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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Well considering Baghdad was arguably the most important city of Saladin's empire besides Jerusalem, that's not the most unfair term. I'm fairly certain that Saladin never controlled Baghdad, and the city and adjacent territory was under the Abbasid Caliphate until conquered by the Mongols in 1258. I know they were under Seljuq domination from the 11th century onward, but after looking it up it seems the Caliph was sovereign in Iraq from the mid 12th century to 1258. I'm also doubtful that Jerusalem was a major city in the Ayyubid dynasty after it was taken from the Crusaders, particularly in comparison with Cairo and Damascus. E: though of course it just occurred to me that if you were talking about which city European observers would have considered most important, that would almost certainly be Jerusalem Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 07:07
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ChaseSP posted:Something I was always curious about, what is the main issues for stuff like dual wielding in the first place, in terms of something like two swords which seem popular in fantasy. I've heard things like it would he very hard to concentrate or that the sword on your weaker hand would just be a liability. Why is it generally considered a dumb thing? The use of left-handed weapons was quite common and arguably the norm, if you conceive of shields as a weapon. They were used to shove and bludgeon opponents, or to trap weapons. The small buckler type shield was particularly handy for this purpose, and sword-and-buckler fighting seems to have been popular throughout the period but especially so in the later middle ages and renaissance. Some contemporary illustrations show bucklers with large central spikes on their faces to improve their lethality as weapons. The sword-and-dagger style was also very significant during the renaissance, perhaps the main method of single combat and self defense, with the dagger held in the left or off hand to be used mostly for parrying but also to strike or to bind the opponent's weapon. These daggers were often specially designed for parrying, such as the main-gauche (literally meaning "left hand"). The realism issue with depictions of "dual wielding" in video games and fantasy is that they tend to show characters with something like a longsword in either hand. Ambidexterity is pretty rare so few people are going to be able to use either hand with equal effectiveness. With two full size weapons, you would most likely just get in your own way, particularly since your off hand is going to be clumsier and weaker. It's better to use something smaller and handier, like a main-gauche. Also, if you're going to have both your hands tied up holding a weapon, its arguably smarter to just carry a two-handed weapon, which would extend your reach and increase your striking force. Part of the reason that the sword-and-dagger or sword-and-buckler styles were popular for dueling and self-defense is that they were more convenient and less disruptive to carry around than a more lethal and bulkier weapon like a greatsword. You might compare it to the modern self-defense standard of carrying a concealed pistol--though a full-size rifle is vastly more effective, people tend to get antsy if you walk around town with one slung across your back. More on topic, this is also the likely reason that the common "walking around" sword kept getting smaller, going from the arming sword to the side sword, then to the rapier, then finally to the smallsword (the sequence might be inexact since I'm not a sword expert, but the trend is obvious). Over time the brute effectiveness of the weapon became less important and the convenience and fashionable appearance became more important.
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Sep 13, 2013 21:40
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Squalid posted:I still haven't seen any evidence that the Mongol invasion of 1285 was comparable in scale to the action in 1241, and evidence from other Mongol campaigns in Europe in the 1280s suggest conquest wasn't even an objective of the second Hungarian campaign. I still think the Hungarians just chased off some second rate raiders and blew it up for propaganda reasons. Turn it around. What evidence or reasoning do you have for that belief? Why make the assumption that is most generous to the Mongols? The records (at least in English) of these later campaigns are much more limited than the attacks in the 1240s, but what we do know is that they ranged extensively throughout the Balkans, subjugating and extracting tribute from Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc. They attempted to do the same to Hungary but failed, and in fact were defeated severely enough that they chose to flee the area via the Carpathian mountains in the middle of winter, where most of the survivors perished. They would not have taken this route had they had any alternative.
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Sep 29, 2013 04:06
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HEY GAL posted:Of all the things in the world to base a cult of personality around, you pick reenactors. Clements came up a while back in the thread so I happened to look around online and found some of his detractors, who seem to be mostly people who used to work with him and then resigned because of him. The read I got on it from them is that he carries himself less like a scholar or reenactor and more like a martial arts "sensei", which makes a lot of sense. A lot of those guys wind up turning their classes into cults. The really wild thing on this particular topic is that the "edge on edge contact is a myth!" argument about parrying with the flat has been going on for years and years even though there are evidently stacks of primary sources that speak directly to parrying with the edge.
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Jul 17, 2014 00:28
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Siivola posted:The marker comparison is kind of unfair. A dagger like that is a weapon for stabbing, and although it's got an edge, I would wager you're unlikely to get sliced to death. A dagger like this just doesn't have the sort of heft or geometry to cut very well. (I wonder what the ratio of deadly cuts to deadly stab wounds is nowadays, with knives being less like icepicks and more like, well, knives?) With a knife, thrusting attacks are much more likely to disrupt a vital organ or sever a major blood vessel, which are the main causes of death by bladed weapon. However, cutting attacks are still debilitating and dangerous, particularly because they only require contact with the knife to cause damage. The issue isn't that you'll get cut to death, it's that the cut can hurt you at any time. For example, say you successfully trap the weapon hand but then when you attempt the standing armlock or the disarm, he defends and as he's twisting free he drags the edge along your forearm. A deep cut the length of your forearm won't kill you, but it will hurt you and make you less able to defend yourself against subsequent attacks. This is the actual point of the marker comparison--somebody can "win" a knife defense drill by handfighting and executing traps, but afterwards they might be covered in defensive wounds. Had that been a real knife, those wounds would have been a major problem, possibly to the point of preventing them from effectively defending themselves.
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Sep 12, 2014 23:25
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If you search for fechtbucher that feature the pollaxe, such as on wiktenauer, you'll see that most of the time they're illustrated with a hammer and spike and not an axehead. This would suggest that people at the time made little or no distinction on that basis.
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Sep 23, 2014 23:47
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IronicDongz posted:Quick, possibly weird question-one of my favorite weapons just in terms of aesthetics is the kanabo, but I'm having trouble finding anything about its actual place/usage in history. I have to imagine that it was used much like any other blunt weapon, but most weapons I'm familiar with made to deal blunt trauma seem to either be one-handed, or are polearms that are also capable of stabbing/cutting, while kanabo(unless I am missing something) are just two-handed big gently caress-off clubs... which strikes me as rather unwieldy and I'm not sure what context that would be useful in. I'm having a lot of trouble finding anything not-bullshit related to them, so I guess I'm essentially just wondering if these were actually used to any real extent, and if so, for what purpose. To clarify for anybody else reading, the Japanese "kanabo" is one of the names for a category of staff or club-like weapons either made entirely of metal or from wood reinforced with metal. There's a lot of variation in size, design, and construction but the most common depiction is something like a five-foot baseball bat with the business end covered with a spiked metal sleeve, or just metal spikes embedded directly into the wood. Basically a heavy two-handed club. The kanabo is referred to in a lot of myth/folklore as the characteristic weapon of the oni and even features in a commonplace expression--"oni with an iron club," meaning not just strong but invincibly strong--which probably reflects that it was in use at some point. There are also the all-important surviving historical examples. It doesn't mean that the kanabo was necessarily a common weapon, of course, just that it was around. And in fact your difficulty finding more information about the martial as opposed to mythical uses of the weapon probably indicates that it wasn't as common or as highly regarded as weapons like the sword, bow, spear, etc. I think the classic claim about the kanabo is that it was a powerful weapon to be used by infantry to break the legs of warhorses, and I honestly don't know what to make of that. There are also a couple types of sword (zanbato, a two-handed sword with an extremely long blade, and nagamaki, a two-handed sword with an extremely long handle, almost a polearm) that were supposedly used for the same purpose of attacking cavalry at the legs. Speaking speculatively, Japan is a fairly iron-poor country what ore they do have is pretty low quality. The kanabo is composed mostly of wood with only comparatively small amounts of metal, which are also relatively easy to make (i.e. iron spikes). Even the versions that are entirely metal would be simple to produce compared to a usable sword, since they're pretty much just an iron bar. The kanabo might be a way of making do with what you have, being a reasonably effective two-handed weapon for a foot soldier that could be turned out in short order by any blacksmith. Another possible reason we might not hear as much about the martial techniques of the kanabo is that it might have been a battlefield weapon rather than an individual one. As big and heavy as it was, it wouldn't be as practical as a sword for a carry weapon for dueling and self-defense, but if you were a foot soldier charging into a confused brawl it'd probably serve pretty well. quote:I have to imagine that it was used much like any other blunt weapon, but most weapons I'm familiar with made to deal blunt trauma seem to either be one-handed, or are polearms that are also capable of stabbing/cutting, I just wanted to pull this bit out to address it, because it's not exactly true. Staves like shepherd's crooks, walking sticks, and so forth were very commonly used, particularly for self-defense by people who couldn't afford swords. e.g. the commonplace English phrase "to stave off" probably derives from fighting off an attack with your walking stick. In Paradoxes of Defense the English martial arts writer George Silver argued that the short staff (better known these days as a quarterstaff) was the ideal personal weapon, because of its length and speed. At 8'-9' it was long enough to severely outrange opponents with most one- and two-handed weapons, but short enough to be handy in close distances, and more nimble than polearms of similar length because it lacked the mass of metal at one end. It's probably de rigeur at this point to note that the usual modern image of quarterstaff technique has the combatant gripping it near the middle of the staff (as in the boy scouts manual of quarterstaff), but historically it was gripped close to one end to maximize the advantage of its length. There are some cool HEMA videos of it being used correctly, and it looks like it would be a nightmare getting your sword anywhere near to a guy who knew how to use a quarterstaff. There are also a couple surviving stickfighting arts, canne de combat in France and jogo do pau in Portugal. One of the events in canne de combat is baton, which uses a two-handed stick of about 55", which is also about the standard length of a stick for jogo do pau. It's also around the right length for a good walking stick, or a good two-handed sword. A lot of the techniques in both arts are visually similar to those used by the two handed longsword, although different in some respects because it can be gripped anywhere along its length, and has no crossguard for striking with. There are also neat videos of those being used, but they're performance or sporting forms now rather than combatives. I believe shillelaghs were also often two-handed, although they were more clubs than staves. At any rate, at first blush staves wouldn't seem to be as lethal as bladed weapons but they actually applied quite a lot of force thrusting or striking--enough to break bones, knock a guy unconscious, or even kill outright, particularly against an unarmored opponent as you might meet in a self-defense scenario.
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Oct 25, 2014 17:24
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Since this thread came back abruptly, I thought I would bring something up relating to the last post I made here, about the Japanese kanabo and two-handed club/mace weapons generally. Since then I've read up a little bit on the Maciejowski Bible, which is a famous primary source for medieval clothing and accoutrements--including arms and armor. It's illuminated with detailed illustrations, and since the convention in art up through the early modern period was to pretend that everybody in history was analogous to the artist's contemporaries, the illustrations tell us a lot. When the Old Testament talks about Israelites smiting the bad guys, we wind up with illustrations of what Polish guys in the mid-13th century would be wearing and carrying. Significantly, the illustrations appear to depict weapons that are not discussed in martial treatises, perhaps because they were in use for military purposes but not for single combat and not by people who read martial treatises. One of the failings of the fechtbuch is that by it's nature it must be directed towards people who both fought and could read, meaning the military aristocracy. In practice a lot of fighting was done by professional but illiterate soldiers, who couldn't afford books nor learning, and perhaps not the weapons described. The Maciejowski Bible, at least, depicts a few arms that are not known from fechtbucher. This is one that frequently appears:  Here we have a long club-type weapon with studs or spikes driven into the business end. In illustrations where it is being actively wielded, it's shown used with both hands. It would seem directly analogous to the kanabo, and even has basically the same design. Another example would be the "bar mace," which amounts to a steel bar with an x-shaped cross-section and a grip on one end. It has been observed in art, and there are even some surviving specimens, including one described by Oakeshott. Some were of ordinary one-handed mace length (24" or so), but they might be as long as a meter or slightly more in length, and heavy enough to require two-handed use. There is also the Godendag, which is a polearm of somewhat disputed design. A commonly accepted version would have it as a long club with a steel spike projecting from the top, and maybe spikes projecting out perpendicular from the business end. In the present day it doesn't appear that anybody is 100% on what it should look like, because descriptions and illustrations are not clear. This weapon was possibly related to the morningstar or holy water sprinkler, which was a spiked mace head often mounted on a 4-6' shaft, plenty long enough to be a two-handed weapon or even a polearm.
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Jan 17, 2015 06:53
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I was mulling over a couple armor-related questions. First, my rough understanding is that the Western/Central European standard was padded cloth and mail, with increasing incorporation of plate components beginning in the 13th century until the adoption of suits of plate in the 15th century. To what extent were other types like brigandine or lamellar used? Were they transitional forms, were they used for special purposes, were they more/less expensive than the more widespread mail/plate? How do their protective characteristics compare to mail and plate? From my limited reading it seems like both types were commonly used in Eastern Europe, Russia in particular, and lamellar was very popular farther afield in East and Southeast Asia. Second, were different kinds of armor preferred for very warm climates? From looking at Iranian and Mughal armor it looks like the same kind of thing; mail worn over a quilted coat, with some plate components (mirror armor). It seems like it would be impossibly hot considering average temperatures of 90-100 degrees in many areas during the summer. Were there alternative varieties of armor to avoid heat prostration? Or did they just avoid fighting when it was very hot?
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Feb 9, 2015 04:35
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JaucheCharly posted:One has to keep in mind that the persian plateau was largely depopulated by the Mongol invasion, with the population only reaching pre-invasion levels in the late 19th century. Iran is mostly windy cold rear end arid mountains (with some cold desert sprinkled inbetween), with lush valleys where most people live and spots with mediterranean climate. Their north is covered with woods and the south around the gulf is the hot type of desert. A persian friend told me, when you think of Iran, think of mountains, lots of mountains. Another thing to remember is that until the Mongol invasion Mesopotamia and Central Asia were also very populous, hugely wealthy, and very much Persian in culture. In the 12-13th century several of the wealthiest and largest cities in the world were Persianate cities along the Silk Road, most of which were largely destroyed in the Mongol invasion. Politically speaking, the rise of the Abbasid Dynasty was a win for Persianized Arabs and their Persian elite allies, which was why they built Baghdad as their new capital, located in Mesopotamia, and planned out after the fashion of Sassanian urban design. As a result of the Abbasids winning out, Sassanian Persian culture became really hugely influential on the development of what we construe as "Islamic" culture. The practices of the Sassanian aristocracy represented wealth and sophistication to the Arabs who had conquered them, and they had a ton of influence over the Abbasids. A lot of things that are associated with Islamic culture were adopted from Persian, like veiling of women, domed mosques, libraries, etc. And a lot of the major cultural and scientific figures of the so-called Islamic Golden Age, like Bukhari, Khwarizmi, Avicenna, etc. were either Persians or had been born and educated in Persianate areas of the Islamic world. As the JJ said, their military strength declined and they were increasingly reliant on Turkic peoples to supply muscle, and eventually they were politically displaced by them and the area was under Turkic rule. But, again, the rulers were Turkic but ruling class and elite culture relied a lot on Persian forms. This is true even down the line to the Ottoman Empire, and even moreso the Mughal Empire. At the same time this is going on, other areas of the Islamic world are splitting off from Baghdad and going in different directions politically and culturally. North Africa, Spain, and Egypt are not nearly as influenced by Persian culture.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:58
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Thanks for the answers. As a followup, I was wondering why lamellar was commonly used in Russia and East Asia but very seldom in Europe and the Middle East. Does it have any specific advantages or disadvantages of protection, flexibility, or weight compared to mail, plate, and brigandine? Were there production factors? For example, I think I've read that a major reason for the adoption of plate wasn't necessarily that it was more protective, but rather improvements in smithing technology made it faster and cheaper to produce than mail.
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Feb 12, 2015 18:22
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JaucheCharly posted:The Janissaries are the police force and firefighters. Which makes for a good guess why everything turns to poo poo shortly after they're making the job hereditary. Something related while we speak about the Janissaries or Ottoman Turkey, I really wonder what's up with the whole boylove thing? Is that a muslim thing? Scarcety of whores in muslim countries? I mean these dudes are obsessed with underage boys. They dress them up like women and there's no secrecy about it. Is that also a thing at that time in the rest of Europe? There's a couple things at work here. First, the social ideal for gender relations is that women are kept isolated in the household. This isn't something that the typical family can afford, because to survive they need their women working, but it is affordable and de rigeur for the kind of upper class people who are running things, setting standards, and leaving behind records of their culture. So as a rich young man, in terms of female interaction you have your mother, your sisters, and probably your father's extra wives and some household slaves, and then eventually you get married to one or more women who you really barely know. In that environment homosociality is hugely important. All your friendships are with other men, and the relationships you do have with women are oriented around maintaining family honor, because that's heavily a function of their morality and purity. This is also true going the other direction, concerning the male relatives of any women you might be interested in messing around with. Putting a guy's sister in a compromising position can be a very big problem for both you and her. It seems ridiculous but the consequences of banging his little brother could be much less serious. Second, the notion that homosexuality is a personal status or an essential personality trait is a modern idea. Before the 19th century in Europe (and somewhat later in most of the rest of the world) people understood homosexuality as an activity that a person might engage in according to their preference. It's also age-structured. Boys and men in adolescence and early-adulthood are supposed to be in the passive role, while adult men are in the active role. Age-structured homosexuality is also related to the mentor principle, which is another reason it was a big deal for military elites. Older men train the adolescent boys who will be the next generation of janissaries, and they're very close emotionally and physically. But you catch until you're old enough to grow pretty good facial hair, then you start pitching. If you keep catching into adulthood, that's not okay and people are going to think you're weird. There's also some suggestion that a marked preference for homosexual over heterosexual intercourse was considered odd and possibly degenerate, so you probably wanted to mix in some evenings with your wives between your boylove sessions, just for the sake of appearances. Third, Islamic jurisprudence recognized that people were naturally lustful and that the human form aroused sexual desires. This is in fact the reason that women were supposed to be veiled and isolated in the home. There are also rulings, though less frequently invoked, concerning male modesty. You're not supposed to gently caress around because it's socially dangerous, but the law knows that you want to and sympathizes. Homoerotic desire is a recognized part of this, and there are even rulings where the faqih would basically write "look, we all accept that young boys are sexy, but don't gently caress them". There's even a great one I remember, but that I would have to find, where the ruling says that anybody who claims he's not attracted to young boys is a liar or a freak. This is not to say that homosexual acts weren't illegal, because they were, and some of them were punishable by death. However, actually getting punished was very rare. For example, poets were able to write openly homoerotic works with little fear of punishment. There's been a pretty good literature about this topic in the past 10 or so years. The best-known book is probably Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards by Afsaneh Najmabadi, about Iran. For the Ottoman context there's Producing Desire by Dror Ze'evi. Also Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb.
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Feb 14, 2015 23:34
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HEY GAL posted:are you saying these writings and their implied audience exemplify the Male Gays yeah why not also on a less humorous note, Islam also recognizes the problem of the female gaze, and juridical opinions in favor of FGM usually cite women's uncontrollable libidos as a justification. You see, we have to mangle their genitals because otherwise they'd just gently caress anything with a penis!
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Feb 15, 2015 03:51
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Ofaloaf posted:What if I've got my degree and want to attend solely because I'm genuinely interested in the subject matter? The University of Postgrad-Low-Wage-Job doesn't cover those sort of fees. It costs money to put on the conference, nobody is stepping up to pay, so they charge the attendees. If you're hooked up with a school you can soak money from your department to pay for it, otherwise you're out of pocket. It sucks, and in an ideal world the host would eat the cost and attendance would be free. But we live in the real world, where donors vomit millions of dollars into stupid poo poo like athletics instead of funding research and basic university functions like conferences.  Sorry, it sucks.
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May 9, 2015 04:51
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Pharmaskittle posted:Tell me everything about halberds. They have spear, axe, and hook. Is there a more useful weapon for a barely trained soldier to face any enemy with, or is it the ultimate peasant arm before gunpowder? Halberds belong to a category of combination polearms that also includes the bill, glaive, guisarme, voulge, and others. Arguably, percussion weapons like the lucerne hammer and others are also in that group. These weapons are usually stated as having their origin as agricultural tools, which is particularly obvious in the case of the bill, which is pretty much a modification of a hedging and pruning tool called a billhook, mounted to a pole. Here's your tool billhooks, courtesy of billhooks.co.uk (but rehosted to imgur)  and here's some weaponized bills  Obviously it has some improvements to increase its effectiveness for killing people, but it's still recognizably the same thing. The bill was considered a characteristically English weapon in a sense similar to the quarterstaff and longbow. England was actually still trying to hang on to the longbow and bill into the era of pike and shot. Had the Spanish Armada managed to get Farnese's men across the channel into England in 1588, he would have kicked the poo poo out of an army armed predominantly with longbows and bills. Anyway, that's the English version. The principle is simple and effective so there was parallel evolution in a lot of different places. The halberd was most closely associated with the Swiss, and the word specifically refers to a pole weapon with an axe, a reverse spike or fluke, and a long spike or spearhead for thrusting:  You have a weapon that can be thrust, swung with great force to crush or pierce armor, or used to hook and entangle enemies or their weapons. The sheer reach of the weapon is also important, because it gives the soldier a huge advantage against someone with a shorter weapon, like a sword, and it allows him to maintain distance to protect himself. That's a particular asset for infantry, who tend to not be nearly as well armored as knights. However, by the renaissance period knights fighting on foot tended to prefer their own version of this kind of weapon, the pollaxe, which can embrace a variety of different design features (e.g. a hammer instead of an axe, a butt-spike for thrusting while held reversed, etc.) but is mechanically very similar to the above-described weapons. It's also very debatable whether the poleaxe originated out of those polearms, or if it was just another case of parallel evolution. Not sure it matters. One of the main differences was probably in how the weapons were used, because the pollaxe was characteristically a knightly weapon, and a knight fighting on foot in full harness doesn't have the same concerns as an infantryman who will likely be wearing much less protection.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:16
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HEY GAL posted:Interestingly, though, you can loving wreck a pikeman's poo poo with a bill one-on-one. What they do is use the hook to trap the pikeshaft and pull it toward them. Somebody or other posted about this a while back. I thought it might have been you, or maybe somebody else. But apparently pike formations usually included men with halberds or similar weapons (the Germans liked to use bidenhänders) who would try to close distance and get in the enemy block, in part by trying to break the pikes. Pellisworth posted:How effective would the English longbows been compared to the Spanish muskets? Were the English using muskets at all or were they all in on the archery at that point? The English army was behind the curve in part because they hadn't yet transitioned to a standing royal army as the French and Spanish had done. They also didn't have huge piles of permanent mercenary companies for hire kicking around like the Germans and Italians. Instead, the king would simply raise an army as and when he needed it. In case of a sudden invasion he would be able to raise a militia pretty quickly. One of the effects of this is that there isn't anybody experimenting with modern tactics or procuring newfangled weapons in usefully large numbers. But the major appeal the arquebus wasn't just that it was powerful, it was that the power could be applied by a guy who spent only a short amount of time training. England still had those laws on the books that required people to practice archery, so they had a ready supply of people who could shoot longbows, which was unusual. The characteristics of a longbow compare pretty favorably to early firearms. Range, accuracy, killing power, rate of fire, etc. are all pretty good. The main technical disadvantage is the logistical issue of arrows, which are very expensive and bulky in comparison to what you feed an arquebus. But if you already have the guys who can shoot them, longbows aren't that bad. As to the bills, the short reach would have been a problem as the Spanish tercios closed in. But we aren't really talking about a huge technological disparity that would have made the English incapable of even showing up at the fight. The issue is not so much that longbows and bills suck. The English also adopted artillery pretty much as fast as everybody else. So all this isn't a huge problem. Henry VIII took an army mostly constituted from billmen and longbowmen to invade France a couple of times (1513 and 1544) and he did reasonably well against the French armies. Didn't really accomplish anything, but he didn't get his rear end kicked. Then again, the French were themselves a little slow to adapt to the pike-and-shot paradigm, and in the second invasion (1544) I think all their best guys were arrayed against the Spanish forces rather than against Henry. myarmoury has a little article about this--notably, Henry hired German pikemen and Spanish/Italian arquebusiers to fill out his ranks, so he appears to have known that a pile of billmen and bowmen wasn't going to cut the mustard. As to what I said about the Armada, it's not so much a technological shortcoming. The Spanish were going to drop the Duke of Parma and the bulk of his army in southern England. Farnese was generally regarded as the finest general of the era and his troops were hardened veterans of his campaigns in the Netherlands. The whole series of events that led up to Anglo-Spanish hostilities and the Armada campaign was due in large part to Farnese absolutely kicking the poo poo out of the Dutch and recapturing what is now Belgium. Elizabeth I only had what forces she could throw together on short notice, to defend England against the hardest army under the best captain in Europe. Despite all the above about longbows and bills and muskets and pikes, the biggest problem might have been Farnese's cavalry, which was was excellent, against the English cavalry, which was few in number and probably nowhere near continental standards. According to that article, this threat appears to have woken them up from complacency, because from the 1580s on the English get more serious about modernizing and adopting firearms.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:24
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Minarchist posted:Wouldn't most soldiers not have full plate and be rocking padded mail or a curiass instead? The answer is that the English were making significant use of longbows from the 13th through the 16th centuries, and body armor was also going through a lot of changes during the same time. In 1250 you would expect to see mail over a gambeson, with some plate components protecting vulnerable areas like the elbows, knees, etc. By the 15th century you would be more likely to see armor composed predominantly of plate, with mail protecting the gaps such as in the armpits. At any time, a knight would be likely to have head-to-toe protection, whereas an ordinary soldier or infantryman might be more variable. For example, the 15th century saw increasing production of what is called munition armor,. Whereas full-harness was made and fitted to order for an individual, munition armor was made on a pattern to equip large numbers of soldiers in the new standing armies. For infantry, it was normal for to wear a partial suit, usually with an open-faced helmet and limited protection for the lower extremities (e.g. no armor from the elbows and knees down). Consequently, plate penetration is actually salient for assessing comparing longbows against early firearms, because that's the target they're both shooting at. Tests of longbow penetration usually run into some issues. JaucheCharly already pointed out that we need to know which type of bodkin point is being used in the test, because they were optimized for different purposes. I also wanted to expand on what he said about metallurgy. Using the wrong variety of steel for either the armor or the arrowhead will give false results. If the arrowhead is a softer variety of steel than the armor, it will deform on impact and fail to penetrate. Conversely, if the armor is less hard than the arrowhead, there's a better chance to penetrate. Going back to munition armor, it was often made of lower-quality metal than was used for the much more expensive, made-to-order harness of plate worn by the aristocracy. If you assume milder-steel munition plate and hardened bodkin points of the right type, you could very well be looking at consistent short-range penetration.
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Aug 19, 2015 23:44
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Minarchist posted:No reason not to spam arrows until 1600 or so, then? Even if you can't kill a knight, you can ruin his support troops or wound a horse. Slow down and disrupt/demoralize the enemy if you can't outright kill them. Nope. That mode of fighting was already obsolescent by the latter stages of the Hundred Years War, mid 15th century. Look at Patay, or Formigny. The French cleaned up... brushed the English aside, really.
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Aug 20, 2015 09:31
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Bendigeidfran posted:I've got some questions about the Genoese Crossbowmen during the early crusades era. Because it seems like everyone in the 11th/12th century is loving terrified of crossbows and they were basically the best at crossbows. You posted this a while ago and I don't think anybody replied, so I thought I would just take a shot at it. The famous Genoese crossbowmen have their origins in mercantile regulations imposed by the Most Serene Republic of Genoa. Genoese merchant ships were obliged to carry a number of men armed with crossbows and trained in their use, as a deterrent and defense against pirates and other people who might want to attack Genoan shipping. Since Genoa was a highly successful merchant republic with interests all over the Mediterranean and a pretty vast merchant marine, this meant there was a continuous demand for mercenaries bearing crossbows. This led to the development of a military establishment for training and equipping such men. The Genoese Balistai Corporation manufactured high-quality crossbows, others supplied equipment like body armor and pavise shields, and more-or-less permanently established mercenary companies recruited, trained, and equipped their men for service. Genoese crossbowmen served not only on galleys, but also in the defense of the Republic's trading depots and the city of Genoa itself. They were also for hire throughout Christendom, Eastern as well as Western, as Genoa had interests throughout the Mediterranean. A big portion of the French army at the battle of Crecy was composed from Genoese mercenaries, although the French command badly misused them. In the 1453 siege of Constantinople, the core of the defending army was made up from a body of 700 Genoese mercenaries led by Giovanni Giustiniani, and it was his withdrawal from the battlefield after being mortally wounded that precipitated the final Ottoman victory. The Genoese had the reputation of being the best mercenaries available anywhere, at least until the Swiss began hiring themselves out. It probably has to do with the relative guarantee of quality you got by hiring them. You knew when you put the money down that they would come fully equipped, trained, and disciplined. On top of that, they specialized in a weapon that was not just highly effective but also added a capability for skirmishing and ranged combat lacking in many armies of the time, rounding out their tactical options. As to how they were recruited, Hegel would be the best person to expand on this. But basically you would have a guy with a stack of money and he would put the word out that he was looking for able-bodied men to take up arms. In a monarchy the king might give his marshal or another household official some money to do this. There were also professional recruiters who would accept X amount of money to raise Y number of soldiers, and they would act as paymaster, liaison, and often captain of that body of men for the duration of the fight. Historically speaking it doesn't appear it was ever all that hard to pull an army together, as long as you had money and didn't develop a reputation for always getting all your guys killed.
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Sep 26, 2015 00:48
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:We do know that there were some kinds of polearms around in the 11th and 12th centuries. Wace, writing in the mid-12th century, describes English soldiers wielding long "gisarme" at Hastings, and he uses this as a word distinct from spear or axe. What the gisarme was, however, is anyone's guess. My strong suspicion would be gisarme as the French term for the English bill and similarly constructed weapons.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:What leads you to this conclusion? Nothing concrete, which is why I called it a suspicion rather than a conclusion. Billhooks were a common implement in Anglo-Saxon Britain and mounted to a pole they would have defied categorization as either a spear or an axe. I'm suggesting that if the English had undefined polearms at Hastings they may have been bills on the basis of agricultural billhooks being available in the time and place and the weapon version belonging to the the set of polearms that are not axes or spears etc. It doesn't necessarily follow that gisarme=bill, though, because Wace may simply have lacked a ready term for them in Norman and borrowed a "near-enough" equivalent, or been mistaken in his chronicle about what exactly they were carrying so many years earlier.
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Jan 22, 2016 21:01
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Here, have a lecture Christopher Dyer (PDF) delivered at the British Numismatic Society. Dyer is probably the most prominent historian of daily life in medieval Britain, and the currency nerds invited him to talk about what ordinary rural people did with coins.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:16
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Hazzard posted:We're Spanish especially noted for using rapiers? That looks like an anti rapier counter measure, Yes, it's from a fencing treatise about dueling with rapiers.
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Jul 2, 2016 21:02
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Hazzard posted:And on the other point, is a rapier actually any threat aside from the point? I assumed it wasn't, because a fencing master said to use your offhand to palm away thrusts to the chest. That's why I thought the afore mentioned image showed a move that wouldn't work against a cut and thrust sword. http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Octavio_Ferrara If I'm understanding the website correctly, 16r and 17r are a two-image sequence.  Goofus (right) has attacked by lunging, but Gallant (left) parried the thrust. There is no risk of Gallant being cut in this position, because his own blade and the hilt are closing that line.  In part two, Gallant has moved slightly closer to Goofus and is using his left hand to control Goofus's sword, again meaning there is no risk of his being cut. Now that he no longer needs his sword to protect him, he's free to thrust it through Goofus's face. Throughout the sequence, Gallant is entirely safe from being cut, and it would work similarly against any variety of sword in that particular context.
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Jul 4, 2016 21:47
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ChaseSP posted:What is wrong with lindybiege exactly? I remember watching some of his armor/weapon videos and they seemed pretty good and consistent with other stuff I've read/heard from this thread I haven't seen that many of his videos so I wouldn't claim to be familiar with his whole channel, but based on what I have watched he approaches historical topics as a hobbyist. By which I mean, he has a dilettantish approach of studying a lot of different things that he's interested in, not at any great depth, and then he puts up a video of his thoughts. That's fine for what it is and a casual entertainment approach is how you get people interested in studying at greater depth, but he's not an expert, and a certain amount of stuff he claims is obviously made up based on what he assumes is correct. Again, I haven't gone over his whole clip library so there may be topics he has a more serious approach to and better command of the facts, but what I've seen has involved a lot of misinformation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXQygRVvEmM For example, somebody in the other thread posted this video comparing the Bren to the MG42, which he insists on calling a "Spandau" because "everybody" called it that during WWII. Which I don't think is even particularly accurate with respect to just British troops, let alone everybody else. Since it isn't a medieval topic I'm not going to belabor the point, but that video contains some correct information but also lots and lots of false statements, and is basically terrible. Grenrow posted:Matt's continued recommendation of lindybeige confuses me so much. Is it just because they're youtube buddies or can he not tell how loving stupid Lindybeige is? I dunno, but lindybeige has been youtubing for most of a decade, his videos regularly get hundreds of thousands of views, and he has over 250,000 followers. Even if he's frequently wrong, he's a bridge between fantasy RPG nerds and historical reenacting and HEMA nerds. I also wouldn't be surprised if, more specifically, lindybeige has helped Easton out by steering subscribers to Easton's channel and his sword school.
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Jul 24, 2016 16:10
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VoteTedJameson posted:Anyone around here read up on the Byzantines? I'm scouring cultural histories of he Byzantine empire up and down and I can't find anyone who'll sit down and discuss how the institution of slavery worked at any length. It was in full swing when the Western empire collapsed, and there are lots of references to prisoners of war being enslaved, but as to where those slaves fit into the social order- there's this big weird gap in every book I check out. Can anyone recommend me a book with a good run-down of Byzantine slavery? With the proviso that I haven't read it so I can't say that I specifically know if it is any good, I ran across this translated monograph (from the French) pretty quickly after googling: Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World On JSTOR I found three decidedly mixed academic reviews--one full of praise, one that criticized the author for arguing beyond what his evidence could support, and one that complained that the scholarship was outdated and the translation was shoddy. It sort of looks like exactly what you're looking for, so even so it might be worth a look at least if you can find a copy.
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Aug 24, 2016 00:15
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I did think you had probably found that as easily and immediately as I did but I posted just in case. I don't know much about the field you might just be running into a problem where there just aren't that many people doing Byzantine studies, at least not in English. even fewer people doing the narrower topic of slavery in the Byzantine world. I think the publishers description for that non-useful book notes that it is the first on the topic since the 1950s, which isn't encouraging for your search but probably indicates why somebody decided to translate it. I know you're asking about Medieval Rome, but you could also try running the question by the Ask Me About Ancient Rome thread just in case https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3486446
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Aug 26, 2016 04:08
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Bendigeidfran posted:With regards to blunt impact weapons like maces: what were the main elements of their design? A heavy bit of stone or metal at the end of a long bit of wood or metal. Typically 24-30" long, usually on the shorter end of that. Mostly they weighed under 3 lbs., which is less than video games and fantasy literature would lead you to believe, but in reality the force of impact comes from the distribution of weight. A mace is heavy at its business end, so there is a lot more momentum when it is swinging compared to something like a sword, which is balanced nearer the hilt. quote:Was there a particular way they were forged, changing styles over time like we see with swords? Or was there not much advancement because early designs worked well enough despite changing battlefields? There were a wide variety of designs across different places as times, as you might expect from a weapon that was used from the stone age onward. Some had rounded heads, while others had knobs or prongs to concentrate their impact onto a smaller surface area. This can be seen going all the back to bronze age mace heads. There were some innovations in Europe in the later medieval period (13-14th century), probably in response to wider availability of armor and improvements in its protective characteristics. The morning star and the flanged mace were popular during this period, and by the early modern period I think the flanged mace was pretty much the standard for this type of weapon. Over the same time frame you also see wooden shafts increasingly supplanted by all-metal construction, usually with a hollow shaft to save weight. This is probably because metal is more resistant to wear and damage. There is also an interesting variant on the all-metal form sometimes called a "bar mace", which consists of a metal bar with an X-shaped cross-section, thicker at the business end to get the right weight distribution.
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Sep 14, 2016 03:46
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Bendigeidfran posted:Stupid question time! So I understand that grappling was an essential part of armored combat, since getting through armor is a pain-in-the-rear end at the best of times. With this in mind, were there famous cases where an unarmored/potentially unarmed combatant overcame heavily-armored opponents with knowledge of these techniques? Whether on the battlefield, during an assassination attempt, or otherwise. AFAIK detailed accounts of specific fights aren't very common and most of our primary source knowledge of how stuff worked comes from instructional literature. There are some exceptions but I think they're mostly involved with celebrated duels, like Carrouges-le Gris which was the last officially sanctioned judicial duel in France (you can read about it in "The Last Duel" by Eric Jager). That one is actually a case in point for what you're asking about, because of how it ended--they both wound up dismounted and fighting with swords. le Gris was stronger and managed to wound Carrouges on the leg, but Carrouges wrestled him to ground and got on top, and he smashed le Gris visor open and finished him with a dagger in the face.
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Sep 19, 2016 21:29
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The Battle of Nicopolis (1396 CE) is something like what you're asking about, but not exactly. A combined Hungarian-German-French Crusade was in the Balkans to stop the advancing Ottoman Empire. When Sultan Bayezid advanced his army towards them, the French Crusaders made a headlong attack by themselves that routed the Ottoman archers and infantry. This left them some distance ahead of their allies and in considerable disorder. The Hungarians advised they should take a break to reform so they could advance as one force, but the French thought that they had broken the entire Ottoman army and began the pursuit to complete their victory. Bayezid had been holding his cavalry in reserve and he separately crushed first the French and then the Hungarians and Germans. So, it wasn't because the Ottoman infantry was able to reform, but it does show the dangers of a disorderly pursuit.
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Sep 26, 2016 22:01
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Baron Porkface posted:Did a True absolute monarchy exist outside of fairy tales? In addition to what others are saying about how we need more information about what you mean, I also want to point out that this is barely a "medieval" question at all. Absolute monarchy is more of a 17th-18th century European thing, and locating it in time and place helps you understand it better. It isn't a description of how governments actually functioned, it's a philosophical position. It emerges out of a time of crisis involving plague, famine, religious war, political instability, while the status and power of the aristocracy in a some particularly important countries like France or England, is in decline relative to the royal court. Some people argued for a revision of the feudal relationships among monarch, aristocracy, church, and commons, towards a system where the monarch has absolute authority and all political legitimacy and power flows from his person. You can think of this as being less an actual objective and more of a political ideal, which a monarch could use to support his position during disputes. Did this ever exist in the idealized form? Not really. But some monarchs used it, with varying degrees of success, to justify their supremacy over other potential centers of power in the societies they ruled. Competing examples would be Louis XIV of France, who was fairly successful, and Charles I of England, who was not.
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Oct 13, 2016 20:33
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yeah I essentially agree. [very nasal voice] IN HOCK is an American English colloquialism dating from at least the early 19th century it derives from Dutch in similar fashion to terms like BOSS or SANTA CLAUS from the Dutch hok meaning cage or pigsty, an apparent IRONIC REFERENCE to debtors' prison you are "in hock" when you have run out of money, you are in debt, and you have begun to sell your worldly possessions to pawnbrokers just to survive
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Nov 5, 2016 05:16
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The purpose of serfdom is to guarantee landowners will have consistent access to the labor power of their tenants, because the tenants cannot move away or pursue other work. It was introduced in the later Roman Empire to address a labor shortage in the agricultural sector. Serfdom in Western Europe is widely supposed to have broken down as a result of the 14th-century plagues. Mass death reduced the available labor pool, creating a labor shortage. But at the same time, institutions that enforced serfdom were weakened. In the 14th and 15th centuries there is clear evidence of increasing social tension, including spectacular uprisings like the French Jacquerie or the English Peasants' Revolt. This may indicate that the aristocracy tried to respond to the labor situation by retrenching serfdom, but struggled to do so and provoked militant resistance, such that serfdom eventually became untenable and was negotiated into milder forms of obligation. AFAIK the general line on late serfdom in Central/Eastern Europe is similar--states with small populations and large land areas faced labor shortages, and the landowning class resolved the problem by imposing serfdom on the peasantry, and had the power to make it stick.
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Mar 2, 2017 03:45
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Professor Shark posted:What are the rocks for in this picture and what is the staff-club-weapon that a few of them have called? The image depicts a section of a Hussite wagon fort. Just googling, I'm finding some claims that they carried stones as weapons of last resort, to chuck at enemies if they were being overrun or ran out of ammunition. As Hogge Wild says, the club-like weapons are peasant flails modified as weapons. They originated as agricultural tools used to beat the husks from grain, but they were popular weapons of peasant rebels in late medieval/early modern uprisings. This is probably because they were available, peasants were familiar with using them, and they could apply a lot of percussive force, which is useful if you're being attacked by someone in armor. The flail was the characteristic Hussite weapon.
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Mar 6, 2017 02:43
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