Ask Us About Military History: Remove Balls To Fire Blanks

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HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Grand Prize Winner posted:

That thing about perceived insult resulting in direct violence reminds me of some people I've known. Most of them are ex-boxers or some other kind of athlete, a few are punk rockers, and one is low level associated with some gang. They were all ready to go at the slightest hint of an insult. Most of 'em did time as a result, but it seems like those guys would blend happily into one of your regiments.

far more happily than we would, not just because we'd disapprove of them morally but also because they'd disapprove of us. if you let all that poo poo go unanswered, it might mean it's all true. you can't trust a guy like that.

edit: you don't have to threaten to hurt people though, you can just sue 'em and spend all your time in court. schutze and steter got into one fight on their way back from court to settle a previous fight :v:

so the 21st century transplant to one of my regiments could keep honor intact without having to murder his comrades.

edit 2: those dudes might end up doing time at the Provost's or something--just because these guys fight one another all the time doesn't mean the officers have to like it, it's a huge hassle when their soldiers kill one another instead of whoever it is they're payed to kill

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jul 26, 2016

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 20:20

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:03

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Grenrow posted:

When I was doing 19th century British swordsmanship research, I found some articles in newspapers and magazines complaining about how no one dueled with swords any more and that fewer stabbings were contributing to the Moral Decline of the Youth. I love that people complaining about the kids these days haven't changed a bit since centuries. Now they use lovely jpgs on facebook instead of florid Victorian prose to whine, though.

this was actually a thing i was wondering about--19th century germans stab one another all the freaking time, members of the bourgeoisie and the army love duelling. (we think it's aristocratic and atavistic but in germany it's actually bourgeois and modern. weird.) austro-hungarian officers too. also civilians in italy and spain. french people got into duels over marie loving curie and this happened so late i posted youtubes of it in the fencing thread.

is england the outlier?

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 20:52

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

my friend, you need to google mensur fighting :getin:

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 21:28

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Siivola posted:

They kinda are, I think. By 19th century I'm fairly sure both they and 'Muricans had already transitioned to shooting each other � which conversely failed to catch on on the continent, right?

some 19th c americans fight with big knives (some are almost shortsword sized) but i think we were pretty into shooting one another

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jul 26, 2016

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 21:30

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

aag

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 22:13

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

IM_DA_DECIDER posted:

That reminds me, I remember reading a lot of Borges, and some of his stories deal with gauchos having knife duels. Anyone know stuff about that? Is it as much of a myth as cowboy gun duels?

no, that was a thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fac%C3%B3n

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 22:41

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

EvanSchenck posted:

It makes sense. The War Nerd aka "Gary Brecher" is a pseudonym for the writer John Dolan, who happens to be one of those Irish-Americans who are still obsessively Anglophobic. I suspect his explanation of the 30YW:

is motivated less by sympathy for Germans or antipathy towards Swedes, and more by some kind of weirdo transference of his anger at the Proddies who victimized his ancestors.

i found it

the only non-anti-Imperialist-biased anglophone historian, if he counts as a historian
(actually peter wilson is admirably evenhanded. gg.)

edit: also irl his ancestors, unless they belonged to a Spanish escuadron, might have found themselves in the Swedish army right alongside a whole lot of English and Scots. But those guys were less bigoted than we are, most of the time. (I just read a letter where someone gets mad at Piccolomini for insulting Germans lol)

edit 2: He's wrong, but it is a welcome change from "Only Protestants or people from Northern Europe can have good ideas."

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Jul 27, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 08:18

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

EvanSchenck posted:

There was also "rough-and-tumble" aka "gouging", which was an unarmed fighting tradition supposedly peculiar to the (mostly Southern and frontier) USA in the 18th and early 19th century. It was similar to contemporary boxing except that the objective was to knock your opponent to the ground and disfigure him in some permanent way; e.g. gouge out an eye, tear off his ear or testicle, bite off his nose or finger, etc. The wikipedia article on gouging is drawn almost wholly from this actually quite fun AHR article, if you have a means of looking it up:

Gorn, Elliott J. ""Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch": The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry." The American Historical Review 90, no. 1 (1985): 18-43.

It goes into how gouging functioned socially within the honor system of the backwoods USA at the time. Gorn concludes by writing that gouging apparently declined in popularity from the 1830s on, as disputes began to be settled more lethally with the use of bowie knives and, later, pistols and revolvers.

cool, i remember hearing about that! apparently you can tell a seasoned gouger by his long thumbnail. it was especially popular among riverboatmen.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 08:29

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Trin Tragula posted:

E.S. Thompson makes a couple of incredibly bad life decisions that HEY GAL's chaps would have been proud of....

i probably would have done something similar tbh. "hey what's that?" *touches the mystery powder*

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 08:37

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Holy poo poo, you just zeroed in on why I like him.

Deus lo vult.

things gustavus adolphus did ended up in staff college curricula in the 19th century, things wallenstein did did not, cue generations of dudes talking about how great the frontal assault is without stopping to think that ga got clotheslined in the neck at Luetzen (and goaded into attacking a fortified position at Alte Veste)

:dawkins101:

edit: meanwhile, Swedes who were more legit like Baner and Torstensson get ignored because almost nobody cares about the last third of the war

edit 2: and then there's Fritz Redlich, who says Wallenstein counts as a Protestant because he was raised Bohemian Brethren and converted as a young man. Catholics who converted to a Protestant religion also count as Protestants though, because ?????

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jul 27, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 09:53

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

It's also a thing on a lot of places in the Latin American countryside as well. I live in Northeast Brazil and my family has several tales of people who died or got grievously wounded in those, and I actually had an uncle who died in a knife duel due to a debt of what amounts in converted value today to barely eighty dollars....

i guess it's like the bowie knife or the arkansas toothpick, if you live in the country a big working knife is useful both for utility reasons and to duel a guy if you're mad at him

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 17:00

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Disinterested posted:

Wasn't there, in any event, more overwhelming public pressure for reconciliation than you might see in certain other civil wars that for example stem from more traditional causes?

compared to the civil wars i'm familiar with? not really. both the english one and the 30yw had the same sort of exhausted desire to push everything under the rug, maybe after one or two high profile scapegoats had been identified.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jul 27, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 18:58

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

chitoryu12 posted:

Lots of flailing and near-simultaneous hits.

this is also most sword fights :ssh:

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 19:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

sound the jauchecharly alarm

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 22:00

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

if that's not him the muslim thread might know, esp if his name is spelled a bunch of misdirecting ways in our alphabet

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 22:10

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

more words i learned:

bastand or bastant-satisfied. From basta, Italian, "enough"
execution-enforcement.* In military jargon, "the enforcement of contributions." A guy who's not with the company this week because he's auf der execution is (in the best case scenario) shaking civilians down for cash and food.

*not the execution of a legal punishment, to get executed is "justificieret werden"

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 28, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 23:46

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Squalid posted:

I read a good paper on the subject of contagious dishonor/pollution amongst the vlax Roma which argued that it is probably an adaptive trait by which groups can more rigorously enforce social norms and laws.

Not all gypsies have placed the same importance on ritual defilement, with Finnish Kaale standing out as an exception. This might be because there are relatively few economic ties outside the family group among them, meaning there are fewer reasons to enforce cooperation. Instead they are more likely to resort to blood feuds to settle disputes.

this whole subculture-embedded-in-a-larger-culture thing looks very similar to early modern trade guilds (the people in early modern germany most obsessed with pollution) and how they enforce their norms. for instance, guilds often come into conflict with the state/citystate/regional authorities over pollution things.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 10:05

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Xerxes17 posted:

I'm going to miss it too as I'm going to Berlin tomorrow and I won't be here for when it opens on the weekend

so go to Schloss Wallenstein

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 10:31

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kemper Boyd posted:

The concept of that there's poo poo you don't do in war was recognized at least during the 17th century, maybe even before that. I think HEY GAL had some examples.

N�rnberg was more or less the big shift, but stepping away from the Westphalian system could have been said to have happened with the Helsinki Accords in 1975. That sort of opened the door for humanitarian interventions in general, for better or for worse.

this is true, it's in Articles of War that you shouldn't harm young women or pregnant women, the sick, clergy, etc. I mean, you can talk about how often they were followed, but rules were there.

this is apropos of nothing, but speaking of "the Westphalian system" have any of you guys read the actual text of the Treaty of Westphalia? it's all about the land disputes of the Margravine-Regent of Hesse-Kassel, this woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countess_Amalie_Elisabeth_of_Hanau-M%C3%BCnzenberg
hesse-kassel and hesse-darmstadt had a war within the 30yw and Amalie Elizabeth won. due to her skillful leadership Hesse-Kassel was one of the few places to make out unambiguously well from the 30yw. (Speaking of rad nicknames, her bio is entitled The Iron Princess.)

which is good for her, but is there anything more German than the two parts of a territory fighting a war within a war? is the HRE actually a fractal? what happens if Amalie-Elizabeth's living room decides to secede

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Jul 28, 2016

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 12:15

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Disinterested posted:

Hey Gal, I believe there was a vague procedure in the HRE after the TYW that allowed people to apply to the imperial court for a local power to intervene in a neighbouring state to prevent the mistreatment of subjects for confessional reasons in exchange for tax receipts, and I think it happened on a number of occasions (it's a vague recollection, it was a friend's PhD thesis). Ring a bell?

none whatsoever, but since it's post '48 and also about religion System Metternich might know. sorry!

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 12:45

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

JaucheCharly posted:

There's requisition orders preserved that tell about the process of ordering stuff and literature about how villages were organized to produce certain goods, fletching, shafts, glue and all that for being freed of taxes. Afaik this is all in turkish, possibly in Y�cel's book, but good luck translating it. The process of aquiring enough feathers for an order of about 1 million arrows must have involved quite organized breeding of geese. The forging of the heads was done by gypsy villages around Edirne, which was also home of the best bowmakers in the 1600s.

interesting, wallenstein did something similar in his dominions to produce military materiel and food

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 17:41

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Xerxes17 posted:

Hey Gal, why are all these Catholics in Prague this week going around the old down chanting, singing and yelling hallelujah?

no idea, my calendar is 14(?) days away from theirs so i'm always negatively surprised when i wake up and it's Dormition or something and I'm in Vienna so all the stores are closed (and then this changes based on where in the German world you are, like I get Reformation Day off here in Saxony because protestant)

did you go to Wallenstein's schloss like i said, i've never been but the pictures are very pretty, and you can raise a beer in its direction and tell him a bunch of spergs on the internet (me) think he's cool

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 28, 2016

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 18:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Xerxes17 posted:

... in the evening after dinner...

please wander tipsily around the old town, that's good times

edit: they've got a cool motto too, prague mother of cities, PRAHA MATER VRBIVM

edit 2: it's such a cool motto it's in their train station

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jul 28, 2016

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 18:20

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

my dad posted:

If you've ever wanted to take part in a global money laundering and blackmailing scheme...

i thought i was the early modern warfare poster

anyway, what a terrible weekend: some other hauptmann insulted mine severely, my battalion was kept in reserve for an entire battle and did almost nothing, and when I finally managed to take a prisoner some douche killed him by accident

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 02:33

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

I have data on Saxon regimental strength from 1618 to 1625, and then again from 1631 until 1651. I want to write an article on this, but I need a way to turn the second chunk of data into a table that isn't a billion pages long--it needs to be able to fit on two pages. But it's from 20 years, and several months from each year, so the xls document I've got all this on, if printed, would be about 30 pages long. Wat do?

edit: Remember when David Parrott said all our regimental strength data for the early modern period would be vague and hopeless? turns out he was wrong :iamafag:

edit 2: this is because the people who have vague bad data look at what, in German, is called a bestallung--the head of state's request for troops. Those are nowhere near the actual numbers and everyone in the 17th century knows this, that if you give a guy money for 3000 guys you'll be lucky if you get 2000, and that's before they all get sick or desert. Parrott has some humorous quotes from Richelieu on the topic. I look at actual muster rolls/pre-battle counts of dudes/reports about quartering, usually produced by the musterschreibers or colonels themselves, or copies of those documents.

(Also documents for internal consumption are unlikely to share the...strategic inaccuracies that documents you send to the people employing you are full of. If you're overcharging the Elector Of Whatever you send him bad muster rolls, but if you want to know how well you can fight you pay attention to the good ones and update that information every time that number changes.)

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 10:16

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Xerxes17, I'm kicking myself that I forgot to tell you this, and then I was at a reenactment all weekend, but Pappenheim is also buried in Prague. You should visit his tomb the next time you're there, leave a pistol and a shot glass full of something potent on it

Edit: Here it is.
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazilika_Nanebevzet%C3%AD_Panny_Marie_(Strahov)
He's buried beside an empty tomb, in which he wanted Wallenstein to eventually be buried. Everything I learn about their relationship is adorable as heck.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 11:03

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:03

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

feedmegin posted:

I think you might need to be more precise about what you have and what you want out of it...

OK: here is a screenshot from what I am working on right now. This is Saxon cavalry, 1636.

(Red means "catastrophe." These guys got savaged at the battle of Wittstock)
There are several months in 1636 that I have data for; within those months the data was generated on certain days--for instance, on 10 Aug 1636 the first company in this list had 721 horses in it, and on 12 Sept it had 855. (That means approximately that number of cavalrymen. Most cav rolls count horses with more attention than they count people.) If a cell is blank it means that I have no data for that company on that month.

As you can imagine, a table that has several months for each year from 31 to 51 is really long. How do I make this more palatable, visually?

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 12:02

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