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This is old butRailtus posted:Essentially he made his career from semi-sport battles rather than in war. One reason I like Marshal is he developed the land he had gained, making improvements while he owned it (although mainly expanding two castles). This is kind-of true but also misleading. William the Marshal spent much of his youth in tournament, that is true, but from 1188 he was much more important as a soldier, general, and military adviser to Henry II and his successors. John Gillingham has made a solid case for this, noting for example that many more words in his Life are devoted to warfare than to tournament. He may have come to royal attention through his reputation as a tournier but even in his early days of knighthood he was a warrior, and his skill in war is quite evident from his biography.
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Feb 13, 2013 16:38
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Anne Whateley posted:I'm not sure. I watched it awhile back, so I don't remember specific quibbles, but I remember being irritated a lot. Maybe not past the fifth grade for people who like history but some dude came into this thread asking of medieval people stank so bad we'd pass out were we to meet one. Some things are vexingly persistent, like constant witch-burning, 20 pound swords, the all-powerful longbow, medieval people being inherently stupid, etc. and Medieval Lives goes a little way to correcting that. Also, Jones' analysis of Chaucer's Knight is pretty contentious, and I'm not convinced by some of his arguments, especially in regards to contemporary views of the later crusades.
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Feb 14, 2013 19:52
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EvanSchenck posted:Yes, effective use of pikes demands soldiers trained in close-order drill, because they are actually a remarkably poor individual weapon. What do you think of George Silver's assertion that the pike was a better weapon for single combat than the two-handed sword? Railtus posted:To give a few examples, the Battle of Visby was depressingly one-sided, even though the peasants had some armour and equipment. Another thing would be the 'success' of the chevauchee tactics during the Hundred Years War (well, they succeeded in looting and burning villages, but failed at their goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people whose homes they just burned down). "Winning the hearts and minds of the people" was not a primary goal of the chevauchée, at least not in the campaigns of Edward III or his sons. Speaking strategically their chief purpose was to draw the French into unfavourable battle-- Crécy and Poitiers being the most famous examples from this period. They also served to help pay for the armies and of course to supply them, but Clifford Rogers has done a pretty good job of showing that their chief purpose was to provoke the Valois onto the field. It is also worth mentioning that 'hearts and minds' campaigns should not revolve around making people like you, but rather around making their allegiance to you seem the most optimal for their own defence and stability, and be justifiably legitimate. Making your use of force seem irresistible is part of that. To quote from FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency posted:“Hearts” means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. “Minds” means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. To bring it back to the Middle Ages, let's consider an example from my area of expertise: when Louis VI brought forth William Clito as the rightful successor to the duchy of Normandy, and repeatedly ravaged Anglo-Norman lands, some barons came over to his side not only because they viewed Clito as a superior overlord (either because he was more legitimate or more easily exploited) but because Henry had proven incapable or unwilling to defend his vassals, and would not make serious headway against Louis until Brémule in 1119. There are a number of reasons you do not see allegiances shifting as radically in the HYW. The foremost of these is that notions of treason, and the punishment of treason, had become much more extreme. Where in the 11th and 12th century the confiscation of lands was a common punishment, by the mid-14th century execution had become much more regular (in England anyway, not sure about the continent). Xiahou Dun posted:Any good resources on non-ecclesiastical Medieval music? I do a little, but most of it's really late. That drum beat is pretty positively not medieval European. This sounds like 'medieval-esque' music. A buddy of mine who has studied the historical use of the gusli (a Russian instrument akin to a psaltery) has told me a lot of bands sell themselves as playing medieval music but oftentimes make it up. Naxos's "Time of the Templars" CD set seems decent. Whoever plays their Palästinalied does a credible job. Among other bands that have claim to at least semi-accuracy you have Sirin and Estampie. Estampie does do mixed medieval-pop stuff sometimes but they usually alert you to that fact in the CD description.
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Feb 14, 2013 23:56
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Railtus posted:I am being a little ironic in my description; I figured I did not have to repeat the more nuanced commentary I made in earlier posts. 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. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Feb 15, 2013 |
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Feb 15, 2013 02:03
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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, 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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Feb 15, 2013 07:21
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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 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.
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Feb 16, 2013 00:58
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Obdicut posted:During this period, the Vikings also took over poo poo. They went into France, and the Normans have a lot of Scandinavian, particularly Danish, influence in them, and the ship technology they brought with them is part of the reason that the Norman invasion of England was successful. By 1066 the Normans did not really wage war differently from other members of the Frankish sphere. Additionally, the voyage to Pevensey was not perilous. Wace claims that only two ships out of hundreds were lost, and they may have been overburdened. If the technology helped, its effect was not really measurable.
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Mar 1, 2013 17:49
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Obdicut posted:The Norman seamanship shows itself best in their conquests in Italy and beyond. What have you read about Norman fleets in the Med? I only really know about their conquest of Sicily and involvement in the First Crusade, neither of which required skilled sailing. From what I remember from looking at some of Bernard Bachrach's stuff the Italo-Normans basically just integrated Greek sailors and ships, rather than construct norse-style ships or import Norman sailors. EvanSchenck posted:As to Venice and Genoa, they were wealthy port cities with strong navies, located in favorable defensive terrain. Genoa is located in mountainous Liguria, hard between mountains and sea, making it somewhat difficult to access from the landward side if the Genoese didn't want you to. It also had sufficient wealth to build fortifications and maintain mercenary forces for its defense, the ease of resupply by sea made it practically impossible to take by siege. Venice was an even more impossible task, because it was located on an island in a huge lagoon controlled by the Venetian Navy, and the territory surrounding the lagoon was disease-filled swamps. Those cities were just situated in extremely strong defensive positions, and that's why they were unconquered for such a long time. The bigger issue, as I see it, is that very rarely could anyone be bothered. The Italians that the Holy Roman Empire cared about were in Pavia, Milan and eventually Sicily and Naples. The men of Languedoc, meanwhile, were too busy fighting each other and Franks to the north to bother, and none of the nearby Italian cities were powerful enough to go after Genoa itself. As for Venice, the Croats were always busy fighting the Hungarians, the Hungarians were always busy fighting everyone except the Polish, and again the HRE wasn't very interested and the rest of the Italian powers were too weak or too far away. That is partially a function of their strong positions no doubt, but the siege of Genoa in 1522 only lasted 10 days, so its position couldn't have been too strong. Venice's swampy country was more dangerous, to be certain, but I doubt if a Duke or King really wanted to expend enough effort that he couldn't take it.
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Mar 2, 2013 07:03
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tonberrytoby posted:What sort of naval combat was going on in the age of the longship? In the Anglo-Norman sphere there is only one large naval battle until the Barons' War of the early 13th century, and we know almost nothing about it. During Robert Curthose's attempt to usurp the Kingdom of England from his brother, William Rufus, Robert spent some £3000 on mercenaries to invade the country, but during their voyage across the channel they fought at sea with Rufus's forces and were almost completely destroyed. And that's about all we know. We also have details of the river war between Richard I and Philip II on the Seine, but these too are vague, and never amount to a major battle. After the loss of nearly all of the Angevin empire under John, naval conflict between the kingdoms of England and France became much more important. Once John dies, however, and Prince Louis, later Louis VIII, was forced to return to France, neither entered into a major war with the other until the HYW. Fizzil posted:Its mostly boarding actions, longships and galleys lend to that alot, i don't really know much but it seems the design remained fairly static since antiquity, galleys were literally the pinnacle of naval ships in that period, well until the Portugese and Spanish combined european/middle eastern ship designs to make more sea worthy, sail reliant ships this shifted alot of the manpower into more important functions instead of rowing for example. Galleys were by no means "the pinnacle" of ship design, in large part because there was no singular pinnacle. Galleys tended to fare much more poorly outside the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean than their deep-hulled counterparts, and were, as I recall, not as fast when operating under sail alone. You are essentially correct about boarding actions, however. Boarding and missile exchange (bows and crossbows, not siege weapons) were the primary ways of combat in naval warfare until the proliferation of cannon. Even then, of course, boarding could still be a useful action.
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Mar 9, 2013 03:42
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Phobophilia posted:2) You really had to draw the sword towards you or push away from you to get a good cut into someone. We usually assume a good strong hit was instantly incapacitating, when it may actually be the case that you need a good cut AND a good pull in order to slice through the skin and fat into the muscles and tendons to reduce someone else's fighting capacity. What they don't seem to explore is the effect of armour, I'd imagine if you're fighting mail you want to emphasise your cut and spend less time on the draw in order to bruise and batter your opponent. The draw-cut is actually of fairly limited use. poo poo, look at their own videos. You cannot extend your arms as much as they do when demonstrating the geometric advantage of cutting to the head and still draw your sword back to slice. I'm amazed that with all their focus on biomechanics they don't recognise this. Additionally, you simply can't slice a hard material like bone effectively. You are far better off translating all of the energy of your swing to a normal cutting stroke. That is not to say draw-cuts were not used. In situations where a full swing would not be usable, either due to proximity or obstruction, you could and should draw-cut if you can, but saying that you can't cut well without slicing is just plain wrong. Their overuse of the term 'biomechanics' also bugs me. That you have more leverage closer to the hilt of the sword is not biomechanics, it's just simple physics.
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Mar 13, 2013 06:38
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Given the context of the presentation, I think it's understandable why they just use a single term, so as to not confuse the crowd. The distinction between physics and biomechanics also seems unnecessary to me, in the context of fighters, as the fighter and his equipment should ideally be natural extensions of each other. Focusing on the term biomechanics makes that more obvious I feel, and brings home the point that you're sensing your opponent through your sword and shield, not just looking at him with your eyes. If you're going to use scientific terms you should aim for some kind of accuracy. Why not simply say 'physics', which is the more accessible term, over biomechanics? The sword and shield being 'natural extensions' of the fighter is mysticism, and the point I was making has nothing to do with feeling your opponent's movement through the sword, but the fact that the Forte is stronger than the Debole, which is just leverage. Phobophilia posted:Thanks for the criticisms. So yeah, draws if you can afford to against soft tissue, but it's worthless against armour. Better off slamming as hard as possible against joints or bones. Not 'if you can afford to', but rather if it is appropriate for the situation, which typically precludes a full-force swing. Roman legionaries would slice the hamstrings of their opponents, for example, which is not part of a full-force swing. The only evidence I've seen of a full-force swing draw-cut existing is from HEMA people that have trouble cutting some things and so reinterpret the information available. The conclusions people draw from experimentation are often questionable, simply because we are still divorced from the proper context, namely single combat with hand weapons. You are absolutely correct that their interpretations are not for the shield wall, nor should they be extended to the deeply curved kite shields seen in the Bayeux Tapestry, nor to deeply curved Roman scuta. Reasonable interpretations for use of curved shields have been made by Stephen Hand in SPADA 2, which is well worth picking up for that article alone. Their interpretation of Roman hilt design is also highly suspect, in large part because the nature of the scutum, being deeply curved, is contrary to their earlier contention that deeply curved shields were unsuitable for their method of combat. Scuta, however, were also centre-gripped, and their use to some degree required exposing the arm. It is clear that whatever similarities there were between the use of the scutum and gladius, their analysis is ill-founded. Again, you do not need to draw your blade back to cut through flesh. Look at all these Cold Steel videos. Look at them. They're horrible. But if you can hold back your laughter for a minute, look at what they are cutting and how they swing their swords. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04GNPaeaqqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiQUUlOwWcY
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Mar 13, 2013 16:40
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Zeitgueist posted:It's worth noting that it's likely that swords of the day were, or most blades for that matter, were not as razor sharp as we imagine them to be. How sharp do we imagine them to be? Though we have some swords with quite good surviving edges, they represent a limited sample. Still, Peter Johnsson notes at least one example that was still sharp enough to cut paper. Check out this thread: https://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=25639 So there are at least some examples of swords being 'paper-cutting sharp' although perhaps not 'razor sharp', though the latter is a very hard term to pin down. Edit: Hey Railtus did you go to the R. L. Scott conference in Glasgow last year? If not you missed some good presentations from Syndey Anglo, Peter Johnsson and Matthew Strickland, as well as a really bad presentation from John Clements. Dierk Hagedorn also presented but I honestly cannot remember what it was about, just thinking it was decent. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 13, 2013 |
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Mar 13, 2013 19:05
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Railtus posted:Then use a club, it would make far more sense. It's worth mentioning that a lot of these techniques were designed for unarmoured fighting. Abschneiden (what I called draw-cutting in earlier posts) is the most obvious example. It is within that context, I think, that Liechtenauer speaks of the nature of strength, as I think strength is an inarguable boon against armour, in wrestling with half or in normal strikes. For the value of strong sword blows against armored opponents, consider the following examples from different chronicles and different eras: Vie de Louis le Gros posted:He took up arms on the spot and headed there with a few companions by a hidden path. Seeing that some knights whom he had sent ahead had already struck Thomas [of Marle] and that he had fallen, Ralph [of Vermandois] spurred on his horse, charged forward, and struck him ardently with his sword. He delivered a deadly wound and, if no one had stopped him, he would have done it again. The Rhyme Chronicle of Livonia posted:[The Semgallians] advanced toward [the Vogt Goldingen] on the fields. He returned their charge with spirit. They did not abandon their attempt; their numbers were too large for him. The officer was quite worried about this. He had fifty men with him, and yet he attacked with such force that they retreated into their gates. His bravery took him too far. Often he rode into the gates far ahead of the Kur army. The Semgallians were aware of him often in their gates on that day. Finally a hero ran forward and hit the officer on his helmet so that he fell down in the dust. Yet a Brother was near him, who dismounted on the grass at the same time, and gave help to the officer. El Victorial posted:Thus did he go as far as the bridge which is near to the city [of Setenil]; then there came out a knight armed and on foot, who most boldly came up to him near enough to lay hands on his horse's reins. Pero Niño struck him such a blow on the top of the head that he split his headpiece over his skull, and the Moor fell to the ground dead, but with the blow Pero Niño nearly lost his sword. These instances are from the early-mid 12th c., mid-late 13th c. and early 15th c. respectively. For its own sake, let's just throw in some axes. Roman de Rou posted:The Normans were doing well when an Englishman came running up ... He held a very fine Norwegian axe, its blade more than a full foot in length. He was well armed in his own manner and big and strong and of a bold countenance... he came straight up to a Norman, who was armed and on horseback. He intended to strike him on the helmet with his axe of steel, but the blow slipped right past him. The axe, which was very sharp, skidded on to the front of the saddle-bows and sliced crossways through the horse's neck, so that the blade of the axe, which was heavy, went right into the ground; the horse fell forward on the ground along with its master. I know not whether he struck him any more blows, but the Normans who saw the blow gasped in amazement. The Bruce posted:And he, that in his sterapis stude, Edit: Just so's you know, I'm in large part posting so much stuff because I just wanted to fling out some primary source material. Suger and Barbour are particularly entertaining, though Wace and Gutierre Diaz de Gamez are also pleasantly evocative. quote:Cost has not been mentioned in my experience. However, medieval swords were typically associated with the professional warriors who were typically well-funded. It has never really occurred to me at all that it would be costly, since I assumed a whetstone would be fairly common. Certainly the feudal troops (knights and their household retainers) often had squires to sharpen their swords. It seemed to be something that the troops organised for themselves. This is an era when everybody and their dog carried a knife, and used it day-to-day. The knowledge and ability to at least get a crappy working edge on a blade would be nearly universal, especially when people not only used knives but also axes, scythes, sickles, etc. A majority of these people would be working in areas where having centralised sharpening would just be inefficient, given how low population density was. Sending out entirely blunt weapons to the field would also be a bad idea, not only because men would provide their own equipment in many instances but putting a half-decent edge on a properly blunt instrument is much, much more time consuming than sharpening a dull one when you don't have a grinding wheel available. Literally hours of work. I'd also point out that "lances" as a unit are a relatively late phenomenon, of approx. the 14th century. Instead in the 11th, 12th, and early 13th you had conrois, or squadrons, which unite around a single gonfanon, or banner. These small groups of knights would act as a cohesive unit in combat, and would often provide a certain number of foot-soldiers with them, but there was no requirement or expectation in the earlier parts of the era. In the Rule of the Templars, which is mid-late 12th c., there is a provision for each knight having a 'squire', who would fight as foot-soldiers, as well as additional squires as the master saw fit. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 16, 2013 18:27
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Railtus posted:Excellent use of sources! With Vie de Louis le Gros it does not clearly say whether he struck armour or not, but those are beautiful contributions. Thank you! It is not explicit but I am fairly unshakeable in the belief that Thomas of Marle would have been wearing armour. Thomas was a fairly powerful noble, having, earlier in his life, controlled Crécy, Amiens, and Nouvion in addition to Marle and Coucy. It is during an attempt by Louis to besiege Coucy that this takes place. Thomas was waiting with a host to ambush the king and, in the words of Suger, 'seal its doom'. It is infeasible that he would not have been wearing armour for such an attack, and other circumstantial evidence points strongly toward it. The fact that Ralph considered it necessary to strike again after delivering a wound which broke Thomas's neck, plus the lack of detail for the wound (unusual for Suger) implies that it was done by percussive force rather than cutting. Additionally, any damage to the neck by a sharp blade against bare flesh or cloth would more likely have ended there and then, with blood. I wish I had Henry of Huntingdon on hand, because he describes Henry I of England getting hit so hard on the side of the head with a sword that it drove the mail into his flesh and made him bleed, but he also notes that it was Henry's personal bodyguard, not the king himself, who overcame his would-be killer. quote:Liechtenauer’s comments on abschneiden or draw-cutting are definitely blossfechten (unarmoured combat for the benefit of other readers). When you get to harnischfechten (armoured combat) the game changes considerably. Also, by the time of the Liechtenauer tradition, transitional armour was becoming more common with the mail being reinforced, so bashing with heavy blows would be more difficult than previously. Unfortunately the earliest medieval swordsmanship manual I know of is the I.33, so we have less surviving evidence of how earlier swordsmanship was different. I am unsure about this. I've begun to suspect, and Silver's comments on the advantages of different polearms seem to support, that fighting on the battlefield is quite different from fighting in a personal defence or duelling environment. Certainly, the prevalence of leg-cuts at Wisby and Towton, which you almost never see in fechtbuchs, suggest a far more chaotic environment with less hard and fast rules. Also, you can't strike a foot-soldier from horseback while half-swording. quote:On the other hand, if you wanted to batter someone senseless, then a mace would be my first choice. An interesting thing is we do get the occasional literary reference to split helms but I have never seen it duplicated in reconstructive testing (which is probably one of the reasons you mentioned to be wary of reconstructive testing earlier). That said, I was very surprised to see a split helmet mentioned in a 15th century source, normally the split helmets tend to be mentioned earlier. I think your choice of weapon depends on where you are and who you are fighting. Indeed, I was talking with Toby Capwell (curator of arms and armour at the Wallace Collection) a few months ago about armour, and he mentioned that German, Italian, and English armours have definite differences between them, and that a book he is putting together will elucidate on the English arms industry in particular. Split helms are very rare in what I've read, and I suspect are most often the consequence of repeated battering over the course of an engagement weakening the metal. That such a weakening could happen was certainly acknowledged. For example, Gutierre Diaz de Gamez brings up an instance from when he and Don Pero fought the English at Poole: El Victorial posted:The standard and he who bore it [that is, Diaz himself] were likewise riddled with arrows, and the standard bearer had as many round his body as a bull in the ring, but he was well shielded by his good armour, although this was already bent in several places. quote:By the way, do you know any good sources that describe conrois in more detail? I have occasionally heard them mentioned in passing as small teams of knights when reading up on the Normans, but I have never received much detail on them (most of my research has been later medieval, but it has irked me when I saw a book mention a conroi and then go on to say virtually nothing about them). Haha, nope! I don't think there are any, truth be told. They seem to have been fairly ad-hoc bodies. Even quite detailed works, like the Rule of the Templars, only gives hints as to the size of what the translator terms a 'squadron', and these do not seem to have been of a regulated number of knights. It's very frustrating for me as well. I can tell you some detail about how they operated, but that would be mostly cribbing from the Rule, and I cannot speak to how that compares with the conrois of secular knights. Railtus posted:Someone trying the same thing with a blunted sword - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q Oh hey, one of those guys (Daniel Jaquet, whose face you briefly see before he flips the visor down) was also at the R. L. Scott Conference, and that video all ties into his doctoral dissertation on how armour affects the wearer. He gave a presentation on it, and what was most interesting was how it actually extends certain ranges of motion, notably the ankles. One thing that Ralph Moffat (curator of European arms and armour at the Kelvingrove) has pointed out is that modern HEMA fighters are not exact analogues of their medieval/renaissance counterparts. Most importantly, knights would have grown up wearing armour regularly. In much the same way the muscle connections and bone structures of lifelong bowmen are different than most other humans, so too would it be for men who had worn armour from youth. The Black Prince, for example, received his first harness at 8, I believe. This is another reason why I'm leery of experimental archaeology. quote:A metal-reinforced bat would do better, but on the chest if it would still barely get his attention. The arms and legs have typically thinner armour (less weight makes them easier to move), and while the helmet is usually at least as thick as the breastplate the brain is a little more susceptible to the shockwaves from the blow. There is only so much a helmet can do about a concussion. You are partially correct here, and this actually brings up one of the big problem with off-the-stand repro armour, and some custom suits: any individual piece was not uniformly thick. The top of a bascinet would be much thicker than the sides, and so too would the front of a breastplate over the edges. Froissart, I believe, even mentions men-at-arms lowering their heads so the crown of the bascinet faces forward when advancing toward the English at Poitiers. This also helps to keep any cheeky splinters from taking out your eye. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 00:50
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Railtus posted:One of the major reasons the fechtbucher rarely suggests leg cuts is reach; if you cut for the lower body, the angle of your weapon does not reach as far forward. Assuming similar-length weapons that means your opponent can strike your head or shoulders from further away than you can strike his legs, so he can just step back and brain you, and if your weapon is low enough to aim for the legs you will struggle to defend your head, neck or shoulders. In formation, the opponent cannot step back as easily, which makes low strikes less risky. Aye, it's all dead Pythagorean. quote:Though Towton (1461) was after shields became less popular and Visby (1361) was when shields were starting to fall out of use, but I expect shields were still pretty common among the people without access to the top transitional armour of the time, since a guy with no shield and wearing only limited armour would be highly vulnerable to arrows. I know I mentioned earlier that Liechtenauer (1300s) was the age of transitional armour, but I think the rise of two-handed weapons did not occur equally for everyone at the same time. I will bring up Pero Niño again, for he not only had access to some of the absolute best equipment available, but in two instances (the only two, if I recall correctly) in his biography which enumerate his equipment, he bears a shield. I feel the translation here is questionable, and I would like to get a look either at the original language or a Spanish translation when I can track it down. In any case, the first example was outside Pontevedra in 1397: El Victorial posted:His arms were a coat, a bassinet with gorget, according to the fashion of the time, leg pieces and a great tilting buckler which had been given him at Cordova as very fine, the which had belonged to the good knight Don Egas. The second comes in 1404, when Don Pero commanded a small fleet of galleys hunting for corsairs and raiding the North African coast. As the Castilians tried to take a galley in the port of Tunis, Pero boarded the enemy ship wearing "a cuirass, vambraces, a steel cap, a sword and a targe." Shields clearly still had their place even among wealthy combatants in the early 15th c. After this my knowledge trails off quite rapidly quote:Another issue, chicken-and-the-egg related, applies to Visby. There was very little leg armour at Visby, but a fair amount of head and torso armour. That was probably a factor behind where the attacks were directed. If someone has body armour on their chest, a shield covering their left arm, possibly a helmet, and their right arm kept back, the leg might be the best target under those circumstances. While the majority certainly were to the upper body (the arms in particular, and this holds true for Wisby), it is worth mentioning that injuries to the leg were more numerous than injuries to the neck and torso. edit: I'm going off memory for this, so if someone can get to the book that would help! quote:On the differences between German, Italian and English armour (and this is not one-upmanship I swear) I remember Dierk Hagedorn once mentioning in conversation that the differences were more in how the plates fitted together but the kind of things the wearer would not even notice. I am not sure they would influence what the best choice of weapon would be against each style of armour. That said, I will definitely keep an eye out for Tobias Capwell’s book, I like everything from him I have seen so far, and this seems like a very good subject for exploration. No one-upmanship taken. I can believe that to a point, but I'd very much like to see what Capwell has to say about it. quote:Also lowering their head so the crown of the bascinet faces forwards had an added bonus of presenting a more glancing shape for the arrows to skim off. Although the visor was also sloped, the breaths (air holes) probably meant the visor was far weaker than the rest of the helmet. Indeed. It could also have been a subconscious reaction, the way people duck their heads in a driving rain. I believe Froissart writes about people being suffocated by the press of men, as a result of a similarly instinctive bunching of the formation. Wiggy Marie posted:This is to all of the medieval history studiers of the thread: if you were asked to dramatize (for film/TV/whatever) a particular event from the time period, which event would you choose and why? What kind of strategies would you use to depict the time period accurately? Anything specific you'd want to showcase? I'm curious about what y'all think matters most, so to speak, about the time. Given unlimited resources and time I would show Robert Bruce splitting Sir Henry de Bohun's head open from different angles, and play that on repeat for about an hour and a half at normal speed and in slow motion, occasionally superimposing the words 'gently caress ENGLAND' in big flashing letters. Ideally, I would be able to go back in time to record this. I would have it open a week before the referendum. Alternately, I think the Seventh Crusade, as covered in Jean de Joinville's Life of Saint Louis could be an entertaining watch, certainly if they get the violence right. (No, his nose should be HANGING OVER HIS LIP. That nose is not nearly severed enough!) Not that that's the most important thing. The humanity of the crusaders and Egyptians and the varying motivations along with the interplay of politics would be good. It's also a well-covered event, unlike say the 1117-1119 war between Louis VI and Henry I. I think the latter war would actually make for a better film or tv series because it could more easily avoid racist and colonialist overtones and the late 11th/early 12th century is the coolest time ever. I really like that war as well because it highlights how complex and weak rulership was at this time. This is something basically every medieval movie (except for El Cid with Charlton Heston) gets wrong, turning the king into a 19th century autocrat because that is the nearest touchstone most people have to kingship. I'd also try to stick to a fairly short period of time, which wars are good for. No more than three or four years, I think, because otherwise your pacing can get hosed up. TV shows can do more, of course, and I think The Tudors, for all its ridiculousness and pornography, actually paced itself very well. For a TV show I think Philip Augustus' and Louis VIII's excellent campaigns against John would make for wonderful watching. Looking a little earlier, the life of William Marshal would also be wonderful. The most recent Robin Hood film, for all of its horrible nationalism, had an great scene where William turned his back on King John and offered to let him strike the first blow, because he's just that hard. That was excellent. Related to this, what do you medieval folks think of Pillars of the Earth? I've only seen the TV show. To keep my opinion from contaminating the debate, I've put it below in spoilers. 
Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 23, 2013 |
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Mar 23, 2013 17:31
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Why did people not realize that the front ranks of a phalanx or pike square are a lovely place to be, for the thousands of years they were employed? Why did people not realize getting killed is SCARY and that it's a bad idea? What was up with these guys???
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Mar 25, 2013 15:41
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tonberrytoby posted:How much did those actually weigh? I had been imagining them as about as heavy as modern rifles until I thought about it right now. Shooting sticks still exist, so they never really 'evolved' into bipods, but integral bipods on weapons would only be useful when things like general marksmanship training came in, so post-American Civil War, basically. But this is beyond the scope of the thread! HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:This flies in the face of just about every primary or secondary work I have read on pike combat. Seriously, who told you this? Yes, mercenary companies will sometimes refuse to fight or desert if they're not payed or if they're unhappy with the situation, but they don't balk at closing with the enemy when they do fight. This is why I typically loathe talking to reenactors about history. Many of them act as if they are authorities when they only know things through two sources. Either they have been told about 'how it really was' by the group guru, who has probably only read Oman (or Shelby Foote if they are ACW), or they have 'deduced' a lot of things about warfare through their LARPing. They fail to recognise they are playing a game, one with noticeable safety rules like "no killing people", rather than fighting a war. It's one of the few history things that can really make me spitting mad. (another is the death of William Rufus)
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Mar 26, 2013 01:02
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EvanSchenck posted:Interesting stuff. I had to look this up and I found some criticism on an ex-member's HEMA blog: Having met him personally, he is a tremendous douche. I have never seen such a lame dude with groupies before, but he had em. grown-rear end men and women licking this dude's boots. He also gave a presentation at the conference which amounted to calling all eastern martial arts ahistorical and crappy. Unsurprisingly his fan club threw him softball questions. I'd write more but I'm on a phone. guy who asked about motte and bailey: I'm picking through the primary sources I can to see if I can find good descriptions.
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Apr 5, 2013 16:23
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Obdicut posted:I'm betting it was just having a notch that was too narrow, or one that fitted against a special piece on the bowstring (whether with a blade or just a little button or something) given that the limited references I've seen always talk about the notching of it. The bent arrows is easier to explain and would probably be mentioned specifically. It's also not recorded, as far as I know, in any other Mongol battle. This is most probably correct, but I'd be curious to know what primary source this comes from. It sounds like an oddly specific bit of information to be wholly fanciful, but other battle accounts exist which were written long, long after the fight that have little bearing on reality, but have nevertheless been treated as reliable sources by incautious scholars; the 13th century account of the Saxons fighting on horseback at Stamford Bridge comes to mind.
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Apr 22, 2013 17:37
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Obdicut posted:I 99% know I saw it elsewhere, other than just the cool-but-rather-pop book. I'll try to confirm that and see if there's any reference for it. I haven't seen references for it in other battles that the Mongols engaged in, but most of their archer vs. archer battles were vs. other steppe tribe types who were more likely to have a similar bow. The thing is the same thing could be said about Rus' much of the time. Especially in the South (where Kiev, Chernigov, and Pereyaslavl are) exposure to the steppe nomads would have been fairly substantial. Defence against steppe raids or expeditions against them were quite normal, and one of the most famous was Igor of Novgorod Seversky's campaign, which is preserved as an epic. Bowstrings survive horribly. We have a complete one from Mary Rose but I don't think anywhere else. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Edit: I'd also point out that they don't have to be pop-historians to be incautious. R. Glover was one of the chief users of the above source and I would not call him a pop-historian. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 19:10
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Obdicut posted:I think that the particular Rus force they faced at that point was a "Europeanized" one, but you're right that they faced the Kikchick(sp?) and a bunch of other steppe tribes using very similar weapons. It's going to remain a puzzler; as you say, it's a weird detail to just suddenly make up, but it's also hard to figure out why it would happen, why it's not mentioned in another story of Mongol warfare, and why it would surprise the Rus in particular since they were used to fighting steppe nomads. Kipchak is the word you're looking for. Igor's campaign was against the Cumans. There were also the Pechenegs and the Volga Bulgars. The latter were less nomadic but came from a similar military tradition. I have seen mention of trumpets and banners as signalling devices, as well as carrier pigeons for communication during siege. While I haven't looked very carefully at the use of trumpets, banners seem to only deliver very simple commands, typically 'advance', 'withdraw', or 'gather here', depending on the context, with more complicated manoeuvres delivered verbally. In the Templar Rule, for example, the standard of one's squadron was the place where knights would regroup after delivering a charge, and throughout medieval warfare the standard bearer was an important role. Arglebargle III posted:Nice piece of fish has seen fit to criticize the swordsmanship on display in the Game of Thrones TV show. And so, Medieval History & Combat thread, what do you have to say about the fearsomely beweaponed combat therein? And most importantly -- should it be more like Ong Bak? The swordsmanship has been lovely, even for mass media type stuff. So have the swords, to be honest. I mean, look at this piece of crap:  Looks like it was injection molded in china and sold exclusively at your local pharmacy. Also there are like 0 arming swords in the entire world.
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Apr 23, 2013 18:08
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:standards etc. I should have said, Gutierre Diaz de Gamez, the author of the biography of Don Pero Niño, was himself a man-at-arms, and frequently served as Don Pero's standard bearer. He actually includes a mini-treatise on the standard and its role in combat. Gutierre Diaz de Gamez posted:Well do soldiers know that all have their eyes on the banner, enemies as well as friends; and if its men see it retreat in the battle, they lose heart, while the enemies courage waxes; and if they see it stand firm or go forward, they do the same. But neither because the standard-bearer is granted such and honour, and has been chosen out of the whole army to fill this office, nor because all look to him and have their eyes upon him, must it happen that pride and vanity wax within him, and that he ascribes to himself a greater part than has been assigned to him, that he march more in the van than has been ordered, or that he think that his charge has been given to him as being the most valiant man in the army. He must tell himself that many other and better men are round him and that it is they that do the work. Let him not wish to distinguish himself and excel another in honour, so that in the end he endangers the honour of his master and those who follow him; neither let him keep himself so far behind that the rest advance and he remains in the rear; for a candle gives more light when it is borne before than behind, and the standard is like a torch set in a room to give light to all men; if by some accident it is put out, all remain in darkness and unseeing and are beaten. And so for such an office should there be chosen a man of great sense, who has already been seen in great affairs, who has good renown and who on other occasions has given a good account of himself. Such a work should be given neither to a presumptuous man, nor to a hasty man, for he who is not master of himself cannot lead others. And some to whom this office has been entrusted have brought their masters and those who follow them into evil straits, since the lord has bidden his men follow the banner. Great reason is there to reproach that lord who sets his men under such a standard-bearer, for honour so works upon gentlefolk that it drives them into certain danger. So it is fitting that the standard-bearer should conform to the will of his lord and should not do more than he is ordered. Diaz then relates Don Pero's command to him to advance. Gutierre Diaz de Gamez posted:"Friend, take heed when you hear the trumpets sound; then march forward with the standard and go forward up to the English. There make your stand and leave it not." So, ultimately, a fairly simple tool, but very good at its job. Arnold of Soissons posted:Dumb question, but the problem is that they're all huge, right? Yes. Do you explicitly mean the guard or the overall shape of the sword? Because not all European swords were cruciform, nor indeed were all swords with straight guards. It's not just an easy way to make a sword, and is actually more intensive than the Roman method Abbasid and Mamluk swords were also frequently cruciform, so it's not a Christian Thing. The shape of the sword was incorporated as part of Christian imagery, but that is not why it came to be. The xiphos was also cruciform. It's not really 'easier' to make. Easier would be hilt-less swords, or swords that were much shorter, like the scramasax. Additionally, I'd argue single-edged weapons are easier to make than two-edged, having made knives of both forms, but that's just my experience.
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Apr 23, 2013 20:09
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Arnold of Soissons posted:I see what you mean about it not being the simplest thing possible, but it seems a flat cross guard must be easier to fabricate than a basket hilt or something. Like I said, the Abbasids and others used the cruciform hilt style. Maybe they should be basket-hilted or something, but it's not like the Schiavona was developed during a time of impiety, what with the Reformation going on. There's a myriad of complex reasons why weapon design evolves. Some of it is certainly cultural or religious, but a lot of it is not. Straight cross-guards were clearly adequate for a lot of people, since they appear on designs like the Persian Shamsir, the Indian Talwar, and the Turkish Kilij as well. Rabhadh posted:I have read that cruciform is so prevalent because it allows the user to hook one finger over the cross, giving you more control over the blade. Particularly because the sword was mainly drawn after the charge, when a knights hand could be slippery from either sweat or blood. Some people would certainly do this, but to treat it as universal, or even particularly common prior to the 15th century, is nonsense. There is very little iconographic evidence of such a practice, though what there is suggests it was more common in Rus' and the Islamic world than in the West. Still comparatively rare, of course. Having handled some complex-hilted 16th century swords, I could in one instance not even put my finger over the guard if I wanted to, because of the design of the hilt, and this was at a time when many swords accommodated such a technique. One of the most obvious issues with the technique prior to the 15th c. is a fairly simple one to point out: Mail mittens were extremely common from the mid-12th to early-14th centuries, and indeed I don't believe the Morgan Bible shows a hauberk without them. Mitten gauntlets, too, were very common and would also completely preclude such a technique.
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Apr 24, 2013 05:25
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Squalid posted:Yeah in the 13th century European castles and siege technology were probably the most advanced in the world and in Hungary represented a huge barrier to Mongol conquest. In order to break the six year siege of Xiangyang in 1273 the Mongols imported European designs for counterweight trebuchets more sophisticated than the traction trebuchets existant in China at the time. Then again the siege of Xiangyang is one of the reasons I don't buy some of the Mongol revisionism that claims Mongols really didn't murder the Hungarians that bad. Xiangyang was a fortress besieged for years by 10s of thousands of troops, and while I couldn't find any sources going into detail on the invasion of Hungary in 1284, my guess is it was more about plunder than conquest, considering that the golden horde was also at war with the Il-Khanate in the 1280s and contemporaneous raids against Poland lacked siege trains. Nothing you say backs up your assertion. There were two campaigns in Hungary, neither of which ended with the subjugation of the kingdom. The claim that 'their hearts were not in it' for the second invasion needs a little bit more than your gut feeling to substantiate. It's worth remembering that the invading army of 1241 was absolutely tremendous, and represented the culmination of the push across Siberia and Rus'. Nogai's campaigns of the 1270s and 1280s were much more limited both because of other wars and because the Sarai Khanate was just plain smaller. The example of Xiangyang would be hugely relevant if it represented either the Sarai khanate's capabilities or the Europeans', but it doesn't. Kublai was not Nogai and Xiagnyang was definitely not anything like the castle system of western and central Europe. It's also worth noticing that Nogai wasn't bribed/submitted to get him out of Hungary. His army was defeated. Besides that, the only serious assertions of political control were in realms that were either much smaller than his own (Serbia), or terribly crippled by internal strife (Bulgaria) or both (Constantinople). Even then, I wouldn't really call Sarai's influence over Serbia 'serious', but I'm being generous here.
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Apr 29, 2013 21:58
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Halloween Jack posted:My understanding of Crecy was that the English were on the retreat from their campaign of chevauchee, weary and by that time subsisting on looted provisions, and didn't really want that battle. "Subsisting on looted provisions" is an essential part of the chevauchee, or any ravaging campaign for that matter, but certainly the English foodstuffs were running low. The English did want the battle to some degree, else they would not have stopped. The site was carefully chosen, the army was well-rested and provisioned, and Edward and his son in their own letters said they sought to end the war "by battle". I side with Clifford Rogers in saying that the English were manoeuvring into a highly advantageous position rather than retreating. Although we cannot know the circumstances with complete certainty, Rogers makes a very convincing case. I don't have "War Cruel And Sharp" on-hand, so this is partly from memory and partly from other stuff written on Crecy.
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May 2, 2013 03:41
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Railtus posted:Nothing springs to mind, although people might get appointed to power based on usefulness. It is arbitrary in the sense that political connections might take precedence, but at other times merit mattered a great deal. Often it was the Constable or Marshal of France in the Hundred Years War advising the cautious sensible battle plan while the impetuous lords wanted to rush blindly on, so I get the impression there was some meritocracy going on with their promotion or appointment to their positions. I have never heard that the Bretons supported William's invasion because they were sore about losing Britain to the Anglo-Saxons. It seems far more probable that, because of the longstanding involvement of Bretons in Norman politics, and vice-versa, there were much stronger personal and political bonds tying the Breton contingent to William. Alan III, for example, served as William's guardian during his youth, and William supported Rivallon of Dol against Duke Conan. Another important thing to remember is that during this period of Capetian rule in France the king was no more powerful (and when compared with William, noticeably less) than the other great princes of the land, and basically only controlled the area around Paris, from the Vexin to Orleans to Rheims, and even this control was not particularly secure. Louis VI spent much of his reign suppressing his own vassals, particularly Hugh III of Le Puiset and his extended relations like Guy I of Rochefort. It wasn't until Philip II that the kingdom of France can seriously be viewed as internally cohesive, especially with the elimination of the Angevins as a serious rival. edit: To the guy who asked about the invasion, what exactly do you want to know? I know you asked a couple questions, but is there anything else you want to know? I can tell you some things, but I'll be drawing heavily from secondary sources, since the only primary overview of that campaign I have is Wace, who is only ok on the subject. Should really pick up a copy of William of Poitiers. For the Battle of Hastings itself, you should look for R. Allen Brown's article on the subject, which as far as I know is the best thing written about it to date. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 18:43 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 18:34
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Giodo! posted:Slate ran a little question/answer thing today that deals with something that sometimes comes up in this thread. I don't speak to its accuracy, knowing nothing about the subject: I've been thinking about this for a while. Water was obviously a plentiful drink, and castles nearly always (and this presumably extends to counter-castles but I do not know for sure) had a well within their walls. When Robert Curthose and William Rufus besieged their brother Henry in Mont-Saint-Michel, Robert sent in water as a mercy to Henry. Clearly clean supplies of water were fairly accessible. However, I seem to recall info for an archaeological dig in Rouen that found personal wells placed close enough to cesspits to lead to contamination. Going off memory for this, though, so someone with access to archaeological stuff would know better. This guy's information seems highly selective. The key example he cites for water distribution is London, but this doesn't come until the 13th century, and even then may not have been typical (though I think York had some kind of similar cistern/aqueduct type deal). While he notes tanners and dyers had ordinances detailing where they could work, he fails to remark upon the fact that butchers did not. His comment on the use of beer as 'gatorade' is highly speculative, and assumes a level of knowledge that I do not think can be safely made about the drink. Besides, low alcohol beer has few calories, so his implication that small beer was drunk for this reason does not really stand up to scrutiny. I would guess small beer was drunk because drinking nothing but water is boring as gently caress.
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May 24, 2013 15:47
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gyrobot posted:Also, was there something like Grapeshot for catapults? Aka designed to break up into small ball bearings to kill or maim infantry? Ahaha what? No. Also grape isn't just for infantry. Catapults would sometimes throw pottery that would shatter and spray shards but catapults weren't hauled around in the field, they were built at a siege. Additionally, they simply don't accelerate projectiles quickly enough to rip apart the rope and canvas of grape and even if you could fine some other way to deliver them, they wouldn't be going terribly fast.
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May 25, 2013 14:59
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Let's talk infrastructure! Who built and maintained the roads in medieval Europe? I get the impression that the old Roman paving was frequently torn up for building materials, but what about the roadbeds themselves--Who kept them navigable? At which point after the fall of Rome did people start maintaining and building them again, and how was that organized? I know very little about this. I do know that Alfred the Great maintained the Roman roads in his domain, but beyond that I honestly cannot tell you! The sources I deal with do not often mention roads explicitly.
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May 30, 2013 02:16
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Arglebargle III posted:I've heard that whale tastes bad. The Japenese government with subsidized whaling fleet apparently can't sell enough of their catch so they put it in school lunches and students hate it. I would take that with a grain of salt though because one, overproduction is a common problem with subsidized industries regardless of their product, and two Japanese kids bring their lunch from home. A Faroe Islander I spoke to said it tastes fine, though he had a hard time describing it. Different whales, of course. Part of the problem of whale meat these days is that it's got a lot of mercury in it. SlothfulCobra posted:Jesus, I never knew that whaling went back that far. The blunted swords used in tournaments were sometimes made out of whalebone, so even dudes who'd never been to the coast would at least have a conception of what a whale was.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:31
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Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html It's not perfect (and I'll expand a bit on some of its points when I get time) but it's 1000x better than the Goon Theorizing that's going on now.
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Jun 18, 2013 20:24
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Hey, my Goon Theorizing was pretty choice, thankyouverymuch. You are certainly right that firearms got more powerful. The transition from serpentine to corned powder in the 16th c. was particularly massive.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:26
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yo before you folk keep spouting completely uninformed theories on mail's origin and implementation please read this first: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html OK so as promised here are my thoughts on Mr. Howard's points. One serious criticism is that he does not provide very good evidence for the use of mail in the later Middle Ages. That prices existed for it is fine, but does not speak to its popularity or lack thereof. Some of the strongest evidence for the continued usefulness of mail comes from the Western Highlands & Isles of Scotland. As elaborated on by Dr. Martin MacGregor in the recently-published Military History of Scotland this region is unusual in Europe as a majority of its noblemen wore mail instead of plate as body defence well into the 16th century, after which point the military independence of the Western Highlands wanes rapidly, and so too do many aspects of its martial culture. For a somewhat earlier example, we can look to Pero Niño's biography. To contextualise, Pero Niño was raised in the household of the King of Castile, and thus was a noble of high enough standing to warrant the friendship of the king himself, though his territorial holdings never amounted to much as far as I can tell. This passage describes his deeds during the Siege of Pontevedra in 1396. I should also point out that the translation here is, I think, incorrect. I have not had a look at the original text to confirm, but the author describes Don Pero as wearing a 'gorget' in the translation, when in fact he was more probably wearing a mail aventail. Gutierre Diaz de Gamez posted:His arms were a coat [of mail], a bassinet with gorget, according to the fashion of the time, and a great tilting buckler. . . There are two important things to note from this passage, which deal directly with Mr. Howard's points on mail. One is that it reemphasises his contention that it was an effective form of defence. Lances, bows, crossbows and swords were unable to penetrate Don Pero's armour enough to seriously debilitate him. The most serious wound he received was dealt to his uncovered face. His neck, too, received a wound through the 'gorget', but it seems that its more serious consequence was the binding in his armour it caused than damage to flesh. This passage also brings up a point that Mr. Howard does not. While, yes, plate armour can be bent and pierced in various places, it does not compromise the armour in the same way that damage to mail does. Being made of individually weaker pieces, especially on the torso, means that the mail can have holes torn in it over the course of the battle. Thus I would say that while mail, when whole, is very effective it has a greater tendency to deteriorate in protective quality over the course of an engagement. While mail is easier to repair, in other words, it is easier to break, too. This is, again, not to say that it is in any way a bad form of defence. It is clear that plenty of men-at-arms were very much satisfied with mail armour, and indeed could prefer it to cheaper alternatives. Looking earlier, there are very interesting examples of mail's protective quality from William the Breton's prose account of the Battle of Bouvines: William the Breton posted:Gerard La Truie, who was nearby, struck [Emperor Otto IV] in the middle of the chest with a knife which he held unsheathed in his hand, and when he saw that he could not pierce through (because of the thickness of the armor with which warriors of our time are equipped and which is impenetrable), he gave him a second blow to make up for the failure of the first. He thought that he was going to hit Otto's body but instead he met the horse's head which was high and raised; he dealt it a blow right in the eye and the knife, thrust with great virtue, slipped all the way to its brain. Halloween Jack posted:So from the 1200s to 1400, they were supplementing mail with breastplates, vambraces, and greaves until the first full suits of plate showed up around 1400? One thing that tends to get lost in these analyses of armour development is that plate armour never actually disappeared. Helmets remained a plate armour component through the migration period and into the Middle Ages. Additionally, lamellar and scale were both in use around the time of Charlemagne in Western Europe, and throughout the Middle Ages in and around Rus'. The technology to make armour like the lorica segmentata was clearly not lost, but rather seems to have been rejected in favor of mail. Obdicut posted:Pikes first started getting used in the 1300s (apart from antiquity). Plate armor reached its zenith in the 1600s. On pikes you are mistaken. Pikes, as far as I can tell, never truly fell out of use. They certainly were in use by at least some peoples throughout the Middle Ages. The Menavlion described in the Praecepta Militaria was a thick spear in excess of 3m in length, which arguably qualifies it as a pike. More directly, Wace in his Roman de Rou provides this example: Wace posted:There was a mercenary there from France who conducted himself very nobly and sat on a wonderful horse. He saw two very arrogant Englishmen, who had stayed close to each other because they were highly thought of. . . They held two long, broad pikes at shoulder height and were doing great harm to the Normans, killing men and horses. The mercenary looked at them, saw the pikes and feared them... But soon he had quite different thoughts. He spurred his horse, pricking it and dropping the reins, and the horse carried him swiftly. He raised his shield by the straps, for fear of the two pikes, and struck one of the Englishmen cleanly with the lance he was holding, beneath the chin, on the chest; the iron passed right through his spine. While this one was being struck down, the lance fell and shattered, and he seized the bludgeon which hung from his his right arm and struck the other Englishman an upwards blow, shattering and breaking his head. Though the translation may be faulty, and the weapons held by the Anglo-Saxons may be hewing spears, the translation elsewhere differentiates between spears and pikes, so at the very least the original language accounted for two different types of polearm. Also of interest is this image from the Morgan Bible. Although pictorial evidence cannot often be relied on (I doubt, for example, that medieval foot soldiers were typically pygmies) the use of a two-handed spear is noteworthy, and the Morgan Bible is generally quite reliable on the appearance of equipment, even if its depictions of effect are typically dubious. 
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Jun 26, 2013 21:16
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bres0048 posted:There were, however pre crusade stone was much rarer. Most fortifications were wood motte and bailey types. Or at least as far as I understand. There were stone fortifications, they were just less common. The reason I bring up Chateau Gaillard is, as soon is Richard gets sprung from jail and gets back following the third crusade he builds this monster in just under 2 years. Very very quick back then. Spends nearly double what Dover's budget was and implements a 3 tier system with a keep at the top. Should have been impregnable so long as a QRF force relieved them within 8-10 months. This however didn't happen as John was rather inept and it fell to the French early in it's life. 1196-1204. So yes, the Castle design was revolutionary in Western Europe. It dominated the Seine and had a dock that stretched a good way into the river which could control traffic. While using a fortification system atop the hill that was based on redundancy. Eastern influence is all over it. What 'Eastern influence' are you seeing exactly? Multiple layers of defence were nothing new, nor were castles atop hills. The contest over the Seine was actually a fairly recent development, which John Gillingham gets into in his 'Richard I, Galley-Warfare and Portsmouth: The Beginnings of a Royal Navy'. Though Chateau Gaillard was perhaps the strongest fortress of its day I would hardly call it revolutionary. Obdicut posted:It's been my impression that spears shortened considerably and then lengthened again, but I certainly overstated it by saying that they started getting used again. There definitely always were some people using them, but my main point was that plate armor didn't reach its zenith until hundreds of years after the pike had been in very common use and so plate didn't fall out of favor due to pikes. The sarissa was a long spear or pike used by various peoples during the 4th-1st centuries BC but you are still over-generalizing. The spears of Roman triarii, for example, were never as long as the sarissa, and were more in-line with hoplite spears in length, around 8 feet. While the sarissa was widely used within the remnants of Alexander's empire still more people did not use it. It's an iffy assertion. Charlie Mopps posted:here is a huge post about Byzantine swords, should be of some interest to people here. This post makes a lot of logical assumptions that cannot safely be made. The two most crucial are: 1. if it is depicted in an icon it must be an accurate representation of the real object and 2. if it is depicted in an ERE icon it must be a sword of ERE origin. This is especially contentious for the later period when the empire was seriously diminished in size. That he ascribes few dates to the weapons and icons depicted makes the post of little use within historical analysis of the evolution of sword forms, and some of his assertions (that, for example, globular pommels and narrow-ish blades are an especially Byzantine feature) are highly dubious. The sword he pulls from Oakeshott's book, which is in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, is one I've spent a long time looking at. It is in very good condition and bears some deep nicks in the edge, which could just as easily be from a collector loving around with it or from actual combat use. I never took a picture of the inscription unfortunately, but it has long puzzled me because I found it inscrutable. That it was written with Greek letters is something I had never considered but would perhaps explain my confusion. I'll see if I can get a friend to snap a photo. The pommel has also confused me significantly, but that it is a shape unusual in the West is not a valid reason in itself to reassess the sword's origin. Additionally, the pommel is not truly globular, but cuboid. Very strange. Here's a picture 
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Jun 29, 2013 22:07
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feedmegin posted:I'll say! The motte in motte and bailey is an artificial hill and the bailey is the outer layer of defence, after all. Yes and no. This is something I meant to deal with earlier, but there seems to be a common misunderstanding here that motte-and-bailey castles were exclusively wooden and that the 'bailey' is basically any permanently-enclosed area below the motte. I blame Medieval: Total War. Motte-and-bailey, really, refers to the overall shape of the castle, specifically the high motte and, on one side of it, a lower raised bailey. This is distinct from castles comprised of a motte fully encircled by a secondary wall, which seems to be what Le Puiset, for example, was in 1111. That motte-and-bailey is not a contemporary term and descriptions of castles are typically lacking in good detail for my period, makes identifying them difficult. Consequently, we don't *really* know how common they were. Sartana posted:To what extent was chivalry actually practiced? *snip* For any understanding of what chivalry was and how it functioned we must understand first that 'chivalry' has no firm definition, or indeed much of a definition at all. It is a term that is very hard to pin down, because it is tonal, contextual, and shifts with time. Maurice Keen's Chivalry provides us with something approaching a definition. Maurice Keen posted:Chivalry cannot be divorced from the martial world of the mounted warrior: it cannot be divorced from the aristocracy, because knights commonly were men of high lineage: and ... it very frequently carries ethical and religious overtones edit: For a better answer than that you should look at three books: Keen's Chivalry, Strickland's Chivalry and Warfare, and Kaeuper's Chivalry and Violence. The latter has some problems but it's still interesting. Amyclas posted:Slavery was completely outlawed in England at the end of the middle ages by Elizabeth 1 in 1569. Woah woah woah, hold up. Elizabeth I is most definitely not part of the Middle Ages. Even generous parameters for the Middle Ages put you almost 70 years off. Amyclas posted:Fire-based weapons might have been possible, but it is extremely unlikely that barrels of burning oil or pitch based weapons were used: the cost would have been astronomical for that time. Oil could only be extracted from surface sources, and was extremely rare. Very sophisticated markets would have been needed to trade it. Tar was also used to fuel fire weapons, but again it is a rare commodity. Ahaha did you even read the link you posted? Fire-based weapons were used throughout the Middle Ages. Red-hot iron, flaming missiles, and of course fuckin Greek Fire. Off the top of my head I can think of 6 sieges in a 50 year span in northern France that used fire as a potent weapon. Once fire was employed by catapults flinging 'flaming dross', as Orderic calls it, another it was red-hot arrow points, two were wagons stacked up with flammables and covered in grease to burn gates down, and two are just plain old fire from torches. Pitch was really common as an adhesive and a sealant for boats, buckets, etc. I don't know where you get the idea it was astronomically expensive. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 19:49
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Smoking Crow posted:Wait, pitch doesn't come from trees? It does, but bituminous tar, as used in road works, does not. He said this in that very post. Has running head first into a wall become one of the criteria for posting or something? Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 03:08
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Smoking Crow posted:We always looked for pitch pine in Scouts because it would burn wet. That's what I always thought pitch was. Pitch is cooked pine resin. Pitch pine has lots of resin which (surprise surprise) can be cooked down into pitch. Am I getting through to you?
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Jul 3, 2013 03:13
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Hydrolith posted:I'm still working my way through the thread, so apologies if this has been asked before. This partly depends on the terrain. In places like Wales and, as Odobenidae pointed out, Ireland, where the terrain was rougher and forests less well-managed, skirmishers on foot were a common feature. In Rus' and in South Slavic countries too, men with javelins were a common feature, though in the former they would sometimes be on horseback. Even in heavily chivalric parts of Europe like the kingdoms of Aragon, France and Germany there was still room for men with javelins. The almughavars of the Catalan Company are most akin to what you want, but knights, too, could throw spears. Suger mentions that 'javelins menaced javelins' at a confrontation near Montaigu. Though he is referencing Lucan, there is some implication of missile exchange. Indeed, the mid-12th century Rule of the Temple has a specific injunction against knights throwing their lances at each other in the lists, and Norman cavalry are (rarely) depicted throwing their lances in the Bayeux Tapestry. Throwing the lance was also listed as a knightly exercise by Orderic Vitalis. What seems to be more often the case for missile skirmishers, however, is that they are professional soldiers, archers and crossbowmen. William Rufus is described as deploying 'archers and crossbowmen' to watch the roads of Maine and harass his enemy, Count Helias. Speaking for the 11th and 12th centuries, knights made excellent skirmishers. By skirmish, in this instance, I mean a smaller confrontation than a battle, beyond any kind of permanent fortification. Ambushes on the roads, opportunistic combat while ravaging, that sort of thing. They were good at it because they combined high personal skill and good coordination within a conroi with good armour and mobility. It is clear that skirmish was an extremely common form of knightly combat, perhaps even the most common. Dedhed posted:Might not be technically medieval, but... It's about the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The revocation made Protestant worship illegal, so the 'heretic' is a Protestant, who is presented as the victim of royal tyranny.
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Jul 6, 2013 14:15
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Hey Obdicut, if you're around I went and looked around my translation of Wace and it seems the translator chose to translate 'gisarme' as 'pike', so what Wace ascribes the Saxons to carrying are not pikes but a different kind of polearm. However, what the word 'gisarme' literally means is somewhat open to interpretation, since terminology for polearms was not that precise at the time. The translator describes it as 'something like an axe . . . affixed to a lengthy pole'. This is a fairly good guess (and is the one Oakeshott makes) but I have no idea why he didn't just include the drat word 'gisarme'.
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Jul 6, 2013 21:52
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Ascetic Crow posted:Speaking of banking, what did the Templars actually do? I know that they may be the beginning of the Swiss banking system, but what did they actually do besides protect Jesus's kids? Is this post for real? Arglebargle III posted:How important was feudal and church law to international (inter-kingdom?) politics in medieval Europe? Was the legal framework for legitimate rule a unique European thing or did other medieval regions (like the Islamic world) also fight wars over legal interpretations and that sort of thing? Feudal custom was not quite fully formed in my period but it had a huge influence on relations between the Anglo-Normans and their successors and the Kings of France. Owing homage for French possessions was a huge part of politics up until the HYW decided the issue for good. Your question is really broad and vague, can you refine it a bit more? LankyIndjun posted:So in other words, this scene from Holy Grail is quite accurate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0 For a second I thought Railtus had started posting again. I will say the notion of 'the English' develops long before the HYW, and indeed by the time of Harold Godwinson there was a notion of 'Englishness', though more local identities would typically be stronger. While under the Normans and Angevins there was a definite cultural divide between much of the nobility and the commoners, this ebbs and flows to a degree, until the nobility becomes quite firmly English during King John's pitiful reign. As a whole, the notion of the Norman Yoke is stupid. Here's a good BBC podcast featuring Real Academics on the subject: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b009q7zm/In_Our_Time_The_Norman_Yoke/
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Jul 11, 2013 16:59
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