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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Thanks, Rodrigo Diaz!

We're the guy in the back irl.

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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Smoking Crow posted:

I'm trying to remember the name of a particular tactic done by the Tokugawa army that was later done by the British army. It's where musketeers fire and then move back behind a line while they reload. This is done over and over so that you can have continuous musket fire.

Thanks!
Countermarch. And it wasn't just the British; it was almost simultaneously invented by Tokugawa and the Dutch. (The Japanese were observed using it a little bit earlier than it shows up in Dutch military theory, and I would poo poo myself and die if I ever found proof that the Dutch got it from them.) Every Western European army did it.

If you want to get fancy, your pikemen can move back between the musketeers, too. (Everyone's a lot farther apart than they would be later--or earlier, for that matter. There's about three feet or more of space between one man and another on all sides. So the musketeers aren't moving back "behind a line," they're stepping to one side, moving back between the rows, and then stopping at the back of their own file.)

If you want to get real fancy, you can do things like divide your company into thirds or collections of squads and have them go through the whole thing at different times. Like every other product of Baroque art, this stuff looks static and ponderous at a cursory glance, but when you take a closer look it's full of complex and continuous motion. Reminds me of this:


my dad posted:

So, who's going to organize the bets for the next big "HEGEL vs Rodrigo Diaz" fight?
Rap battle.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Nov 14, 2013

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Smoking Crow posted:

Also, did the British actually do anything innovative, or did they just steal everything from the Dutch? (They did corporations, crop rotation, military tactics, and the British got rich off it.)
National debt. That won the Anglo-Dutch wars.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Alchenar posted:

Well a Dutch King ended up on the English throne so take what you will from who won what (incidentally that's why the English army takes so much from the Dutch in this period - the post civil-war rehabilitation of it was done by Dutch drillmasters, and they spend the War of Spanish Succession fighting the French in Holland).
Speaking of which, the entire thread should listen to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB4HTXMJR0

This version doesn't contain my favorite verse, which is:

"Oh, Holland is a lovely land and in it grows fine grain
It is a place of residence for soldiers to remain
Where the sugar cane grows, and the winds they do blow, and the tea grows on every tree
I never had but the one sweetheart and he's far away from me."

To die in an endeavor you know so little about that you think sugar and tea come from the Netherlands because they're the ones who sell it. :smith:

They're right about the link between carrying capacity, population density, and what kind of war an area can support, though.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Until you get into the really arcane poo poo or the stuff produced by armies for internal consumption, military history tends to be written in an approachable style. This is the only subfield that's dominated by people who aren't professional historians and most writers try to keep things zippy without sacrificing accuracy or rigor.

Military history belongs to all of us.

Edit: Oh what? This was in response to something steinrokkan deleted.

^^^Oh, their date was the issue? Cool then.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Nov 14, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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PrinceRandom posted:

War is really depressing. Does it ever get depressing reading about real people killing real people?
Yeah. The part in Hagendorf's diary when his children just keep dying bummed me out, and when I realized that, given what we know about his culture, they were trying to build a family, wellllp...:smithicide:.

Mans posted:

How common are memories of wars that are not made by the upper echelons of militaries pre-WWI? Hegel might awnser me this. I wonder just how much the common peasant\mercenary\condottieri registed about their military days.
Look up any secondary source related to what they call "Ego documents," especially the work of Hans Medick, who killed a pig with my advisor once.

They're less common during the Thirty Years' War than will be later, but far more common than you'd think. Even at the time it was going on, people recognized that the 30YW was a big deal and a lot of them wanted to record what was going on for posterity. Moreover, this time also saw an expansion of literacy, with more people able to record what was going on. Most people still couldn't read or write, but more and more people could.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Nov 14, 2013

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:

I have a book for you. This book got me really interested in history and I read War and Peace shortly afterwards. It's the memoirs of a French sergeant during the invasion of Russia.

Link.
Once they're done with that, they can read the diary of a private who was involved in the same operation,
http://www.amazon.com/The-Diary-Napoleonic-Foot-Soldier/dp/0140165592

It's interesting to think about the different ways people from very different social classes experience the same event. Fewer wistful memories of Paris in Walther's diary, more shooting off muskets indoors and getting toddlers drunk. :yotj:

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Nov 14, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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ArchangeI posted:

Also warfare isn't, and hasn't been for some time, an entirely masculine activity.
Yeah, and it actually got more masculine in the 18th and 19th century, since the roles that had been filled by women earlier end up getting filled by noncombatant support staff instead, or by the more effective resource deployment of the state. Any time Keegan talks about gender roles, what comes out of his mouth is absolute poo poo, just nothing but romanticism.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Nov 14, 2013

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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bewbies posted:

I can't do it as I'm on my phone, but might someone go through the last history thread and pick out some of the really interesting stuff to be reposted in this one? I for one would enjoy this.

Here are two effortposts I remember doing.

Although the style of fortification current in 16th century Germany (and, through German architects, England) was eventually abandoned, I wouldn't call it "backwards"--also, early modern pillboxes were a thing:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=191005&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post417818516

Frederick the Great is, in my opinion, neither the master tactician that his fanboys say he is nor incompetent, but someone with both good and bad ideas:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799&userid=191005&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post418901986

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Nov 14, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Obdicut posted:

And to put another perspective, the average mobile army back in, say, the 30 years war would have a very large number of 'camp followers', who were not just prostitutes but did a lot of actual logistical work.
Yup. Like civilians did at the same time, early modern soldiers worked in household economies, where everyone who's old enough contributes to the economic activity of the family. So, in the case of the soldier and his life partner (you may not know this, Obdicut, but in early modern usage "Hure" need not mean prostitute, but only "loose woman," which is what city-dwelling authorities would call military women whether or not they were married to their men--a woman could be completely chaste, but if she traveled with an army she was automatically a "slut" to outsiders), he'd do the fighting and she would do basically everything else.

The historian John Lynn called what these women did the "plunder economy," and considering that until after the 30 Years' War soldiers made their living not through pay but through plunder, the work of these women in stealing poo poo from people obtaining food and goods was absolutely essential.

This wasn't some safe position, either; Hagendorf recounts how when his second wife was gleaning in a field outside a besieged city the defenders shot at her, narrowly missing her. (It made perfect sense from their point of view, since gleaning their grain is also a hostile act, and also endangered their lives.)

Edit: Also, while women had to dress up as men to join armies, it was routine for women to take part in combat if they were fighting in defense of a besieged city. Absolutely routine.

Edit 2: Also, since all drovers are civilian contractors and most civilian jobs have women as well as men in them, we have no idea how many women were involved in the logistical stuff as a matter of course.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Nov 14, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Godholio posted:

There's a significant difference between being a sniper and being a tank loader, for example. Stupid facebook arguments aside, many military jobs require physical strengths that many women (and men, for that matter) don't possess. The USMC has already allowed women to take part in one of their infantry training courses, but so far they've all failed out for physical reasons (inability to complete events or injuries). Contrast that with the USAF, where women have flown combat missions for years. It's more job-dependent than a sweeping gesture of "no girls allowed".
Yeah, but Keegan's argument is some really really stupid stuff about archetypal masculinity, not "This job should only be done by a big person, and only X% of men and Y% of women are that big, whereas that job should be done by someone smaller." (For that matter, I imagine most of the men I study would probably not be able to pass those requirements.)

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:

My favourite analogy from the last thread (I think Hegel posted it) was that a 17th century army was like a Gathering of the Juggalos, except stupider and more well-armed.
That was me. If you were a head of state, one thing you could do if another head of state was looking at you funny (seriously, these people go to war over the most inane poo poo) was simply have your army sit inside your enemy's borders. No actual combat need be involved for them to gently caress things up a lot. Remember that these are subsistence economies and everyone is one catastrophe away from starving to death while the only people they're supporting is themselves.

And I wouldn't be too sure on the "more well armed" part.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Godholio posted:

How do you find a modern example of something that's been happening almost continuously for thousands of years? He might as well ask for the modern example of prostitution, or picking fruit.
Well, I know for a fact it didn't happen in my period, because the muster rolls I study have, in the same company, men with lengths of service ranging from less than a month to several decades. There is no "entering cohort."

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Fragrag posted:

It's pretty funny how this never actually changed.
Although they also seem to have called themselves that too, since the "Hurenwebel" ("Slut leader") was the officer in charge of arranging the baggage train.

InspectorBloor posted:

You mean "Dirne" or "Metze"? There's also a bunch of other early modern words that denote unmarried "loose" women that slipped my mind. Help me out.
No, I mean Hure. It's what they're called in city legal records.

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

What are some of your favorite military-related songs? Folk songs or marching songs, it doesn't matter.

Sung by Wallenstein's troops (the image is incorrect--nobody would have worn that in the 1600s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORNOFGZgi2w

This one's about the Italian Wars. Of note is the bad Italian. :downs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75oM6gTVRYM

So's this, about the Battle of Pavia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0szqSd0osoE
Joerg von Frundsburg, incidentally, was beloved of his men. This contains the lovely little verse: "All the little flowers stood red / Eeesh--death falls like snow."

This one is about the siege of Berg Op Zoom, which the people singing (who work for the Emperor of Spain) are about to lose, even though they don't know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Z6Aez6T3c
I like two of the verses in here, which are:

We swallow dust when we walk
and our purses hang empty
The Emperor swallows all of Flanders
Cheers, man. :rolleyes:

He thinks about devouring lands,
he wants to rule the world
I've got a girl at home
who would cry if I died

This is the oldest song in here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spxDh01wvvg
I paraphrase: "A Landsknecht came over the field. He had no purse nor money. He came to a pub, and the woman who owned it looked out the window. I have no money, he said. We can arrange something, she said." The refrain is a list of plants with aphrodisiac qualities. :huh:

I wanted to post all of this quickly so I didn't write the translations down. If you want me to translate an individual song though, I will.

Edit: If you don't speak German, don't click around the related links at random. A bunch of them are Nazi things. They love these songs. :(

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Nov 14, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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These are later, from the British Isles.

Possibly the nicest date rape song ever? I feel weird saying that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAYW5dwZJRA

Guy is rear end in a top hat to chick, buggers off to war, the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3A5Tgy47M

This doesn't seem military-related, but the last verse reveals that it was sung during Queen Anne's War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN9Y3ChP1go

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Ca ira and the Carmagnole are pretty punk rock. :getin:

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Fangz posted:

The Sacred War is also pretty good, though it cannot be more different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABby6nGIeHM
This rules, but I say that about everything that involves Nazi defeat.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Koesj posted:

That'd be Bergen op Zoom. Two types of soil accumulate and it's mountainous by Dutch standards :downs:
Dude, when you guys make it up to sea level it's mountainous.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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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.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Dude, I defy you to find me an IRA song that doesn't rule. Cannot be done.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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cavalry.txt :iamafag:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0SZYbwA1iw
The dude's voice is way too polished for this, in my opinion.

This version's incomplete and the singing bugs me, but the sound is rougher, which is good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnflIwK6RYU
Also, :lol: fat reenactors.

Edit: As far as I know, this song encapsulates Stuart's attitude to life. Like I said, cavalry.txt.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Nov 15, 2013

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Welcome, new mod. :)

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Grand Fromage posted:

I'm glad for the thread change since I'm still like 4,000 posts behind on the old one. :smith:
This is why we changed the thread over--because people were convinced they couldn't :justpost: in it without getting up to date on the entire thing. Which is, in my opinion, not necessary for a three year old megathread. I mean, if you want to, knock yourself out, but nobody was going to jump down anyone's neck for not being familiar with all the details of something that huge. We inadvertently drove a lot of new people away.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Arquinsiel posted:

My school's rugby team had one that involved killing a polar bear, in Antarctica, via anal sex. I hated the entirety of my school's rugby culture except for that one song.
My school had one about our Great Books program. It was painfully nerdy and I still know the whole thing by heart because it was also great.

Koramei posted:

Also I notice there's a surprising number of posters in this thread that aren't in the other history threads. What's up with that?
Early Modern Germany is kind of a niche thing.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Farecoal posted:

What made you want to study it? (Also, you are a teaching professor, correct?)
Not for a few more years, I'm in the process of getting my doctorate. (There's no way I could post on the Internet this often if I were a professor.) I came into my current program thinking I was going to study Nazi Germany--I can't tell you what I was going to do specifically since I'm one of about six people who study that topic and I have written a paper on it so you could probably find me from that. But it turned out that reading about Nazis depressed me, and while I was studying for my quals I read some really neat books on the Early Modern period, and so I switched focuses.

Edit: Also, a love of the tabletop roleplaying game 7th Sea. Not kidding. :rolldice:

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Nov 15, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Elissimpark posted:

If they chicken out and break, then you get to chase them down - fine. But if they hold, do you just keep going helter skelter and run into them for a body check? Or do you have to slow down in the last ten metres?
If you're cavalry: Go towards them, stop a way in front of them, fire your pistol/carbine at them if you have one (this is period-dependent, of course), run away, run toward them, stop a way in front of them, fire your pistol/carbine at them if you have one, run away....

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Nov 15, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Koramei posted:

Usually the cavalry would veer off to either side at the last moment- it was really like a game of chicken (sans the game part and with more horrificness).
Hello friend. :) I can tell you and I and Rodrigo Diaz are going to have some nice times.

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Oct 11, 2012

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Slim Jim Pickens posted:

If you try plow your horse into a bunch of dudes who aren't giving, two things happen.

1.
Your horse is ill-trained and it freaks the gently caress out. It does its best to not follow your commands, so you probably veer off. In the worst case, it rears up in front of these angry infantry dudes and you get your rear end beat.

2.
You bowl over whoever is in your path, and probably one or two more guys behind him. You may or may not take a grievous wound in the process. If it's just you, you aren't going to last so long in a sea of infantry because now you're surrounded by angry dudes who are stabbing the poo poo out of you and your horse. The best case scenario is that you break through to the other side in the inital charge, without terrible injury.
This is correct! Except as far as I know, #2 hardly ever happened. (Which is actually good for all concerned: google racetrack accidents for an image of what would happen if this were a thing.) There is no such thing as "shock" in the sense of a horse literally smashing into a dude like a big furry missile. It will refuse at the last minute, no matter how well trained it is--especially if the dude has a pike or something and is aiming the point at the horse's face. Accounts of "shock" are, in my opinion, either accounts of the foot breaking due to the psychological impact of cavalry coming right the gently caress at them, or describe a situation which is not the norm (the horse is dead already but still moving forward, it's happening on a bridge so everyone is crammed into a tiny space, etc).

If Occupy ever becomes a thing again, I'll try to test this out by giving everyone else staves and promising them that nothing will happen if they don't run. I'll get back to you on that.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Nov 15, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Xibanya posted:

I would like to hear about brilliant moments in Spanish military history. Since the 16th century Spain has pretty much been in a slow depressing decline.
The Battle of Rocroi. Spain's performance here (they lost) wasn't the result of "decline," which is a term I don't like since it can have a lot of teleological baggage attached to it, but of specific poor decisions made by the government.

For a hundred years prior to this battle, Spain's infantry had been the best in Europe. Under Philip the Second its military budget alone surpassed the entire budgets of most other heads of state, and its army was very well trained. (For instance, they could move at the blistering speed of four and a half miles per day! :v:)

Under the administration of the Duke of Alba, a hard as gently caress shot caller who may have been a douche but he got poo poo done, the officers of the Army of Flanders were commoners or members of the impoverished lower nobility, many of them former common soldiers, promoted by merit. The Count-Duke of Olivares, prime minister from 1621 to 1643, reversed this policy, promoting only higher nobles. Ironically, since none of them actually wanted to be there or enjoyed army life, he secretly diverted funds from the intelligence budget to give them kickbacks.

The quality of officers, predictably, declined, but Spain's tercios were still among the best infantry in Europe.

We can see both of these factors on display at Rocroi, where most of the high command fled within half an hour of the first engagement, refused to commit cavalry reinforcements to the Spanish infantry, and possibly forgot to order them to retreat. (The only Spanish high officer in the field who knew anything about anything, the ill and elderly Count of Fuentes, there for the sole and specific purpose of telling the Duke of Albuquerque what to do since he refused to listen to anyone who wasn't at least as well-born as he was, died early in the fight. Turns out if you're carried to the field in a litter, you're somewhat visible.)

So from eight in the morning until ten, the tercios stood under artillery fire--which is quite rare in this period, it's usually a defensive weapon or used for sieges--and repulsed four French cavalry charges. (Their German coworkers meanwhile, seeing what was coming, had already surrendered.)

The Duke d'Enghien (who would later level up as Conde) eventually gave the tercios surrender terms like those given to an enemy fortress, and they left the field with their flags flying and their weapons in their hands.

"It's time to act like what we are," said the Duke of Albuquerque just before the battle began, and he was right--both the Spanish noble officers and the Spanish infantry acted exactly like what they were.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Nov 20, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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brozozo posted:

Can't talk about Rocroi without posting this.



Or this, which appeared in the Alatriste movie and, in this video as in the movie, is being played by members of that regiment's descendant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcXCRJ8Biao

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

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Is that played by Soria 9, though? It's just not the same unless it's being played by the same regiment.

quote:

In this picture there seem to be a lot of narrow-bladed rapiers. Was that correct battlefield weaponry? The one complex hilted sword I've handled was from about 50 years earlier, but the blade was wide and the point more spatulate than this delicate taper. I think it was a cavalry sword, of course, so that might make a difference.
According to thearma.org, it's hard to tell battlefield swords from civilian swords in this period. I think it's good? Although this isn't my country.

It does look awfully reenactory though. Like the Spanish version of those crystal-clear pictures of the American Civil War and such.

Edit: The third guy from the left in the foreground in Las Lanzas (which everyone should study deeply, as according to Picasso Velasquez may be the best painter for faces in the world) has a long thin sword, but it's sheathed.

But look at the guy in cloth-of-gold with the olive-green cape, behind Spinola, almost obscured by the horse, with his back to us and his left elbow up and out. Is that a very thin sword in his hand?

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Nov 15, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Rabhadh posted:

Spain was the weight of the 15th century though, everyone else was trying to pull themselves up.
Yeah, this. Like I said, their defense budget was bigger than everyone else's budgets. (Not to mention that their bureaucracy was far more well developed.) The only people they could be compared to was the Ottomans, but they had no European peer.

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Oct 11, 2012

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Rodrigo Diaz posted:

I don't know. judging by the way the hilt is directed and the way his fingers are positioned it seems that we are looking at an edge-on view.
You can see a hilt? I can't see anything, just his fingers. What about Spinola's sword? (The Wikipedia entry for this painting has the picture in huge, if you want.)

Edit: Now that I think of it, I have no idea what cloth-of-gold-guy is doing. Imagine yourself in that position. Is it comfortable? Does it even make sense? Yeah, let me just lean against this animal, throw my elbow waaaay back, look up and to the left, and fiddle with my weapon, no big.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Nov 15, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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VanSandman posted:

The trick is to time your firing mechanism so you can only shoot when you won't hit the propeller. This took a while to work out, actually.

Boy oh boy did it ever. :spergin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_gear

Edit:

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Fokker figured this out around 1916. Before then, like a lot of WWI tech, was a bunch of insane ideas that people tried to use. The French were partial to the SPAD A.2, which featured a gunner's seat sited directly in front of the propellor. Another French invention was the "deflector plate" which was just a hunk of steel on the propellor blade so that any bullets would plink off.

The British would tape their propellors and then just shoot through them. The tape prevented catastrophic splintering.
This is characteristic, where the Germans fall all over themselves with some worky solution to whatever's going on and the Britsh just go :effort::respek::iamafag:

See also, their trenches.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 16, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Rodrigo Diaz posted:

José Leonardo's La rendición de Juliers gives a better range of swords, though it's kinda dark, so click on the image for the full size. The men at the front clearly have wide-bladed side-swords which is what I'd expect but the guy in the background clearly has a narrower blade.
Are you admitting that...there's a question you wanted the answer to, and I supplied that answer, and I'm...correct?

Squalid posted:

That exceptions exist doesn't necessarily disprove that fighting war is a particularly masculine activity.
Primarily male, yes; that's not what we (at least, I) have an issue with. But not essentially or archetypally, which was Keegan's argument.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Nov 16, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Mans posted:

What were their characteristics? I know the Germans tended to make deep, angled trenches and tended to make them as comfortable as possible, since they knew their soldiers would tend to hang around them or a while.
Yes: German trenches were comparatively well-protected and well-appointed, partially because, as Alchenar mentioned, British doctrine (reality notwithstanding) was that you were "supposed to be" attacking from trenches rather than living in them, and partially because in the northern part of the Western Front the Germans had dug into the chalky hills of the high ground, affording them opportunities to excavate trench systems that the British or French would not have been able to construct even if they had wanted to.

Hell, the bunkers in some of those things were wired for electricity.

Edit: The characteristic British WW1 Western Front infantry experience is living in a hole scratched clumsily out of the poisoned earth while everything rots around you. The characteristic German WW1 Western Front infantry experience is getting shelled for days, wondering what would kill you first, a direct hit or asphyxiation once the entryway to your underground cell collapses.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Nov 16, 2013

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Oct 11, 2012

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Before I :justpost: about the Thirty Years' War, I'd like to respond to Rodrigo Diaz in.re. military-swords-that-look-like-rapiers-but-aren't-chat.

Even though I brought up period paintings in this discussion, I think they should not be relied on without corroborating evidence, since many painters probably used theatrical props for models and I don't know if Velasquez was one of them (Although he did know Spinola personally, I think). In order to really see what weapons these people would have been using, we should look at artists we know travelled with armies and drew soldiers from life, such as Callot.

There too, we see some damned skinny swords:


A mixture of very thin swords and thicker ones:


Or just thicker ones:


So it looks like I was probably right, but I don't think I should have gone straight to Velasquez.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Unluckyimmortal posted:

Basically, I think what's at play here is that courtiers probably often took their dueling swords with them when they went to go play officer.
These dudes have decades of professional experience.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Wild Horses posted:

Can anyone explain how the fighting between armies during the 30 year war went down, and the differences between the various armies doing the fighting?
I've always thought this time-period was the least interesting, but then someone in the thread started talking about Gustav Adolph's use of combined arms and I got interested. Thanks in advance :allears:

SeanBeansShako posted:

Incoming enjoyable Hegel mega post.
All right, let's pump this poo poo like they do in the future. :)

Why on earth did you think this was the least interesting period, it is the coolest. The Early Modern rules because you will either laugh or scream until you throw up, and I've chosen to laugh.

The first thing I need to stress is that the differences between the way different armies fought has been overemphasized in the past. Until relatively recently, Protestant historians (which means most of the historians that English speakers are likely to encounter) have stressed Gustavus Adolphus's modernity at the expense of Spain or the Empire; meanwhile, the focus on the military revolution from the 50s until about five years ago (when it's a version of the military revolution discussion that talks about drill and tactics--there's several lines of thought covered by that phrase) has also tended to obscure the extent to which a number of tactical options existed simultaneously with none being any better than the others.

(Not to mention, of course, that the common soldier is likely to work for many different employers during his career, so he will have had experience with their varying tactical styles.)

Bear in mind that the tercio, the supposedly out of date tactical unit which the newer tactics supposedly supplanted, made it possible at Rocroi for a regiment to get bombarded for two hours and repel repeated cavalry charges without breaking. Rocroi isn't a story about "weakness" or "backwardness," it's about a small number of stupid, contemptible people spitting in the face of their employees with fifty years of bad decisions based on bigotry.


Anyway, how an engagement would have gone down.

Bear in mind that everyone involved is moving very slowly. The field glass isn't even used yet; you figure out where the opposing force is by sending out light cav or looking on the horizon for a plume of dust. The artillery, as the most honorable and important branch, has the first right to the roads, which means that everyone else, if they're on the same track, moves at the pace of the slowest gun. Remember when I said that the Army of Flanders--well-trained, well-organized, very proud--moved at four and a half miles a day? This amazed contemporaries.

So you find your enemy, or he finds you. A lot of the times, you pick a site, reinforce your position and camp overnight before giving battle, then get up slightly before dawn and deploy. This isn't always the case, though. Contemporary commentators believe that your success or failure depends heavily on how you deploy your forces before everything starts. I don't know if this is actually true, but since it's what they believed you get a lot of theorists fussing at the right way to arrange your people. There's all sorts of shapes, but most of them were probably not used outside of display/the textbook.

This one's a "bastioned square," which was used.


Launch yourselves at the other guys and...
Oh.
Oh poo poo.
This is kind of hosed up.


It is possible for a commander to give instructions to individual tercios (if you're an Imperial ally) or brigades (if you're a Swede), but if these units have to, they're strong enough to operate almost independently. There's not a great deal of...finesse here. Move forward, shoot at mans. There's room in this period for very intelligent people to do very intelligent things, but a lot of that seems to be about whether or not to give battle, or how to pick the ground, or whether you can force your enemy to move in poor country (or, if you believe these guys, how you deploy) than combat decisions--although an enterprising commander or lower officer could probably still have a bunch of room to act if he saw an advantage.

If you're smart you'll have kept reserves, which you deploy as you need to. Also, if you know that reinforcements are in the vicinity you can send messages to them: here's Wallenstein telling Pappenheim to haul rear end to the battle of Luetzen, which he did overnight, where he was killed the next day (the letter was in Pappenheim's pocket when he was hit):

quote:

The enemy's marching this way leave everything lying and hit the road with all your people and guns [blood] early tomorrow morning with us with us [unless I'm getting something wrong, he wrote the last three words of that sentence twice by accident] i however remain

my lord's will-
ing

WALLENSTEIN

Litzen 15 Novembr.
Anno 1632

He is already at the pass where that bad road was yesterday

It'll be over in about six hours, or when it gets dark. ~Good luck!~ :sparkles:



OK, what's the difference between what Gustavus Adolphus does and what everyone else does?

Even given that Imperial tactics still win fights, he had some good ideas.

He attempted to use super-light artillery as mobile infantry fire support, in contrast to the entirely static role of all bigger guns (note the battle picture up there--the cannoneers and gunners are huddling behind their gabions as the battle moves around them, they are not attempting to resite the guns). These "leather guns" didn't work very well, but they demonstrated the validity of the idea, and ultra-lights would be used later, during the English Civil War. He also deployed musketeers in concert with his cavalry, since the Swedish cavalry were not equipped with pistols, and only lightly armored. Small companies of musketeers alternated with squadrons of horse. Meanwhile, the cavalry forgoes the use of the caracole in favor of saber charges.

Imperial forces deploy infantry in tercios, which at this time are about 1,500 people strong (One tercio is several companies--each company has a flag, which is why there's about eight flags in each big square in the above battle pic). They roll quite deep, almost squares. Swedes deploy infantry in brigades. The lines are thinner (nowhere near as thin as they'll be in a hundred years), and the units are smaller so they're more mobile, but they're possibly more vulnerable--if you're in a Swedish formation, getting flanked is suddenly a big deal, whereas I'm not sure whether a tercio gives a gently caress.

These are good ideas, but they're not game-changing ideas. Gustavus Adolphus wins frequently, but so do other people, nor does he win every time. Nor, for that matter, are his victories always due to his tactics as opposed to those of his enemies. But they are very interesting. Please consider learning more about the Early Modern period!

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Nov 17, 2013

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HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Koramei posted:

Thanks! I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about this stuff as either of you though. But I will have fun reading for sure!
I hope you do, but I was also alluding to the fact that any time anyone asks something about foot vs. cavalry, Rodrigo Diaz and I end up slapfighting at each other for a few pages. It is known.

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