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Rodrigo Diaz
Apr 16, 2007

Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

EvanSchenck posted:

I had to look this up, but in that respect he seems to be talking about the half-pike or spontoon, which was about 6-7' long. I was talking about the full length pike of 14' or more, which he calls the morris pike, about which he says,


It seems kind of hard to credit the notion that someone armed with a pike wouldn't be able to stop an opponent with a sword and dagger from getting inside his reach, but would be able to do so against a two-handed sword--but he'd be the expert, and I'd just be speculating.

You seem to be misreading him. He is talking about a two-on-one situation, where, to be honest two men with any weapon would have advantage against a pike. It is the one-on-one though that I am concerned with, and on this he states, in the section quoted, they 'have advantage against all manner of weapons, the short staff, the Welch hook, partisan, or glaive, or such like weapons of vantage excepted'.

I can certainly accept you don't think it to be reasonable. It seems peculiar to me as well, and perhaps a product of Silver's own dogmatism (the cut is greater than the thrust, the English staff is better than the Spanish rapier, etc) but I was interested to hear what someone who practices HEMA thought on the subject. It is certainly interesting that Silver does not distinguish between the montante and the zweihander, though from what I heard from a conference back in september they are quite differently used.

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Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

You seem to be misreading him. He is talking about a two-on-one situation, where, to be honest two men with any weapon would have advantage against a pike.

You're right, I misread that. He also says that one man with one a short staff or half-pike can defeat two men armed with rapiers or pikes and so forth. Honestly, the idea of assessing weapons on their ability to defeat two opponents at once didn't occur to me and I assumed it was some idiosyncrasy of his language.

He actually notes the main issue with using a pike as an individual weapon, which is that the length becomes a severe liability as your opponent closes:

quote:

Why should not the long staff have advantage against the short staff, since that the long staff man, being at liberty with his hands, may make his staff both long and short for his best advantage, when he shall think it good, and therefore when he shall find himself overmatched in the length of his staff, by the strength of the short staff, and narrowness of space of his four wards of defence, he can presently by drawing back of his staff in his hands, make his staff as short as the other's, and so be ready to fight him with at his own length? To this I answer(21), that when the long staff man is driven there to lie, the length of his staff that will lie behind him, will hinder him to strike, thrust, ward, or go back in due time. Neither can he turn the contrary end of his staff to keep out the short staff man from the close, nor safely to defend himself at his coming in.

So he says that a pike will lose against a short staff, because the man with the staff will be able to get inside the pikeman's range, and the pike is too long to be useful in close. But I'm still not sure why he only says this about the short staff, when it seems like the same thing could be done with a number of the shorter weapon types.

quote:

I can certainly accept you don't think it to be reasonable. It seems peculiar to me as well, and perhaps a product of Silver's own dogmatism (the cut is greater than the thrust, the English staff is better than the Spanish rapier, etc) but I was interested to hear what someone who practices HEMA thought on the subject.

Whoops. I didn't mean to be misleading, I don't do HEMA. I've had an amateur interest in this medieval stuff for quite a while, and I follow modern combat sports pretty closely and there are at least some transferable concepts, but I've never actually beaten on anybody with a sword. I think there were one or two people posting in the thread earlier who have done.

Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Feb 15, 2013

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

I was actually thinking of War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360, though Wars of Edward III would certainly be a useful companion.

On Rogers as a historian: I don't like his 'military revolution' pap but his analysis of Edward III on his own is pretty solid. As for Crecy, it really wasn't that unfavorable to the English. Edward had already fought and defeated a larger Scottish force (Edit: I mean larger than the force he had at Halidon Hill, not larger than the French force at Crecy) in a similar manner at Halidon Hill, and the tactics and formation, as I recall, were developed even earlier than that.

The thing about Crecy, though, is much the same problem that Edward II had at Bannockburn. It is worth remembering, after all, that Philip VI had waited 9 years before meeting the English in the field himself, and in that time things like the Battle of Sluys and the sack of Caen had occurred. The mounted vexation toward the English over that time (or toward the Scots at Bannockburn) meant that the knights and noblemen in the army would be chomping at the bit to trade blows with the English, making the forced march more likely. Compounding this was Philip's desire to come with an overwhelming force, but this meant he had even less control. The pressure from his noblemen to fulfill his role as liege and fight the enemy, especially after 9 years of delay and failure meant that further delay could have been politically disastrous. Through his own caution, Philip basically forced himself into fighting Crecy with all haste, and it seems that Edward was well aware of this. His own father, after all, suffered for his haste to reach Bannockburn for many of the same reasons and with similar results.

Thanks. I had been thinking about this a little more and the chevuauchee also makes a fairly decent Xanatos Gambit ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit ) since it becomes a lose-lose situation for the French. Either the French overextended themselves trying to meet the English or they fail to protect their people.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



As far as George Silver goes, I was under the impression (from having read Paradoxes of Defense and the Notes on those), that what the books mostly were was an advertisement for George Silver.

Also, he makes absolute statements a lot, saying X is always better than Y forever. I find it hard to trust people who do that when it comes to fighting.

WARDUKE
Sep 18, 2012

Muscly armed warrior with glowing eyes and shit.

Pimpmust posted:

There's a reason people invented formations and lines to do battle, things didn't really turn "massacre" ugly until one of those formations broke and got charged down by dudes on horses.

That and massive field battles just didn't happen all the time either, due to the risks/cost involved.

Thanks for the response. What are some of the largest battles that occurred during this time period?

Railtus posted:

At the risk of sounding flippant, one way was winning, another was surrendering (not always reliable) and a third was running away.

Although this is more for knights than the footmen, armour worked really well. A good suit of mail was very reliable, there were stories of Crusaders on foot covered with arrows and seeming completely unaffected. A coat-of-plates was very reliable too, able to stop a couched lance fitted with a graper. Essentially most armour used at the time would stop most hand-held weapons – at least initially. Once you got stunned you were more vulnerable.


To a degree you are right. Re-enactors doing shield walls and other competitive battle simulations found that most people never saw the guy that scored a killing blow on them.

My guess is that both individual warriors and their commanders actively avoided the kind of exhausting, confusing mass of bodies you describe – precisely because it was so dangerous. A good case for it is made by I-Clausewitz; http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141128.html

Essentially formations staying in good order was what stopped the swirling mass of confusion and death. If one group lost cohesion first, that would be the group that started taking lots of casualties, and the carnage that followed would be fairly one-sided. The only times both sides would end up in a swirling mass would be if both groups lost cohesion at the same time, which was more common post-1500 during pike-and-shot, referred to as ‘Bad War’.

As opposed to the nice friendly kind of war.

Another thing to consider is fear. Quite a lot of people would hold back from the fight, there were complaints about soldiers “fencing” with the pike, which is standing at full pike length and just poking at each other with neither side continuing their advance more aggressively.

Battlefield medicine, from what I could tell, was moderately advanced. I did find this - http://www.strangelove.net/~kieser/Medicine/military.html - which I find fairly trustworthy because it openly points out the limitations of its own information.


Thanks Railtus. Great information.

The only armor I have seen up close, and had a bit of time to actually study, was that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I know there are a lot of common misconceptions about medieval armor (several examples are discussed in this very thread), but I was unaware that it was so effective at stopping the weapons in common use at the time. Fear being a huge factor is understandable as well considering the type of injuries that could result from these battles.

I thought the following was interesting from the link you posted regarding Battlefield medicine (especially the first two):

Medieval Military Disease Prevention:

Avoid marshy, swampy land
Put higher ranking personnel in better winds
Change is dangerous – in weather, diet, routine (and new soldiers more vulnerable than veterans)
Ensure sufficient shelter (for example, provide straw to protect from damp ground)
Provide proper diet – tisane (from barley) prevents fever
Choose safe water – test by dipping a white cloth in the water and checking it for stains
Dispose of refuse, waste and bodies properly (pits outside the camp)
Don’t stay in one place too long. Static situations (winter camp, sieges, etc.) increase disease

Thanks again!

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

monkeyharness posted:

Thanks for the response. What are some of the largest battles that occurred during this time period?


Thanks Railtus. Great information.

The only armor I have seen up close, and had a bit of time to actually study, was that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I know there are a lot of common misconceptions about medieval armor (several examples are discussed in this very thread), but I was unaware that it was so effective at stopping the weapons in common use at the time. Fear being a huge factor is understandable as well considering the type of injuries that could result from these battles.

I thought the following was interesting from the link you posted regarding Battlefield medicine (especially the first two):

Medieval Military Disease Prevention:

Avoid marshy, swampy land
Put higher ranking personnel in better winds
Change is dangerous – in weather, diet, routine (and new soldiers more vulnerable than veterans)
Ensure sufficient shelter (for example, provide straw to protect from damp ground)
Provide proper diet – tisane (from barley) prevents fever
Choose safe water – test by dipping a white cloth in the water and checking it for stains
Dispose of refuse, waste and bodies properly (pits outside the camp)
Don’t stay in one place too long. Static situations (winter camp, sieges, etc.) increase disease

Thanks again!

You’re welcome. I saw some armour from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and what is amazing is the attention to detail that goes into it. The fluting on gothic or Maximilian armour was a design feature intended for structural strength. Mail rings were often flattened to increase the surface area of the links (probably so that any strike was spread across multiple rings of mail and therefore having less chance of breaking any of the links) as well as riveted or forge-welded shut to stop weapons forcing open the rings.

A general theme with armour is that a blow stopped by armour can still be effective, such as with a pollaxe or warhammer or just the impact of an axe. Or the blow might pierce the armour but their life was still saved by wearing it (such as the coat of plates vs lance or the breastplate vs arrow links below.

A good list of examples of how effective mail armour could be is Mail: Unchained by Dan Howard - http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.php

An important point is the thickness of the iron wire used in mail varied, so there were lighter versions and heavier versions that obviously varied in their protection. Lighter sets of mail had larger holes, which meant narrow-tipped swords could slip through, and one set of mail can be different to another - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl-ec6Ub7FM

The coat-of-plates resisting a lance was based on this test by Mike Loades, I wonder if using the same foam all three times affected the test though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJnkH1YXY8E#t=21m34s (starting at 21 minutes 30 seconds if the link is being strange).

Another somewhat similar test involving a longbow and a breastplate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011

I'll comment on the George Silver thing. After practicing HEMA for around a decade I'll say that a 5-7 foot staff weapon can generally beat a sword if you use it like a spear (both hands close to one end) to take advantage of length and will generally beat longer weapons if you use it like a half-staff (hands around the the middle like the classic Robin Hood style quarter-staff) to get inside the reach of the longer weapon with the advantage of leverage. There are specific techniques designed for those respective scenarios with each weapon. Of course a more skilled fighter is going to win against a lesser skilled fighter regardless, but with all things being equal (and they never are) a staff weapon is the most versatile.

Don't know if that is helpful or only repeating what other people said. I'm only speaking from personal experience as I have only a passing familiarity with the historical HEMA Masters.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

Railtus posted:

Thanks. I had been thinking about this a little more and the chevuauchee also makes a fairly decent Xanatos Gambit ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit ) since it becomes a lose-lose situation for the French. Either the French overextended themselves trying to meet the English or they fail to protect their people.

Just say gambit or plan, no need to insert a nerd vocabulary.

the JJ
Mar 31, 2011

FedoraDefender420 posted:

Just say gambit or plan, no need to insert a nerd vocabulary.

Yeah, a 'win-win' situation isn't so much a gambit as... I dunno, intelligence?

Rodrigo Diaz
Apr 16, 2007

Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Railtus posted:

Thanks. I had been thinking about this a little more and the chevuauchee also makes a fairly decent Xanatos Gambit ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit ) since it becomes a lose-lose situation for the French. Either the French overextended themselves trying to meet the English or they fail to protect their people.

The French were certainly capable of countering the chevauchée (and indeed they did so handily under Bertrand du Guesclin), but they had to be more careful, more coordinated, and more consistently aggressive. While du Guesclin made a point of ignoring the field armies in favour of quick, effective sieges, there is also the option of engaging the enemy army while they are dispersed to ravage. Count Baldwin of Flanders did this to Philip II's forces when they invaded his county in 1197, and Helias of Maine tried to do this during William Rufus' invasion of his county in 1098. However, while Baldwin successfully defeated Philip in a series of skirmishes, Helias was outfoxed by Robert of Belleme and captured.

Railtus posted:

You’re welcome. I saw some armour from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and what is amazing is the attention to detail that goes into it. The fluting on gothic or Maximilian armour was a design feature intended for structural strength. Mail rings were often flattened to increase the surface area of the links (probably so that any strike was spread across multiple rings of mail and therefore having less chance of breaking any of the links) as well as riveted or forge-welded shut to stop weapons forcing open the rings.

Your comment on the fluting in armour is interesting, because I had always been told that it provided more glancing surfaces, rather than that it made the armour sturdier. It could certainly do both, of course.

Your explanation for mail, though, I find questionable. I do not see how a round cross-section prevents a strike from being spread across multiple links. Flattened rings, rather, seem to me to give the advantage of a tighter inner diameter, making it more difficult for the armour to be penetrated.

quote:

An important point is the thickness of the iron wire used in mail varied, so there were lighter versions and heavier versions that obviously varied in their protection. Lighter sets of mail had larger holes, which meant narrow-tipped swords could slip through, and one set of mail can be different to another - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl-ec6Ub7FM

The coat-of-plates resisting a lance was based on this test by Mike Loades, I wonder if using the same foam all three times affected the test though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJnkH1YXY8E#t=21m34s (starting at 21 minutes 30 seconds if the link is being strange).

Another somewhat similar test involving a longbow and a breastplate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk

I'd be really, really leery of treating any reconstructive test as a reliable source.

Looking at the Mike Loades lance example, I can point out all kinds of problems with his test: the foam target was not as heavy as a man, and thus would not provide the same resistance to the impact. He was not wearing armour, thus robbing himself of some momentum and a potentially firmer grip on the lance, and his horse kit was not of the right kind. Notably, he lacked the high-backed saddle that you see from the 12th century that enhances delivered impact. He is not a trained lancer, for all his enthusiasm, and so we cannot be sure he was holding it correctly. He even drops the bloody thing. Moreover, the armour used was almost certainly not made with the same materials, or in the same way as a historical example, and the same with the lance. I don't even think the armour in the test was appropriate for the Battle of Lewes. I have only ever read about coats of plates of that type in use from the 14th c.

Much better scholarship can be found in Alan Williams' The Knight and the Blast Furnace, though even the tests he performs, with much better controls and concern for the realities of armour, are of uncertain veracity.

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.

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

Your comment on the fluting in armour is interesting, because I had always been told that it provided more glancing surfaces, rather than that it made the armour sturdier. It could certainly do both, of course.

It does do both. The fluting (more broadly known as corrugation) created more glancing surfaces, increasing the odds of deflecting away a strike. But corrugated materials also have increased bending strength against the axis of the corrugations (thanks to the power of arches). The fluting meant that the armor was more resistant to buckling, such as when hit by a mace or hammer. The technique is great for making strong yet light-weight materials, and is often used in construction.

Kaal fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Feb 16, 2013

Makrond
Aug 8, 2009

Now that I have all the animes, I can finally
become Emperor of Japan!

AlphaDog posted:

As far as George Silver goes, I was under the impression (from having read Paradoxes of Defense and the Notes on those), that what the books mostly were was an advertisement for George Silver.

Also, he makes absolute statements a lot, saying X is always better than Y forever. I find it hard to trust people who do that when it comes to fighting.

George Silver from what I've seen of his manuals was an incredibly xenophobic man and his preference for the bill hook probably had more to do with the fact that they were considered English weapons. A lot of his arguments against other weapons that were popular in warfare at the time had more to do with which armies and mercenary companies were well-known for using them.

That being said (and to second what Poldarn mentioned), pole weapons between about 5 and 7 feet are quite versatile and were pretty popular because they were cheap to make, easy to learn and someone who was particularly well-trained could be deadly at any range against any sort of opponent. The only real downside is they lack the finesse of a two-handed sword at close range, but you always had the option of dropping it, wrestling your opponent to the ground and/or drawing another weapon at that point. I've met people who were under the impression that if you used a pole weapon against someone with a sword or an axe they'd just cut clean through it and kill you, but I feel like it would be a struggle even with just a pine shaft, let alone the hardwood shafts everyone was using.

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

Makrond posted:

I've met people who were under the impression that if you used a pole weapon against someone with a sword or an axe they'd just cut clean through it and kill you, but I feel like it would be a struggle even with just a pine shaft, let alone the hardwood shafts everyone was using.

A sword doesn't do much against a wood shaft, you're right.

About medieval superstition, I minored in folklore so I got some tidbits. What it all boils down to is that before circa 1850, there was absolutely zero effort put towards collecting folklore. The national romanticist period is what made rural people fashionable in Europe. We can safely assume that massive amounts of knowledge have just plain disappeared due to never having been written down. One thing that's fun to note is that there's a type of creature appearing in folk stories and myth that's called a "fict", pretty much a made up creature to frighten children, and we assume that grownups of the day and age didn't really believe in it.

Did superstition have an impact on everyday life? Most def. For instance, it's hard for the modern person to grasp how hostile the environment was to the medieval man. Outside your yard, at night it was pitch dark and you never ever left the farm at night. Most people didn't go to the woods alone ever if they could avoid it, because people believed in stories about robbers, forest spirits and the like. You even get strange phenomena like "bergstagen" (taken by the mountain) where people who disappear into the woods for one reason or another return messed up, and this was explained by being captured by trolls.

However, we don't really know what people believed in and what they didn't. While it's renaissance age stuff, it's rather clear that many people in the Swedish Royal Commission of Sorcery (set up to investigate the witch craze) just plain didn't believe in witches at all.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



I'm not disagreeing that a short (5-7 foot) pole weapon is incredibly versatile. I'm just questioning Silver's statements because most people who publicly make "x is better than y" statements about fighting have some sort of agenda.

Kemper Boyd posted:

A sword doesn't do much against a wood shaft, you're right.

It certainly can. Probably not the swords Silver was talking about, but earlier, heavier swords will quite effectively cut a pine shaft, and might well ruin a hardwood shaft to the point where it was unusable.

That said, you'd never block a sword with a wood shaft in a way that would enable it to be chopped through - you'd have to hold it completely rigid, since any "give" will absorb most of the blow. Also, a lot of wooden weapons shafts were wrapped in hardened rawhide (the ones I know about are the viking short axes, the top half of the handle was often rawhide-wrapped) and later had metal re-enforcing on the sides.

Edit: Wasn't one of the functions of the Zweihander to chop through pike shafts? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find a reference now.

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011

AlphaDog posted:

Edit: Wasn't one of the functions of the Zweihander to chop through pike shafts? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find a reference now.

I read that too and could never find a source. I think in practice a formation of mercenaries armed with Zweihanders was intended to break another formation armed with pikes. In the primary guard for a Zwiehander vs polarm one holds the sword with one hand right above the pommel as usual for the two handed sword, but the other hands is essentially backwards (right thumb pointed towards the left hand) between the primary and secondary crossguards. Hell, its hards to explain to so I'll let this gentleman from the ARMA show you.



Anyway this gives you a tremendous leverage advantage and I don't see why a highly trained group of armored guys couldn't smash a formation of a weapon who's primary technique is thrusting.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Kemper Boyd posted:

A sword doesn't do much against a wood shaft, you're right.

About medieval superstition, I minored in folklore so I got some tidbits. What it all boils down to is that before circa 1850, there was absolutely zero effort put towards collecting folklore. The national romanticist period is what made rural people fashionable in Europe. We can safely assume that massive amounts of knowledge have just plain disappeared due to never having been written down. One thing that's fun to note is that there's a type of creature appearing in folk stories and myth that's called a "fict", pretty much a made up creature to frighten children, and we assume that grownups of the day and age didn't really believe in it.

Did superstition have an impact on everyday life? Most def. For instance, it's hard for the modern person to grasp how hostile the environment was to the medieval man. Outside your yard, at night it was pitch dark and you never ever left the farm at night. Most people didn't go to the woods alone ever if they could avoid it, because people believed in stories about robbers, forest spirits and the like. You even get strange phenomena like "bergstagen" (taken by the mountain) where people who disappear into the woods for one reason or another return messed up, and this was explained by being captured by trolls.

However, we don't really know what people believed in and what they didn't. While it's renaissance age stuff, it's rather clear that many people in the Swedish Royal Commission of Sorcery (set up to investigate the witch craze) just plain didn't believe in witches at all.

Speaking of medieval superstition, I once read a book that talked a lot about peasantry in France and how they lived. One weird tidbit in the book was that apparently there was a sub-caste of peasants that were treated like Jim-Crow era blacks; they couldn't drink from public wells, they couldn't use the main doors of churches and other public establishments, and were basically treated extremely badly by their fellow-peasants. The author wasn't sure why this sub-caste developed, or precisely who it was comprised of, just that he had compiled examples of the laws discriminating against them and anecdotes of them being lynched for breaking those laws. I guess my question is, is that author pulling that completely out of thin air? Has anyone else heard about such a thing? For the life of me, I can't remember the name or author of that book, and google has not availed me.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

AlphaDog posted:

Edit: Wasn't one of the functions of the Zweihander to chop through pike shafts? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find a reference now.

I think that came up in the general military history thread some time ago, with the conclusion that that particular tidbit is most likely conjecture. I think I have read somewhere that it was fairly common to have a few guys with Zweihändern in a pike formation, but their main purpose was to protect the ensign and/or to quickly exploit any holes in the enemy formation. Maybe this misconception comes from a bad translation somewhere, something like "and the Zweihänder cut their way through the pikes" was taken to literally mean the weapons instead of just the people wielding them or something?

Perestroika fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Feb 16, 2013

Kemper Boyd
Aug 6, 2007

no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

sullat posted:

Speaking of medieval superstition, I once read a book that talked a lot about peasantry in France and how they lived. One weird tidbit in the book was that apparently there was a sub-caste of peasants that were treated like Jim-Crow era blacks; they couldn't drink from public wells, they couldn't use the main doors of churches and other public establishments, and were basically treated extremely badly by their fellow-peasants. The author wasn't sure why this sub-caste developed, or precisely who it was comprised of, just that he had compiled examples of the laws discriminating against them and anecdotes of them being lynched for breaking those laws. I guess my question is, is that author pulling that completely out of thin air? Has anyone else heard about such a thing? For the life of me, I can't remember the name or author of that book, and google has not availed me.

I think you're talking about Les Cagots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Kemper Boyd posted:

I think you're talking about Les Cagots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot

That's them. Thanks. Weirdest thing.

New Coke
Nov 28, 2009

WILL AMOUNT TO NOTHING IN LIFE.
Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was.

the JJ
Mar 31, 2011

New Coke posted:

Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was.

Well, Xenophon's Anabasis has a fun bit where a big western army gets caught in some godforsaken highlands, some how offend the tribal natives, and are relentlessly harried until they leave, even though the native's were armed with only light wicker shields and slings and javelin's against the Greek heavy hoplites.

It's sort of an interesting question, a lot of your Joe Blow peasants weren't treated much worse by the enemy than their 'native' overlords, and when you don't necessarily have weapons (likely because you local lord enjoys taxing people occasionally.) He's not going to be able to much even were he so inclined. On the other hand, given sufficient motivation (often a certain amount of investment in the possession of the area e.g. tribal ties) you do get plenty of cases of armed insurrections. Self interested banditry could be a huge deal as well. I think the Christian crusades into Eastern Europe got pretty Vietnam-ish in places.

I remember that by the end of the Thirty Years War a lot of towns and villages had started to wage guerrilla war on any army that came near them, usually because armies were going near inhabited places mostly to 'requisition' supplies. Guerrilla warfare itself originates from the Iberian campaign so... yeah, it's a thing that happens fairly often if an invading force (or local overlord...) provokes or incentives a population capable of resisting.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012
Well, the thing about the Anabasis is that the Greeks weren't trying to stay and conquer the highlands, they were trying to get the hell out of dodge. It was just that those natives wouldn't give the Greeks any food. And if you remember, the Greeks armed a bunch of their dudes with bows and slings, and used them to keep the enemy skirmishers at bay.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Perestroika posted:

I think that came up in the general military history thread some time ago, with the conclusion that that particular tidbit is most likely conjecture. I think I have read somewhere that it was fairly common to have a few guys with Zweihändern in a pike formation, but their main purpose was to protect the ensign and/or to quickly exploit any holes in the enemy formation. Maybe this misconception comes from a bad translation somewhere, something like "and the Zweihänder cut their way through the pikes" was taken to literally mean the weapons instead of just the people wielding them or something?

That seems very likely. Mistranslations or misunderstandings are apparently a huge problem for historians. I am not a historian, but I enjoy listening to them talk.

I can't remember the specifics of where my favorite one comes from, but the translation said something like "he ran forward, throwing two spears at once from each hand", and the meaning of the original was "two guys ran forward at once (as in, right away) and each of them threw a spear from their hands". Possibly it was a Roman thing, I really don't remember.

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.

New Coke posted:

Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was.

You'd see a lot of banditry, but not the kind of guerrilla warfare that we see today. The technological and political realities didn't really permit it. First off, most cities were surrounded by a wall that would fend off any small-time attacker, so attacking the establishment required a real commitment of troops. And the limitations of medieval weapons also limited the capability of guerrilla forces. You needed a real army of trained warriors to do any real damage, and that army would attract a lot of attention and would lead to widespread reprisals against your supporters. Lots of insurrections would get started but then would be put down extremely harshly once the nobility rallied their troops and marched on the rebels; if the rebels fled then their homes and families would be put to the torch, and they wouldn't have anyone to support their guerrilla activity. This state of affairs continued until the modern-era, where powerful weapons and philosophical changes on the use of force made it much more possible for a rebel force to wage war effectively without being put down.

The one real exception to all this are the so-called Free Companies, or mercenary forces that were well-trained and had no homes and families to protect. They would basically ravage the land wherever they went, taking payment to fight (or bribes to stay away). But they were only asymmetric in the sense that they only fought when they knew they could win (i.e. fighting against helpless peasants), and their only interest was accumulating wealth. Free Companies were born out of the Carthaginian merchant empire, morphed into Mediterranean pirate activity when Carthage fell, then got pushed onto the Iberian peninsula when Rome seized all the ports, and then became part of the Western European experience. They eventually disappeared with the advent of large national militaries after the 100 Years war.

the JJ
Mar 31, 2011

sullat posted:

Well, the thing about the Anabasis is that the Greeks weren't trying to stay and conquer the highlands, they were trying to get the hell out of dodge. It was just that those natives wouldn't give the Greeks any food. And if you remember, the Greeks armed a bunch of their dudes with bows and slings, and used them to keep the enemy skirmishers at bay.

Yup. Still, I'd call showing up and demanding food and shelter sufficiently close to an invasion to fit the bill, and yup, that was the Greek solution (well, one of them, and it got pretty complicated around terrain and stuff. The final river crossing is quite gripping reading.)

Kaal posted:

You'd see a lot of banditry, but not the kind of guerrilla warfare that we see today. The technological and political realities didn't really permit it. First off, most cities were surrounded by a wall that would fend off any small-time attacker, so attacking the establishment required a real commitment of troops.

This is a pretty big deal, and why castles were a pretty big deal. They let the professional force in the castle set the terms of engagements.

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

daz nu bi unseren tagen
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der man ze den ziten pflac

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

Your comment on the fluting in armour is interesting, because I had always been told that it provided more glancing surfaces, rather than that it made the armour sturdier. It could certainly do both, of course.

Your explanation for mail, though, I find questionable. I do not see how a round cross-section prevents a strike from being spread across multiple links. Flattened rings, rather, seem to me to give the advantage of a tighter inner diameter, making it more difficult for the armour to be penetrated.

Much better scholarship can be found in Alan Williams' The Knight and the Blast Furnace, though even the tests he performs, with much better controls and concern for the realities of armour, are of uncertain veracity.

To confirm what others have said, I have heard the fluting described as resembling corrugated iron or steel I-beams as girders. The other use I heard was the fluting on the surface could act similar to a stop rib, causing blows sliding across the surface of the plates to skim off rather than slide into a vulnerable point.

With mail, it is not that rounded cross sections stop the force from being spread out, but the inner diameter you mention is combined by the flattened rings linked together also obstruct the space within that inner diameter, making it more likely that several rings will be in the way of a blow. However, that is pure speculation on my part without any sources to back it up.

Also, I love The Knight and the Blast Furance. I highly recommend anyone here check out the previews online.

Makrond posted:

I've met people who were under the impression that if you used a pole weapon against someone with a sword or an axe they'd just cut clean through it and kill you, but I feel like it would be a struggle even with just a pine shaft, let alone the hardwood shafts everyone was using.

Another thing was metal cheeks or langets reinforcing the shaft.

AlphaDog posted:

Edit: Wasn't one of the functions of the Zweihander to chop through pike shafts? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find a reference now.

There is a 1548 woodcut of the Battle of Kappel showing zweihanders being used against pikes in a way that may suggest hacking at them, although personally I am not that convinced. Another suggestion I have heard is that parrying hooks (the secondary crossguard) could be used to bind several pikes at once and push them aside, creating a breach your side can exploit. On the other hand, that was a later addition to two-handed swords, many bidenhanders or motantes or similar war swords did not have them and they were still semi-popular in pike squares before then.

New Coke posted:

Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was.

Yes, asymmetric warfare happened, although it does not appear to be common/routine/standard enough to call it an analogue to guerrilla warfare.

The main examples I know of was Hungary after the Mongols won the Battle of Mohi in 1241. However, what was more successful was just to bring all the food inside a fortified building (a nearby refuge, monastery or town) and just wait for the enemy to leave, which was more successful for the Hungarians. Most of the places with those defences were able to resist the Mongols.

In fact, Hungary tended to be the main place for guerrilla warfare, typically against invasions from the east. I think it did happen occasionally in the Hundred Years War, although it seems to have been rare enough that most people did not have a ‘concept’ of guerrilla warfare, it would just be isolated incidences brought on by exceptional circumstances.

Kaal makes excellent points on the subject. Medieval Europe was a very unfriendly place for guerrilla warfare.

Vivoviparous
Sep 8, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post
Well in the interest of having this wonderful thread not die I will ask some questions.

What kind of contraceptives did people use historically besides pulling out? How much did they know about fertility and menstrual cycles?

What do you think about Bernard Cornwall?

How common were flails and things like that (ball+chain style weapons) in the era of plate armor? They seem ridiculous and unwieldy and inconvenient in about a dozen ways.

Was fighting with a main gauche or parrying dagger strictly a dueling thing? Did anybody ever actually dual wield?

Some of these questions are silly and I understand if you don't answer them.

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

Vivoviparous posted:

Well in the interest of having this wonderful thread not die I will ask some questions.

What kind of contraceptives did people use historically besides pulling out? How much did they know about fertility and menstrual cycles?

What do you think about Bernard Cornwall?

How common were flails and things like that (ball+chain style weapons) in the era of plate armor? They seem ridiculous and unwieldy and inconvenient in about a dozen ways.

Was fighting with a main gauche or parrying dagger strictly a dueling thing? Did anybody ever actually dual wield?

Some of these questions are silly and I understand if you don't answer them.

Actually, they’re good questions.

Doing a quick read-around, I saw some suggestions here - http://www.richeast.org/htwm/mmed/mmedicine.html - I cannot verify that website but it does cite its sources. They mention Queen Anne’s Lace seeds being used to prevent pregnancy, and more abortion methods. I should note that abortion methods were not all that safe. Until surgical abortions, terminating a pregnancy often led to the dead foetus remaining inside the body.

Some herbal remedies are suggested here - http://faculty.bsc.edu/shagen/STUDENT/Joy&Chris/contraset.html - This is also the kind of thing that in England “cunning folk” might do. Again, it lists the sources, but elsewhere it mentions chastity belts, which you should never take at face-value in reference to the medieval period. The evidence for their existence in medieval times was circumstantial at best (Bellifortis sketch 1405, which seems to be a joke) and like many ‘medieval’ torture devices they seem to be mostly Victorian inventions.

I like Bernard Cornwell, his writing is fun to read, he does a fair amount of research, and he also makes no secret of when he takes liberties with the facts for the sake of a good story. I greatly enjoyed the Warlord Chronicles (a re-imagining of the King Arthur story based on the early Celtic context), I also absolutely loved Azincourt – Sir John Cornewaille is spectacularly entertaining and I love Hook’s religious experiences. My main criticisms of his writing are that he gets carried away with the subjects of corruption within Christianity (which did happen, but far less than one would think from reading his work) and the mistreatment of women.

Flail type weapons were never common, but did gain some popularity during the Hussite Wars. One ordinance from the 1400s in Germany required 3 men out of 20 have flails. They were definitely inconvenient and had serious flaws, although their main strength in my opinion is that many peasants were familiar with using grain flails and so might have an easier time using them.

Main-gauche & parrying daggers were generally civilian weapons, although not strictly for duelling. The context they were most likely to be used was an urban street fight or ambush. They were excellent for stabbing when either your swords bound up or when your opponent gets past the point of your sword. Civilian swords tended a little more towards rapiers, which had excellent reach but were far less effective when up-close, so having a short off-hand weapon meant you could deal with that situation quite handily.

A pair of identical weapons was very rare, there is mention of a ‘case of rapiers’ in some Italian sources (I think Di Grassi) but these do not appear to be the norm. Generally two full-size weapons are more likely to get in the way of the other, and if you hold a weapon in each hand it is generally preferable for them to be able to do different things and therefore cover each other’s weaknesses. Like the aforementioned rapier & dagger being effective both at long and short reach.

Battlefields did not seem to encourage dual-wielding though. Early on weapon-and-shield was most popular, while later two-handed weapons were more the thing. The sword-and-buckler was very popular, for people who wanted to switch from a two-handed weapon (a bow or a pike, for example) to weapon-and-shield quickly once the enemy got close. Occasionally we have references to warriors having multiple single-handed weapons, but it does not say if they were to be used at once.

I hope that helps!

Alien Arcana
Feb 14, 2012

You're related to soup, Admiral.
While we're discussing weapons again, how about hammers? I believe cavalry hammers were a thing, but were they ever in use by infantry? What did they look like?

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa

Alien Arcana posted:

While we're discussing weapons again, how about hammers? I believe cavalry hammers were a thing, but were they ever in use by infantry? What did they look like?

Infantry used hammers for different purposes, although generally it was a weapon for commoners. Most war hammers would look similar to a modern sledgehammer. One common usage was by longbowmen, who would use their hammers primarily to set up stakes at defensive positions, but also as an improvised weapon if need be. Hammer type weapons would typically be on a longer pole, and used similarly to a poleaxe, that is to knock a rider off his horse either with a blow, by using the spike/hook end to grapple them off (if the hammer had one), or by targetting the legs of the horse. Hammers with a spiked end could also be used to puncture armor on areas where the metal was less thick. Even against heavily armored opponents though the amount of force from a hit could be enough to stun, cause concussions, and break bones.

Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010
Also, in spite of the implication you might get from its name, the poleaxe was a combination weapon that had features of both the axe and the hammer, and it was as likely to have a blunt or spiked hammer head as it was to have an axe head. It seems to have become the weapon of choice for knights fighting as infantry during the renaissance. This was a polearm about 6-7' long overall. The business end was usually a hammer or an axe, and it would have a pick opposite side which could be used to strike or as a hook to drag a man from his horse. On top of the weapon was a spike, which allowed it to be used as a thrusting weapon like a spear. Sometimes there was another smaller spike at the butt end of the weapon, so it could also be thrust effectively while held reversed.

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

Alien Arcana posted:

While we're discussing weapons again, how about hammers? I believe cavalry hammers were a thing, but were they ever in use by infantry? What did they look like?

Hammers were definitely in use, I would even say primarily in use by infantry. They were relatively affordable and good anti-armour weapons to stun or slow-down a well armoured opponent. We see them mostly in the 1400s, although quite a few forms were around earlier to lesser degrees.

First thing about how hammers looked is they were relatively small. A giant head is not that desirable, partly because of the extra weight and partly because a smaller head concentrate the impact of a blow onto a smaller area (not that you cannot get around the issue with a larger hammer, but the smaller ones make it easier). You see some hammer-heads split into flanges or serrated faces like a meat-tenderiser to further concentrate the force of a blow onto a smaller area.

Second thing is the hammerheads were very rarely alone. They would typically be combination weapons with an axe or spearhead attached, in some cases picks.

The early versions were just a protrusion on the back of an axe. It gets referred to in Norse sagas as an oxarhammer (axe-hammer) for striking a less lethal blow. Byzantine axes I was researching earlier into the thread sometimes had hammers on the back, etc.
How far this was a conscious design to have a hammer head or a by-product of making a strong back so the axe is secure in place I am unsure.

Later on you get much more purpose built hammers like many pollaxes, these are still not always or not entirely hammers (generally Europe liked to produce polearms with lots of different ways to kill people), but the role and prominence of the hammer seems to be increasing.

Another option was the mauls used by longbowmen, primarily these were tools to drive wooden stakes into the ground, although they also seemed functional as weapons when fighting against people in armour. How far they count is a matter of opinion; I tend to think of them as tools being used as weapons rather than weapons in and of themselves. My image-search is being uncooperative, but they tend to look just like wooden sledgehammers.

Railtus fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Feb 19, 2013

Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010

Railtus posted:

My image-search is being uncooperative, but they tend to look just like wooden sledgehammers.

You should rehost those pics on imgur or something if you want to post them, else you might get in trouble for leeching bandwidth.

Anyway search for "mallet" instead, that gives more results. The root word is the same as maul, mallet is the diminutive; a full-size wooden maul would be larger and have a longer half than a carpenters mallet, but that's about what it would look like.

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

EvanSchenck posted:

You should rehost those pics on imgur or something if you want to post them, else you might get in trouble for leeching bandwidth.

Anyway search for "mallet" instead, that gives more results. The root word is the same as maul, mallet is the diminutive; a full-size wooden maul would be larger and have a longer half than a carpenters mallet, but that's about what it would look like.

Thanks. I tried with mallet, although unfortunately I never got quite what I was after.

Frostwerks
Sep 24, 2007

by Lowtax

Railtus posted:


Battlefields did not seem to encourage dual-wielding though. Early on weapon-and-shield was most popular, while later two-handed weapons were more the thing. The sword-and-buckler was very popular, for people who wanted to switch from a two-handed weapon (a bow or a pike, for example) to weapon-and-shield quickly once the enemy got close. Occasionally we have references to warriors having multiple single-handed weapons, but it does not say if they were to be used at once.

I hope that helps!

Did sword and gauntlet ever get used with the gauntlet as both a defensive tool and offhand weapon? I really don't know much about the combat of the era (or hell it may have even been after that or in fact never at all) so I'm probably full of poo poo. Was sword and cloak ever a thing?

Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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Frostwerks posted:

Did sword and gauntlet ever get used with the gauntlet as both a defensive tool and offhand weapon? I really don't know much about the combat of the era (or hell it may have even been after that or in fact never at all) so I'm probably full of poo poo. Was sword and cloak ever a thing?

Overall, sword & gauntlet: no. Sword & cloak: yes.

With sword & gauntlet, no fighting text I know of seems to specifically advise the use of both together. You could use the same techniques as single-sword with the other hand empty, but generally if you have access to a gauntlet for your left hand you are probably armoured and so to a degree those techniques would not apply. If you are not in armour, such as in a civilian context or you simply lack the resources, there are clearly much better options such as sword & buckler or sword & dagger.

That said, there was some weird thing called a lantern shield, which was a bizarre combination of a shield, a gauntlet, several different long knives and a lamp all at once. Apparently it was supposed to be for a watchman at night.

Sword and cloak has references for different times. Rapier and cloak is taught in Spanish rapier fencing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKZ-Y4T66Y and Swords & Swordsmen by Mike Loades mentions bronze figurines from Villa Giula with swords and a cloak rolled over their left arm. In later-period fencing, cloaks were great for entangling your opponent's weapon, masking your figure (hold it in front of you they struggle to know where to stab), generally blinding your opponent etc. In the early period sources, one suggestion was you could use the the cloak like loose netting to absorb the energy of a blow or generally protect your forearm (which is viable unless your opponent has a sharp slicing sword) and it can be held in front of the sword handle so your opponent cannot clearly see what your sword-hand is doing. This makes blows more likely to be a surprise.

Vivoviparous
Sep 8, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post

Railtus posted:

Until surgical abortions, terminating a pregnancy often led to the dead foetus remaining inside the body.


:barf:

quote:

Some herbal remedies are suggested here - http://faculty.bsc.edu/shagen/STUDENT/Joy&Chris/contraset.html - This is also the kind of thing that in England “cunning folk” might do. Again, it lists the sources, but elsewhere it mentions chastity belts, which you should never take at face-value in reference to the medieval period. The evidence for their existence in medieval times was circumstantial at best (Bellifortis sketch 1405, which seems to be a joke) and like many ‘medieval’ torture devices they seem to be mostly Victorian inventions.

So chastity belts were just the Victorians being extremely kinky? I know this is a little outside of the scope of this thread, but what was up with the Victorian era and all the sexual piccadillos that persisted as a result of whatever cultural trauma seems to have affected the time period? What was different about the sexual repression of earlier periods compared to the Victorian era?

In a similar vein, is there historical documentation that shows the effect cultural traumas like The Inquisition had on society, like how Japan is still affected by the bombing or Germany is still affected by WW2 or the southern United States is still affected by Reconstruction?

quote:

I also absolutely loved Azincourt – Sir John Cornewaille is spectacularly entertaining and I love Hook’s religious experiences. My main criticisms of his writing are that he gets carried away with the subjects of corruption within Christianity (which did happen, but far less than one would think from reading his work) and the mistreatment of women.

Excellent, I'm glad I can responsibly enjoy a little :black101: and learn something at the same time. Cornwell had some bizarre experiences as a child growing up with the Peculiar People sect/cult who "banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine" so I cut him some slack with all his rapist/con men priests, I think he does a great job of making a case for the good the church did as well as the bad. Especially in the Saxon Series he explains the power of Christianity from the viewpoint of pagan warriors, which gave me a whole new perspective on the rapid rise of the early Church due to the practical value of the Christian religion. There's a little aside where Uhdred ponders Wodin, and how there's no sense he could ever give a drat about you personally. The gods were mercurial and did their own thing, arbitrary just like natural forces. Jesus, though. Jesus loved you and could be proud or disappointed, would punish and reward based on relatively clearly defined rules.

Anyway I just think this stuff is neat and if you feel like just expounding on a topic that's interesting to you that you don't think many people are aware of, I would enjoy it.

Schenck v. U.S.
Sep 8, 2010
This is getting into discussion of the wrong timeline, but happily it's an area that I'm more qualified to talk about.

Vivoviparous posted:

So chastity belts were just the Victorians being extremely kinky? I know this is a little outside of the scope of this thread, but what was up with the Victorian era and all the sexual piccadillos that persisted as a result of whatever cultural trauma seems to have affected the time period? What was different about the sexual repression of earlier periods compared to the Victorian era?

The Victorian period is essentially the high point of sexual repression in culture. It's important to note that sexual behavior in private and in secret doesn't actually vary that much between historical periods. In the Victorian period people were engaged in every sort of perversion they could come up with, they just didn't talk about it because it was unfashionable. There's actually an amazing chapter of Anne McClintock's "Imperial Leather" that I read for a class, which was about these diaries that had been discovered from the Victorian period. They were written by an upper class British gentleman who was in a life-long BDSM relationship just getting dommed by this big, muscular working-class woman he had met through her washing his clothes. The Victorian period was also the golden age of prostitution in Europe and the Americas, with whole districts given over to high class brothels, and street walkers widely available in any significant city. The same middle-class Victorian men who were supposed to be these paragons of respectability were sustaining a tremendous sex industry.

The difference was just that people during the Victorian era didn't talk about any of it. Even in infamously repressive societies like those with widespread practice of Islamic fundamentalism, people will have frank discussion of intimacy within the bounds of marriage. Like when the internet became more widespread in the Middle East, websites where you could e-mail religious questions to an imam became popular, and a lot of the questions would be stuff like "is it okay for me to drink my wife's breast milk?" and so forth. Victorians didn't even do that. But it's hard to make general observations about stuff, because the Victorian period was also when doctors were fingerbanging women to treat "hysteria." Conversely there were periods of history, like Restoration England, where it was permissible to talk quite openly about all kinds of sex stuff, but that came in and out of fashion. It was out of fashion in the late 19th century.

In trying to explain why that was, I think historians have looked mostly at the balance of power between social classes. At that time in history the middle class or bourgeoisie was supplanting the aristocracy in wealth and political power, but they also needed to show that they had the right to it. They did this by publicly subscribing to what you might think of as the bourgeois values--hard work, faith in education, rectitude (sexual, financial, whatever), religious faith, etc. "We deserve to rule because we are better people than the aristocrats in these ways."

quote:

In a similar vein, is there historical documentation that shows the effect cultural traumas like The Inquisition had on society, like how Japan is still affected by the bombing or Germany is still affected by WW2 or the southern United States is still affected by Reconstruction?

The concept of cultural trauma itself is pretty recent vintage so anything along those lines would come from close readings of available historical document. I want to say that the first time people took the idea seriously was after WWI, when it was hard to avoid recognizing the damage that had been done by the war. Medievalists are able to look back at an event like the Black Death and see that it had very serious repercussions for quite a long time--like this whole mess. But people at the time didn't have that frame of reference.

bewbies
Sep 23, 2003

Fun Shoe

Vivoviparous posted:

What do you think about Bernard Cornwall?

The only things I've read of his were Agincourt and all of the Saxon Stories and I've loved them all. The Saxon Stories in particular I really respect both as a literary work and as a really plausible take on England during that time period. Granted I'm pretty partial to that time and place history (my master's thesis was on Alfred the Great) but it is pretty rare for an historical novel to ring that true.

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Railtus
Apr 8, 2011

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

Vivoviparous posted:

:barf:


So chastity belts were just the Victorians being extremely kinky? I know this is a little outside of the scope of this thread, but what was up with the Victorian era and all the sexual piccadillos that persisted as a result of whatever cultural trauma seems to have affected the time period? What was different about the sexual repression of earlier periods compared to the Victorian era?

In a similar vein, is there historical documentation that shows the effect cultural traumas like The Inquisition had on society, like how Japan is still affected by the bombing or Germany is still affected by WW2 or the southern United States is still affected by Reconstruction?


Excellent, I'm glad I can responsibly enjoy a little :black101: and learn something at the same time. Cornwell had some bizarre experiences as a child growing up with the Peculiar People sect/cult who "banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine" so I cut him some slack with all his rapist/con men priests, I think he does a great job of making a case for the good the church did as well as the bad. Especially in the Saxon Series he explains the power of Christianity from the viewpoint of pagan warriors, which gave me a whole new perspective on the rapid rise of the early Church due to the practical value of the Christian religion. There's a little aside where Uhdred ponders Wodin, and how there's no sense he could ever give a drat about you personally. The gods were mercurial and did their own thing, arbitrary just like natural forces. Jesus, though. Jesus loved you and could be proud or disappointed, would punish and reward based on relatively clearly defined rules.

Anyway I just think this stuff is neat and if you feel like just expounding on a topic that's interesting to you that you don't think many people are aware of, I would enjoy it.

Chastity belts were mostly just the Victorians projecting their own insecurities onto earlier societies. Confirmed finds are overwhelmingly nineteenth century, there are rumours of one from the sixteenth century but it is missing, and the Bellifortis sketch was from the fifteenth century. However, medieval documents otherwise do not mention the thing like it was any kind of common practise. If they existed at all in the medieval period they were rare, and generally something not discussed in public, when the medieval world otherwise had some very frank documents about sex and sexuality.

Cultural trauma is a new term to me, so it is difficult to comment on. However, I will say the Inquisition would be nowhere near as traumatic as the other examples. Thomas Madden even makes the argument that the Inquisition was a force for good mitigating or reducing the damage done by secular courts - http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp

That said, I disagree with his other similar article on the Spanish Inquisition, which contradicts itself. At one stage it says the Spanish Inquisition did not have the power perform executions, then it later states the Spanish Inquisition performed fewer executions than other courts – which would only be a valid point if it had the power. http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spanish-inquisition

In theory, the Spanish Inquisition was just. Officially they only had jurisdiction over Baptised Christians, so could not persecute Jews or Muslims. In practise things were rather unjust. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 required Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave, then Muslims later. Many chose to stay on the grounds that they had nowhere else to go, but the Inquisition was charged with investigating “false converts”. This was a very unfair situation for the Jewish & Muslim population of Spain.

However, the Inquisition also did some good things. They stopped witch hunts, they acted as a control against corruption in the church, they made sure the trials of heresy were based on theology rather than mob rule or lynching. Essentially the point I want to make is the Inquisition seemed to be more of a symptom of cultural trauma rather than a cause.

I certainly agree that Cornwell has grown more balanced in his treatment of the church than he once was. Warlord Chronicles was painfully anti-Christian, but Azincourt has both a corrupt priest and a good priest. I have not read most of his recent works though.

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