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ScottP posted:Excellent thread already, thanks! It's hard to say with some precision what their daily life was, but the mercenaries definitely resorted to brigandage. In the Alexiad (I believe) Anna says that Robert the Weasel started his career as a brigand, before becoming a mercenary. You could say that his time as king was brigandage on a larger scale, trying to swipe the Byzantine crown. Obviously, she may be a bit biased against Robert, but still. There was another incident around the time of Manzikert where the Frankish mercenaries refused to fight the Turks, and the commander tried to carve out his own little slice of Anatolia to call his own. The Turks eventually put a stop to that.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:55
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Grand Prize Winner posted:How does that work? True. Even though demand for labor dropped (fewer people to feed/clothe/whatever) the supply of labor dropped even faster. In England, the crown passed laws to try and freeze wages at pre-plague levels, one of the factors leading to the peasant rebellions of the late 14th century.
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Jan 29, 2013 06:33
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EvanSchenck posted:I feel like I remember reading--sad to say I can't remember where--that Alexios had intended Urban II to send a modest army of professional soldiers who would retake Asia Minor for him. The territory they conquered would return to him, but in order to compensate them and encourage them to remain as a buffer against the Seljuqs, he would give them title via imperial land grants (pronoia) to the land along the border. Yeah, what Alexei wanted and what was dumped on his doorstep were definitely two different things. Barely-armed peasants, fractious feudal princes, Bohemend... not what he wanted. And remember the land that he wanted re-conquered was formerly Byzantine. Antioch, for example, had been the second city of the empire for centuries, and to have Bohemend seize it for himself was quite the annoyance.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:15
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Railtus posted:I got curious about the part about the Mongols and decided to look into it. It seems like the Silk Road was relatively sporadic and unreliable; it's about 1270 before it seems like a solid trade network, then it starts falling apart in the 1340s when the Black Death struck and the Ming Dynasty took over. Fractured groups in the area disrupt trade, then the Ottomans obstruct trade between Europe and Asia in 1453. It seems like there were periods when the trade was steady and periods when the trade was reduced to a trickle, which is a further complication. One of the main routes for the spice trade was from India to the Red Sea ports, and then overland to Egypt. The Venetians would then distribute it to the Europeans. Obviously, with so many middlemen, the price was pretty hefty, but that route was pretty well established by about 1100-1200 or so. It lasted until the Portuguese destroyed the Indian Sea trading fleets in 1500 or so. This was a real double-whammy for the Venetians, since the Black Sea trade was cut off in 1453, and then the Indian spice trade was cut off in 1500.
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Feb 2, 2013 01:58
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cda posted:The depth of knowledge represented in this thread is astounding. Thanks for making it. Vis a vis prisoners of war, it varied greatly from war to war and time to time. Generally, the rule of thumb was high ranking dudes would be held for ransom and average shmoes would be killed. Or sold into slavery. Apparently Charlemagne made some serious money selling defeated prisoners. At Agincourt, for example, Henry ordered his dudes to kill the non-noble POWs because he was afraid that the third wave would break his lines, and didn't want to spare the men to guard the prisoners. Then there are instances like Basil the Bulgar-Slayer blinding 10,000 prisoners as a big "gently caress You" to the Bulgar king. Rare, but POWs were not treated very well. But there are also rare examples like Saladin, who was decent to his prisoners and didn't massacre anyone. Well, he didn't massacre any Crusaders, I guess, which is what counted to the Medieval chronoclers. He was less nice to the Fatamids. And Alp Arslan let Romanos Diogenes and his surviving men go after Manzikert, although that was in exchange for a huge ransom. And many times, people just didn't bother with prisoners. At the Battle of Yarmouk, the Arabs didn't take any prisoners, wiping out a huge Byzantine army. Same went for the Mongols, who only took prisoners that they thought might be useful. Everyone else got massacred, or used as human shields in the next conquest. As far as the Children's Crusade, basically, poo poo be hosed up sometimes. The theory was that only children, so pure and innocent and free from sin, would be able to reclaim the holy land. Presumably God would simply sweep the obstacles away in front of them. I don't know if there's a consensus as to how this belief began spreading across France, but apparently a few thousand children made it to Rome, where the Pope told them to go home. A bunch more ended up in Genoa and were sold into slavery. sullat fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 20:52
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Kemper Boyd posted:A sword doesn't do much against a wood shaft, you're right. Speaking of medieval superstition, I once read a book that talked a lot about peasantry in France and how they lived. One weird tidbit in the book was that apparently there was a sub-caste of peasants that were treated like Jim-Crow era blacks; they couldn't drink from public wells, they couldn't use the main doors of churches and other public establishments, and were basically treated extremely badly by their fellow-peasants. The author wasn't sure why this sub-caste developed, or precisely who it was comprised of, just that he had compiled examples of the laws discriminating against them and anecdotes of them being lynched for breaking those laws. I guess my question is, is that author pulling that completely out of thin air? Has anyone else heard about such a thing? For the life of me, I can't remember the name or author of that book, and google has not availed me.
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Feb 16, 2013 17:59
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Kemper Boyd posted:I think you're talking about Les Cagots. That's them. Thanks. Weirdest thing.
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Feb 16, 2013 20:09
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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.
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Feb 17, 2013 01:56
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Being able to bribe your way out of false/racially motivated accusations of heresy seems about the most fair you can hope for, I guess. Lot of talk about the Spanish inquisition, but as I recall, the inquisition was originally founded to root out a much more sinister menace to Catholicism; the Cathars. Does anyone know how the inquisition went about doing that? The usual torture->confess-> execute route? Or did they, too, let suspected Cathars bribe their way free? As far as the "execution" bit is concerned, as far as I understand, you're right in that the inquisition didn't execute people; they turned them over to the civil authorities for execution. Which is the kind of legal distinctions that means oh so much to the poor inquisitors doing god's work. But possibly less so to the defendant.
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Feb 20, 2013 17:42
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Adeptus7 posted:Why did the Byzantine Theme system break down? The theme system broke down because it relied heavily on having small plots of land directly owned/farmed by the peasant/soldiers. This was incredibly annoying to the landed aristocracy who wanted that land for themselves. For about two hundred years there was a seesawing effect where military emperors tried to strengthen the system and noble emperors tried to weaken it. In the run-up to Manzikert, the Doukas family gutted the system. After Manzikert, it was too late and the Anatolian heartlands were lost.
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Apr 17, 2013 08:16
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Yeah, Candia was a mess. Neither side had naval supremacy, so the defenders could resupply at will, but then, so could the Ottomans. Although they may have been too lazy to storm the place, at least they had persistance. How many other empires would have just given up after 10 or 20 years?
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Apr 25, 2013 21:26
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Why are some of the disputants standing in holes? Is that some sort of handicapping mechanism?
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Apr 30, 2013 16:57
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Arglebargle III posted:I mentioned that Chang'an (Tang capital) was a heavily fortified city. I should add that it made everyone who visited lose their loving minds at how amazing it was. I'm serious, the ancient people of the world gave Chang'an rave reviews and came back to their home countries gushing about how everything Chinese was the best. This was the time when Japan and Korea just decided to convert their culture wholesale to the Chinese model because those guys were so great. It was the place to be in the 6th and 7th centuries up until its sack in the 8th century. Maybe there was this place called Constantinople or whatever but forget that for a minute! And then it was all wiped out by barbarian rebels. So not fortified enough.
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May 8, 2013 22:38
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When Xenophon and his buddies were heading through Anatolia, the natives were harassing the poo poo out of the hoplite column with javelin skirmishers. So he says that all the guys from Rhodes were given slings, while the dudes from Crete got bows, and these were used to keep the enemy at bay. Which is probably where the notion that those cultures had superior skills in those weapons came from.
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Aug 14, 2013 12:45
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Rabhadh posted:If you could afford a horse why would you still be using a sling? I suppose if you were some sort of hipster horse archer, you might try it.
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Aug 14, 2013 15:38
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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. I dunno, that sounds exactly what happened in China several times; a foreign culture sweeps down, conquers huge swathes of China and set up a dynasty. Would you say that the empire of China didn't exist during the time of Mongol or Manchu rule?
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Aug 15, 2013 15:25
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pulphero posted:I remember hearing something about Ethiopian christians taking part of the crusades. Does anyone have info on this or know what they where equipped like? They did not. Christians living in the target regions sometimes helped, but Ethiopia was beyond the edge of the world. European cartographers believed that there was a powerful Christian kingdom on the other side of Muslim holding them at bay, and if they broke through the Muslim lands enough, Prester John would aid them. Most people believe that this was a vabue remembrance of the Christian Ethiopia, but it could just be wishful thinking. When the Mongols showed up, many thought that was Prester John, but they didn't really help the crusaders out.
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Sep 3, 2013 19:04
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Weren't the Ethiopians just Miaphysites, like the Armenians? And did this ever led to conflict between the crusader states and the non-Catholic (Miaphyisite, Nestor, etc.) before the fourth crusade? On the second question, I'm assuming Catholics wouldn't encourage conflicts with their Orthodox populations as they're still Christian and papa Byzantine was still alive and reasonably powerful. You'd think that the two segments of Christianity would unite against their common foe, but you know, politics. Although the crusaders and the byzantines were allied, and cooperated on occasion, other times they would offer advice and well wishes, but no support. Part (well most) of the problem was that the byzantines had formerly owned much of the crusader states (especially Antioch, Edessa, and Cilicia, and were not happy that the crusaders viewed themselves as wholly independent. Obviously, the sack of Constantinople (motivated more by greed than religious differences) ended any cooperation between the two (although relations were tense after an unpleasant emperor massacred the city's Latins on the 1190s.
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Sep 4, 2013 01:42
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It's accepted that a Trojan War seems historically likely. Whether the Trojan War happened is another matter. For what it's worth, though, Homer got a lot of geographic details of the Hisarlik region right according to the latest archeology. We probably need to dynamite the truth out of the ruins so more. Also, I thought that the Iliad and odessy are two parts of a larger epic cycle? Which is why they don't cover the actual fall, Achilles' death, the fate of the surviving greeks in those two works.
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Sep 16, 2013 20:28
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fspades posted:Knightly orders were, in part, monastic organizations and monasticism never really caught on in the Islamic world, so you won't find an exact mirror image to Templars. The closest analogue would be the ribats. These fortresses (or more accurately walled compounds) would be built alongside trade & pilgrimage routes and on the frontiers of the Dar al-Islam. They had a religious character as they would house ghazis and other volunteered holy warriors and later they often had Sufi lodges as well. But it's impossible to speak of a single organization like the Templars. I remember that Ibn Battuta told about being escorted by a fraternal brotherhood while travelling through dangerous lands at one point. Must have been those futuwwa fellows. He said they kept an eye out for pilgrims and the like, although unlike knightly orders they were supported by private charity, not by grants of land or income.
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Jan 6, 2014 03:20
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Also, it wasn't just knights. A lot of times non-nobility would be given some land and the obligation to show up when called. Mostly the Byzantine themes and the English yeoman-longbowman, who was also forbidden to play any other games on the weekend, other than practicing his archery. Even though troops were paid, they also expected to get a bonus in the form of pillage out of the deal, so there were incentives to serving. e: but yeah, you don't want peasants or artisan arming themselves. When that happens, they tend to get uppity, and then get crushed fairly quickly by the nobility. Pro-tip: If you're a peasant leading a rebellion, don't go to meet your king unarmed.
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Feb 9, 2014 23:02
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Railtus posted:Also this video from 6:00 on addresses the topic of cutting through spear-shafts with swords - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2YgGY_OBx8 - and he says it takes about 3 good hits to split a spear shaft (under good circumstances with sharp blades). Also, from the Western chronicler's point of view, Saladin did all the right things; he treated the noble prisoners well. I have read that he was somewhat harsh in his treatment of the Shia during his rule of Egypt, which a Frank might not care about when describing him.
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Mar 6, 2014 03:57
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Namarrgon posted:An important reason to keep in ind that gavelkind was used is because parents generally love their children and want all of them to have something. Only if they have a stat above 15! But yeah, "gavelkind" is enforced by law in much of the non-UK parts of Europe these days; you're not legally allowed to cut one of your legit kids out of a will.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:00
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What about the Avignon popes? Weren't they a blatant attempt by the French nobility to get into the papacy racket? Having a pet pope would be handy to the French kings, and in France, you didn't have to worry about sending an army to Italy to intimidate him.
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May 22, 2014 05:46
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Randarkman posted:I should have made that more clear. More brought it up as one of the good things that came of his rule. But ultimately he was a pretty bad king, but mostly because of his weak authority, tumultuous relationship with the aristocracy and the bad financial state of the realm I'd say rather than because he was a "bad man". The murder of his nephew was kind of a faux paux no matter how you slice it, though.
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Jul 27, 2014 02:02
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Also similar to the feudal system is the concept of the tax farmer. You basially say, well, province Bumfuckland can probably give us X in taxes, so we sell the right to tax that province to Biggus Dickus for X/2 cash on the spot. How he gets the taxes is his business. But in a lot of places, taxes=labor. Not necessarily free labor, since you draw rations while doing it, but building infrastructure type stuff like canals, tombs, walls, that sort of thing. Also keeps the peasants busy during the off season, too. Finally, at the lowest level, taxes are paid in kind, rather than in coin. Whenever they switch to making the peasants pay in silver, it's always to screw the peasants for the benefit of effective tax administration and the government.
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May 25, 2015 17:27
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Killing/banishing a wealthy person (or unpopular class of people) and taking their stuff works in just about any era.
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May 26, 2015 17:40
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HEY GAL posted:And what does she recommend in the way of logistics instead of what they did? I think she found the whole "sack the city and kill the inhabitants" method of foraging to be distateful, especially when done by princes and popes.
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Jun 26, 2015 00:24
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Jamwad Hilder posted:What? No it wouldn't. The entire French plan was to keep the tired, hungry, and outnumbered English in one spot until more reinforcements arrived and cut off their retreat. At that point the English would either surrender or be slaughtered. If the French archers out-range their English opponents, how do the English force the French to attack them without suffering losses they cannot afford to take? In the run up to the battle, Henry has his dudes pull up stakes and inch closer to the French because they're too busy loving around with the chain of command to attack. Like, it is difficult to overstate how bad the French command was at Agincourt. Even in this straight black Dauphin scenario, we've still got to account for the fact that the French aren't going to use their archers because it wouldn't be cricket or whatever.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:54
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Fuschia tude posted:Clearly this thread should be named Axe me about Medieval History & Combat. Axeman rush is the hallmark of a crude, brutish civilization player. Bronze doesn't make good swords, so the bronze age civs used axes, and they were pretty civilized.
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Jan 20, 2016 16:16
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deadking posted:I don't know a ton about the later reception of Salic Law, but it certainly isn't a forgery. The Salic Law is an early medieval law code first issued in written form by the Merovingian Frankish kings. It's generally thought that the Salic Law was based on older oral traditions, but IMO its reliance on oral tradition is overstated. With the rediscovery of Roman law by European scholars starting in the 12th century, the Salic Law was displaced in certain parts of France. In fact, up to the period right before the French Revolution you can find reference to a split in France between "customary" (i.e. Salic Law) and Roman law. It is actually more like, when one of the French kings died, leaving only his sister as his heir, the uncle showed up with an army and was like, "no chicks allowed to rule France". And everyone was like, "wow, that is a big army. And those spears, very pointy. We see your points. Your interpretation of inheritance law is the correct one, here is the official paperwork." And on that basis, Salic law for the monarchy becomes a thing. Later on, when the English king tried to claim the throne through a lady descendant, the French were like, no, screw you, uh, Salic law. So it was more of a pragmatic thing to use, until it became a tradition.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:45
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MikeCrotch posted:The Romans almost lost the Second Battle of Beneventum because the Roman commander promised the majority slave army that any slave who brought him a Carthaginian head would be freed. Predictably, the slaves spent so much time cutting off heads that they started losing the battle - the Roman general had to tell all the slaves they would be free at the end of the battle so that they would stop looting and actually finish the fight. The Hittites lost the battle of Kadesh because their dudes stopped to loot Ramses's camp before the battle was finished. Probably a big problem in an era where soldiers are expected to support themselves through plunder rather than an organized quartermaster corps.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:58
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:The Peasant's Crusade is some real Speaking of unusual crusades... HEY GAL posted:turks? in 1096? Yeah, the crusades were after Manzikert, and had to fight through Turkish-ruled lands to get to the holy land.
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Oct 20, 2016 03:14
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poo poo. A quick (and shamelessly simplistic) description of it is it's the answer to the question "what would happen if a army's camp followers decided to form their own army?"