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Roughly what proportion of the French and English 100 years war armies were mounted? Is the answer basically "as many as possible" or "more as time went on"? Was there an idea ratio of mounted to unmounted that armies of this period strove for? And by mounted I don't just mean knights on destriers, I mean guys who are mounted for mobilities sake. Finally, does this apply to the rest of Europe or was the 100 years war a unique microcosm in regards to horse use?
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Nov 13, 2013 23:11
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a travelling HEGEL posted:These are later, from the British Isles. Planxty are Irish, as is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBdywzKD2Jw
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Nov 14, 2013 23:29
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a travelling HEGEL posted:I'm aware of that. Ireland is part of the British Isles, and the people who wrote those songs were in the army of the British Empire. My latent republicanism wouldn't let me pass it over though
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Nov 14, 2013 23:36
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Baloogan posted:I think the conquest of the new world was when Spain really shined and punched above her weight. Spain was the weight of the 15th century though, everyone else was trying to pull themselves up.
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Nov 15, 2013 20:15
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Squalid posted:Regarding cataphracts, history supplies an unexpected counter in the form of light infantry interspersed among opposing cavalry, for example in the battle of Strasbourg in 357 the Alamanni routed the Roman cataphracts with this strategy. Although I'm not sure if the historian who recorded this, Ammianus, was an eyewitness. According to his account the infantry hid amidst high grass and other ground cover to attack the bellies and legs of the Roman cavalry. Presumably for this strategy to work the Alamanni horse must have met the Roman's from a standstill, otherwise they would have separated from the infantry. Alexander use close light infantry support to tie up the Persian cavalry at Gaugamela. Its probably not used that often because you need really good light infantry to pull it off successfully. Of course when the Greeks say "light infantry" that mean a fighting style instead of the amount of armour a guy is wearing. The peltasts of Alexander's day were wearing the same armour as his phalangites, linothorax and helm. So maybe there is no similarities in the 2 situations.
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Nov 16, 2013 13:09
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Re: Sword chat, was Colichemarde a thing during the 30 years war? This wiki page gives 1680 as an invention date, but who knows if some kind of proto-Colichemarde was in use earlier. I believe the only surviving examples are on Small Swords though.
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Nov 17, 2013 12:29
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a travelling HEGEL posted:There are tons of pre-rapiers, proto-rapiers, and transition rapiers out there, the categories of many of which bleed into one another in practice. I do not remember seeing any swords with that cross section from this period. It just seems like an elegant solution to the "your sword is too drat thin  " argument, which is why I brought it up.
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Nov 17, 2013 13:13
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) So the answer is...maybe not? Sorry.
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I've read about cav operating in Ireland during the War of the 3 Kingdoms, who were supposedly equipped as pistol cavalry, but unable to get enough pistols to go around to they were issued with lances instead.
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Nov 18, 2013 11:27
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veekie posted:Incidentally, what would you consider the most interesting mistakes on the battlefield in military history? The British artillery could've been a wee bit more accurate when firing on a certain motorcycle courier.
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Nov 18, 2013 13:59
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I think obsolete equipment was mentioned earlier in the thread? http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/11/the-irish-rebel-and-the-ancient-sword/
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Nov 19, 2013 09:07
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Ron Jeremy posted:What was the advantage to the uk in guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium or Poland? War was an unpopular move for a British government to make so they needed a solid and acceptable reason to go to war. Nazi Germany wasn't exactly disliked in pre-war Britain.
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Nov 23, 2013 00:14
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Dear Smeggins, Signing your posts will get you mocked at around here, friendly warning. -goons
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Nov 23, 2013 12:58
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Koramei posted:To bring it back to thin sword chat again I just saw this video and it is pertinent (to a week ago): I like this guy, he teaches longsword primarily but dabbles in whatever swords catch his fancy.
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Nov 25, 2013 23:17
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I do quite like Lindybeige but I've always taken him with a pinch of salt. When it comes to reenactment stuff he's an enthusiastic amateur like myself and many of us here. The whole No Overhand stab! thing is really silly. Not only are people fighting for their lives quite pragmatic about what way they'd like to stab someone, but those Greek spears were counter weighted with a bronze butt spike making them even easier to use overhand. The pikes video as mentioned already is absurd as well. He also seems like a staunch Imperialist.
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Nov 26, 2013 18:35
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Here's another picture of over-hand spear use: Something to keep in mind about over-hand spear use compared to coutching is that it allows you to attack enemies around and behind you, instead of just in front (admittedly less effectively). This is important when you aren't using stirrups (as in the Irish cavalry pictured) or they haven't been invented yet.
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Nov 26, 2013 19:20
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Grand Prize Winner posted:So what's the deal with Japanese castles? They look relatively indefensible to my Western eyes (relatively low stone escarpments under what appear to be wooden ceilings and paper walls). But presumably they worked else the daimyo wouldn't have kept building the drat things. Japan is a lot more seismically active than Europe and their castles reflect this.
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Nov 26, 2013 19:23
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If you want your arrow to go where you think you're aiming, instead of off to right/left, your arrows have to be "spined". Basically they have to flex correctly with the bow.
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Nov 27, 2013 18:22
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I'm embarrassed for everyone in this video.
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Nov 27, 2013 19:58
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Yep. The first and last time this comes down to physical strength (and it is a taxing job) is when you heft that bitch and balance it. The rest is about thinking and skill. Is there any mention of natural drift of the formation in the sources? What I mean is we've all heard how Greek phalanxes naturally drifted to the right, but did something similar happen in the pike blocks of this time period?
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Nov 27, 2013 20:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Spanish at the advent of the Tercio liked to put dudes in their pike blocks armed with bucklers and swords. These guys disappeared realll early on. They didn't disappear because they were ineffective, they disappeared because having another musket became effective as time went on. re: 60 year old pikemen, some of Alexander's Silver Shields who survived him served well into their 60's as well. You had men who enlisted under Philip, conquer the world then endure the Diadochi wars. a travelling HEGEL posted:A lot of these guys have "servants," so I think that's how it went down, I just don't know. And science isn't about something that seems like a good idea to us, it's about knowing. In the Gaelic world, fosterage and apprenticeship were the most common forms of military training. A soldier (Nobleman or Galloglach primarily) would take on a young relation or promising recruit to be his "harness-bearer". Its all very similliar to how knightly squires work. The Brehon laws give 16 as the age when a man is allowed to bear arms, so this is when the recruit is allowed to participate in battle as a skirmisher if his boss was an infantryman or mounted on a spare horse if his boss is a nobleman. The system lasted up until the 17th century, and its quite a natural way of training up guys and inducting them into a brotherhood of the regiment.
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Nov 28, 2013 08:56
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Slavvy posted:The romans invented this so yeah it's been around for a couple of thousand years. The romans had an entirely professional volunteer army pretty much like any first-world modern state today. Even the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the roman system where a small group is commanded by one man, then another man commands several of those men, and another man commands several of those, and up and up until the commanding general. All those things were around before the Romans. The reason "the organisation of modern armies has evolved from the Roman system" is because Maurice of Nassau had such a boner for all things Roman, not because they were inherently better in some way. Slavvy posted:the dark ages We don't say that any more.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:40
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Davincie posted:The Achaemenid Empire also did the whole training and NCO thing. In the end it didn't save them though since their army was build for a totally different opponent then the Greeks (and Macedonians) proved to be. I think Alexander and his army was more of a perfect storm than an opponent the Achaemenid system couldn't handle. Obviously we know what happened in real life, but the Achaemenids weren't just some speed bump the Greeks had to drive over to achieve the world power they eventually did. They had their own sophisticated military systems that successfully conquered a huge swathe of the world. I guess the real weakness of the Persians was how fragile the regime was at the top.
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Nov 29, 2013 23:23
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Taerkar posted:Perhaps I worded it wrong. I was asking more about how the soldiers were trained. Did they do a more one-on-one approach or were there a series of drills and motions that the troops would go through. One of the reasons the feudal system developed the way it did was to produced a dedicated "warrior class" who were supported economically by a group of people who were never expected to take the field. Obviously this changed as populations expanded and technologies developed, but its fair to assume those guys were trained on a one-to-one basis by either family members or close political allies. I think its only recently that warrior nobility has stopped being a thing.
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Nov 30, 2013 00:01
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Frostwerks posted:Lol like Spartan men are interested in women. Plutarch says this about Spartan marrages: "The custom was to capture women for marriage(...) The so-called 'bridesmaid' took charge of the captured girl. She first shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom – who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always – first had dinner in the messes, then would slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to the bed." wow so man
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Nov 30, 2013 14:58
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No mention of The Price of Glory in WW1 book chat? Fantastic book about Verdun. The White War has been mentioned already, just want to second that. I've walked those mountains around Tolmin in Slovenia, I can't imagine fighting a single battle there, never mind loving 12.
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Dec 3, 2013 21:23
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One of the more interesting things is how much trouble the various Italians had talking to each other. The Northerns could barely understand the Southerners, and the urban educated kids could barely understand the peasants.
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Dec 3, 2013 21:46
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Just seeing the name Gabriele D'Annunzio fills me with so much rage.
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Dec 4, 2013 08:26
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I assume greater integration of firearms into the pike block over the century lead to the thinning out of the formation? In Dolstein's picture, the landsknechts are all marching tightly packed together ready to murder their way through the Swedes. I have no doubt that being under heavy missile fire helps to compress a formation, but did later pikemen also switch into a tighter formation when they go on the attack, instead of just warding off cavalry? I also like your point about dropping the pikes rank by rank when moving into to combat. It looks tiring to hold the pike on the diagonal for a long period like this, unless its anchored in the ground that is. But attacking pikemen wouldn't be able to anchor their pikes on the ground would they? Was the "pikes help deflect missiles" thing ever mentioned with regards to early modern pikemen or does that reference only apply to classical phalangites?
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Dec 7, 2013 12:26
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a travelling HEGEL posted:I don't remember anything about that--good luck parrying a bullet or a crossbow quarrel, bro. I only really remember it being mentioned in regard to Macedonian pikemen, the hedge of pikes helps to deflect incoming arrows, causing them to lose energy and become largely harmless. As an interesting side note, perhaps this shows a difference in archery from the classical period to the early modern. Long range archery (arcing shots) could have been an effective strategy in the classical period, but becomes less and less useful as time went on and armour improved. Crossbow bolts are not as aerodynamic as proper arrows, they tend to lose energy a lot sooner and become less effective at range. So the crossbowmen/archers of the day might not have bothered with any long range shots at all, meaning there was no eye witnesses around to comment on the fact that long range bolts/arrows can clatter harmlessly off a hedge of presented pike shafts. I've been reading quite a bit about close range archery in the medieval period recently so please forgive my wild conclusion jumping.
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Dec 7, 2013 13:48
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a travelling HEGEL posted:How do you think I feel! Your stuff is by far the most interesting though
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Dec 8, 2013 02:55
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Grand Prize Winner posted:When did the Scots regiments drop their kilts anyway? WWII movies tend to feature the kilts, but were they actual battlefield attire then? If so, when? I seem to remember some Scots regiments (black watch?) getting shipped over to Iraq after OIF. Did they wear kilts then? I've read that kilts are literally the worst thing you could wear while living in a trench.
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Dec 10, 2013 09:42
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Ah les les pantaloons rouge, the pants that got hundreds of frenchmen killed. I think its mentioned in The Price of Glory that the way French infantry kept their shiny mess tins on the outside of their kit bags got a lot more of them killed than red pants ever did.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:20
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Changing gears for a minute I found the picture of crossbowmen firing at a high angle I'd been looking for: Outside Dawg posted:If you look at the quarrels that have hit the ground, all the flights are strewn at odd angles lying apart from the shafts. Could it be illustrating some type of crossbow deployed calthrop (sp?)? The shafts stuck in the ground look like spikes as well. They're also firing on unbarded horses. I read a quite interesting thing recently about how close the Genoese Crossbowmen came to the longbowmen at the Battle of Crecy. Apparently so close that the English guns were able to effectively fire on them, causing "much loss".
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Dec 11, 2013 10:02
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Eh? Isn't it just a Vickers in disguise?
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Dec 11, 2013 20:49
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Hogge Wild posted:Why did they drop out of use? Gonna' say guns.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:04
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A castle has a clear extra millitary function but a fort does also but to a lesser degree?
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Dec 23, 2013 09:22
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You don't need to see a whole lot while jousting. Presumably you can just take off that big face piece and use something else for actual battlefield use.
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Dec 26, 2013 20:32
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Anyone remember that amazing submarines LP from a few years ago that the OP abandoned? Was a fun read, got quite intense sometimes too.
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Jan 2, 2014 14:47
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Didn't the Sea Peoples use straight swords that didn't show up in other cultures?
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Jan 8, 2014 09:52
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I thought the whole Verdun "bleed the French white" thing was just the general trying to save face after it failed. The "bleed the French white" thing game from Falkenhayn's memoirs after the war, and I don't believe he ever mentioned the phrase to anyone during Verdun. No one is really sure what his intentions were at the time.
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Jan 11, 2014 03:03
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