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Third Murderer posted:I suppose that works, but in that case you're mostly talking about folding the metal over onto itself a bunch of times... The layers become exponentially thinner so I could see how that would quickly "even out" the elements in the metal. You can't do the folding much with a visible pattern however, as after just a few folds the layers are too small to see. You could fold the individual layers before welding them together, of course. They called it the Holy Roman Empire for a reason.
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# ¿ Jan 27, 2013 03:37 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:27 |
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Anne Whateley posted:I dunno dude. It felt like all of my professors loved "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Discuss " Yeah, but the question was about claimants to the legacy. Of which the HRE, in some form or another, was the biggest and longest standing example West of the ERE.
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2013 08:00 |
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FedoraDefender420 posted:Just say gambit or plan, no need to insert a nerd vocabulary. Yeah, a 'win-win' situation isn't so much a gambit as... I dunno, intelligence?
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# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 00:07 |
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New Coke posted:Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was. Well, Xenophon's Anabasis has a fun bit where a big western army gets caught in some godforsaken highlands, some how offend the tribal natives, and are relentlessly harried until they leave, even though the native's were armed with only light wicker shields and slings and javelin's against the Greek heavy hoplites. It's sort of an interesting question, a lot of your Joe Blow peasants weren't treated much worse by the enemy than their 'native' overlords, and when you don't necessarily have weapons (likely because you local lord enjoys taxing people occasionally.) He's not going to be able to much even were he so inclined. On the other hand, given sufficient motivation (often a certain amount of investment in the possession of the area e.g. tribal ties) you do get plenty of cases of armed insurrections. Self interested banditry could be a huge deal as well. I think the Christian crusades into Eastern Europe got pretty Vietnam-ish in places. I remember that by the end of the Thirty Years War a lot of towns and villages had started to wage guerrilla war on any army that came near them, usually because armies were going near inhabited places mostly to 'requisition' supplies. Guerrilla warfare itself originates from the Iberian campaign so... yeah, it's a thing that happens fairly often if an invading force (or local overlord...) provokes or incentives a population capable of resisting.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2013 01:20 |
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sullat posted:Well, the thing about the Anabasis is that the Greeks weren't trying to stay and conquer the highlands, they were trying to get the hell out of dodge. It was just that those natives wouldn't give the Greeks any food. And if you remember, the Greeks armed a bunch of their dudes with bows and slings, and used them to keep the enemy skirmishers at bay. Yup. Still, I'd call showing up and demanding food and shelter sufficiently close to an invasion to fit the bill, and yup, that was the Greek solution (well, one of them, and it got pretty complicated around terrain and stuff. The final river crossing is quite gripping reading.) Kaal posted:You'd see a lot of banditry, but not the kind of guerrilla warfare that we see today. The technological and political realities didn't really permit it. First off, most cities were surrounded by a wall that would fend off any small-time attacker, so attacking the establishment required a real commitment of troops. This is a pretty big deal, and why castles were a pretty big deal. They let the professional force in the castle set the terms of engagements.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2013 04:06 |
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life is killing me posted:I really love this thread. I love history and study it a lot for fun, but I had a lot of misconceptions sprinkled with some skepticism on depictions and common thoughts of medieval life. That said, I have some questions for you medieval buff goons. I know that in Tokugawa Japan the shogun kept all the daimyo's wives and first born sons in Tokyo to keep them subservient. Oda Nobunaga committed suicide after being turned on by an allied lord, who had supposedly let Oda use his mother as collateral. Oda reneged on the deal and got the mother killed so... European wise, it was customary to send young nobles to live with and train in other castles/courts, as part of a way to build alliances and friendships. quote:How did the Knights-Hospitalers differ from the Templars? I don't know much about either other than (I think) they were both religious warrior sects. Did they have notable prowess in fighting and riding? Were they basically the same as Templars without the subsequent negative stigma? Pretty much, they were a group that formed to protect pilgrims, and were associated with, suprise!, hospitals. The Templars pissed off the Pope, the Hosplitar's ended up squatting in Malta for basically forever harassing the infidel in someway or another, often combating Barbary pirates. quote:I read through the entire thread and came across a discussion of Bernard Cornwell, so having read his entire Saxon Tales series, I thought I'd weigh in and ask a related question as to his historical accuracy: In the books he describes the main character, Uhtred of Bebbanburg (modern Bamburg) in his dealings with Christians. As was discussed before he seemed to place a heavy bias against medieval Christians in that he distrusted them and they were all liars, only converted to be sheltered from Alfred's pious wrath, etc. At one point he describes the character with a group of Christians who are traveling with the corpse of St. Cuthbert as a holy relic. Was this a thing, carting hallowed corpses around as relics like this? Wouldn't it have been considered heretical to not bury the bodies of your most revered saints? Noooope. Dead saints had protective and curative power. Dead saint bits were all the rage, hair, teeth, toenails, the jams. Big churches generally had one or two. This isn't unusual at all, I think there's some Sufi sect with a reliquary of a saint's dentures. Still, the whole 'idolatry' thing was a bit controversial, but the Catholic church's devotion to the saints is kinda one of their things. quote:How prevalent was the shield wall and when did it fall out of use? Where did this form of warfare originate? quote:How much freedom did the typical commoner have in the medieval period? Were all commoners serfs or peasants in service to a lord, or were some free men who had a little money and a trade but no status? Define 'typical.' Generally, farmers with no lords would find themselves lorded over pretty quick. Urban dwellers and those with travelling trades were a little more independent, but it varied wildly from time to time and place to place.
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# ¿ Feb 23, 2013 05:51 |
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cargo cult posted:This is more ancient history but is there a direct cultural and linguistic link from whatever ancient indo-aryan tribes who created Sanskrit and founded Zoroastrianism/Hinduism to Sarmatians/Scythians and then eventually Sicambri/Frisii/Other germanic tribes? I think Scythians are mentioned as allies of Germanic tribes during the Macromanic wars. This may sound ridiculous but all kinds of Europeans have tried to claim Sarmatian/Scythian descent, from Polish nobles to Ossentians. I think Iranians were even considered "aryan" under Nazi law and of course the whole Hitler co-opting the Swastika thing. Well, I don't know what you mean about a 'direct link' but the Indo-European language group is called that because, well, they're in the same group. The most striking example I always hear is Dyaus Pitr who shows up in Hindu myths. Dyaus Pitr/Jupiter/Zeus Pater. (Or pateras whatever, it's father. You probably recognize as the Latin pater, but it's the same in both. Fun fact, words that are used often 'drift' the least between language groups. Mother and Father, along with all the 'family' words have drifted the least. ) Sooo... it's not crazy in the sense that there are some fun linguistic cultural roots, it is crazy in the whole race-as-something-other-than-a-construct blonde white demi-gods sort of thing.
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# ¿ Mar 2, 2013 19:29 |
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Yeah, there are a lot of ancient Greek accounts of thousands of soldiers meeting on each side and maybe a hundred dying when it's all said and done. If neither side lost cohesion you could have some nearly bloodless stalemates. Even clear victories where the defeated side retreated in good order or had cavalry to cover their backs could be relatively harmless. I imagine things were similar when pike formations met.
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# ¿ Mar 25, 2013 21:36 |
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House Louse posted:Thanks for the offer; I've got a few questions and I'm particularly interested in the Sui/early Tang period. Re 4: Yeah, the Japanese monks at periods were able set themselves up in various ways as political/militarily significant factions. One of my favorites: temple owned land was exempt from a lot (all?) taxes, so sometimes people would 'donate' their land to orders and then 'rent' it at, of, say, a few % points lower than their regular feudal/imperial obligations. So 'warrior monks' could sometimes be less, well, DnD Clerics (Buddhists, at least nominally, shouldn't even eat meat much less kill people...) and more, I dunno, Papal employed condottiero, if put into European terms. I'm not so up and up on the Chinese history, but I think the famous Shaolin monks had a similar deal, militarized over taxation conflicts between temple and state lands.
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# ¿ May 6, 2013 15:52 |
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veekie posted:Anyone know much about the splintered Germany period? What led to it and whats the fallout? A lot of it is Germany existing as sort of splintered in the first place, it was never conquered by the Romans and its period of integration into once-Latin Europe mostly consisted of a series of overlapping and domino tribal migrations. Also, almost everywhere was splintered until, one way or another, particularly strong crowns brought their frontiers and subordinates inline. Even then, nobody gets a real solid 'nation' until, of, say, around the French Revolution. It's sort of weird how our ex-post-facto view of the 'natural' state of things affects our perceptions. Had, say, the Union of Kalmar stuck we'd probably all be asking 'why'd it take Scandinavia so long to unify?' Or, had, say, Napoleon won and rolled Portugal and Spain into one big ball we'd all probably laugh at how silly the inter-Iberian squabbling over colonies was.
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# ¿ May 8, 2013 10:56 |
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veekie posted:Any merit-based systems out there for governing/administrative roles other than the chinese imperial examinations(or for the matter, how well did those work)? I've never taken a post-Orientalism/Everything You Know is a Lie class on the subject but the reputation is that the tests soon led to an overemphasis on, e.g. poetry and Confucian theory and not, you know, the nitty gritty day to day management. Still, worldwide the whole European rights of vassals/inherited land wasn't a constant which meant that big empires often ran on bureaucracies where, at least in theory, merit mattered more than blood.
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# ¿ May 17, 2013 10:40 |
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veekie posted:Point. Basically evolution in quality and coverage, but not so much in nature? From what I gather, the evolution in quality made certain things more or less viable, hence the cycle from bronze sandwich boards to segmented to rings to plates with ring filling to articulated plate.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2013 19:17 |
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Chamale posted:How did pikes influence the reduced popularity of plate armour? I've heard that guns alone weren't enough to end the era of heavy armour, but the combination of "pike and shot" made plate mail knights obsolete on the battlefield. Pikes kept people on horses away from the gunners while they reloaded, which lead to the decline in horsey knights doing their thing. Men on horses also started carrying guns themselves sooo... yeah. I don't think pikes had any particular armor piercing qualities that lead to a decline in plate armor.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2013 13:03 |
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Namarrgon posted:I disagree, it was a foreign power conquering the capital. More importantly, a foreign culture. I've made this example before in the Antiquity thread I think, but imagine if the USSR had conquered the US. Would giving the soviet leader title of POTUS make sense? I would argue not, though they might have done so for propaganda reasons. Or imagine if the US would occupy large territories in the Middle East and declare the president as the Caliph. I am of the opinion you need a certain cultural claim within the culture you are usurping for the strongest claim. Well, if you lean foreign culture you sorta have a dispute between Latin speaking Italians calling themselves Roman and a buncha Greek speaking Greeks calling themselves Roman so... plus you've got these really famous Emperors like... Basil the Macedonian, Leo the Isaurian, who were, you know, Isaurian and Macedonian. And did become emperor by showing up with a gently caress off army, kicking in the doors, and stabbing folks. I really don't think you can apply modern standards of nationalism to the medieval and ancient world. I mean, you can make the argument that Islam was a big old thing... if we ignore the fact that Constantine, oh noble founder of Constantinople, also radically changed the religious landscape of the Empire so, well, yeah.
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# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 14:50 |
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Cream_Filling posted:Dunno by late empire arguably the idea of "romanness" was primarily cultural and not ethnic. There's a difference between a separate, foreign power and someone who's already integrated into Roman society regardless of where their family's from. Well you could say the same for Rome. Culturally, it was Greek speaking, Orthodox Christian religiously, and the art and architecture had largely moved on. What is this 'romanness' that legitimizes Leo over Mehmet? In China there definitely was something to the notion of the Mandate of Heaven and there was a real 'thing' about being the Emperor that went beyond 'yeah, I'm strongman the 8th, kneel before me.' Sure, the name changed, but the Byzantine Empire became Basileia Rhōmaiōn instead of the Imperium Romanum. So that logic doesn't work. I'm not saying we should be calling the Ottoman Empire "Rome," or the true successors to Rome. I'm saying that I've yet to see any logic that demands we treat the ERE as just "Rome" the one and only that can't also be applied to any number of other claims to the the title.
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# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 16:23 |
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Beeez posted:Yeah, these are some of the reasons I found it confusing to be sure how formations actually worked. I know ultimately the goal is to rout the enemy and it wasn't very likely for battles to be fought to the last man, but from some of the descriptions and pictures I've seen I don't understand how just pushing could work that well in a lot of instances. It seems like it'd limit mobility and dexterity too much if the formations are excessively rigid. But again, I could be way off, just trying to figure it out. Yeah, I don't think 'just pushing' is how a lot of that was supposed to go. Hence the 8 foot long bits of pointy death everyone is carrying around. For the Greek phalanx, you've got everyone with spears, attempting to stab each other somewhere vulnerable. Everyone sort of scoots toward the man to his right, so that he can use his neighbor's shield (held in the left) as well as his own. Since elite troops most often went on the right, this could lead to spinning battles, or the Theban 'let's triple stack our best on the left and gently caress up your king.' I think of it as a very proto-Boar's Head maneuver. It's interesting to note that (per Thucydides etc. number) stand up fights like this were pretty tame as far as dead men on the field, at least, if they did not result in a bloody rout and massacre. (Many of them didn't, a good cavalry screen or solid rear guard could force a pursuing force to huddle up under their shields, letting sprinting losers retire more or less safely.) That's the benefit of the tight, well armored formation. It's safe(ish) and can power through less well equipped or tightly packed formations. Flexibility is an issue, see also, battle of Pylos. The Romans end up adopting the maniple, a sort of balance between the two. I don't think I've every seen a record where pushing was a big deal.
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 02:41 |
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Beeez posted:And they were generally aware of this? When you see it happen often enough, you do tend to put two and two together... Well, 'poo poo I'm thirsty' is a common response to dehydration and pretty natural and easy to do, while the whole not bleeding thing depended on the fashions of the time (you know those barbers, always on the cutting edge...) Prevention by clean water was a big deal. Armies that figured out that latrines should go here and drinking water here generally did better than those that hadn't grasped the difference.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 05:53 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:Do you mean something like this? Ahh, trail maintenance.
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 04:13 |
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The-Mole posted:Those are a popular drunk driving deterrent, apparently. ... how? Like, I'll whack you in the shins with this if you ding my bumper?
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# ¿ Aug 24, 2013 22:52 |
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How true is it that Turkish (Arab, Iranian, etc.) horsemen would rather flee a battle than lose their horses? And are there any other cultures that were like this? Okay, that bolded bit is all sorts of wrong but that aside... not really sure not my area of expertise. Seems pretty reasonable, giving that fleeing would he hard on foot if you're in a situation that's so dangerous to your horse. So it's a case of 'if I stick around here and my horse carks it I'm pretty dead as well, let's GTFO.'
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 17:16 |
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:Hell, I've heard Saladin called the "King of Babylon," but that's probably intended to be more symbolic (tyrannical enemy of the righteous, comes from over-there-ish) than "realistic," if you can even make that distinction with a bunch of medieval literature. Impulse wikipedia search posted:Farang khi nok (Thai: ฝรั่งขี้นก) is a particular variety of guava, feijoa. Scruffy Westerners, especially backpackers, may also be called Farang khi nok. This means "bird-poo poo farang", as khi means waste and nok means (wild) bird; but, while khi nok may mean guano, it is also a species of fish, Diagramma pictum, a species of grunts Haemulidae.[3] Farang khi nok stating that Westerners are bird poo poo, is referring to the colour of a Westerner's skin, white, and the colour of bird poo poo, white. Goddamn it now I want to go back to Thailand...
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 23:17 |
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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. This is especially true in an era when classical civilization was revered quite seriously, so France was occasionally called Gaul, Palermo was called "the Panormitan city" by Orderic Vitalis, Galenic medicine was still standard practice etc. The Ayyubids never ruled Baghdad. Probably Cairo/Damascus were the most important.
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# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 08:07 |
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Namarrgon posted:Did the Muslims ever do counter-crusades? Well, they rallied a few times to push the Christians out of the holy lands, but it's not quite like they declared Rome a holy territory and made it an obligation to get there. Constantinople was a bit different, had been a target from very early on.
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# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 18:40 |
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Cream_Filling posted:I was under the impression that the preoccupation with heresy was more a feature of like the early transitional to modern eras from the 15th century and beyond. Nah it was a big deal. Cathar heresy, Arian heresy, Gnostic heresys, hell, even Islam, kinda problematic to the church's claim to authority.
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# ¿ Sep 4, 2013 03:55 |
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Blue Star posted:Regarding the Ethiopian Christians, how would medieval Europeans have reacted to them if they encountered them? How racist would they have been, if at all? Some, probably, but much more of the 'wow you're so exotic' sort of thing. The white man uber alles thing really is a quite modern idea. Captain Postal posted:Don't confuse celibacy with "no sex". Celibacy means/meant "no heir", so not having legitimate children. It was a means of ensuring that church property was not passed father-to-son to become family owned property (instead it passed uncle-to-nephew and became family owned property). Yeah, the celibacy rules for priest is , I think, like 13th century or something. Really more modern than you'd expect. Even then, you get all these Popes trying to set their bastards up with cushy deals.
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# ¿ Sep 4, 2013 16:39 |
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Griz posted:Religious authority equalling political power is a major theme of Crusader Kings 2, and a lot of games where the player isn't Catholic end up with the church collapsing and being replaced with Cathars, Fraticelli, and various other heresies because the pope keeps calling crusades on impossible targets, or the 12th century Spanish nobility would rather fight each other than the Muslims, or various other things that seem insignificant at first but end up starting a downward spiral. I know this isn't a formally academic discussion and I do love CKII dearly, but it has its own thread and I think we should all remember that it has been abstracted to hell and back to make it into a game.
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# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 05:02 |
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Agean90 posted:Yeah achilles on top of the whole "dipped in the river stix and given armor forged by a god" needed divine intervention to beat Hector. Diomedes. (Actually, Diomedes is bland as gently caress, Hector definitely better as a character.)
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2013 06:29 |
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tonberrytoby posted:An actually good argument against the Mongols defeating the English is that the Mongols never managed to conquer Japan despite trying twice. I don't think it's a matter of couldn't, so much as it was a matter of cost/benefits. And maintaining those coastal defenses utterly wrecked the Shogunate and led to its collapse.
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# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 20:47 |
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Can it be my turn?
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 01:47 |
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Smoking Crow posted:The other day in my history class, the professor offhandedly mentions that Aristotle might have been the most important person in the Middle Ages. Why is that? Because he was pretty influential in philosophical thinking. Him and Plato, but even Plato doesn't become super important until Europe sort of gets him back from Iberian Muslims. Basically you can blame him for all the misogyny. (All of it. Ever. In the history of ever.)
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2013 20:48 |
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Blast of Confetti posted:Were there ever any descriptions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in old writings? There must have been a lot of cases when you have thousands of people dying in these huge battles. How would people even cope with things like that? Well, there's some research that points out that constant stress and factors of the unknow magnify PTSD more than single incidents. Or is more likely to cause it or whatever. Supposedly this is why we see more PTSD out of WWI trench fighters or 'Nam vets and Iraq vets who are always waiting for that next IED. I dunno if I buy it 100%, but things like hyper-vigilance it sort of make sense not to see in folks who didn't have to deal with asymmetrical war/WWI style constant shelling for weeks. As for examples, I think Ajax is cited as an example a lot. He's a mythical figure but the writers would have been drawing on their own experiences. Herodotus reports a vet at Marathon shutting down and going blind not because he was hurt but because of a near miss. Big Persian dude nearly killed him, stabbed the guy next to him instead. I'm pretty sure some people have pointed to examples in the Arthurian myths as well, but I don't remember.
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# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 22:49 |
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WoodrowSkillson posted:A soldier with PTSD bad enough to affect his daily life probably would not fare well in battles were one on one combat occurred. WWI made it so you could theoretically be the worst soldier ever, never fire a shot, and still endure endless amounts of torturous experiences and get massively hosed up. I mean, that's PTSD that exhibits on the battlefield. Lotsa people function better out 'in the field' than they do in the transition back to 'normalcy.'
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# ¿ Nov 21, 2013 02:25 |
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Hogge Wild posted:Everyone has problems at sieging good fortifications. The reason for tearing down castles is that your enemies can't occupy them again, and that the governors or vassals you appoint to rule the area can't rebel so easily. Yeah, the Mongols swept from Northern China to the West before shifting south. So the presence of siege engineers from Islamic territories isn't unlikely.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 03:06 |
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Fizzil posted:A person, usually hammering in nails fastened to a rope to create some sort of ladder of sorts so the other troops can climb it as well. Yeah, dunno about 'wall climbers,' but siege experts were a thing.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 00:35 |
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Chillyrabbit posted:Also a horse is a very heavy animal if the spear didn't stop it well enough a flying horse into your face would make you break your ranks and probably crush you to death, if not serious injury. A surprisingly rare occurrence though. Most often you'd get one or the other part (that is, horse or dude with spear) deciding 'gently caress this' and avoiding the issue. This, for instance, happened probably once through out the whole Napoleonic era (which was, if perhaps a little less reliant on cavalry charges, very well documented and certainly up there as far as number of engagements go.)
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# ¿ Dec 30, 2013 09:07 |
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Mycroft Holmes posted:How did dismounted Knights typically fight? Sword and Board? Mace? Greatsword? You're talking about a huge time span, a lot of cultures, and a period of significant development in metal working, weapon making, and armor making. So... lotsa things.
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2013 20:43 |
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Mycroft Holmes posted:The last period where plate armor was king, before firearms. Western Europe. But plate armors heyday coincided with firearms! Also Western Europe as in...France? GB? The men fighting the Reconquista were very different than those fighting the Hundred Years War was different than the Crusaders was different than... well you get the idea. That said, Agincourt is sorta a typical English/French throwdown with plate armor and a few, very early and insignificant to the battle cannons so... Most of the dismounted men at arms fought with lances. One book I read said that the French had shortened theirs and the English hadn't but I don't know if that's true.
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2013 21:33 |
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Baldbeard posted:How could that possibly be the case though? Even with plate armor, if someone swung a hammer, sword, or poleaxe, wouldn't you much rather have it hit a shield, then say your forearm? That way the full impact isn't transferring directly to your body. I mean, even with a plate helm on, couldn't you just concuss the ever loving hell out of someone by grabbing your sword by the blade and pommeling them with the hilt? The shock hitting the shield is going to be about the same as it hitting plate armor. It's not like shields were made out of vibranium or something. By the time plate rolls around it's better to be the one swinging big with the hammer or having both hands free to grab the blade and pommel whack.
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# ¿ Jan 4, 2014 17:28 |
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I think it's important to interject in here that, theorycrafting aside, historically the people wearing plate armor pretty much dropped shields as their armor got better.
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2014 00:04 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:27 |
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Baldbeard posted:Yeah we believe it. The discussion is whether or not an armored arm is somehow equally as effective as a shield at deflecting/absorbing blows. I'd say not. Well, I think the point at which you're slapping away at a hammer things have gone wrong already.
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2014 00:31 |