing them with the later French identity might be a mistake. The Langobards/Lombards were as well, but were likewise assimilated into the local population. That both grups placed themselves as the ruling class of an ethnically different population probably makes it even harder to figure out identities I suppose, as the ruling classes have a tendency to not care particularly about anyone but themselves.

As far as I know, the Egyptians were pretty skilled as well, doing stuff like plastic surgery. Besides curative treatment, most modern people should also be well aware of basic stuff like separating poo poo and drinking water, which seems like it could be pretty useful to the people of the age. Then there's stuff like the printing press, which history has certainly proven to be useful. None of that is going to make you the Great Inventor Emperor of Europe and Beyond though, at best you could be rewarded with a cushy job working for a king/emperor doing "science". Really, there are plenty of things we take for granted nowadays that would blow people's minds back then, not to mention the stuff people know that's not general knowledge/skills. It's more a matter of actually making it useful and accessible I think. Which might also have been the case for inventors in the time period? What was the scientific environment like at the time?

Trying to assign a modern identity to medieval people is never going to be a perfect fit. The Franks are part of French history but not all French history is Frankish.

Inventors might run into trouble from the guild system, which was eager to preserve trade secrets. That interfered with the spread of technology and invention. Another thing is a predominantly rural economy gave many people very limited opportunity to invent, particularly when we have a harvest to bring in. However, I would say to the educated social class with financial backing, medieval times were fairly open to science, discovery and learning more about the natural world.

Morholt
Mar 18, 2006

Contrary to popular belief, tic-tac-toe isn't purely a game of chance.

Railtus posted:

The only reference I have to knights trampling their own men was at Crecy, when the Genoese crossbowmen mercenaries retreated. I might find other examples if I looked but I think that was just the French being very disorganised at the time.

Thank you for your answers. These two pages both mention the Order knights trampling their own men as they were being routed by the Lithuanians at the opening stage of the battle. Especially in the first one it seems like an attempt at vilifying the Teutons, which is why I asked.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

Xiahou Dun posted:

Just for the record, Occitan isn't a variety of French. It's its own full on language.

Not like saying, no, it's a real language, man : it's actually about as similar as Spanish is to Italian.

Also, Breton isn't dead.

Yet. :sigh:

Occitan struck me as more similar to Catalan than to French.

I've been to Bretagne and the Breton culture/identity seemed quite strong still, much more alive than Occitan culture seems to be.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

As far as I know, the Egyptians were pretty skilled as well, doing stuff like plastic surgery.

The ancient Egyptians were certainly skilled for their time, but they were never particularly good at surgery. They made prosthetics and they performed circumcisions, but I've never heard anything about cosmetic surgery being performed on the living. Their burial practices required a decent understanding of the body, but that knowledge wasn't passed on to their day-to-day practitioners.

I did some reading and found that Indian surgeons were the first to perform plastic surgery in the form of rhinoplasty. Pretty cool stuff. The story of medicine, written in extremely broad strokes, is thus: The Egyptians developed pharmacology, the Greeks developed pathology and epidemiology, the Romans developed surgery, and the Chinese and Indians developed therapy. Obviously the word "developed" is problematic since all cultures had some knowledge of the diverse array of medical disciplines, but those were the cultures that built those practices into something significant enough to be copied and disseminated.

quote:

None of that is going to make you the Great Inventor Emperor of Europe and Beyond though, at best you could be rewarded with a cushy job working for a king/emperor doing "science". Really, there are plenty of things we take for granted nowadays that would blow people's minds back then, not to mention the stuff people know that's not general knowledge/skills. It's more a matter of actually making it useful and accessible I think. Which might also have been the case for inventors in the time period? What was the scientific environment like at the time?

Well certainly you'd need to have a firm understanding of engineering and chemistry to become the Great Inventor Emperor of Europe and Beyond. More than the average modern joe is likely to have. But really I think that most folks would be perfectly capable of single-handedly causing a renaissance and a regional power shift. Even boring things like bureaucracy and agriculture would see significant improvements from basic concepts, and would have major impacts on the world. Of course the problem is getting those concepts to be received - women and minorities of all kinds would struggle to be listened to. The scientific environment was very variable in Europe throughout the Medieval period. At some times and places, suggesting a bunch of scientific advancements would have been ignored or gotten you charged with heresy. Whereas in 1500 Italy, they nearly had a renaissance right there in Florence and you could have easily tipped the scales.

Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jan 26, 2013

Medenmath
Jan 18, 2003

AlphaDog posted:

I have a question about Viking and Celtic swords and knives. I know they were pattern-welded, probably due to the poor quality of iron ore available. Is it true that they could work designs into the patterns created by the process? I've seen modern smiths pull it off (sort of), but I've always wondered if they could do it back then.

Railtus posted:

They could definitely work designs in. Pattern-welding was sometimes layered on top of a soft iron core, which would say it was decorative rather than functional. How detailed these designs got I am unsure, but they could definitely use it just for decoration.

I've done some amateur blacksmithing and I thought I'd say something about this. Pattern welding is done by layering different types of steel and then messing around with the layers by twisting or cutting the resulting chunk of metal. You apply an etching chemical after the piece is finished to make the different types of steel stand out (since they will etch at different rates). The idea that metal made this way is superior in some way is a little spurious - I expect it's a myth. Pattern welding is decorative, although it can indeed be used on a functional blade or other tool.

Here's the remains of an historical weapon:



And here's a modern example:

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Railtus posted:

Trying to assign a modern identity to medieval people is never going to be a perfect fit. The Franks are part of French history but not all French history is Frankish.
True, I just like to keep in mind that the French are named after conquerors from a foreign culture, and that the history of France makes identities a bit more complicated then the case of some others.

Railtus posted:

Inventors might run into trouble from the guild system, which was eager to preserve trade secrets. That interfered with the spread of technology and invention. Another thing is a predominantly rural economy gave many people very limited opportunity to invent, particularly when we have a harvest to bring in. However, I would say to the educated social class with financial backing, medieval times were fairly open to science, discovery and learning more about the natural world.
That's what I figured, since they did invent some cool stuff in the period. It's not like the "Renaissance" would have worked if people from the middle ages hadn't invented the tools and thinking they needed to do their thing.

Earwicker posted:

I've been to Bretagne and the Breton culture/identity seemed quite strong still, much more alive than Occitan culture seems to be.
Yeah, from what I remember of my visit there a decade ago, the place seemed pretty strongly non-French identifying. Haven't been to southern France though, so I can't compare.

Kaal posted:

The ancient Egyptians were certainly skilled for their time, but they were never particularly good at surgery.
Sorry, I wasn't talking about the ancient Egyptians, but the Egyptians around the time of the Romans. Who would certainly have had time to be influenced by the rest of the Mediterranean by that point. Could have been clearer I suppose.

Kaal posted:

Well certainly you'd need to have a firm understanding of engineering and chemistry to become the Great Inventor Emperor of Europe and Beyond. More than the average modern joe is likely to have. But really I think that most folks would be perfectly capable of single-handedly causing a renaissance and a regional power shift. Even boring things like bureaucracy and agriculture would see significant improvements from basic concepts, and would have major impacts on the world. Of course the problem is getting those concepts to be received - women and minorities of all kinds would struggle to be listened to. The scientific environment was very variable in Europe throughout the Medieval period. At some times and places, suggesting a bunch of scientific advancements would have been ignored or gotten you charged with heresy. Whereas in 1500 Italy, they nearly had a renaissance right there in Florence and you could have easily tipped the scales.
I absolutely agree about it being possible to cause such a renaissance, assuming you can avoid being killed. And a lot of the basic improvements seem pretty nonthreatening to me, such as for example the printing press. Not that the printing press can't lead to social upheaval, but the social upheaval would probably not be something a sponsor would expect. Basically, the boring stuff like bureaucracy, agriculture and health are really the things that would allow more man hours to be used for improvements, instead of just upkeep. A lot of the stuff that's taught as high school math/physics is also relatively recent, and would probably also be useful. Leveraging that knowledge into actually being boss of anything more than your workshop (and perhaps a county if you really excel) is probably unlikely though.

Third Murderer posted:

I've done some amateur blacksmithing and I thought I'd say something about this. Pattern welding is done by layering different types of steel and then messing around with the layers by twisting or cutting the resulting chunk of metal. You apply an etching chemical after the piece is finished to make the different types of steel stand out (since they will etch at different rates). The idea that metal made this way is superior in some way is a little spurious - I expect it's a myth. Pattern welding is decorative, although it can indeed be used on a functional blade or other tool.
Maybe the skill involved in making the pattern is a good indicator that the man who made the weapon is a skilled craftsmen, and so the pattern would indicate superior craftsmanship?

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

Morholt posted:

Thank you for your answers. These two pages both mention the Order knights trampling their own men as they were being routed by the Lithuanians at the opening stage of the battle. Especially in the first one it seems like an attempt at vilifying the Teutons, which is why I asked.

Vilifying makes a lot of sense. The first source says the Germans had the best field leaders in the world, if that was true then such poor discipline would be very unlikely. Running down their own men would also waste the force of their charge, and I think the knights would have known that. All the knights would need to do to avoid trampling their own men is to form wedges before charging, which would allow the infantry to scatter safely. Again I think that would be very easy to manage if the Teutonic field leaders were so impressive.

Overall, I would say the first source is unreliable in general. By 1410 “massive plates” would describe the German armour far more than it would the Polish/Lithuanian armour. Germany, particularly Augsburg (along with Milan as an independent city state) more or less pioneered plate armour in Europe. In fact, East Europe was the place most likely to use mail-based ‘bechter’ armours which integrate mail with rectangular plates.

Grand Master Ulrich “who always underestimated the Poles and Lithuanians” is clearly not the subject of an attempt at being impartial.

The second page shows much better scholarship, it identifies patterns in the sources and it talks about possible interpretations and so on. It also seems intended for relatively light reading, rather than delving into the sources with any detailed analysis.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

That's what I figured, since they did invent some cool stuff in the period. It's not like the "Renaissance" would have worked if people from the middle ages hadn't invented the tools and thinking they needed to do their thing.

Yes, although the Renaissance might be overstated historiographically. Some food for thought to throw out there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vufba_ZcoR0

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
selch vreude niemer werden mac
der man ze den ziten pflac

Third Murderer posted:

I've done some amateur blacksmithing and I thought I'd say something about this. Pattern welding is done by layering different types of steel and then messing around with the layers by twisting or cutting the resulting chunk of metal. You apply an etching chemical after the piece is finished to make the different types of steel stand out (since they will etch at different rates). The idea that metal made this way is superior in some way is a little spurious - I expect it's a myth. Pattern welding is decorative, although it can indeed be used on a functional blade or other tool.

It depends on the quality of the metal you work with. Messing about with layers is helpful if working with poor metals, such as an uneven carbon distribution. By spreading the carbon across layers you can make sure that a sword does not have too much carbon in one area (meaning a brittle spot) and too little carbon in another (a soft spot), to ensure a more consistent quality to the steel.

However, once you have the metalworking technology to produce homogenous steel all that becomes unnecessary and a waste of extra effort.

Overall, it is not superior, it was just an earlier, more labour-intensive method of compensating for limited metallurgy. Around 600-1200 it was the main type of sword in use, but during the later half of the medieval period forge-folded or pattern-welded swords were considered medium quality, and the best swords were the ones made of homogenous steel.

Railtus fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jan 26, 2013

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



For all the talk about doing your own Army of Darkness/Connecticut Yankee stuff, keep in mind that your chances of successful communication, for at least a good chunk of when you arrive, are basically nil unless you happen to speak Latin.

While a modern English speaker, with some training, can half-assed read some Middle English, the pronunciation was very different, and English speakers are much better off than just about anyone else, and the dialects would be far less similar or unified so you're entirely boned outside of chunks of Southern England. So, I guess I hope you speak Latin.

And to respond about Breton : it's one of the better off minority languages, in terms of actually having a cultural presence, but its future is still pretty grim in the long-term. It's in a similar situation as Irish where they're trying to build it up, and are doing great work, but they have to fight really hard just to tread water, basically. Considering that they're the ones doing better, it's sad to say but a lot of stuff like Occitan, and O god, non-European languages like Salish, it's more of a question of when they die than if they are going to die.

And yeah, Catalan, Occitan and Romansch are all separate Romance languages no more related to the other Romance languages than any other.

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Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010
I had a practical question about armor. Did soldiers and knights wear it throughout the day while they were on campaign, or did they carry it as baggage and put it on before the fight? If they were in a situation where their enemy was known to be in the vicinity, would they sleep in their armor if they suspected a surprise attack at dawn or something like that?

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