Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

«‹›91 »

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

*clears throat*
Wallenstein.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 08:54

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:26

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

simplefish posted:

Was it all planned in advance and everyone had to stick to it (like making plans with friends before mobile phones) until they went their own way and took initiative in a situation? Or could things be change in the heat of battle with coordination?

in the 17th century: the first one--so much so that little sketches with pre-battle plans on them exist. Then during the battle each oberst is expected to know enough to take his own initiative, and each big block is expected to be tough enough to fight on its own until rescued, if necessary.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 08:56

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tias posted:

Seri�sly

wow, that's serious

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 08:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tias posted:

Get cracking or I'm whipping out the umlauts

big into strategic mobility and deception, like Torstensson
but unlike that guy, very tactically defensive, his battles all go (1) make sure you're on better ground than your enemy (2) fortify it
also did what nobody else could do before or since, which is make sure an army that works for the HRE or its successor, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is well supplied
rich as hell, put villas up on all his estates, you can visit them
definitely had gout and malaria
possibly also had syphilis and heart disease
not the sanest knife in the drawer
had a habit of telling people exactly what he thought of them in writing, which was sometimes good and sometimes not as good
was into astrology, owned an amulet
my fav

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 09:05

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tias posted:

I'm getting the impression that he was an autist as well, the whole devotion to minutiae must have driven people around him insane, but also made his sick level of attention to logistics possible.

things he was obsessed with include:
possibly growing silk on his estates
the exact measurements of the cells of the monks he was supporting with a Stiftung he set up
the management of his estates in general, city planning for Jicin

oh yeah, he and General Pappenheim were also bros for life and BFFs. I learned yesterday that Pappenheim is buried beside an empty tomb, which was intended for Wallenstein.

edit: Well, as far as the logistics is concerned, being one of the richest people in Europe didn't hurt.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 09:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

System Metternich posted:

Yo Hey Gal, can you recommend Golo Mann's Wallenstein? I read a bit of it years ago and remember being really impressed and I'd like to try it again, but I have no idea about how historically accurate it is. It reads more like a novel, after all

i can indeed :getin:

also Rebitsch's Matthias Gallas. Haven't read his Wallenstein but if it's as good as the Gallas bio then get it. Also there's a bunch of things about the Wallenstein-Affair in the bio of Gallas, as there would have to be.

edit: speaking of the things he funded, he founded a lot of schools on his dominions and at least one of them remained in operation until 1945, which is emotionally moving to me.

edit 2: feel free to skip the part of Rebitsch's book where he talks about the history of Trent since the 1400s :jerkbag:

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 09:21

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tias posted:

Well, if you're gonna have a stiftelse, the monks can't go about sleeping in disharmonious proportions

what bothered him specifically is that the plans the monks gave him specified cells that were very small, too small to stand up or move around in. he hated this because he thought it would be unhealthy, and didn't seem to get that they probably wanted to practice aesceticism in those cells. so he revised the plans and sent them the gently caress back.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 10:07

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Comstar posted:

Why did the 30 years war go on for so long?

every single country in Europe, looking at what's going on: "boy, getting sucked into this is a fantastic idea that can in no way go wrong! let's go to war"
fifteen minutes later: :mrwhite:

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 11:31

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Empress Theonora posted:

Seeing a Sherman being used by the Nazis makes me really sad in a way I'm not sure I can justify regarding a piece of inanimate military equipment.

Poor tank.

i think everyone cares about equipment like that, ask people who have swords about their swords, artillerists give all their cannon names, ships of course, etc. So yeah--poor tank.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 11:42

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Molentik posted:

' Pappenheim & Wallenstein' sounds like the title of the best sitcom ever. They could call each other Pappie and Wallie and have wacky drunken adventures involving pistols, windows and wizards.

pappenheim already has a nickname, it was "scarface" (balafr�)

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 12:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

JcDent posted:

Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that.

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw

that break in the very end for bavaria was when their entire army--yes, the whole thing--committed treason along with their Elector

edit: also saxony's involvement for the emperor at the beginning of the war needs to end in '25, not the teens, since that was when the war in their corner of the Empire ended, also also they forgot hesse-darmstadt

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 14:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier.

Some other reasons for that difference:

in your time, the guy in command of the entire army is not expected to take personal command of his own regiment and fight like a colonel would in addition to floating around to keep an eye on things in general

while there's still a whole lot of luck involved in a pitched battle, my guys seem to believe that once the fight starts it's almost all out of the commander-in-chief's hands so more depends on the initial deployment

pretty sure your guys had more dudes running messages back and forth, per capita

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 15:04

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

JcDent posted:

Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw

yeah, "is bethlen gabor/rakoczi going to do a thing" is a running minor theme throughout. the answer is always "maybe, if he feels like it"

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 15:19

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

System Metternich posted:

Yeah, after Swedish and French troops were utterly destroying Bavaria and torching Bavarian cities left and right and the elector's good buddy Ferdinand II had died while his son and successor expressed no interest at all in finally negotiating a drat peace

Also we entered the war like half a year later again, so the treason wasn't too bad I think

still though, you're just fine and nice while if some people i won't name try to negotiate a ceasefire with Saxony they get halberded to death, i see how it is

bigotry pure and simple

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 16:45

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do

do your generals and colonels have personal bodyguards? because my high officers are loving surrounded by otherwise redundant dudes in really spiffy outfits, sometimes entire companies of them

shallowj posted:

HEY GAL, is honor the reason commanders in your period are expected to fight personally in battle?

I don't think it's as simplistic as that, but this is definitely part of it. They really really want to, part of it is definitely to obtain honor and renown through brave deeds. Part of it might be that if you've been brought up to think of battles as more or less out of your control once everything starts, you might want to have a lot of control over what you can control, which is the extent to which you can shiv a motherfucker right in the eyes.

quote:

is there any connection between medieval codes of chivalry and early modern soldier's honor?

This is actually a debated question, and the answer is...maybe. Feudal ties and old ways of calling up armies are definitely a thing. I now think there's more continuity between the late middle ages and the early modern period than I used to. But this is complicated by the part where all these guys are reading stories about the middle ages, almost as much as they will in the 19th century.

quote:

do early modern duels share any similarities with judicial combats of earlier periods?

no, there the aim is to establish guilt while these guys are trying to maintain self-respect/the respect of others. duelling is also extra-legal or outright illegal.

quote:

did duels of honor also exist alongside judicial duels?

I don't know.

quote:

do your soldiers recognize any differences in honor between different regiments? i.e., can an entire regiment be seen as more or less honorable based on its performance? you mentioned that entire professions can be seen as honorable, so I'm curious how much honor can become a collective thing.

yes. different regiments and different companies within a regiment will have more or less precedence based on what they've done in the past, how old they are, the seniority of their hauptleute/obersts, etc. Certain regiments like the Green Swedish Brigade or the Alt-Tillys became famous because of being good at poo poo. The oberst's personal company is also the senior company in the regiment (more honored), and its flag has more white in it, which makes it "more beautiful."

They could also gain the privilege to do certain things based on honorable deeds they had performed in the past, like this arquebussier regiment:

RIP austro-hungarian dragoon regt. #8, 1618-1918, like dis if u cry ever time

quote:

also, how far did honor matter on the battlefield? is there any recognition of difference in demands of honor between combat on a "battlefield" and the kind of ambush based combat that the raiding parties would engage in?

deceiving your enemy is fine (Wallenstein at Nassau Bridge), ambushing them or attempting to ambush them (GA at Luetzen) is fine, attacking from the back is fine (Baner at Wittstock), refusing to take prisoners is a little sketch but not unheard of (Frankfurt-Oder, the battle one of Piccolomini's sons died after). You do what you can to win, they're not robots, like the way weebs think about bushido.

quote:

finally, what are the differences between a more formal duel and the kind of fight over honor a non-elite soldier would get into? you've mentioned brawling with civilians and things like that. i assume duels would be reserved more for one's relative equal; is that the case?

In this period it's a spectrum and duels are not only reserved for the elite. Peter Spierenburg writes about lots of non-elite duelling in Amsterdam and I've seen the same thing in my research--everyone follows a code of conduct in their fights, whether implicit or explicit. It's also possible common soldiers duel more than officers because they have less of an opportunity to sue. I think you only fight your equal, which means it's interesting that common soldiers and officers will fight each other--possibly because they're nearer to being equals than they will be in the 18th or 19th centuries.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 17:02

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

let's hope this doesn't become another Hitler's diaries thing

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 17:18

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

so i specifically looked up the 8th Bohemian Dragoons (Montecuccoli's), and the privileges they received for appearing in that courtyard when they did were huge:

quote:

The regiment may march when on duty to the sound of trumpets and with standards flying through the Imperial and Royal Hofburg Palace and the Imperial capital and Residenz city of Vienna, and may also set up on the imperial palace forecourt (the Franzensplatze) and recruit there for three days. The guard is then to be drawn from the regiment in front of the apartment granted pro forma to the regimental commander in the Hofburg Palace, to where the regimental standards are to be brought, and the respective regimental commander is permitted on such an occasion to appear, unannounced, in full dress before His Majesty the Emperor.

The regiment also has the assurance that it will never be disbanded or reduced, as long as it continues to maintain its current glory, and finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8th_Bohemian_Dragoons_(Count_Montecuccoli%27s)
Read the language--glory, privilege, etc. This would be like catnip to the sorts of people who join cavalry regiments. They would have loved this so much.

No doubt various regiments/companies in other armies had similar things going on, based on similar brave deeds, etc.

Edit: When and in what context you take the flags out of their cases ("fly them") is a huge Thing, as is when you may play your trumpets/flutes and drums.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 17:33

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

shallowj posted:

thanks for the great answers Hey Gal.

also, what does " finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time." mean? is that a one-time get-out-of-execution-free card through being transferred out? or does the last bit imply that they will/may be executed for the crime, but in a different regiment where they won't tarnish the 8th Bohemian Dragoons?

i think it's the second but with the caveat that since executions are carried out at the discretion of the oberst you can appeal and get a pardon (and according to some of my friends, many soldiers do). so it's not automatic but can happen "at any time"

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 17:40

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

SeanBeansShako posted:

Also, I too am intirugued at this black powder communicate via e-mail game project Grey Hunter.

the miniatures game? only if our little dudes really exist on a table somewhere and Grey Hunter takes pictures of them every so often

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 19:56

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

spectralent posted:

But doesn't show anyone until the end at which point we see why half the army marched off a cliff.

what's wrong with our bloody little resin dudes today, grey hunter

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 20:00

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

oh gently caress, i got the quote wrong

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 20:05

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

also the same company makes pike and shotte

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 20:06

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

P-Mack posted:

Pyke and schottte

Pyekë nde sczhœdtze

ah, you too are familar with how my guys spell. welcome.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 20:14

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

warning:their names all sound alike and there's some dude named gundaker von liechtenstein, who was not making that up

pretty important but also, probably, an rear end in a top hat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundakar,_Prince_of_Liechtenstein

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 22:30

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

TasogareNoKagi posted:

How do you keep the various military subdivisions straight? Battalion, brigade, company, corps, division ...

in my period it's actually really easy :v:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 11:36

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Endman posted:

I imagine in the 30 Years War you just followed the man in the big hat, who reports to the man in the bigger hat, and so on.

it's huge floppy hats all the way up

but anyway, a
SQUAD is five dudes, they eat and sleep together, and are probably listed together on the rolls. This has nothing to do with tactics, unless you need a few squads of dudes to take a convoy from one place to another.
A
COMPANY is about 300 guys on paper before the war/early in the war and about 200 guys on paper through the war. Paper numbers have nothing to do with who actually shows up. It isn't a tactical unit either. Several of these things, anywhere from 2 to...i dunno, 16? is a
REGIMENT, which if it had a standard size would be about 2000 infantrymen. That is an administrative division, you fight in a
BATTALION, which is a big rectangle of dudes, six deep if you're Swedish, ten deep if you're Imperialist, seven deep if you're Wallenstein at Luetzen. And if you're a Spaniard it's called an ESCUADRON and it's a perfect square.

The regiment doesn't have to coincide with the battalion and especially doesn't late in the war, when everyone's regiments are smaller. If your regiment is too small to form a battalion on its own you combine them with someone else, if it's very big it divides into two batalions to fight.

A whole bunch of those is an ARMY or an ARMADA. On the field it's AN ARMY EMBATTELLED.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Aug 3, 2016

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 11:47

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Fangz posted:

Is it consistent who forms up with whom to form a battalion? What happens if one side gets their poo poo together first?

I have no idea, but French officers at least will bitch at one another on the field about who gets to stand in the more honorable place and who gets precedence. I've seen something almost like this in reenactments, once some English officer refused to take orders from my hauptmann, which led to a huge scene. The kind of person who thinks it's a great idea to portray a 17th century officer is, surprise surprise, the same kind of person who gets butthurt at insults to their prestige.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 12:12

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Grey Hunter posted:

Now there is a thing. I love the idea of putting HEY GAL in charge of a 30YW army.....

i don't know a drat thing about the mechanics of wargames, so if this happens other people would have to be in charge of the actual moving dudes around bit. like they did at the time, we could then make decisions by bitchy, bitchy committee.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 12:43

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kemper Boyd posted:

I have some vague recollections of detached companies doing fighting in the Russo-Swedish wars in the late 16th century. Of course, the armies at that point were absolutely tiny when compared to the 30 YW.

might you be remembering commanded musketeers, which is where someone takes a few musketeers from every company around, combines them into a group of about 200 or so, and uses those guys as skirmishers/to guard the baggage/to guard cannon/anywhere else they need only a few gun-having dudes to do a specific task?

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Aug 3, 2016

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 12:47

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

ArchangeI posted:

marvel as everyone around you does THE ABSOLUTLY WORST WRONG THING IMAGINABLE. No worries, they think the same about you.

so it's authentic :v:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 12:52

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

counterpoint: early modern

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 14:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

yo, kemper boyd

Risk Factors For Gout

Consumption of alcohol. ✔️ lol
Among the categories of alcohol, beer is more dangerous than wine. ✔️ Oh dear.
A meat heavy diet. ✔️ It's actually a science fact that soldiers ate more meat than civilians, someone analyzed the teeth of the guys in the Wittstock mass grave.
A fruit heavy diet. No idea here.
45 years old and up ✔️. To be a famous general, you have to have experience.
A man or a post-menopausal woman ✔️
Ethnicity: blacks and hispanics are more likely to get it. Semi-check, depending on how you define "hispanic."
Genetics. No idea here.
Obesity. Semi-check, depending on the general.
Metabolic Syndrome, which is "a clustering of at least three of the five following medical conditions: abdominal (central) obesity, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting plasma glucose, high serum triglycerides, and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels." No way to know, since they couldn't diagnose most of that. This is associated with diabetes though, which they could diagnose, and I don't think any famous generals had it.
Prior injuries to the joints. ✔️ More likely than civilians.
Periods of sudden illness ✔️
Periods of sudden fasting. ✔️ Depending on the supply situation, an army can go from "pretty OK" to starving in a matter of days.
Chronic low-level lead exposure. ✔️ Especially lead-tainted alcohol. ✔️

And that's why all the generals we read about had gout

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 3, 2016

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 15:20

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

i'm the baselard in 1645

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 17:09

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

this is actually an interesting thing because I've never actually seen a study on damage to plate armour (of which helmets are of course a type) over time. This would require care if set up as experimental archaeology because the higher slag content in medieval iron vs. modern steels would make them more liable to break if repeatedly deformed.

if you buy it for me, i'll wear this armor
this will solve my problems and yours at the same time

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 18:31

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

apparently some of the people of the amazon were so dismayed by the early modern european practice of medical/instrumental cannibalism (which I posted about in the last thread), in the 1970s their descendants still called the author of this New Yorker article a pischtaco, someone who wants to steal the fat from human bodies.

quote:

One day, after hours on the river with no sign of human habitation, we rounded a bend and saw a dugout canoe, carrying a woman and a child, both with long black hair and naked torsos. At the sight of us, they began screaming and paddling frantically toward the riverbank, where a row of crude shelters sat on a bluff that was cleared of jungle. They shouted a word over and over: pishtaco.

We came ashore cautiously, pulling the boat. The camp had been hastily deserted; I found a fish still roasting on an open fire. The boatman nervously said that we should not continue upriver, or the Indians might attack us. When I asked him about the word the woman and child had shouted, he said that they believed I was a pishtaco, an evil person who had come to steal the oil from their bodies.

Months later, a Peruvian anthropologist explained to me the roots of their fear. The term pishtaco, he speculated, originated in the sixteenth century, when Spanish conquistadors such as Lope de Aguirre began exploring the Amazon. These initial contacts had been so nightmarish as to inspire a cautionary tale that still endured: some of the Spaniards, frustrated that their muskets and cannons rusted so quickly in the jungle humidity, were said to have killed Indians and boiled their bodies in iron pots, then used their fat to grease the metal.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/08/an-isolated-tribe-emerges-from-the-rain-forest

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 19:32

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

early modern Europeans used human fat to make medicines and do magic. early modern Amazonians--I don't know. So probably what I think happened is that in Spain the folk belief is about people who'll do that to you, instead of you doing that to some corpse, and in South America maybe the idea of doing it at all was incredibly hosed up and they saw some Spanish rendering people for fat, which we know from primary sources (posted in the last thread) that they did.

Pulling this further out of my rear end, possibly the belief in south america ended up being that the spanish did it to stop their weapons from rusting because an outside observer had no idea it was supposed to be magical.

Edit: Blood drinking was also medicinal in early modern Europe; the blood of a soldier or other violent person would cure epilepsy, for instance. That one's as old as Classical Rome.

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Aug 3, 2016

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 20:52

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Mycroft Holmes posted:

This is really putting the 1632 series in new light. Why do they never mention this sort of thing?

because everyone who's on the same side as Our Heroes is an enlightened believer in modern ideals :angel:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 21:10

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kopijeger posted:

One funny thing: the conquistadors would probably have practiced corpse medicine everywhere they went, yet the myth seems to be confined to the Andes region. Why would they cling to the belief that outsiders want to take their fat centuries after they stopped the practice?

"we'll cut your heart out and mummify our heads of state but there are some lines you just don't cross"

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 21:13

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

xerxes17, did you read my (too late) post on pappenheim's tomb? next time you go to prague you should go say hi to him

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 21:52

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:26

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Xerxes17 posted:

I did, and I'll certainly give him a visit. I didn't see nearly enough irresponsibly rad things when I went there.

what? that's like...the entire place

# ¿ Aug 3, 2016 22:14

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

«‹›91 »