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WoodrowSkillson posted:I just looked up one for an example of form, but yeah I'm sure the dudes then knew what could and could not be used that way. Here's the thing, though: if you're in a fight, you do what you gotta do. Doesn't matter if it messes up your pistol to block or bash someone with it, because you'd rather get your pistol broken than your skull. That's one reason why that whole theory of parrying with the flat, not the edge of the sword doesn't make any sense at all.
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Jan 12, 2018 20:45
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Plutonis posted:And saying slavish devotion to a political leader is something that authoritarian ideologies have is really myopic. Hillarymen are more sincere than any Juche apologist. A 2016 take so hot that this loving moron couldn't contain it all in one post. Have you ever actually posted anything of value in this thread or do you exist entirely to remind people why D&D sucks?
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Jan 13, 2018 05:45
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I'm not entirely sure where you guys are getting this whole thing about officer's pistols being in anemic calibers because they're a purely ornamental badge of rank thing comes from. Concerns about "stopping power" are omnipresent in 19th century British officers' writings about their service weapons; one of the reasons thet a lot of old colonial soldiers kept advocating for younger lieutenants to get better at fencing is that the pistol will not always reliably put a dude down (or you'll miss), but a sword can be used to defend yourself. They're always complaining about the unreliability of pistols and the scumbags who sell cheap, shoddy pistols to officers looking for a discount (remember, officers have to pay for their own poo poo). The caliber size issue is one reason why some British officers liked those big four-barreled Lancaster Howdah pistols instead of revolvers well into the late 19th century (and probably early 20th for some real holdouts). So I don't think the argument can be made that early 20th century officers' pistols were in (what we now consider to be) weak calibers because they weren't being used or no one thought they had a purpose. The dudes using them definitely would not agree, although I don't have a clue about what French/German/Japanese officers thought about pistols in the same period. To explain why there were a bunch of pistols in .32, I think you'd have to also take into account the firearms metallurgy of the day, the design of cartridges, general pistol trends at the time, etc. rather than arguing that they were deliberately lovely because no one thought they'd really see combat.
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Feb 7, 2018 00:26
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The Lone Badger posted:Can I ask a bow question? A couple issues with attaching a quiver directly to your bow is that A) in a modern compound bow, the design is such that you have a lot of room to attach fiddly bits onto that you would not have available for a longbow or composite bow and B) you might actually need to drop your bow and draw a sword pretty fast, so you don't want to be throwing arrows down too. If you need arrows quick to hand, you can just tie them to your belt (or shove then into your belt).
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Feb 19, 2018 05:18
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Cythereal posted:Most often, it was a lack of any treaties compelling them to get involved. Daisy chains of military alliances are what drew in most of the principal combatants, leaving a lot of nations that weren't bound by treaties to enter the war. Many later entered the war out of opportunistic aims (this was Italy most prominently) or because one side or the other made choosing a side very enticing (Romania) or one side royally pissed them off (America). And poor Belgium and Luxemborg just happened to have the bad luck to be in the vicinity of places Germany wanted to fight.
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Feb 24, 2018 00:16
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P-Mack posted:Re: guns and centralization, if we forget small arms for the moment cannon necessitated a completely different and extremely expensive approach to fortifications. This isn't as much of a transition as people think it is. Yes, cannon eventually shaped the evolution of fortifications in a big way, but they didn't really change the game as much as is often implied. It took the majority of the 14th century for cannons in western Europe to become very useful and, even then, cannons are an enormous logistical feat to move around and rulers have a very limited supply of them. Fortifications were already monstrously expensive and a huge burden to maintain, supply, and man prior to cannons, so gunpowder didn't change the game there either. Even with cannons, undertaking a major siege operation was costly, painful, and lengthy throughout the 15th century (and beyond, but I know less about that period).
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Mar 6, 2018 23:11
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Ardent Communist posted:I mean, people are mentioning how peasant revolts are more or less ubiquitous in history, but you can look at the struggle for independence in Switzerland as being dependent on the Swiss use of pikes, and their increasing efficiency against armoured knights, as an example of how trends in weapon technology leading to (or more accurately supporting) political developments. Please go read an actual book on medieval warfare before talking about it, thanks in advance. This is embarrassingly stupid, even by your standards.
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Mar 7, 2018 01:47
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I'm the unsourced wikipedia page that gives no citations for any of its figures. Infantry was always capable of standing against cavalry in the right circumstances. That hadn't changed for the entirety of the medieval period and it certainly was not a new innovation of the later medieval period, as much as proponents of the Infantry Revolution thesis want to pretend like it is. Medieval soldiers had been dismounting in order to more effectively hold defensive positions for centuries. As Anne Curry once noted, "...the military revolution has been a moveable feast. Cynically speaking, it is to be found in the period in which the particular author considers him or herself to be expert."
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Mar 26, 2018 01:32
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Ardent Communist posted:Perhaps I misworded it. It's more than armoured cavalry tends to require greater resources, so that only powerful rich communities could outfit large forces of them, and thus would tend to enforce the aims and beliefs of such communities. As well as giving an advantage to groups that may not have been as numerous as their opponents. You are establishing this big divide between mercenaries and non-mercenary forces that is not as apparent in the actual period. "Mercenaries" of some variety were a major feature of warfare everywhere in the middle ages, definitely not just Italy. And it's absolutely not the case that Italian aristocrats were less "martial" than other Europeans or that other Europeans were necessarily more martial. Try reading some William Caferro.
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Mar 26, 2018 01:56
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Man, there can be and have been great Marxist historians, but you are an embarrassment to their work.
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Mar 26, 2018 02:35
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Ardent Communist posted:Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. Infantry of just about every era always been capable of surviving and winning against cavalry charges, you ignorant clown. Infantry was always incredibly important throughout the medieval period, and even medieval soldiers who were mounted were perfectly happy to dismount and fight on foot when the tactical situation called for it (which was often). There is no period where your fantasy image of glorious peasant revolutionaries were capable of overthrowing powerful states with ease exists, because effective military forces as a whole are incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain. The people who talk about an "infantry revolution" in the medieval period are wrong, but what they're really getting at is not any sort of tactical shift. It's the growth of the state, in its power, resources, and organization, that allows states to form larger, more effective military forces and raise large units of heavy infantry for longer periods of time.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:00
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Fangz posted:Your point is that you only have a specific set of revolts in mind that count as 'revolutionary' and they happen to by all infantry focused, and it's incredibly pointless trying to second guess which ones you count and which you totally ignore. I love also that he counts Spartacus as one of his properly "revolutionary" figures when we have very little evidence on Spartacus' motivations or objectives besides "didn't like being a slave" and "pissed off at Rome." Is the idea here that Spartacus was going to march around the Mediterranean world on a grand anti-slavery crusade had he won?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:04
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We're not being defensive. We're mocking your ignorant bullshit, because there's a lot of people here who professionally study these subjects and we're being condescended to by a dumbfuck tankie who seems to have replaced his brain with Stalin's mummified dick. Eric Hobsbawm would blow his brains out if he ever had to read something so goddamn stupid as the drivel you post in this thread.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:32
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Ardent Communist posted:So you're saying that I'm an idiot, and actually, the material conditions of warfare have absolutely no effect on the possible success of revolutionary change, that cavalry and infantry have always had the exact same role and importance in warfare in a stable equilibrium and no changes in tactics have ever occurred? I'm just trying to understand what your argument is, perhaps you could outline it? Yes, I am saying that you are an idiot, but everything else is you completely failing to understand the point. I'm not going to bother to address your nonsense about the conditions of revolutionary change in much detail, because that is a weird thing you've personally come up with for purpose of huffing your own farts. It's not how people in the vast majority of the past we study would have conceived of themselves and it's not an especially useful or interesting thing to try and understand. It tells us nothing and teaches us nothing except what we already knew, which is that you are a tankie who doesn't read actual history very much, if at all. Actual Marxists historians like Hobsbawm saw class conflict as an important lens through which to view history, but their work was much more complicated and nuanced than dumb poo poo like "cavalry is a reactionary concept." Judging by the things you post, I don't think you even read the people who have contributed the most to your own claimed ideology. And no, cavalry and infantry have not remained static in their roles and uses throughout all of history. Those terms (again) aren't really all that useful to apply in such general terms and it doesn't make much sense at all to analyze military history over enormously broad periods to see whether "cavalry" or "infantry" has the upper hand in any given era. In the majority of the medieval period, for example, you can't really discuss the "cavalry" as a totally distinct thing from the "infantry." Mounted troops frequently and readily dismount to fight or remount in the middle of a battle if they saw a good opportunity. A soldier may have signed his contract as a mounted archer with no intention of ever engaging in combat from horseback (if you were English). Medieval soldiers weren't signing up for Henry V's 5th Mounted Yeomanry Regiment. Roles in combat became much more specific and defined by the day of Heygal's rowdy fightboys and later, which is again a product of the growth of the power/organization of the state. In the medieval period, being paid as a mounted soldier did not necessarily mean that you were intended or intending to fight from horseback, the way it would if you enlisted as a member of a cavalry regiment of later periods. It meant that you were of sufficient income to afford to bring a horse to war (and have better equipment in general than soldiers without horses) and were therefore due additional compensation because you need to maintain the horse(s). If you're a hussar at Waterloo, it means you are have been paid and equipped to fulfill the specific tactical role of the hussar. Your horse was probably supplied by the army; you weren't personally acquiring the horse or the rest of your kit (unless you're an officer, in which case you pay for all of your poo poo yourself). A Napoleonic hussar probably isn't dismounting to fight on foot a lot of the time; that's what the line infantry has been paid, equipped, and trained to do. When talking about the actual changes in tactics and military organization, you need to be specific about what you're talking about and look at the actual particularities of the era in question and examine why those things happened and how people at the time thought about them. It's not about weighing "infantry" vs "cavalry" in the abstract like a video game and trying to assess whether a dude stabbing people from horseback is more progressive or reactionary than a dude stabbing people on his own two feet is stupid.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:32
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Ardent Communist posted:Well it seems like the early modern era ends with the French Revolution, so that's a good definite point to mention. Obviously after this there is a revolutionary wave. But there are earlier attempts where people are gradually implementing them, such as the mentioned Hussite Wars, American revolution, Pugachev's Rebellion, Jacobite risings. So you're talking about events which took place in the very late 17th through the 18th century and then throwing in the Hussite Wars? Those are separated by centuries and don't take place in anywhere near the same context. Also, what kind of criteria are you using here for "revolution?" You know that the purpose of the Jacobite wars was to put the Stuart dynasty back on the throne, right? They didn't give a gently caress about "progress" or whatever dumb criteria you've decided to invent today, they would have ruled pretty much the same as any contemporary aristocrats.
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Mar 27, 2018 02:47
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Ardent Communist posted:I'm using it in the basis of political change coming that is more widespread than merely a palace coup, supported by nascent feelings of nationalism or religious feelings. I mentioned the Jacobites because their support came from the Highland Scots, who favoured infantry tactics. In contrast to their opponents, the 18th century English army, famously overreliant on cavalry? Although the majority of both forces was infantry, the two sides at Culloden had cavalry (albeit lovely compared to cavalry forces elsewhere in the world), because unlike you, people who actually fought in the era understood the utility of combined arms and weren't busy coming up with dumbshit theories about the inherently reactionary nature of the cavalry. The rest of your poo poo is too dumb to even address. You are like the dude in everyone's freshman philosophy class going on about how everything is just like, chemicals bro.
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Mar 27, 2018 03:53
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HEY GUNS posted:Bad Cav Island is sadly real My favorite Bad Cav Island stuff is from the 19th century when cavalry officers in India try to figure out why they are so Bad at Cav, and their theories end up looking like one of those conspiracy theory boards with the red yarn and letters cut from magazines. UNIFORMS?? INDIAN STEEL -> WILKINSON SWORD??? SMALL HANDS. BIG HANDS? MUST INVESTIGATE FURTHER.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:17
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ChubbyChecker posted:There had been posts earlier about how rare it was in the the Napoleonic wars for the charges to hit home, because either the target broke before contact, or because the attack faltered, and most soldiers didn't have to ever face real melee. Was it also rare before the Napoleonic wars? I feel like I always jump in to point this out (because it's awesome), but in colonial warfare, this wasn't the case. British accounts from the multitude of wars in India are always like "oh poo poo, hand to hand combat is way more common here, jesus christ." Except for the guys who just loved sword to sword combat, there were a bunch of nutcases like that.
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Mar 30, 2018 02:29
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Kemper Boyd posted:In general, there's that whole anglosphere thing going on, where the English really overstate their importance and competency for a long time. For quite a long while, the British Isles were just an unimportant periphery in an Europe where only the French and the Spanish mattered. This is more true for the early modern period, but in the 14th/15th centuries, England had a pretty prominent role in the European continent due to the Hundred Years War and its aftereffects. The English/French conflict spills over into the Iberian kingdom and Portugal, there's a bunch of battle-hardened English mercenaries running around Italy, and the politics of Burgundy/Flanders are also deeply impacted by the conflict.
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Apr 7, 2018 17:00
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Might also have had to do with political debates over the war back in England. Not everyone was totally on board with using force to crush the revolt, and so raising too many new British regiments might have opened up opportunities for political controversy and a stage for the anti-war types in a way that just hiring a bunch of Germans or Cossacks wouldn't.
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May 4, 2018 11:51
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Jack2142 posted:Thanks Rodrigo Diaz that was informative. You're trying to fit this into modern society, where there's harder lines (at least in the west) between "soldier" and "civilian." But it's a totally different context and mindset. Medieval warriors wouldn't have thought of themselves like this. To take one narrow example, an employee/retainer of Henry V's household might have carried out his duties as a tailor 95% of his life, but he also would have accompanied the king on campaign and fought in combat as an archer. He wouldn't have thought of himself as in reserve when he was working as a tailor; he was carrying out his role as a retainer of the king regardless of whether he was sewing up doublets or shooting arrows at French people.
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May 19, 2018 23:00
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HEY GUNS posted:clergy, young women, pregnant women, and do not steal things belonging to a church Unless the clergymen show up to fight on the battlefield, then it's their loving problem if they get themselves killed (at least in the medieval period). I can't remember whether it was Crecy or Agincourt where some French bishop died, but i think it was one of those.
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May 20, 2018 02:27
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Epicurius posted:Battle of Agincourt, the Archbishop of Sens. It's interesting because an earlier Archbishop of Sens was captured at the battle of Potiers. drat, that is not a lucky seat to hold.
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May 20, 2018 04:16
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EvilMerlin posted:It depends. Don't forget about man-at-arms. Whom were professional soldiers. But not everyone who could be described as a man-at-arms was a full-time professional. Many of them were, but others might go back home in between campaigns, or work as a professional for a few years before going back home and using their loot to buy some land and live comfortably. A man-at-arms on retainer might be an aristocrat's court functionary or serve some other role when the aristocrat was not at war and only went to fight when their master did. There's a broad swathe of semi-professional soldiers who make up medieval armies in addition to the full-timers who spent full careers in arms.
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May 20, 2018 13:33
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Grouchio posted:How does one deal with researching modern nations (or the old histories of said nations) knowing that those countries and their peoples are unlikely to survive the century (climate change, warfare, etc)? Like, say Syria. What do I have to gain from reading earlier Syrian history well-knowing that that region is never going to recover? Do you think archaeologists and historians who do research on ancient Sumerian cities are doing it so they can gain some kind of insight into the Fundamental Truth of modern Iraq? It's time to let go of weird 19th century historiography and move onto more interesting things, like saber duels.
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Aug 2, 2018 02:45
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Grouchio posted:I was looking at it from a contemporary 'how can I help country' insight, sorry. You can't even help yourself by not posting dumb poo poo, how do you expect to help people who have actual problems?
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Aug 2, 2018 03:01
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HEY GUNS posted:saber duels mostly Speaking of, tell me about infantry use of sabers in your era. The usual answer I see on 16th/17th century sabers is that outside of messer/dussack style things, sabers were more of an Eastern European cavalry thing and comparatively rarer (though not unknown or unheard of) as you get further west. So you'd see more of them with eastern european mercenary cav or whatever. Was it A Thing for some infantrymen to use them? I know British officers in the Napoleonic period sometimes preferred cavalry sabers or occasionally even picked up Indian tulwars. Are there equivalent 17th century proto-weebs who want to adopt some Ottoman trappings?
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Aug 2, 2018 23:03
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HEY GUNS posted:
Cool, thanks. I hope there are a bunch of paintings of this dumb nerd cosplaying an Ottoman. Was that controversial at the time or did everyone just dismiss it as this dude being a dweeb? KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Most napoleonic cav had sabres or straight swords as the primary arme blanche. The only exception are lancers. Sorry, I meant infantry officers, not cav. Lots of infantry officer, especially skirmishers and anyone who was going to be in colonial combat, got extremely interested in swapping out their regulation smallswords or spadroons for something a bit more robust. Lot of 1796 light cav sabers got into infantry officer's hands.
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Aug 3, 2018 03:29
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Chillbro Baggins posted:
19th century Indians thought so too. Sometimes they took imported 1796-pattern blades and stick tulwar hilts on them.
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Aug 3, 2018 04:06
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as gently caress, with that deep curve -- it's straight-up an old-school scimitar with a European hilt.
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feedmegin posted:I mean, traces of paint is all you need if you can determine the colour from them. Yeah, but it's like opening up MSPaint and using the fill bucket to color something. They're just identifying one speck of paint, going "welp, that's what this entire piece of the statue was colored," and calling it a day. If you did that to any old art, you'd come up with something that looks ridiculous.
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Sep 8, 2018 14:21
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