Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

[Galloglaich]

Couple of points....

Spear vs. sword and shield

Yes the goal of the sword and shield guy is to fight in 'krieg' range and as soon as possible, bind and rush, but the goal of the spear guy is to maintain 'zu' range (onset range) and keep moving to ensure that. Once you have a spear (or staff or montante) person who can move well and keep their distance effectively, and as others have noted, with a decent length spear (I think 7' - 8' is plenty, 2.4 meters, though 9 feet / 2.7 meters is probably more historical) then your spear guy can keep attacking from his 'sweet spot' and your targets include 1) head, 2) feet / lower legs, and 3) weapon hand every time the swordsman tries to attack. Which gives you some pause especially if it's steel.

LARP spears vs. HEMA spears vs. real Late Medieval vs. real Iron Age spears

The thing about LARP, and even SCA to a large extent, is that they have a lot of safety rules and padded weapons which kind of take the bite or threat out of the weapon - particularly with LARP the fight becomes a kind of tag and you don't have much sense of fear. It just doesn't feel as real with foam rubber or even rattan. Steel is far more intimidating to me anyway, and intimidating keeps you a bit more honest. And a bit less reckless. Which leads me to...

Spears cut as well as thrust.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b7/5e/1b/b75e1b9e8805c91744f8a39ad575497e--landesmuseum-trier-swords.jpg

https://antiquities.co.uk/media/com_eshop/products/resized/400122973-max-500x500.jpghttp://www.mauiceltic.com/img/LateniumSpears.jpg
A spear like the one on the left is basically a gladius on the end of a 7 foot pole...

You don't really see this in most RPG's etc., but spears can cut really well.

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/pix/spear_assortment.jpg

In the late medieval world of course you have the halberd, the partisan, bill, glaive and all their evil friends to hack arms and legs off. But even back in the Viking Age and well before, you have 'hewing' spears with substantial blades which can also cut. I don't know if you have ever tried to cut with a spear but I have a kind of crappy quality Cold Steel boar spear (with a hollow spear blade, not even a proper blade) and it makes terrifying cuts, I once accidentally sheared off the corner of a 4 x 6" target stand.

So this means spears in two hands can cut as well as thrust.

HEMA and shields

Yes, it's true that most HEMA guys don't use big shields that much, but decent sized rotella, comparable to Viking shields, do exist. I still have my old stop sign shield from my punk rock fight club days, and like a lot of the older guys in HEMA, before the fencing manuals were known I came out of an untutored fighting culture which was mainly based on 'sword and board' fighting.

So while Matt is right that big shields aren't so much a thing in HEMA, a lot of us do have experience with them.

I would also say, that a moderately trained I.33 style buckler fighter can eat up an SCA style big shield fighter in an open contest. The big shield gives you a lot of passive protection and makes it easy to block, but it's not nearly as dynamic (even if you use I.33 techniques with it as Roland Warzecha and others have demonstrated) but it also gets in your way a lot more.

Similarly, most later era fencing masters give the nod to sword and dagger over sword and buckler- because the dagger is more versatile, you have much more control in a bind plus you can stab with it.



The trade off in a sword vs. shield fight, is that the shield guy tries to close or even charge, and can kill if he can stay in krieg long enough, the spear guy maintains distance and doesn't overcommit (get his spear bound up on the shield) - if he can move well and is careful with his strikes, he can keep attacking and keep the advantage.

It's also similar with longsword, but the longsword has a bit better reach and you also have an easier time grabbing the spar-haft with your hand if you do get a bind. I think this is one of the biggest vulnerabilities of a spear, halberd or any hafted weapon - you can grab the haft and it's much easier and less risky than grabbing a sword blade. When I fence longsword vs. spear that is my main tactic.

Migration Era / Iron Age / Bronze Age warfare

I'll give the nod to you on this Tobtor since you know the era better, especially in Northern Europe, but I was under the impression that a lot of javelin and small axe heads are found in these contexts. I know bows may not have been mass-weapons (though we know they had longbows back to the Neolithic) but descriptions of battles such as Hastings, and what I know of Roman sources including late Roman / Byzantine sources dealing with wars against Visigoths, Lombards, Franks etc., speak a great deal about javelins. Again, weren't the two most famous weapons of the Franks the Angon and the Francisca?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisca


My understanding of most early medieval / classical and Bronze Age warfare is that you have an extended period of throwing darts, javelins, spears and rocks, until one side wavers, then (in Europe anyway) you get the decisive charge. Sometimes as with the Franks the charge ideally comes with a volley of thrown axes and spears meant in part to disable shields (this being one of the famous design features of the angon / pilum).

yes the sword, or the battle axe, is a key weapon, but it's still a sidearm. It can be both.

Small scale fights

I think I have read all the Icelandic and Norse sagas translated into English, and in the more realistic Icelandic family sagas in particular where they do have a lot of small fights on the 1-3 people scale, they often don't have a shield but just personal weapons, which could be a sword or a seax, but it could also be an axe or a spear. The only time I remember shields would be in raids or Holmgang / formal duels (and in that case sometimes somebody else holds the shield for you, which is hard to visualize)

Saxo Grammaticus

Yes this is another very good source for the era I think. He used to be somewhat dismissed by academics but in more recent years has been 'rehabilitated' as archeology has shown some of his stories to be based in fact. Gesta Danorum is a very good read and highly recommended as a primary source for anyone interested in Vikings, the Baltic / North Sea zone, Denmark or the early medieval world of Northern Europe.

For a bit further back I'd also highly recommend Volsunga Saga. This is the much shorter, much wilder and more violent version of the Ring of the Nibelungen, of Wagner fame. Also a major source for Tolkein with cursed rings, magic swords, evil talking dragons, underwater adventures, cannibal werewolves, dwarves, elves etc. etc.

G.

[wolflance]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YLpe5hmYE0

A decent (I think) YouTube video demonstrating the dynamic change between shield vs spear sparring when the spear is longer. Obviously they are not sparring with full force/speed (the spearhead is too dangerous). Some of my observations comparing to the previous video:

1) The spearman need not to worry about defending himself (most of the time) and focus solely on attacking for almost the entire duration of the video.
2) Spearman can counterattak while running away from the rush. Unless the swordsman absolutely binded/controlled the spear, he is actually at his most vulnerable while rushing.
3) (To my untrained eyes) Roland Warzecha-like shield manipulation to close off line of attack appears to be useful...some of the time (when it prevents the spearman to retract his spear in time). However longer spear appear to be able to retract/change its line and direction of attack faster than the shield can exploit the closed off line/bind.

4) Skill appear to be poor here, or they are not fighting seriously.

[gkathellar]

Can anyone comment on whether such a wide grip on the spear is standard in HEMA? As someone whose spear/staff background is entirely Chinese, it seems very odd - I'd only resort to spacing my hands that far apart during forms and power training.

One thing to remember is that all long weapons, held correctly, are both pivot and fulcrum. Combined with the spear's length, you can potentially move the point much faster (and much more powerfully) than you can your hand. A good spear fighter can wind and reverse their weapon pretty much instantly, not just thrust at lot at different angles. This is also really helpful for feints, since any given thrust can switch targets pretty easily.

[Galloglaich]

Can anyone comment on whether such a wide grip on the spear is standard in HEMA? As someone whose spear/staff background is entirely Chinese, it seems very odd - I'd only resort to spacing my hands that far apart during forms and power training.

need to make 3 quick points here:


There is no such thing as 'standard in HEMA' because it varies widely by master, and by traditions / language groups and time periods.

There isn't that much spear per se in any of the medieval fencing manuals or fechtbucher, but a large number of them do have sections for at least one, or more often two staff weapons. This might be a large or short staff, a polearm like a halberd or a bill of some sort, or even a pike. However most fencing masters tell you that it's a stand-in for a wide range of similar weapons.

As Tobtor has alluded to, by the time we have coherent fencing manuals (with a few exceptions, basically late 14th and into the 15th Century) they heydey of spears per-se is in decline, though they were still in use, emphasis had shifted to various types of polearms, pikes and lances.



All that said, whether you grip the spear or staff in the center or at one end, and with a wide or narrow grip, is usually circumstantial in the fencing manuals.. it would depend who you were fighting (how they were armed) and what the range was etc. Most manuals show like vs. like though there are some which show mismatched weapons. The latter often depict fighting with the queue or back-end of the spear (etc.) facing the enemy initially, to be rapidly switched to the business end as needed.

https://sites.google.com/site/mffgusa/training/meyer-polearms/introduction-to-meyer-s-staff/sideways-drill.jpg

In staff vs. staff fighting, the technique recommended often involves rapidly switching from a wide to narrow stance, using slip-thrusts and sweeping cuts etc., is the norm, as you can see here with some experienced guys doing Meyer staff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uja1TNNNko4

You'll also see them doing slip-thrusts and sling-cuts which end up (very temporarily) one handed, such as you also see in some Chinese spear fencing

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7tBs9yI00R8/V7tqlOMT5JI/AAAAAAAAIgA/yCBd0Asu8ngV_wazeZtv61Kd1oTdxpLCwCLcB/s1600/Staff-one_handed_thrust.jpg

In other systems like marozzo's staff / partisan / spear etc., you'll see both wide / short grips, the former is for teaching the 'close game' and the latter for the long game. If you get into krieg distance the staff fighter will often switch from a 'quarter staff' (or 'quarter spear' grip) to a half-staff grip, so as to strike with both ends and parry more effectively.

The advice given varies widely by circumstance, what kind of weapon you have, what kind they have and what the distance is. The Iberian manuals and some of the Italian for example get into a lot of detail on whether you are fighting in a plaza, on a ships gangplank, in an alley etc. etc., with different tactics for each.



One thing to remember is that all long weapons, held correctly, are both pivot and fulcrum. Combined with the spear's length, you can potentially move the point much faster (and much more powerfully) than you can your hand. A good spear fighter can wind and reverse their weapon pretty much instantly, not just thrust at lot at different angles. This is also really helpful for feints, since any given thrust can switch targets pretty easily.

This is heavily emphasized in all the fencing manuals I've seen that deal with staff or spear or halberd etc.

G

[Tobtor]

Javelins and spears really aren't "the same thing, but different sizes". Most javelins are far too flimsy to be used as a melee weapon - especially the sort of simple, fire-hardened sticks that often passed as javelins in the north. Many war-spears were poorly weighted for flight and made terrible missile weapons.

There were notable exceptions - the framea was a heavier sort of javelin that could be used for both purposes. But they were exceptions.

Ok I agree I wasnt very well formulated. I was in this context talking about throwing weapons. When discussing the number of different ranged weapons having three distinct categories of "javelin, throwing spear, fighting spear also capable of serving as throwing weapons" shouldnt really be seperate categories of ranged weapons. When looking at the archaeological finds, spearheads from northern Europe prior to roughly 200ad is hard to separate into categories. There is clearly a continuum:
From roughly 300BC:
https://en.natmus.dk/typo3temp/GB/92d7baf856.jpg

While some are very short, tothers longer, some narrow others wider etc, there isn't really that great a separation. Later you get more clear functional variation, such as barbed heads. From after 200 AD:
http://oldtidsglimt.dk/wp/wp-content/uploads/47_41.jpg

This likely suggest a more dedicate role as throwing weapons.

Other regions clearly have different weapon systems (like roman pilum, other dedicated javelins), but what in some regions are considered a javelin, migh weigh as much as a light spear in the next etc. So whil I very much agree that there is a difference in use between various spears, and that many of the lighter ones are not used (much) in close combats, when disucussing "throwing a stick with a point", I don't find it usefull to seperate into many different categories.

[Tobtor]

The feint described was to the face, the two dimensional depiction you're using ignores how shields were routinely rounded (both backwards and such that the line down the center went up and down further than the edges), and most critically the matter of depth of crouch can change for both combatants. The results of this are of shields not protecting every angle at once - which is also attested to by the numerous stab wounds people with shields picked up. That's without getting into the question of the shield being forcibly moved.

I'm not saying that it's an unbeatable technique or anything (what with shields being movable). I'm not even saying that a spear in two hands necessarily has an advantage against a large shield. My claim is simply that a shot to the head routinely opens up the lower leg.

Well yes they are round shields (not the scutum which might be rectangular, octangular, or oval etc), but when I stand in front of a spearman I can tell you the shield covers very much of me. The reason I used a LARP spear was that we tested doing both feints and strikes at the head, and as mentioned I didnt really need to move the shield all that much, and thus I could quite comfortably ignore feints to the head, unless we where quite a distance to each-other. We tried me standing still and the spearmen thursting at the head (and also doing small cuts). If the speaman got to some distance backwards he could indeed hit the head, but I could easily move forward to awoid that. Or I could either step backwards or go in and bind the spear with the shield quite easily (as the spearman then held the spear quite far back on the spear and thus had less control of the tip).

Regarding the shield being forcibly moved: This is of course something you should be aware of. Especially with a centre-grib shield. But it mostly happened with relatively strong thrusts (and thus not feints). I have experienced this and it isnt hard to move forward letting the spear slide along the outside of the shield and get very close to hit at least hands/arm, but also shoulder upper body.

It is true that a few times the spearman got his shield below the shield and could hit a leg with a sideways cut, though in most cases it was possible to follow the spear downwards with the shield (as the spear has to move quite alot and you can feel it with the shield). In the cases where my leg got hit, it was almost always a double hit with the sword touching shoulder7upper body slightly before the hit to the lower leg. Double hits is typically a "draw", but you could argue that a side-cut to the lower leg would be quite survivable, while a sword cut to the upper body - not so much (if we assume no armour).

[Tobtor]

Spear vs. sword and shield

Yes the goal of the sword and shield guy is to fight in 'krieg' range and as soon as possible, bind and rush, but the goal of the spear guy is to maintain 'zu' range (onset range) and keep moving to ensure that. Once you have a spear (or staff or montante) person who can move well and keep their distance effectively, and as others have noted, with a decent length spear (I think 7' - 8' is plenty, 2.4 meters, though 9 feet / 2.7 meters is probably more historical) then your spear guy can keep attacking from his 'sweet spot' and your targets include 1) head, 2) feet / lower legs, and 3) weapon hand every time the swordsman tries to attack. Which gives you some pause especially if it's steel.

My practical experience say that baring very good "battle ground" the one moving "foreward" is better (if they are equally light/heavily" equpied. I think the HEMA practise of fighting on very firm smoothe surfaces is problematic here. Fight in a cob-stones, on a muddy field etc, changes it quite alot.

I agree on spear sizes 7-9 feet seem common for dedicated close combat spears (baring spears that are specilized such as Sarissa, and pikes isas I have said a very different matter). Thats why I used a length within the uppe part of this (8,5 feet)


LARP spears vs. HEMA spears vs. real Late Medieval vs. real Iron Age spears

The thing about LARP, and even SCA to a large extent, is that they have a lot of safety rules and padded weapons which kind of take the bite or threat out of the weapon - particularly with LARP the fight becomes a kind of tag and you don't have much sense of fear. It just doesn't feel as real with foam rubber or even rattan. Steel is far more intimidating to me anyway, and intimidating keeps you a bit more honest. And a bit less reckless. Which leads me to...

I sort of agree. As mentioned the reason we used a larp spear is because of using head as target (and we only had an open faced "norman" type helmet. I was too much of a chicken to have a iron spear repeatedly trusted at my face! But I want to state that I have once fought with a fencing mask as the ones shown in the Matt Easton vidoe previously posted, and that gave me MUCH more a sense of security, than fighting without helmets against larp weapons or with open faced helmets against larp weapons.

Different systems have different safety rules, to be sure. And different rules of engagement etc. LARP does have a more diverse set of spontanous combat situations.

Also I wouldlike to add that compared to sparing with both LARP weapons and with steel weapons, many LARP fights with invovled characters are more passive, as people have more at stake than a "win/loose". But both HEMA, re-enactment and LARP is of course simultations of reality. WHich is Why I again and again point out that historically people have chosen to bring shields to combat - even when no ranged weapons are in play. ESPECIALLY before the plate period.



Spears cut as well as thrust.

It to my mind doesn't change the overall dynamic. I also use spears with cutting.


You don't really see this in most RPG's etc., but spears can cut really well.

Again: I agree.


In the late medieval world of course you have the halberd, the partisan, bill, glaive and all their evil friends to hack arms and legs off. But even back in the Viking Age and well before, you have 'hewing' spears with substantial blades which can also cut. I don't know if you have ever tried to cut with a spear but I have a kind of crappy quality Cold Steel boar spear (with a hollow spear blade, not even a proper blade) and it makes terrifying cuts, I once accidentally sheared off the corner of a 4 x 6" target stand.

No, I have never done much cutting with sharp spears. But I am in no doubt that long sharp metal things on a long pole cuts.



So this means spears in two hands can cut as well as thrust.

I agree. But still it seem that for single combats people STILL preferred shield/spear until the advent of plate armour. When you wear plate a single hit to your body isnot what ends the fight, getting control of the fight is (and heavy blows from a spear to a leg might make the enemy stumble etc). They also seemed to prefer sword (or axe) and shield over a twohanded spear. The spear/shield and sword/shield is much more difficult as both appear quite regularly (and again in larger battles spear is the primary).


HEMA and shields

Yes, it's true that most HEMA guys don't use big shields that much, but decent sized rotella, comparable to Viking shields, do exist. I still have my old stop sign shield from my punk rock fight club days, and like a lot of the older guys in HEMA, before the fencing manuals were known I came out of an untutored fighting culture which was mainly based on 'sword and board' fighting.

Early LARP shields where also "stop sign shields". Typically as strap ons. They are MUCH heavier than proper Viking aged shield reconstructions , which makes them MUCH slower as well.


I would also say, that a moderately trained I.33 style buckler fighter can eat up an SCA style big shield fighter in an open contest. The big shield gives you a lot of passive protection and makes it easy to block, but it's not nearly as dynamic (even if you use I.33 techniques with it as Roland Warzecha and others have demonstrated) but it also gets in your way a lot more.

I think you are wrong. I know several people who have trained HEMA for years and then switching to "viking combat" things (such as the Moesgaard moot). They generally quickly change to larger shields. Again the amount of armour changes things. In plate armour you can basically ignore viking age/arming swords hit against you.


Similarly, most later era fencing masters give the nod to sword and dagger over sword and buckler- because the dagger is more versatile, you have much more control in a bind plus you can stab with it.

Again a huge plus against armour with gaps I am sure. But I agree dagger is nice weapon as well, but why then do we first see serious sword7dagger fights in the 15th century onwards, and all duels, small skirmishes etc. before that point fought with arming swords (or la tene swords, bronze age swords, gladius swords, viking age swrods etc) and shields


The trade off in a sword vs. shield fight, is that the shield guy tries to close or even charge, and can kill if he can stay in krieg long enough, the spear guy maintains distance and doesn't overcommit (get his spear bound up on the shield) - if he can move well and is careful with his strikes, he can keep attacking and keep the advantage.

I agree on the overall dynamic. But the larger the shield the easier it is to get in close. Also lighter shields (as in good reproductions - not smaller shields) is also light enough to move very quickly.



It's also similar with longsword, but the longsword has a bit better reach and you also have an easier time grabbing the spar-haft with your hand if you do get a bind. I think this is one of the biggest vulnerabilities of a spear, halberd or any hafted weapon - you can grab the haft and it's much easier and less risky than grabbing a sword blade. When I fence longsword vs. spear that is my main tactic.

Another thing is hand hit. I dont know how its typically modelled, but your hands ARE very vulnerable to hits.


Migration Era / Iron Age / Bronze Age warfare

I'll give the nod to you on this Tobtor since you know the era better, especially in Northern Europe, but I was under the impression that a lot of javelin and small axe heads are found in these contexts. I know bows may not have been mass-weapons (though we know they had longbows back to the Neolithic) but descriptions of battles such as Hastings, and what I know of Roman sources including late Roman / Byzantine sources dealing with wars against Visigoths, Lombards, Franks etc., speak a great deal about javelins. Again, weren't the two most famous weapons of the Franks the Angon and the Francisca?

Yes. Which Is why was specifically referring to the period pre 200AD (where we dont have specific javelin spearhead, and axes are very rare).

AXES:
Also I think "throwing" axes are somewhat rare. Yes they existed and the Franks (and some other tribes) where known to use them (mainly after 450/500AD I think). But they are more common as a popular image than what finds and sources indicate.

SPEARS/JAVELINS:
Again I mentioned them. They where definitely used. But graves from the earlier periods indicate just one and sometimes two pr. man which mean that either it was used like the pilum (that is throwing before going hand to hand combat with a secondary weapon), or that it was used together with a shield (everyone has a shield) in close combat.

In other words; you can't throw your spear and have it too.
(ok yes, you can have multiple spears).

While combat and weapon systems during the bronzeage/iron age in northern Europe changes quite alot, shields are used in all situations, all the time.

For instance in the 1century BC (and likely before) it seems swords where very commonly used together with a relatively light all purpose spear. Swords are common both single edged "germanic" types and la tene swords. The spear could either be thrown at the first charge and followed up by and attack with swords. In the 1cn AD swords almost dissapear, (both archaeological and according to Tacitus) in northern Germany/southern Scandinavia (the area outside Roman control), likely related to a collapse of "celtic" identity. Exception is norterhnmost Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia where singe edged swords are still common (present in the majority of weapon graves, even many graves without spears).

The around 150/200AD bows become an important part of the army equipment together with specialised throwing spears (those with barbs and relatively thin parts below the point).

At the same time shorter hand weapons become more popular again, with either imported Gladius swords (and later spathas), continued use of single edged swords spreading southwards, more axes (not throwing ones, and how many is difficult due to axes also able to serve as tools etc), large fighting knives (short saxes etc).



My understanding of most early medieval / classical and Bronze Age warfare is that you have an extended period of throwing darts, javelins, spears and rocks, until one side wavers, then (in Europe anyway) you get the decisive charge. Sometimes as with the Franks the charge ideally comes with a volley of thrown axes and spears meant in part to disable shields (this being one of the famous design features of the angon / pilum).

I disagree on that. I think what you describe did sometimes happen of course, but quite often you either stayed (or tried to) out of spear distance, aor you tried to close the distance as fast as you could (NO soldier likes standing still when you are attacked by arrows/spears/javelins etc). Also they didnt have as many weapons (at least in northern and western europe) as in the medieval period, thus you make them count.

While you sometimes get situations like Teutoburger Wald battles where an army is herassed for a long time, the common mode was to get close, throw your spear/javelin and close in using any disarray your ranged weapons caused. This is the tactics I imagine based on weapon system and historical sources post 200AD. Earlier on you would have fewer missiles and mostly gone into close fighting right away.


yes the sword, or the battle axe, is a key weapon, but it's still a sidearm. It can be both.

Yes it is a hand weapon, and I agree it is also a civilian weapon.


Small scale fights

I think I have read all the Icelandic and Norse sagas translated into English, and in the more realistic Icelandic family sagas in particular where they do have a lot of small fights on the 1-3 people scale, they often don't have a shield but just personal weapons, which could be a sword or a seax, but it could also be an axe or a spear.

I have also read all the sagas, and I have a very different experience. Yes suddenly evolved fights have no shields, but when they ride out to kill someone shields are usually brought with them. Interestingly the few times a seax is mentioned is along the line "he wasn't armed, he only had a seax", and is likely due to the period, as longer seaxes wasnt much used in the late 10th/early 11th century.



The only time I remember shields would be in raids or Holmgang / formal duels (and in that case sometimes somebody else holds the shield for you, which is hard to visualize)

That must be a weird translation. It is clear that the shieldholder holds any EXTRA shields. In some sources each warrior is allowed three shields, and thus he needs a person holding the extra shields.

(by the way my wife was involved in the latest translation of the Sagas into the Scandinavian anguages and I have with archaeoligcal interest tried looking at various weapon realated paragraphs in the sagas with her).



Saxo Grammaticus

Yes this is another very good source for the era I think. He used to be somewhat dismissed by academics but in more recent years has been 'rehabilitated' as archeology has shown some of his stories to be based in fact. Gesta Danorum is a very good read and highly recommended as a primary source for anyone interested in Vikings, the Baltic / North Sea zone, Denmark or the early medieval world of Northern Europe.

For a bit further back I'd also highly recommend Volsunga Saga. This is the much shorter, much wilder and more violent version of the Ring of the Nibelungen, of Wagner fame. Also a major source for Tolkein with cursed rings, magic swords, evil talking dragons, underwater adventures, cannibal werewolves, dwarves, elves etc. etc.

G.

I agree both sagas and Saxo is interesting. Though I think still mainly to some extend. Saxo tend to embellish the pas very much. He is very good for the 12th century stuff (close aqauintance to main characters, growing up in an elite milieu of warriors etc), thoguh very biased. He is also decent for the 1th-11th century, but when going back earlier all his kings/events are quite random when compared to contemporary chronicles etc.

The kings sagas (also reasonably reliable but with Norweigean bias instead), are also (and likely more so than the Sagas of icelanders) depicting very close to true events (Kings sagas are describing event outside iceland from the 9th-century to th 13th century, with and emphasis of the time after 980AD or so).

The more "legendary sagas" (Volsunga etc) is still interesting in the terms of understanding the culture and mindset, but not as "history" in a narrow sense.

[Kiero]

Ok I agree I wasnt very well formulated. I was in this context talking about throwing weapons. When discussing the number of different ranged weapons having three distinct categories of "javelin, throwing spear, fighting spear also capable of serving as throwing weapons" shouldnt really be seperate categories of ranged weapons. When looking at the archaeological finds, spearheads from northern Europe prior to roughly 200ad is hard to separate into categories. There is clearly a continuum:
From roughly 300BC:
https://en.natmus.dk/typo3temp/GB/92d7baf856.jpg

While some are very short, tothers longer, some narrow others wider etc, there isn't really that great a separation. Later you get more clear functional variation, such as barbed heads. From after 200 AD:
http://oldtidsglimt.dk/wp/wp-content/uploads/47_41.jpg

This likely suggest a more dedicate role as throwing weapons.

Other regions clearly have different weapon systems (like roman pilum, other dedicated javelins), but what in some regions are considered a javelin, migh weigh as much as a light spear in the next etc. So whil I very much agree that there is a difference in use between various spears, and that many of the lighter ones are not used (much) in close combats, when disucussing "throwing a stick with a point", I don't find it usefull to seperate into many different categories.

But they are different. A dedicated javelin has a significantly longer range than any of the other types. A dual-purpose spear has a shorter range. A pilum or soliferra has a shorter range still, that is still longer than a war spear when thrown. Their other properties are different, as already noted.

You could carry a bundle of a half-dozen javelins, you'd struggle to carry more than a couple of the other types.

This is an unhelpful abstraction, they are different things used for different reasons.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Hey guys, I know it's a type of poleaxe, but does anyone know if this weapon has a name? The format of the blade and overall shape of the weapon. Does it has a name?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSPzNc5XkAAInLG.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSPzNc3X0AM6Eca.jpg

[gkathellar]

Looks like a fairly standard halberd to me. The narrow axe blade is a nice touch of realism.

[Vinyadan]

So, as you might have heard, the port of Heracleion in Egypt has been under excavation for some 20 years. It was the largest port in the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's main hub, and a huge city, until it sunk into the sea for reasons currently unknown. One interesting fact is that the clay on the bottom of the sea covered and protected many shipwrecks, so that there now are 60 (!) ancient ships down there, waiting to be excavated.
While the whole thing will probably take centuries, some reports have already been published. It's mainly merchant ships, one of them loaded with limestone, with a tonnage presumed between 40 and 60 tonnes, and a length between 16 and 24 m, with some exceeding 30 m. The age range is from 1200 BC to medieval.
This pdf contains detailed information about the kinds of wood and contruction techniques found on the ships: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00845538/document

[wolflance]

Hey guys, I know it's a type of poleaxe, but does anyone know if this weapon has a name? The format of the blade and overall shape of the weapon. Does it has a name?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSPzNc5XkAAInLG.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSPzNc3X0AM6Eca.jpg
It reminds me of a Indo-Persian warhammer/horseman's pick, known as zaghnal.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/6b/c5/2f6bc56d5154f359004ab88eaec63ce0.jpg

[Kiero]

So, as you might have heard, the port of Heracleion in Egypt has been under excavation for some 20 years. It was the largest port in the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's main hub, and a huge city, until it sunk into the sea for reasons currently unknown. One interesting fact is that the clay on the bottom of the sea covered and protected many shipwrecks, so that there now are 60 (!) ancient ships down there, waiting to be excavated.
While the whole thing will probably take centuries, some reports have already been published. It's mainly merchant ships, one of them loaded with limestone, with a tonnage presumed between 40 and 60 tonnes, and a length between 16 and 24 m, with some exceeding 30 m. The age range is from 1200 BC to medieval.
This pdf contains detailed information about the kinds of wood and contruction techniques found on the ships: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00845538/document

I hadn't heard about that, thanks.

I wonder if they'll find any wrecks that might give us some clues about the Sea People?

[Haighus]

So, as you might have heard, the port of Heracleion in Egypt has been under excavation for some 20 years. It was the largest port in the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's main hub, and a huge city, until it sunk into the sea for reasons currently unknown. One interesting fact is that the clay on the bottom of the sea covered and protected many shipwrecks, so that there now are 60 (!) ancient ships down there, waiting to be excavated.
While the whole thing will probably take centuries, some reports have already been published. It's mainly merchant ships, one of them loaded with limestone, with a tonnage presumed between 40 and 60 tonnes, and a length between 16 and 24 m, with some exceeding 30 m. The age range is from 1200 BC to medieval.
This pdf contains detailed information about the kinds of wood and contruction techniques found on the ships: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00845538/document
This is really interesting, although the pdf you linked to only discusses the ancient and classical shipwrecks, and discounts the medieval wrecks from the discussion. Personally, I would like to see info about the medieval ships.

I found the discussion regarding design work-arounds for making use of inferior local woods in ship building quite interesting. It seems these ships would look quite unusual in design compared to more recognisable and modern construction.

[Galloglaich]

So, as you might have heard, the port of Heracleion in Egypt has been under excavation for some 20 years. It was the largest port in the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's main hub, and a huge city, until it sunk into the sea for reasons currently unknown. One interesting fact is that the clay on the bottom of the sea covered and protected many shipwrecks, so that there now are 60 (!) ancient ships down there, waiting to be excavated.
While the whole thing will probably take centuries, some reports have already been published. It's mainly merchant ships, one of them loaded with limestone, with a tonnage presumed between 40 and 60 tonnes, and a length between 16 and 24 m, with some exceeding 30 m. The age range is from 1200 BC to medieval.
This pdf contains detailed information about the kinds of wood and contruction techniques found on the ships: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00845538/document

Fantastic news, thanks for posting!

[Maquise]

Looks rather short to be a halberd, and I was under the impression that halberd spikes were much longer than that.

EDIT: Well, oops. Sorry, this was referring to an older post that I hadn't realized had become depreciated. Carry on.

[Yora]

Polearms are not an exact science. People have been putting all kind of random sharp metal pieces on poles of different lengths for thousands of years.

[Haighus]

Looks rather short to be a halberd, and I was under the impression that halberd spikes were much longer than that.

EDIT: Well, oops. Sorry, this was referring to an older post that I hadn't realized had become depreciated. Carry on.

I agree. I'm not too sure of the distinction, but I would say it was simply a poleaxe based on the length in the image being about the same as the height of the wielder (~6ft). In my understanding, a halberd is essentially a longer poleaxe, with a length more in the 7-9ft range.

I was under the impression poleaxes were that length because they are intended entirely for armoured fighting, and are a good length for grappling techniques.

[Roxxy]

How did people fight ancient and medieval battles in the mud of France? I'm not from a climate with deep or thick mud, so I've never really thought about this in depth, but I'm in Champagne right now, and this mud is horrid. It grabs my boots and pulls them down, such that I must walk slowly and ponderously so as not to trip, and I certainly couldn't pull off any combat footwork. Yet people fought at Agincourt. How? How do you properly use a sword or made or spear with your feet and legs so hampered?

[Deepbluediver]

How did people fight ancient and medieval battles in the mud of France? I'm not from a climate with deep or thick mud, so I've never really thought about this in depth, but I'm in Champagne right now, and this mud is horrid. It grabs my boots and pulls them down, such that I must walk slowly and ponderously so as not to trip, and I certainly couldn't pull off any combat footwork. Yet people fought at Agincourt. How? How do you properly use a sword or made or spear with your feet and legs so hampered?
Most campaigns tried not to fight when the weather was bad AFAIK. If it was raining or snowing you might march a bit to make it to shelter, but otherwise you hunkered down and waited. I sympathize with you about the mud, though. Parts of Colorado have this reddish clay that when it's dry (most of the time) it bakes into something practically akin to concrete, but the one time I made the mistake of going for a hike right after it had rained, literally pounds of it clung to my shoes. I could either stop every 100 yards to clean it off, or deal with it dragging at my legs like lead weights.

[snowblizz]

How did people fight ancient and medieval battles in the mud of France? I'm not from a climate with deep or thick mud, so I've never really thought about this in depth, but I'm in Champagne right now, and this mud is horrid. It grabs my boots and pulls them down, such that I must walk slowly and ponderously so as not to trip, and I certainly couldn't pull off any combat footwork. Yet people fought at Agincourt. How? How do you properly use a sword or made or spear with your feet and legs so hampered?

In reality you really don't. And Agincourt kind of show the reason why you should avoid it if possible. It didn't end well for those who tried.

Obviously even in a generally muddy area you can find places which aren't as affected (it's quite possible the English had less mud problems, they certainly didn't try crossing a field with heavy cavalry and thousands of men churning it up like the French did), and I would add, medieaval times were generally a bit more drained than today, when alot of wetlands that usually soak up extra water are gone and we have much more stone, pavement, asphalt and concrete blocking of large areas of ground that previously might have shared the burden of absorbing moisture.

[Yora]

I have heard that the terrain at Agincourt is quite deceptive. There are very gentle but quite significant slopes that make the terrain look much more flat than it is, and the soil forms a particularly nasty kind of sticky mudd when drenched.

The English chose their battlefield wisely, but it surprise me that the French commanders were not aware of it, or felt so confident in their numbers that they thought it wouldn't matter. If this is a widespread issue in northern France, then the French should have had much experience with it.

[Deepbluediver]

I have heard that the terrain at Agincourt is quite deceptive. There are very gentle but quite significant slopes that make the terrain look much more flat than it is, and the soil forms a particularly nasty kind of sticky mudd when drenched.

The English chose their battlefield wisely, but it surprise me that the French commanders were not aware of it, or felt so confident in their numbers that they thought it wouldn't matter. If this is a widespread issue in northern France, then the French should have had much experience with it.
Roxxy's question prompted me to go read more about Agincourt, and according to Wikipedia the area where they were fighting was a recently plowed field, which would have made it much worse than normal. Also, while the French did make some serious blunders, such as keeping their own archers to far back to effectively assist the men-at-arms (knights and heavy infantry), the English actually initiated the conflict by advancing from their initial position and then falling back somewhat. The French had appeared willing to wait for additional reinforcements (they outnumbered the English and were standing between the English army and safety) until the English baited them into attacking.

Agincourt being such a famous battle, there are a bunch of accounts both historical and contemporary, and none of them quite agree with each other about all the details, except that the English handedly won the day. So the ultimate answer would seem be: "How did armies fight when the weather was bad?" "Poorly." :smallwink:


Edit: I'm really just repeating the Wikipedia page here, but to summarize the major points-

The English had planted wooden stakes to protect their archers from a cavalry charge, however when the French didn't attack, the English had to pull up the stakes, advance, and replant them; the French completely failed to take advantage of this vulnerability.
When the English attacked and started the battle, the initial French response was a cavalry charge. However some men were absent (possibly related to the above), exercising their horses or getting food, meaning the initial French attack wasn't as strong as it should have been. Also, it was this initial cavalry charge that really stirred up the muck on the field.
During the charge, the lightly-armored horses where much more vulnerable to the English archers than the fully-armored knights. A number of horses either where slain outright or panicked, which in turn worsened the terrain the following French infantry had to cross.
The initial French heavy-infantry attack succeeded in pushing the English back, meaning that the distance the next wave had to cross increased. Also, there's some debate if the French were using shields; a good suit of plate armor was a strong defense against arrows, but without shields the french had to duck their heads to protect the eye-slits (weak point) of their helmets, which apparently makes it harder to breathe and more tiring to advance.
After the English won the subsequent engagement, they took many prisoners. However King Henry mistook the French camp followers and pages as more French soldiers, and to discourage them from attacking, ordered the execution of many French prisoners (at this point the French supposedly STILL outnumbered the English, and the field was littered with weapons the French prisoners could have grabbed to rejoin the fight). This means the death-toll FROM BATTLE might not have been as high as indicated.

[KarlMarx]

How did people fight ancient and medieval battles in the mud of France? I'm not from a climate with deep or thick mud, so I've never really thought about this in depth, but I'm in Champagne right now, and this mud is horrid. It grabs my boots and pulls them down, such that I must walk slowly and ponderously so as not to trip, and I certainly couldn't pull off any combat footwork. Yet people fought at Agincourt. How? How do you properly use a sword or made or spear with your feet and legs so hampered?

Again, they mostly didn't. Campaigns and battles were essentially only possible when the ground was dry and the levies were called up...so essentially summer and fall, with the latter being harder due to the need to gather harvests (certainly doable, though).

Agincourt in particular is a great example of everything that could go wrong in wet conditions. The French soldiers had to slog through dense mud, while the English could simply stand and give fire. However, it's important to note that Agincourt happened largely because of the climate conditions. The French saw the battle as their only chance before winter and impossible campaigning to eradicate the English army, which it likely was. After Agincourt--regardless of its outcome--the French would need to largely demobilize, while the English could regroup in relative safety at Calais.

However, weather problems weren't something unique to Medieval warfare. Muddy conditions may have been a major factor in the defeat of the Romans at Teutoburg Forest, as the lightly armored German warriors could run in circles around the (literally) bogged-down Roman train. And, closer to the modern day, the timing of mud and snow on the Eastern front of WWII were a major factor, as one simply couldn't maneuver armies between the start of winter and the drying of the fields in late spring and early summer. I believe that this was one of the factors that gave the Soviets time to prepare defenses against the Nazis at Kursk, for example, though Hitler's incompetence was probably the deciding factor.

[snowblizz]

And, closer to the modern day, the timing of mud and snow on the Eastern front of WWII were a major factor, as one simply couldn't maneuver armies between the start of winter and the drying of the fields in late spring and early summer. I believe that this was one of the factors that gave the Soviets time to prepare defenses against the Nazis at Kursk, for example, though Hitler's incompetence was probably the deciding factor.

Not quite. The mud season in Russia is after the fall rains and after the spring thaw. So for example during winter when the ground has frozen it's excellent campaign season provided you can stand the cold (which the Germans and much of their equipment really couldn't). Of course it was also an exceptionally cold winter the first few years of the war.

The battle of Kursk happened in the deep summer and would not have been delayed by mud per se. The Nazis were among other things waiting for their new "wonder tanks" to arrive, which may have been a mistake as several verisons were kinda half-baked and not properly tested. A big reason the Soviets had time to prepare though was that it was really really obvious what was going to happen, and they had intelligence and prewarning about the German buildup too. At Kursk really I'd say we are already beyond the tipping point, the Nazis throw away a lot of resources.

More significantly an example might be the autumn of 1941 when the fall mud stopped the Germans dead while the Soviet army was essentially collapsing in front of them. Among other things it meant they didn't reach Moscow until the cold weather hit which they were illeqipped for. It's possible there might not have been any Siberian divisions to reinforce Moscow in 1941 either if the Germans had been a couple months earlier. Like e.g. occupiying it rather than fighting outside.

[Vinyadan]

About taking Moscow, can it be that the Germans would have instead found themselves fighting a third neverending Russian siege, like in Stalingrad and Leningrad?

About Agincourt, I have taken a look at the precipitations in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais area, and they tend to be constant along the year (around 60-70 mm rain each month). Of course, the question is whether the rain had time to evaporate during a colder month like October (which is the most rainy, after November).

[Deepbluediver]

About Agincourt, I have taken a look at the precipitations in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais area, and they tend to be constant along the year (around 60-70 mm rain each month). Of course, the question is whether the rain had time to evaporate during a colder month like October (which is the most rainy, after November).
According to wikipedia (again) "there had recently been heavy rain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Terrain)".

[jojo]

How did people fight ancient and medieval battles in the mud of France? I'm not from a climate with deep or thick mud, so I've never really thought about this in depth, but I'm in Champagne right now, and this mud is horrid. It grabs my boots and pulls them down, such that I must walk slowly and ponderously so as not to trip, and I certainly couldn't pull off any combat footwork. Yet people fought at Agincourt. How? How do you properly use a sword or made or spear with your feet and legs so hampered?

Historically military leaders went to great lengths to avoid situations where they would be forced to advance through or fight in muddy terrain. People fought at Agincourt because sometimes people make incredibly bad decisions.
Agincourt is instructive though as to why they didn't make a habit of fighting in the mud, the results speak for themselves. A force with numerical advantage, superior equipment, moral and in much better overall health anticipating reinforcements to swell their numbers got mauled by a numerically inferior force, the members of which were far from "in good health."

If you were forced to fight on a muddy battlefield, at least in a one-to-one melee, I'd suggest that your best course of action would be:

1. Relax. Stand still. If you must move, move deliberately.
2. Commit to simple, controlled actions.
3. Stay calm. Wait. Repeat, until your opponent makes a mistake.
4. Trust your armor. You will feel the hits. Pain doesn't kill you, panic does.
5. Repeat Step 3.
6. Once your opponent has committed an error, win the wrestling match.

[Storm Bringer]

on Kursk, it was a combination of several factors, including, but not limited to:



A belief in the highest levels of the German command chain that the German army was practically unbeatable in a summer campaign, so they could effectively ignore what the Russians might do, because it just didn't matter.
As a result of the above, there a lack of urgency, and thus repeated delays, from a start date of early may in the initial op orders to the eventual start on 5th July. the Germans felt they these delays would benefit them more than the Russians, but the Red Army did not waste the time given.
the Germans rushed a whole raft of new equipment into service, and even delayed the battle to increase their numbers, but weren't able to either iron out the kinks in their new equipment (most of which had reliability issues in the battle), or build enough of these new weapons to overcome the larger numbers of "good enough" weapons the Russians could deploy.
Despite the massive successes of 1941 and 1942, the Wehrmacht in 1943 was a much less capable force, as most of the veterans of 39 and 40 were dead or wounded, and the front line units were being backfilled with much less capable soldiers.
Strategic laziness in the OKH, related to 1. they were convinced they could steamroll over anything the Red Army could put in there way, so they went the for obvious target, and didn't really care who knew. this, combined with confirmation form the both Russian and British intelligence networks that Kursk was a target, they were able to build the strongest defences in the known world to meet the Germans.




About taking Moscow, can it be that the Germans would have instead found themselves fighting a third neverending Russian siege, like in Stalingrad and Leningrad?

maybe, but the fall of Moscow in 1941 might well have broken the USSR beyond recovery. the fact they were able to stop the germans, even if by the skin of the teeth, gave Stalin and his regime the boost it needed to stay in power, and proved to the Russian people (and the Allied governments) that the Red Army could stop and even push back the Germans.

[Galloglaich]

Re: Agincourt

You need to understand, with respect to this baffling catastrophe, that this was a pattern for the French. Consider the following battles:

Hattin

Golden Spurs 1302

Crecy 1346

Poitiers 1356

Aljubarrota vs. Portuguese 1385 (where the Portuguese used essentially the same tactics the English used at Agincourt)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aljubarrota

Nicopolis vs. Ottomans 1396

and then Agincourt in 1415

It was a pattern with the French, to impetuously attack against prepared defenses on bad terrain, despite advice, in contempt of strategy and so on. In all the examples I cited above, they paid a very heavy price for this arrogance.

They kept doing it for two reasons.

1) First and foremost, the concepts of Feudalism, of the superiority of the nobility and of the knightly heavy cavalry, and the valor of France was almost a religion for the French leadership. They believed in it and they relied on it, and they lead on it's basis - in other words, taking a cautious or prudent approach to battle could undermine the kings support among the gang of rival princes who made up the French leadership.

2) This impetuous, crazy strategy often worked for the French. They won far more often than they lost in fact. So it made it easier for them to just stick with what they felt worked.

3) The attitude they had toward lower orders of humanity, especially commoners of any kind, meant that the French typically had very weak infantry and missile armed troops, ultimately they were forced to rely on mercenaries who, while skilled, could not always overcome the intense contempt and hatred that the French nobles had for commoners. In several of the battles listed above, the French cavalry literally ran down their own men.


In other words, for the French, medieval warfare was stuck in a Feudal mode as almost a type of performance art. They couldn't shake out of this until the 16th Century when they figured out how to adjust their system, but they still tended to make these same kind of mistakes with catastrophic results (battle of Pavia in 1529 where King Francis was captured)

[Max_Killjoy]

It strikes me here that the French of that period are perhaps in some ways responsible for the stereotypical worst impressions we have of quote-unquote "medieval Feudalism".

[snowblizz]

It strikes me here that the French of that period are perhaps in some ways responsible for the stereotypical worst impressions we have of quote-unquote "medieval Feudalism".

They certainly are. The medieval romances where the civalric ideal was codified were mostly of French origin or French influenced, not in the least often being written in French. This period being largely dominated culturally by France and the various French courts.


Note I use "France" ancronistically here more as something we can place on the map. France being politically fragmented and there being several powerful courts e.g. in Aquitane, Burgundy, Bretagne and others during a large part of the period, variously the most powerful and culturally influential.

[rrgg]

Re: Agincourt

You need to understand, with respect to this baffling catastrophe, that this was a pattern for the French. Consider the following battles:

Hattin

Golden Spurs 1302

Crecy 1346

Poitiers 1356

Aljubarrota vs. Portuguese 1385 (where the Portuguese used essentially the same tactics the English used at Agincourt)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aljubarrota

Nicopolis vs. Ottomans 1396

and then Agincourt in 1415

It was a pattern with the French, to impetuously attack against prepared defenses on bad terrain, despite advice, in contempt of strategy and so on. In all the examples I cited above, they paid a very heavy price for this arrogance.

They kept doing it for two reasons.

1) First and foremost, the concepts of Feudalism, of the superiority of the nobility and of the knightly heavy cavalry, and the valor of France was almost a religion for the French leadership. They believed in it and they relied on it, and they lead on it's basis - in other words, taking a cautious or prudent approach to battle could undermine the kings support among the gang of rival princes who made up the French leadership.

2) This impetuous, crazy strategy often worked for the French. They won far more often than they lost in fact. So it made it easier for them to just stick with what they felt worked.

3) The attitude they had toward lower orders of humanity, especially commoners of any kind, meant that the French typically had very weak infantry and missile armed troops, ultimately they were forced to rely on mercenaries who, while skilled, could not always overcome the intense contempt and hatred that the French nobles had for commoners. In several of the battles listed above, the French cavalry literally ran down their own men.


In other words, for the French, medieval warfare was stuck in a Feudal mode as almost a type of performance art. They couldn't shake out of this until the 16th Century when they figured out how to adjust their system, but they still tended to make these same kind of mistakes with catastrophic results (battle of Pavia in 1529 where King Francis was captured)

I think the French "arrogance" in a lot of these battles tends to be overstated sometimes. Often French leaders found themselves in a situation where an invading army was pillaging their homeland and felt that they needed to win a decisive victory as soon as possible.

Winning an offensive victory during the middle ages was often really hard to do in the best of times, but good heavy cavalry tended to work the best since they had a lot of armor and could quickly respond to where the enemy was weakest without growing too tired, whereas a formation of heavy infantry would typically be winded and disordered by the time it even reached the enemy. Even english longbowmen, though they could sometimes coax the enemy into attacking early like at Agincourt, weren't really suited for breaking through strong defensive positions.

Also, the lopsided casualties often tend to cover up just how close many of these battles were. During the middle ages casualty rates of up to 50:1 weren't really that uncommon as most of the killing tended to occur during the rout, when the losing troops were exhausted and weighted down by their heavy equipment. As you mentioned these crazy charges did actually work much of the time, and while it might seem redundant to say "if they had won they would have won" it's quite possible that had the french gained the upper hand crecy and Agincourt would have ended with the English being slaughtered and relatively few French casualties.

[Galloglaich]

They certainly are. The medieval romances where the civalric ideal was codified were mostly of French origin or French influenced, not in the least often being written in French. This period being largely dominated culturally by France and the various French courts.

I would make a distinction here, depending on what period you mean.

During the late migration era into the Carolingian, French culture was very important.

In the High to Late Middle Ages though it was Italian culture which really dominated. French culture remained important to the English, who people tend to forget, were under a French speaking ruling class well through the High Middle Ages and into the Late.

But France crushed their own mini-Renaissance in the Langedoc region, whence came many of the Romances etc., by joining the Albigensian Crusade. They left their most important cultural centers down there in the South a smoking ruin and turned their main Southern University, the University of Toulouse, into the headquarters of the Inquisition. Even Paris University became reactionary and they tried several times to band Aristotle and Averroes etc. in the 13th Century.

By the 14th Century the dynastic wars which became the 100 Years War were beginning to turn much of Northern France, including the Champagne region once famous for their fairs, and Brittany which was kind of the second center of the poetry, Romances etc. into ruins, largely wrecked in the 100 Years War.

The importance of France in the medieval world is basically exaggerated by the importance of English historiography in the English-Speaking world, and by extension, much of 'The West' which is heavily influenced by Anglo-American media.

Everyone knows about Agincourt not so much because it was so important, but because of Shakespeare. Turks know all about Nicopolis and Portuguese know all about Aljubarrota but most Americans never heard of them. Relatively few ever heard of Golden Spurs even and that was a much more important battle in terms of consequences, than Agincourt.

After around the mid 13th Century the truth is France was a cultural and economic backwater, almost as much as England. The epicenter of culture was more in the center of Europe - Northern Italy, Flanders, Southern Germany, Catalona / Aragon, the Baltic coast, Bohemia and so on. roughly in that order.



Note I use "France" ancronistically here more as something we can place on the map. France being politically fragmented and there being several powerful courts e.g. in Aquitane, Burgundy, Bretagne and others during a large part of the period, variously the most powerful and culturally influential.

Burgundy in particular, being an ally of the English for most of the Late Medieval period and more importantly, with all the cities in Flanders and Brabant a much, much more culturally and technologically sophisticated zone than France, even though they were ruled by different branches of the same (Valois) princely house. France borrowed a lot of technology and culture from Burgundy (particularly from the large Flemish cities like Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Lille, Antwerp etc.) well into the 16th Century, almost as much as they did from Italy.

G

[Galloglaich]

I think the French "arrogance" in a lot of these battles tends to be overstated sometimes. Often French leaders found themselves in a situation where an invading army was pillaging their homeland and felt that they needed to win a decisive victory as soon as possible.

Winning an offensive victory during the middle ages was often really hard to do in the best of times, but good heavy cavalry tended to work the best since they had a lot of armor and could quickly respond to where the enemy was weakest without growing too tired, whereas a formation of heavy infantry would typically be winded and disordered by the time it even reached the enemy. Even english longbowmen, though they could sometimes coax the enemy into attacking early like at Agincourt, weren't really suited for breaking through strong defensive positions.

Also, the lopsided casualties often tend to cover up just how close many of these battles were. During the middle ages casualty rates of up to 50:1 weren't really that uncommon as most of the killing tended to occur during the rout, when the losing troops were exhausted and weighted down by their heavy equipment. As you mentioned these crazy charges did actually work much of the time, and while it might seem redundant to say "if they had won they would have won" it's quite possible that had the french gained the upper hand crecy and Agincourt would have ended with the English being slaughtered and relatively few French casualties.

Like I said, if you look at a list of the battles France fought in in the 12th-15th Centuries, they often won with wild cavalry charges.

but the consistent catastrophic disasters they suffered when they lost should have made them adjust more quickly. France had the best aristocratic heavy cavalry in Europe, or close to it, for most of the middle ages. But many other regions also had very good cavalry (Spain, the Teutonic Knights, and Poland notably) and almost every other economically significant part of Europe had learned to field combined-arms armies by the 13th Century and Italian, Spanish, Central and Northern European armies by the 15th Century were extremely sophisticated - featuring cannon, firearms, crossbowmen, pikemen, other heavy infantry, war-wagons and other war-machines, and light and heavy cavalry in just the right combinations. The French by comparison were still heavily leaning toward Feudal style heavy cavalry.

The one technology that France did adopt with great success was the cannon, that (and Jeanne D'Arc) was how they won the 100 Years War after all. But cannon fit with the French ethos - not every peasant could afford to build a massive 'Bombarde', only the King had the resources to hire the right experts and build a big enough blast furnace (at least in theory)

http://travel-tips.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/holidays-Ghent-eurostar-weekend-city-break-gent-groot-kanon-marguerite-big-cannon.jpg

Of course this was undermined by the fact that comparatively small towns like Bruges and Ghent could build mightier and more sophisticated cannon than the King of France, but there were plenty of other smaller towns he could (and did) blow up with his cannon.

All those marvelous illustrated books, like the copies of Froissart etc., that we use as our windows into battles like Agincourt and Crecy and so on, were made in Free Cities in Flanders, not in France. France did not have the powerful artists guilds, paper-mills, and scriptoria to produce this kind of stuff on the same scale.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/06/5e/a0/065ea011ed25323f859fd5469e6fb4ef--the-hundreds-military-history.jpg

After 1450 when the movable type printing press arrived in Germany, note where they were producing books and where they weren't:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Printing_towns_incunabula.svg/443px-Printing_towns_incunabula.svg.png

As you can see pretty clearly on that map of 'incunabla' - printed books and pamphlets created before 1500, the cultural epicenter was not in the 'West' i.e. England or France as our media would imply, but in the center.

G

[PersonMan]

maybe, but the fall of Moscow in 1941 might well have broken the USSR beyond recovery. the fact they were able to stop the germans, even if by the skin of the teeth, gave Stalin and his regime the boost it needed to stay in power, and proved to the Russian people (and the Allied governments) that the Red Army could stop and even push back the Germans.

An important point regarding Moscow that I think is easy to overlook - the logistical aspect. Moscow was the Soviet railway hub (https://i.imgur.com/pPXwvoD.png) west of the Urals; the fact that Soviet troops were pushed back to Moscow rather than entirely destroyed was a major issue for the Wehrmacht, since it meant that the defenders were, logistically speaking, in a relatively good position while the German "logistical planning"* caused them to have a stop-and-go campaign due to problems with supplies catching up to advancing forces.

This also means that losing Moscow makes the entire campaign far more difficult to fight for the Soviets just because their supplies suddenly need to take long detours to get to the front.

*Which in some cases consisted of 'oh, we'll need to transport winter supplies along the rails, but they don't have the capacity to do so while also shipping all the ammunition we need? I guess that just means we'll have to win even faster to avoid that problem'.

[Galloglaich]

I think it helps to keep in mind whenever you are looking at the Middle Ages (and specifically lest I get pounced on, the 'time of different armor', the post Carolingian, post-Viking Middle Ages aka mid 11th Century onwards)

whenever you are looking at that time, you really have to keep in mind that it's a world of competing realities. For the French high aristocracy - there were only 3 Estates: the Church who did the praying and thinking, the Nobles who did the fighting ostensibly against foreign enemies, and the peasants or serfs.... and in France 95% of the population were commoners, only 2% true nobility, and thus only 2% -5% of the population (5% if you were being generous and included courtiers and priests as human) really mattered. The rest were essentially two-legged livestock.

England also has the Three Estates but gives us the notion of some kind of medieval middle class, mainly in the form of their armed country gentry, the famous yeoman farmer with his longbow. The English suggest, and to large extent believe that this was a unique and superior aspect of their culture compared to the Continent.

But in most of the Central part of Europe you had many Estates: especially Burghers (subdivided into patricians and craftsmen and everyone else), university students, friars and monks and nuns as distinct from Priests. Fighting orders of brother-knights. Peasant republics like in Switzerland and Frisia and the Tyrol.

The French system competed against the others, and won enough to keep France mostly under French rule (with the exception of the extended English invasion during the 100 Years War)


All of these estates considered the others kind of irrelevant and annoying. The Holy See cared about Vatican politics, corralling the cardinals and archbishops, and perhaps the existence of rival Popes, but Kings and Cities were just fools blocking Gods Will. Kings and Emperors of various Monarchies cared about their own princely families, first and foremost, including rival brothers and uncles and wives and daughters, and saw all others as impediments. The Kings of Hungary, Spain and Portugal saw themselves on the Front Line against the Muslim Infidel, and saw all other monarchs and city-states as traitors who didn't care about the ultimate menace.

City States like Venice, Florence, Lubeck or Bruges saw basically all Kings, Popes and Emperors as fools, dangerous treacherous thieves to be manipulated when possible, appeased when necessary and forcibly blocked when required. The Religious, (monks, friars and nuns) cared about their Orders and those of their rivals, and the theological disputes between them. Universities were also universes unto themselves and thought anyone who couldn't read and write in Latin, (and ideally in Greek and Arabic too) was illiterate trash who just got in the way.

Even Leonardo Da Vinci was considered a semi-literate upstart by the educated Humanists of Italy because he couldn't read Aristotle in the original Greek or Virgil in the original Latin.

The various estates were always rubbing up against each other, some had a much more sophisticated view of the world which did indeed grasp the other perspectives (say, Venice for example) while others, in spite of being very powerful, were extremely provincial in their outlook. Like France.

But to some extent they all imposed their own reality on their neighbors, and all of their points of view were part of the crazy churn which left us the Renaissance - and thereby cannon, muskets, ocean-going ships, some impressive buildings, and some really nice paintings and statues.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

I think it helps to keep in mind whenever you are looking at the Middle Ages (and specifically lest I get pounced on, the 'time of different armor', the post Carolingian, post-Viking Middle Ages aka mid 11th Century onwards)

whenever you are looking at that time, you really have to keep in mind that it's a world of competing realities. For the French high aristocracy - there were only 3 Estates: the Church who did the praying and thinking, the Nobles who did the fighting ostensibly against foreign enemies, and the peasants or serfs.... and in France 95% of the population were commoners, only 2% true nobility, and thus only 2% -5% of the population (5% if you were being generous and included courtiers and priests as human) really mattered. The rest were essentially two-legged livestock.

England also has the Three Estates but gives us the notion of some kind of medieval middle class, mainly in the form of their armed country gentry, the famous yeoman farmer with his longbow. The English suggest, and to large extent believe that this was a unique and superior aspect of their culture compared to the Continent.

But in most of the Central part of Europe you had many Estates: especially Burghers (subdivided into patricians and craftsmen and everyone else), university students, friars and monks and nuns as distinct from Priests. Fighting orders of brother-knights. Peasant republics like in Switzerland and Frisia and the Tyrol.

The French system competed against the others, and won enough to keep France mostly under French rule (with the exception of the extended English invasion during the 100 Years War)


All of these estates considered the others kind of irrelevant and annoying. The Holy See cared about Vatican politics, corralling the cardinals and archbishops, and perhaps the existence of rival Popes, but Kings and Cities were just fools blocking Gods Will. Kings and Emperors of various Monarchies cared about their own princely families, first and foremost, including rival brothers and uncles and wives and daughters, and saw all others as impediments. The Kings of Hungary, Spain and Portugal saw themselves on the Front Line against the Muslim Infidel, and saw all other monarchs and city-states as traitors who didn't care about the ultimate menace.

City States like Venice, Florence, Lubeck or Bruges saw basically all Kings, Popes and Emperors as fools, dangerous treacherous thieves to be manipulated when possible, appeased when necessary and forcibly blocked when required. The Religious, (monks, friars and nuns) cared about their Orders and those of their rivals, and the theological disputes between them. Universities were also universes unto themselves and thought anyone who couldn't read and write in Latin, (and ideally in Greek and Arabic too) was illiterate trash who just got in the way.

Even Leonardo Da Vinci was considered a semi-literate upstart by the educated Humanists of Italy because he couldn't read Aristotle in the original Greek or Virgil in the original Latin.

The various estates were always rubbing up against each other, some had a much more sophisticated view of the world which did indeed grasp the other perspectives (say, Venice for example) while others, in spite of being very powerful, were extremely provincial in their outlook. Like France.

But to some extent they all imposed their own reality on their neighbors, and all of their points of view were part of the crazy churn which left us the Renaissance - and thereby cannon, muskets, ocean-going ships, some impressive buildings, and some really nice paintings and statues.

G


I'd love to see all of that go into the worldbuilding of a fantasy setting. Not necessarily expys of those cultures and worldviews, but the complexity and competition and the way they were all operating on somewhat different axes.

[Clistenes]

So what I'm hearing is, the origins of geeks sitting around, trying to fight battles with math go back much MUCH farther than I realized. :smalltongue:

Well...


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Destreza01.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Ettenhard.gifhttp://www.alcazarsevilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Imagen-para_Conferencia-Carrancistas-624x346.pnghttps://aplumayespada.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/radacc3adrculo.jpghttp://www.thearma.org/essays/walking-fencing/6-destreza-footwork_6.jpghttps://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/67/6f/36676f7a7dc85b483261cf42e59ef0e3.jpg


Of course, the masters who wrote those books weren't mere potato couch geeks, but skilled, experienced fencers, but fencers who didn't follow La Verdadera Destreza tended to dismiss them as geeks...

[Max_Killjoy]

Here's a question...

Given that gunpowder (ie black powder?) was discover by accident, in the context of people looking for longevity elixirs IIRC, it wouldn't appear that it was inevitable that the entrance of gunpowder onto the scene when it historically occurred was inevitable.

So... just how late might have the discovery of gunpowder or something enough like it to make firearms, etc, practical, occurred, if the Chinese alchemists had not stumbled on it when they did?

[Galloglaich]

I'd love to see all of that go into the worldbuilding of a fantasy setting. Not necessarily expys of those cultures and worldviews, but the complexity and competition and the way they were all operating on somewhat different axes.

Yes absolutely, I think it's fascinating.

This is why successful fantasy writers like George RR Martin borrow so heavily from historical perspective, he's basically taking something like the English or French perspective on Late medieval Europe, albiet in simplified form.

If you want to make it really trippy then make the world what they thought it was including all of their susperstitions and strange beliefs, which are a lot wilder than most people know. Even the Christian stuff like the cults of the various saints and all their magic powers, but there was also tons of thinly veiled pagan stuff. Miners in Silesia and the Carpathians were afraid of Kobolds and Mountain trolls, and tried to appease them. The Baltic was haunted by Werewolves. And the Alps were just nuts.


This being the eve of 12th night and the dawn of the years Carnival traditions, here are a few videos to watch to get a sense of just how weird (and persistent) medieval culture really was

https://youtu.be/EZcnVOXW8qA

https://youtu.be/y76yAm5bwB4

https://youtu.be/RVMScMOGnUE

G

[Galloglaich]

Well...


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Destreza01.jpghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Ettenhard.gifhttp://www.alcazarsevilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Imagen-para_Conferencia-Carrancistas-624x346.pnghttps://aplumayespada.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/radacc3adrculo.jpghttp://www.thearma.org/essays/walking-fencing/6-destreza-footwork_6.jpghttps://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/67/6f/36676f7a7dc85b483261cf42e59ef0e3.jpg


Of course, the masters who wrote those books weren't mere potato couch geeks, but skilled, experienced fencers, but fencers who didn't follow La Verdadera Destreza tended to dismiss them as geeks...

Oh trust me, that is still a thing in the modern HEMA revival. People think they have learned 'enough of the basics' and are ready to just do fitness training and spar- they don't want to spend the hours figuring out complicated technical fencing systems let alone train in them enough hours to really learn them ... until somebody kicks their ass in a tournament using those same 'geek' techniques, which has happened many times now. Then everyone scrambles to catch up.

It's an amusing and by now, somewhat predictable cycle.

The other side of it is when the guy who was beating people in his 20's mainly on being some kind of phenomenal athletic specimen, hits 35 and realizes he's starting to slow down, but still wants to win. That's when the 'geometry' gets a second look...

G

[Galloglaich]

Here's a question...

Given that gunpowder (ie black powder?) was discover by accident, in the context of people looking for longevity elixirs IIRC, it wouldn't appear that it was inevitable that the entrance of gunpowder onto the scene when it historically occurred was inevitable.

So... just how late might have the discovery of gunpowder or something enough like it to make firearms, etc, practical, occurred, if the Chinese alchemists had not stumbled on it when they did?

I think we would have had some kind of explosive pyrotechnic weapons. The real 'magic' about gunpowder was and is really the potassium nitrate, and they were starting to figure that out going pretty far back, using it as an ingredient, albiet a rare one, in Latin, Greek, Arabic, and South - Asian / Hindu alchemy back to around the time the Chinese figured out early gunpowder, circa ~ 9th century.

Prior to that, flame weapons like Greek Fire projectors, naptha grenades and other nasty flaming weapons used by the Romans especially in sieges had already made a name for themselves. Given the intense level of activity in alchemical experimentation and all the other stuff they had discovered by say, the 13th Century I do think it was inevitable.

It did remain kind of a niche thing for a long time tough, firearms and gunpowder grenades were kind of specialist siege weapons in China for three centuries when they arrived in Europe in the 13th Century and weren't necessarily all that much better than naptha bombs or crossbows, it was the innovations in Europe, I think (I'm not that well versed on what happened in China) with both firearms and cannon, that suddenly made gunpowder more interesting and therefore triggered this whole industry of trading, refining and then eventually manufacturing potassium nitrate (which at one point was being imported all the way from Iceland of all places, thanks to their numerous volcanoes I think... or maybe it's birds I don't know) which is what ultimately, in conjunction with rapidly improving metalurgy and iron industry, that made the firearms / cannon revolution possible in the 14th Century.

G

[gkathellar]

Here's a question...

Given that gunpowder (ie black powder?) was discover by accident, in the context of people looking for longevity elixirs IIRC, it wouldn't appear that it was inevitable that the entrance of gunpowder onto the scene when it historically occurred was inevitable.

So... just how late might have the discovery of gunpowder or something enough like it to make firearms, etc, practical, occurred, if the Chinese alchemists had not stumbled on it when they did?

I think that's not really possible to estimate - there's not necessarily a reason to discover gunpowder aside from stumbling onto it. And of course a lot of our early knowledge of chemistry comes from alchemy, which was being done all over Eurasia. We don't really have any way to approach the question of how else we would have acquired that knowledge, because that's pretty much the entire way that it happened. Of course that's also the flipside: there's the argument to be made that alchemists searching for immortality is itself inevitable.

[Galloglaich]

I think that's not really possible to estimate - there's not necessarily a reason to discover gunpowder aside from stumbling onto it. And of course a lot of our early knowledge of chemistry comes from alchemy, which was being done all over Eurasia. We don't really have any way to approach the question of how else we would have acquired that knowledge, because that's pretty much the entire way that it happened. Of course that's also the flipside: there's the argument to be made that alchemists searching for immortality is itself inevitable.

One thing worth noting

Chinese alchemy was focused on immortality, famously leading to gunpowder but also traditional Chinese medicine and I believe they are also the longest lived people.

Hindu alchemy was focused on iron, the 'riddle of steel' you might say. And they invened Wootz steel swords and stuff like this iron pillar which has sat in a Tropical climate for 17 centuries without a spot of rust on it

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/QtubIronPillar.JPG/356px-QtubIronPillar.JPG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi

Arab alchemy was mainly focused on Takwin, the creation of artificial life. And while they didn't figure out genetic engineering as far as I know (though there are some wonderful legends of golems and lab grown homonculus), they did figure out how to make automata, or clockwork robots, based on mechanical engineering they hacked from Greek sources. This in turn was later hacked by the Latin Europeans to become the basis of a lot of the mechanical water wheel and windmill powered industry they created in the 12th-13th Centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takwin

http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/images/Al-Jazari4.jpg

http://muslimheritage.com/sites/default/files/automata02.jpg

https://alifatelier.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/allahsautomata05-702x1024.jpg?w=702

Latin European alchemy was mainly focused on Gold, famously - not in the cliche sense of the 'Philosophers Stone' but much more on practical matters like distilling very strong acids to process gold ore and separate lead from silver and so on, and to operate powerful machines that could drain flooded mines and smash rock.

But they all read from each other and they all shared math and mnemonic systems and chemistry. Another example of multiple perspective which did live in the same world.

India adopted Arab / Latin / Greek Aristotelean medicine and still teaches it in Universities there. Arabs and Latin Europeans adopted Hindu numerals. Everyone adapted Chinese gunpowder, and learned from each others math, astronomy, optics, geared clockwork systems and so on.

G

[Storm Bringer]

Yes absolutely, I think it's fascinating.

This is why successful fantasy writers like George RR Martin borrow so heavily from historical perspective, he's basically taking something like the English or French perspective on Late medieval Europe, albiet in simplified form.

If you want to make it really trippy then make the world what they thought it was including all of their susperstitions and strange beliefs, which are a lot wilder than most people know. Even the Christian stuff like the cults of the various saints and all their magic powers, but there was also tons of thinly veiled pagan stuff. Miners in Silesia and the Carpathians were afraid of Kobolds and Mountain trolls, and tried to appease them. The Baltic was haunted by Werewolves. And the Alps were just nuts.


This being the eve of 12th night and the dawn of the years Carnival traditions, here are a few videos to watch to get a sense of just how weird (and persistent) medieval culture really was

https://youtu.be/EZcnVOXW8qA

https://youtu.be/y76yAm5bwB4

https://youtu.be/RVMScMOGnUE

G

i had a similar thought over the Christmas period, watching the Annie Lennox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI) cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (a traditional carol dating back to at least 1830), and the comments are full of people talking about all the "pagan" imagery in the video, and how far she was taking form traditional Christmas vibes.

Thing is, i'm sat their thinking "that's not pagan, that just folk stylings. I've seen much of the same watching morris dancers". it sounded like the sort of thing at the Cayleigh (folk dances) i used to go to with my parents. Clearly, my understanding of "traditional" Christmas is very different, with a greater emphasis on the "rebirth" element and return of green and pleasant times.

but then again, I'm English, and my pre army hometown, Kendal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal), has a school older than the Jamestown colony, and the "new" castle (built in the 12th century), as well as a Motte that once was the site of the "old" castle. so maybe my sense of "normal" is a bit different. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Gnoman]

Here's a question...

Given that gunpowder (ie black powder?) was discover by accident, in the context of people looking for longevity elixirs IIRC, it wouldn't appear that it was inevitable that the entrance of gunpowder onto the scene when it historically occurred was inevitable.

So... just how late might have the discovery of gunpowder or something enough like it to make firearms, etc, practical, occurred, if the Chinese alchemists had not stumbled on it when they did?

One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the Chinese weren't the only ones who had the opportunity to figure it out. There were enough people toying with the right chemicals that the chance of figuring out gunpowder was pretty high.

The other important thing to keep in mind is that pretty much all pre-percussion firearm concepts were tried within a century or so of discovering the first black powder, and failed mostly because other forms of industry and science weren't there to make them practical. For this reason, even a fairly late introduction of gunpowder would have a very real chance of "catching up" to history pretty quickly.

[Clistenes]

Yes absolutely, I think it's fascinating.

This is why successful fantasy writers like George RR Martin borrow so heavily from historical perspective, he's basically taking something like the English or French perspective on Late medieval Europe, albiet in simplified form.

If you want to make it really trippy then make the world what they thought it was including all of their susperstitions and strange beliefs, which are a lot wilder than most people know. Even the Christian stuff like the cults of the various saints and all their magic powers, but there was also tons of thinly veiled pagan stuff. Miners in Silesia and the Carpathians were afraid of Kobolds and Mountain trolls, and tried to appease them. The Baltic was haunted by Werewolves. And the Alps were just nuts.


This being the eve of 12th night and the dawn of the years Carnival traditions, here are a few videos to watch to get a sense of just how weird (and persistent) medieval culture really was

https://youtu.be/EZcnVOXW8qA

https://youtu.be/y76yAm5bwB4

https://youtu.be/RVMScMOGnUE

G

You should google about mythology and folklore in Spain. Lots of pockets of barely concealed pagan renmants surviving through all the Middle Ages well into the Modern Age or even later: Worship of Goddess Diana, Anbotoko Mari and Akerbeltz, belief in reincarnation, shaman-like folk healers living in caves, real people trying to learn wizardry, tales about merfolk, women kidnapped by fairies, ghost processions, ...etc.

A fun bit: Apostle Saint James was supposed to have made a miracle to protect pilgrims... so in the north of Spain, wolves were supposed to eat only bandits and thieves, not honest travellers. Medieval saints didn't joke around...

[Galloglaich]

i had a similar thought over the Christmas period, watching the Annie Lennox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI) cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (a traditional carol dating back to at least 1830), and the comments are full of people talking about all the "pagan" imagery in the video, and how far she was taking form traditional Christmas vibes.

Thing is, i'm sat their thinking "that's not pagan, that just folk stylings. I've seen much of the same watching morris dancers". it sounded like the sort of thing at the Cayleigh (folk dances) i used to go to with my parents. Clearly, my understanding of "traditional" Christmas is very different, with a greater emphasis on the "rebirth" element and return of green and pleasant times.

but then again, I'm English, and my pre army hometown, Kendal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal), has a school older than the Jamestown colony, and the "new" castle (built in the 12th century), as well as a Motte that once was the site of the "old" castle. so maybe my sense of "normal" is a bit different. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Fantastic video. She makes the Victorian world look much more interesting than it usually does on "Masterpiece" doesn't she?

G

[Max_Killjoy]

I think we would have had some kind of explosive pyrotechnic weapons. The real 'magic' about gunpowder was and is really the potassium nitrate, and they were starting to figure that out going pretty far back, using it as an ingredient, albiet a rare one, in Latin, Greek, Arabic, and South - Asian / Hindu alchemy back to around the time the Chinese figured out early gunpowder, circa ~ 9th century.

Prior to that, flame weapons like Greek Fire projectors, naptha grenades and other nasty flaming weapons used by the Romans especially in sieges had already made a name for themselves. Given the intense level of activity in alchemical experimentation and all the other stuff they had discovered by say, the 13th Century I do think it was inevitable.

It did remain kind of a niche thing for a long time tough, firearms and gunpowder grenades were kind of specialist siege weapons in China for three centuries when they arrived in Europe in the 13th Century and weren't necessarily all that much better than naptha bombs or crossbows, it was the innovations in Europe, I think (I'm not that well versed on what happened in China) with both firearms and cannon, that suddenly made gunpowder more interesting and therefore triggered this whole industry of trading, refining and then eventually manufacturing potassium nitrate (which at one point was being imported all the way from Iceland of all places, thanks to their numerous volcanoes I think... or maybe it's birds I don't know) which is what ultimately, in conjunction with rapidly improving metalurgy and iron industry, that made the firearms / cannon revolution possible in the 14th Century.




I think that's not really possible to estimate - there's not necessarily a reason to discover gunpowder aside from stumbling onto it. And of course a lot of our early knowledge of chemistry comes from alchemy, which was being done all over Eurasia. We don't really have any way to approach the question of how else we would have acquired that knowledge, because that's pretty much the entire way that it happened. Of course that's also the flipside: there's the argument to be made that alchemists searching for immortality is itself inevitable.




One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the Chinese weren't the only ones who had the opportunity to figure it out. There were enough people toying with the right chemicals that the chance of figuring out gunpowder was pretty high.

The other important thing to keep in mind is that pretty much all pre-percussion firearm concepts were tried within a century or so of discovering the first black powder, and failed mostly because other forms of industry and science weren't there to make them practical. For this reason, even a fairly late introduction of gunpowder would have a very real chance of "catching up" to history pretty quickly.


Thank you.

I do agree that it was "when?" and not "if?", and that we'd have had firearms eventually.


If I might rephrase slightly, then, when is the latest it would be "reasonable" to put off the discovery and development of gunpowder to?

[Max_Killjoy]

i had a similar thought over the Christmas period, watching the Annie Lennox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI) cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (a traditional carol dating back to at least 1830), and the comments are full of people talking about all the "pagan" imagery in the video, and how far she was taking form traditional Christmas vibes.

Thing is, i'm sat their thinking "that's not pagan, that just folk stylings. I've seen much of the same watching morris dancers". it sounded like the sort of thing at the Cayleigh (folk dances) i used to go to with my parents. Clearly, my understanding of "traditional" Christmas is very different, with a greater emphasis on the "rebirth" element and return of green and pleasant times.

but then again, I'm English, and my pre army hometown, Kendal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal), has a school older than the Jamestown colony, and the "new" castle (built in the 12th century), as well as a Motte that once was the site of the "old" castle. so maybe my sense of "normal" is a bit different. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:


In some ways "folk" has at various times and places been a way of saying "that pagan stuff with more proper veneer".

[PhoenixPhyre]

In my experience, there are still large pockets of mystical thinking/“pagan” (a bad term, but whatever) traditions in lots of places. I remember running into lots of technically Christian but practically pagan (believing and propitiating witches, pagan deities, monsters, etc) people in the Baltics in 2001.

[Kiero]

I'd love to see all of that go into the worldbuilding of a fantasy setting. Not necessarily expys of those cultures and worldviews, but the complexity and competition and the way they were all operating on somewhat different axes.

You've just explained why I find most fantasy a pale, uninteresting shadow compared to history. Researching historical settings is full of rich, interesting details that made-up settings can't match. Plus you're learning real things, not filling your head with fiction.

[Max_Killjoy]

You've just explained why I find most fantasy a pale, uninteresting shadow compared to history. Researching historical settings is full of rich, interesting details that made-up settings can't match. Plus you're learning real things, not filling your head with fiction.


On the flip side, it's why my worldbuilding is so freaking intense and demanding... because I want a "fantasy" world that gives as close to that same feeling of depth and breadth as possible.

[Galloglaich]

You've just explained why I find most fantasy a pale, uninteresting shadow compared to history. Researching historical settings is full of rich, interesting details that made-up settings can't match. Plus you're learning real things, not filling your head with fiction.

Well said. I have kind of a rule - if the author can make his or her fantasy world better or more interesting than the analogous historical period they are using for Frog DNA, then I'll watch. But it has to be good if I'm going to invest the effort. I really don't want to learn 'Klingon'.

People always come back at you with 'Dude it's a show with dragons / zombies / flying turtles' whatever, but hey, if they were all walking around dressed like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Samurai_with_sword.jpg/382px-Samurai_with_sword.jpg

I'd expect the katanas to be sharp and I'll be looking for some Yumi bows.

When I see someone dressed up like a Roman Legionairre i want to see a pilum...

And when I see someone in plate armor on a horse i expect a lance, or I wanna know why.... and I don't want to see people cutting through his armor like it's cardboard. Because then it starts to seem like it IS cardboard spraypainted silver (which it probably is...)

G

[rrgg]

Like I said, if you look at a list of the battles France fought in in the 12th-15th Centuries, they often won with wild cavalry charges.

but the consistent catastrophic disasters they suffered when they lost should have made them adjust more quickly. France had the best aristocratic heavy cavalry in Europe, or close to it, for most of the middle ages. But many other regions also had very good cavalry (Spain, the Teutonic Knights, and Poland notably) and almost every other economically significant part of Europe had learned to field combined-arms armies by the 13th Century and Italian, Spanish, Central and Northern European armies by the 15th Century were extremely sophisticated - featuring cannon, firearms, crossbowmen, pikemen, other heavy infantry, war-wagons and other war-machines, and light and heavy cavalry in just the right combinations. The French by comparison were still heavily leaning toward Feudal style heavy cavalry.



There does seem to be some of that, but French were experimenting with combined arms during the HYW. The Problem was that even with combined arms winning a massed battle on the offensive tended to be very tricky. At Crecy the French had many infantry and famously the Genoese crossbowmen. At Portiers the majority of the French forces attacked on foot with some cavalry support, but that similarly ended in failure. At Agincourt the French plan was to play it cautiously and surround the English to attack from the flank and rear, but when the french stopped for they day and dismounted to eat and rest up before attacking, Henry V caught them off guard by suddenly performing a rapid advance and replanting his archers' stakes within bow range. The French archers were not in a position to respond at the time so the French vanguard decided to charge ahead without them and the rest of the army followed.

The other thing to keep in mind is that much of the fighting during the HYW still took the form of skirmishes or "chevauchee" cavalry raids. For both of these the best troops to use were still typically cavalry, either mounted archers or knights armed with somewhat lighter armor and lancegays, to either attack quickly or respond to enemy raids in time.

After the war ended Heavy cavalry returned to being the main focus of French tactics with the creation of the compagnies d'ordonnance.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well said. I have kind of a rule - if the author can make his or her fantasy world better or more interesting than the analogous historical period they are using for Frog DNA, then I'll watch. But it has to be good if I'm going to invest the effort. I really don't want to learn 'Klingon'.

People always come back at you with 'Dude it's a show with dragons / zombies / flying turtles' whatever, but hey, if they were all walking around dressed like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Samurai_with_sword.jpg/382px-Samurai_with_sword.jpg

I'd expect the katanas to be sharp and I'll be looking for some Yumi bows.

When I see someone dressed up like a Roman Legionairre i want to see a pilum...

And when I see someone in plate armor on a horse i expect a lance, or I wanna know why.... and I don't want to see people cutting through his armor like it's cardboard. Because then it starts to seem like it IS cardboard spraypainted silver (which it probably is...)

G


Yeap.

Don't call them "Spartans" and "Persians" and then show me a battle of leather diapers vs a freakshow.

[gkathellar]

One thing worth noting

Chinese alchemy was focused on immortality, famously leading to gunpowder but also traditional Chinese medicine and I believe they are also the longest lived people.

Hindu alchemy was focused on iron, the 'riddle of steel' you might say. And they invened Wootz steel swords and stuff like this iron pillar which has sat in a Tropical climate for 17 centuries without a spot of rust on it

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/QtubIronPillar.JPG/356px-QtubIronPillar.JPG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi

Arab alchemy was mainly focused on Takwin, the creation of artificial life. And while they didn't figure out genetic engineering as far as I know (though there are some wonderful legends of golems and lab grown homonculus), they did figure out how to make automata, or clockwork robots, based on mechanical engineering they hacked from Greek sources. This in turn was later hacked by the Latin Europeans to become the basis of a lot of the mechanical water wheel and windmill powered industry they created in the 12th-13th Centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takwin

http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/images/Al-Jazari4.jpg

http://muslimheritage.com/sites/default/files/automata02.jpg

https://alifatelier.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/allahsautomata05-702x1024.jpg?w=702

Latin European alchemy was mainly focused on Gold, famously - not in the cliche sense of the 'Philosophers Stone' but much more on practical matters like distilling very strong acids to process gold ore and separate lead from silver and so on, and to operate powerful machines that could drain flooded mines and smash rock.

But they all read from each other and they all shared math and mnemonic systems and chemistry. Another example of multiple perspective which did live in the same world.

India adopted Arab / Latin / Greek Aristotelean medicine and still teaches it in Universities there. Arabs and Latin Europeans adopted Hindu numerals. Everyone adapted Chinese gunpowder, and learned from each others math, astronomy, optics, geared clockwork systems and so on.

G

All of which is very tied up in metaphor and the tradition of self-cultivation. Taoist alchemy in particular tended to make little or no functional distinction between work with chemicals (external alchemy) and "internal alchemy" (meditation and exercise, basically). Some alchemists even believed that their training would allow them to develop an organ that would physically secrete the elixir of immortality. A lot of the association between alchemy and gold can be seen very early in these traditions - Taoist folklore ascribes gold the special property of occupying none or all of the five phases, and gold's resistance to corrosion was seen as either a metaphor for agelessness, or in many cases a literal property to be assimilated.

Likewise in the Mideast and Europe, the dual preoccupations with eternal life and glittery glittery gold are largely inextricable. The word elixir comes from the Arabic "al-iksir," a hypothetical powdered substance that would have been created with the Philosopher's Stone and allowed for the transmutation of substances. And as was the case in China, the Philosopher's Stone was described even in antiquity as a perfect balance of the elements. I have less knowledge of Hindu alchemy, but IIRC it was very influential on the Chinese traditions. Certainly immortality is a common refrain in Hindu and Buddhist literature.

My point is that all of these traditions were interrelated, and were generally motivated by the desire for (a) power over life and death, and (b) riches (i.e. power over life and death :P). Somebody almost certainly would have stumbled on gunpowder, because just about everyone was screwing around trying to get the same things.

[Vinyadan]

I would make a distinction here, depending on what period you mean.

During the late migration era into the Carolingian, French culture was very important.

In the High to Late Middle Ages though it was Italian culture which really dominated. French culture remained important to the English, who people tend to forget, were under a French speaking ruling class well through the High Middle Ages and into the Late.

But France crushed their own mini-Renaissance in the Langedoc region, whence came many of the Romances etc., by joining the Albigensian Crusade. They left their most important cultural centers down there in the South a smoking ruin and turned their main Southern University, the University of Toulouse, into the headquarters of the Inquisition. Even Paris University became reactionary and they tried several times to band Aristotle and Averroes etc. in the 13th Century.


There was an era between Carolingian and the rise of Italy, in which France was a superpower when it came to poetry outside of Latin. So there are the Chanson de Roland (XI cent.), Chrétien de Troyes (XII cent.), Arnaut Daniel, Bertrand de Born, William IX, all of which would have a massive influence on Italian poetry. This had various reasons. Northern Italy was a rich market for French and Provençal performers, both on court and city square levels. The Normans immediately had French-speaking performers come to their court as soon as they conquered Sicily. Frederick II later invited Provençals too, and the birth of Italian literature as it exists was due to the way in which the Sicilians served as an example to Tuscany as they appropriated Provençal matter into their own language.

I believe that Paris had an enormous role in the conservation of Averroes. Much of his work is lost, and only a small part is left in Arabic. Much more is left in Hebraic and Latin, and the Latin versions mostly were translated from Hebraic. I had no idea about the Condemnations, though, and they are especially unexpected to me because of Thomas of Aquin, who discussed these authors, and, while polemizing with Averroes, used Aristotle a lot. Interestingly, some argue that setting Aristotle's physical treatises aside forced Europe to develop a new logic and a new attitude towards empiricism and experimentation.

But there is no doubt that, after Italy got its motor running, France became its disciple, while it previously had been the teacher. This is very evident in the language, with French loans to Italian being extremely abundant in the Middle Ages, but, around the XIV century, suddenly it's French that starts absorbing Italian words (a process that has yet to stop).


by say, the 13th Century I do think it was inevitable.
G

I think that one Latin treatise about alchemy that was believed to be a translation of an Arab IX century work was actually written in Otranto in the XIII century by a Franciscan friar, with info about making various acids (Liber de inventione veritatis). Dating is actually really iffy -- so others say XIV-XVI century. But it's a time when reactions are well known, and they probably would have been interested into stuff that goes boom -- it's the first work from Western Europe that describes how to make nitric acid, for example. Add that potassium nitrate was already known because of its use for charcuterie. However, the earliest versions might have used calcium nitrate instead, and I could find no info about its use in the Middle Ages, outside of gunpowder.


i had a similar thought over the Christmas period, watching the Annie Lennox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI) cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (a traditional carol dating back to at least 1830), and the comments are full of people talking about all the "pagan" imagery in the video, and how far she was taking form traditional Christmas vibes.

Thing is, i'm sat their thinking "that's not pagan, that just folk stylings. I've seen much of the same watching morris dancers". it sounded like the sort of thing at the Cayleigh (folk dances) i used to go to with my parents. Clearly, my understanding of "traditional" Christmas is very different, with a greater emphasis on the "rebirth" element and return of green and pleasant times.

but then again, I'm English, and my pre army hometown, Kendal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal), has a school older than the Jamestown colony, and the "new" castle (built in the 12th century), as well as a Motte that once was the site of the "old" castle. so maybe my sense of "normal" is a bit different. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Anglican priests in England were until fairly recently forbidden to join the populace in any form of Christmas celebration outside the divine service because of this. It was the only thing that was known to be surely Christian.
Tuscans still call Christmas "Ceppo" (=log/stump), because of a ritual way they have/had of burning a huge log during Christmas time.

[rs2excelsior]

The other side of it is when the guy who was beating people in his 20's mainly on being some kind of phenomenal athletic specimen, hits 35 and realizes he's starting to slow down, but still wants to win.

This comment made me think... are there particular categories of melee weapons that especially either take advantage of a wielder's athletic capabilities, or mitigate a lack thereof? What weapon would a particularly strong person choose to best use their strength? What would a skilled but physically weak person use to best make up for that disadvantage? How much does physical strength matter in a battle between two similarly armed, similarly skilled people?

According to common fantasy tropes, the less skilled but hulking combatant ought to have a large axe, hammer, or the like. How much truth is there in that?

[Mike_G]

This comment made me think... are there particular categories of melee weapons that especially either take advantage of a wielder's athletic capabilities, or mitigate a lack thereof? What weapon would a particularly strong person choose to best use their strength? What would a skilled but physically weak person use to best make up for that disadvantage? How much does physical strength matter in a battle between two similarly armed, similarly skilled people?

According to common fantasy tropes, the less skilled but hulking combatant ought to have a large axe, hammer, or the like. How much truth is there in that?

There are good choices for body types and abilities. There are also styles that take advantage of strength or reach or speed.

Obviously strong people can use heavier weapons more easily, and taller people have an easier time with longer weapons. I'm short and people like to think I'd want a longer weapon to reduce my reach deficit, but it doesn't work that way at all. Longer weapons are balanced for longer people, so I much prefer a shorter weapon. I'm gonna need to close distance anyway, so I practice that and opt for getting in close and using a quicker weapon.

This is one reason why I subscribe to the "no perfect sword" philosophy. My perfect sword is probably not your perfect sword.

I used to try to teach my fencing students, don't try to fight tall if you're short, or fight fast if you're slow. If you're short, learn to get to your distance and fight there, if you're slower, be precise and use smaller movements to achieve the same effect. If you have tons of reach, don't try infighting because you throw away your advantage and the short guy will gut you up close. Keep distance and counter or stop thrust into his lunge and it will drive him nuts.

So, yes, I would tell the hulking but clumsy Ogre to use a big axe and not try to out finesse the elf with rapiers.

There a reason jockeys are short and basketball payers are tall

[snowblizz]

You've just explained why I find most fantasy a pale, uninteresting shadow compared to history. Researching historical settings is full of rich, interesting details that made-up settings can't match. Plus you're learning real things, not filling your head with fiction.
In their defence, real life has all of real life to draw from. An author cannot comprehensively cover all aspects because no oen today can be a Renessaince Man. Tolkien was a linguist not an author and his fantasy work s show that. If I wrote fantasy or an RPG it probably would feature economies that worked much better than D&D.



Anglican priests in England were until fairly recently forbidden to join the populace in any form of Christmas celebration outside the divine service because of this. It was the only thing that was known to be surely Christian.
Tuscans still call Christmas "Ceppo" (=log/stump), because of a ritual way they have/had of burning a huge log during Christmas time.
In Scandinavia Christmas is called "Yule" or rather our local renditions of what in English is called yule. People going on about traditions are large idiots. Our "sacred" Christmas ttraditions are a weird amalgam or ancient belives and stuff that's so modern they were invented after some of the people whining about them not being the proper old ones were born. Almost all christian traditions are papered over pagan traditions and occur on times when older festivities did.


In my experience, there are still large pockets of mystical thinking/“pagan” (a bad term, but whatever) traditions in lots of places. I remember running into lots of technically Christian but practically pagan (believing and propitiating witches, pagan deities, monsters, etc) people in the Baltics in 2001.
Like Easter and Christmas. :P
My favourite may be Midsummer, that's real big in Scnadinavia, how the church let this pagan thing go on is beyond me. Though also most of current Midsummer is probably not much older than the 1800s anyway.


i had a similar thought over the Christmas period, watching the Annie Lennox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI) cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (a traditional carol dating back to at least 1830), and the comments are full of people talking about all the "pagan" imagery in the video, and how far she was taking form traditional Christmas vibes.

Thing is, i'm sat their thinking "that's not pagan, that just folk stylings. I've seen much of the same watching morris dancers". it sounded like the sort of thing at the Cayleigh (folk dances) i used to go to with my parents. Clearly, my understanding of "traditional" Christmas is very different, with a greater emphasis on the "rebirth" element and return of green and pleasant times.

but then again, I'm English, and my pre army hometown, Kendal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendal), has a school older than the Jamestown colony, and the "new" castle (built in the 12th century), as well as a Motte that once was the site of the "old" castle. so maybe my sense of "normal" is a bit different. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:
Santa Claus, arguably the biggest part of Xmas for the West is largely based on a Cocal Cola advertisement illsutrated by a Swedish expat in the first half of the 1900s. People trying to drag out the "traditional" [whatever} celebrations are almsot 100% off their rocker and totally uninformed.

One interesting example is I recently learne dmore about is "Lucia celbratiosn" common at leas tin Sweden and Swedish speaking Finalnd. Peopel who charitavly could eb called conservative have been up in arms when the role of Lucia has bene opened to other people than young blonde pretty girls. Ruining this lovely ancient and very important national holiday right? ERm no. First Lucia of course is Catholic saint or some vaguely mentioned person, supposedly from Sicily martyred at some point in the late Roman Empire. The Reformation supposedly did away with saints in the 1500s. Of course the traditions is filled with pagan folk festivities and various slices of older traditions from various centuries, some of them rather shall we say not very holy. The kicker of course is that the whole thing in it's current format was resurrected in the 1920s as magazine's beauty contest. Which kept going and morphed in to more of nationally observed celebration claiming to remembering a probably not authentic Catholci saint whose companions are part pagan ritual infleunces and large part Catholic procession all of which is celberated on the 13th of December, which naturally used to be the winter soltice before the Gregrian calnder was accepted in the 1700s. The utter mish-mash of various older and newer stuff going into this renders any claim of runing proper old traditions by having a Lucia that is not a young, blonde girl rather, shall we say, odd. Since as it is, it's less than a century old really.
And that's just one minor thing before Xmas. Real world is complicated, and the way things always was, is mostly never how they were.

[Zombimode]

Some questions concerning ancient arms:

Peltasts are named after their shield, the pelte, which has a characteristic crescent shape.
What purpose does this shape serve?


Axes. The greeks didn't seem to like them very much, but other people did. There is the characteristic persian "pick-like" axe which seems to be called "Sagaris":
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/Military/persian_axe.gif

What other types of axes would be typical for the 6th to 3rd century BC in mesopotamia, anatolia, the levante and egypt?
And how would they be called?


Spears. There is the hoplite dory ("long spear") and the phalangnite sarrisa ("pike"). Using the same time frame and area as above, are there other types of spears in common use?
From illustrations it appears to me that the Achaemenids employed shorter spears (shorter then both the sarrisa and the dory). How would the be called?


3rd century BC nubian arms. Is there any information on typical nubian weapons, shields and armor in 3rd century BC egypt? Or would they just be drafted and then equiped in hellenistic style?


Celtic longswords. The celtic longsword would eventually evolve into the roman Spatha. But calling a 4th-3rd century celtic longsword a "Spatha" seems wrong to me. Is there a more accurate name for this type of weapon? Preferably in a celtic language or greek.


Is there any club- or mace-like weapon during 6th to 3rd century BC in Greece, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Levante or Egypt?

[Storm Bringer]

Fantastic video. She makes the Victorian world look much more interesting than it usually does on "Masterpiece" doesn't she?

G

what's "masterpiece"? i'm not familiar with it, though i'm guessing its a TV show about history that regularly covers the Victorian period.

Its worth pointing out that the "Victorian Stuffiness" that we usually associate with the Victorians was:

A) an affection, and a ideal as to how people should behave, rather than a reflection of their actual behaviour.

B) it was an affection of the upper classes, rather than the working classes (who were quite happy to be emotional, expressive types)

C) an Affection of the late Victorian era, of the 1880s and 1890s and later, not of the 1830s or the Regency era.

[Kiero]

On the flip side, it's why my worldbuilding is so freaking intense and demanding... because I want a "fantasy" world that gives as close to that same feeling of depth and breadth as possible.

It's why I consider it largely futile; most developers don't seem to understand more than one or two of the important elements to making a credible setting. Worse still when they try to gloss over things with magic or writer fiat.


Well said. I have kind of a rule - if the author can make his or her fantasy world better or more interesting than the analogous historical period they are using for Frog DNA, then I'll watch. But it has to be good if I'm going to invest the effort. I really don't want to learn 'Klingon'.

People always come back at you with 'Dude it's a show with dragons / zombies / flying turtles' whatever, but hey, if they were all walking around dressed like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Samurai_with_sword.jpg/382px-Samurai_with_sword.jpg

I'd expect the katanas to be sharp and I'll be looking for some Yumi bows.

When I see someone dressed up like a Roman Legionairre i want to see a pilum...

And when I see someone in plate armor on a horse i expect a lance, or I wanna know why.... and I don't want to see people cutting through his armor like it's cardboard. Because then it starts to seem like it IS cardboard spraypainted silver (which it probably is...)

G

Agreed, that's why I've completely given up on fantasy nowadays, it's rarely worth the effort to learn yet another new world(s) where their creator has evident gaps in the things they've considered.


In their defence, real life has all of real life to draw from. An author cannot comprehensively cover all aspects because no oen today can be a Renessaince Man. Tolkien was a linguist not an author and his fantasy work s show that. If I wrote fantasy or an RPG it probably would feature economies that worked much better than D&D.

Which as above, is why I think it's a futile endeavour.


Some questions concerning ancient arms:

Peltasts are named after their shield, the pelte, which has a characteristic crescent shape.
What purpose does this shape serve?

They're not necessarily named after their shields. Depending on which source you're reading, there are a variety of interpretations. This is a good article (http://lukeuedasarson.com/Iphikrates1.html) which touches on the definitional issues.

A pelte could also refer to a whole host of relatively small shields (compared to an aspis). Not just the crescent-shaped ones popularised by the Thracians and others.


Axes. The greeks didn't seem to like them very much, but other people did. There is the characteristic persian "pick-like" axe which seems to be called "Sagaris":
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/Military/persian_axe.gif

What other types of axes would be typical for the 6th to 3rd century BC in mesopotamia, anatolia, the levante and egypt?
And how would they be called?

The tabarzin was another horseman's axe (it literally means "saddle axe"), like the sagaris. In the region you're talking about, they were also used by highlanders and country people, but you're right that the Greeks only used axes as tools.

The axe was well-known in ancient Egypt too, the "epsilon axe" saw use alongside the khopesh.

I've seen references to the Carians using two-handed axes, the labrys (the Romans called the same weapon the bipennis). The axe featured in the Roman symbol of authority, the fasces, where an axe was bound with reeds around the shaft. Nubians used a similar weapon in the period too.


Spears. There is the hoplite dory ("long spear") and the phalangnite sarrisa ("pike"). Using the same time frame and area as above, are there other types of spears in common use?
From illustrations it appears to me that the Achaemenids employed shorter spears (shorter then both the sarrisa and the dory). How would the be called?

Lots of other types, though the doru was widely adopted. The longche was a heavy javelin that can also be used as a spear (unlike the akontio, which is far too fragile to use as a melee weapon).

The primary Celtic weapon was the spear, theirs weren't like the doru.

Achaemenid cavalry often used cornelwood javelins as both thrown and melee weapons. The material matters, it was much more robust than the wood Greeks used for their spears. Which is why the Greeks adopted cornelwood to make their pikes and lances, once they encountered it.

The framea, a spear from the Germanic migration period, was another dual-use javelin/spear.


3rd century BC nubian arms. Is there any information on typical nubian weapons, shields and armor in 3rd century BC egypt? Or would they just be drafted and then equiped in hellenistic style?

I've got access to a number of historians, I'd have to ask them, though much of the information for that period is spotty. They're often relying on later stuff. They did adopt Hellenistic equipment when they could afford it, in mercenary service to the (Ptolemaic) Egyptians. But for the most part, they continued to use the same stuff they would otherwise - bows, javelins, spears, axes and clubs. Big buffalo or elephant hide shields. Little armour apart from cavalrymen (who would also have swords).


Celtic longswords. The celtic longsword would eventually evolve into the roman Spatha. But calling a 4th-3rd century celtic longsword a "Spatha" seems wrong to me. Is there a more accurate name for this type of weapon? Preferably in a celtic language or greek.

You're looking for la Tene swords (which are classified by numbers - "la Tene II" for example), but they weren't really longswords by the proper use of the term.


Is there any club- or mace-like weapon during 6th to 3rd century BC in Greece, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Levante or Egypt?

Loads of horseman's maces in Mesopotamia and central Asia, the Parthians and others liked them. You should be able to find Osprey books with decent images of them.

[jojo]

What weapon would a particularly strong person choose to best use their strength? What would a skilled but physically weak person use to best make up for that disadvantage? How much does physical strength matter in a battle between two similarly armed, similarly skilled people?

Physical strength matters much less than most people think.

In my experience physical strength is nice, but it's way less important than stamina is. The majority of my experience is directed toward MMA rather than HEMA or armed Eastern Martial Arts. That being said against someone with equal or similar (Parity) skill level trying to muscle into dominant positions or out of trouble isn't going to work well enough to be worth relying on.

Generally I would suggest that a particularly "strong" person capitalize on their strength by wearing more armor than the other guy is capable of wearing, rather than focusing on any one particular weapon.

A weak but skilled person is likely to be best served by the use of a bow or other ranged weapon - ideally - a gun, which is why firearms are the de facto weapon of war in the modern era.


According to common fantasy tropes, the less skilled but hulking combatant ought to have a large axe, hammer, or the like. How much truth is there in that?

I would say that there is very little truth to this. Weapons are, ultimately, tools and as such are designed to handle specific tasks in the most efficient manner possible.

A "large axe" such as the Daneaxe is good at degrading the defensive properties of a shield wall for instance, not because it's big and heavy (it's actually not) but because axes are great a chopping wood. It's also pretty good at delivering enough force to break bones and cause trauma even if it doesn't "cut through" chainmail armor.
Neither of these properties rely much on "strength" so much as the mechanical properties of the weapon.

A "hammer" on the other hand is great at damaging and degrading plate mail armor. Even if it doesn't get all the way through being hit with it hurts.

Hammers aren't a particularly common weapon prior to the adoption of plate mail armor while axes are not a particularly common weapon following the adoption of plate mail armor. This is again because they rely on mechanical properties of the weapon to do the job.

[Haighus]

From what I understand of dane axes, I don't think they would be very effective in a direct strike on mail. They have remarkably light and thin heads, and appear to have been designed to allow the head to be moved around and changed in direction very quickly. The era they were prevalent in does not feature full mail coverage, and many warriors were not well armoured, so I think they were designed to exploit unarmoured portions of the opponent very rapidly. I reckon a skilled dane axe wielder would be able to reposition the head with impressive speed. I have also seen thoughts they were used in an anti-cavalry role, as well as the aformentioned concept of defeating shield walls.

They fall out of common use as armour coverage improves. Interestingly, it appears improvements in armour were what allowed them to become a frequent battlefield weapon at all- they generally seem to only be used by heavily armoured elite warriors who can afford to stop using their shield whilst they wield the axe.

Detailed article on dane axe construction:
http://sagy.vikingove.cz/two-handed-axes/

[Tobtor]

Agreed, that's why I've completely given up on fantasy nowadays, it's rarely worth the effort to learn yet another new world(s) where their creator has evident gaps in the things they've considered.

Well in fantasy you at least can say "ohh but this is how this world is, however silly it is". "Historic" settings such as 300 or Vikings is in my opinion much worse (by the way "Game of Thrones" is MUCH more historical accurate in clothing, armour and weapons than the "Vikings"....)


The framea, a spear from the Germanic migration period, was another dual-use javelin/spear.

I think the "framea" comes from Tacitus (56-120AD)? At least thats where I have seen it mentioned. This is BEFORE the migration period. Quite alot happens around 200AD. Migration period is later. So the "Framea" is not migration period. Around the time of Tacitus (1st century AD) we do in fact find many smaller "spearheads" around northern Europe (Germany, northern Netherlands and southern Scandinavia etc), which fits the description by Tacitus.

Alot of the words used (such as Framea) simply means "Spear", and using it to make categories is dangerous, but something historians do like to do. One issue is that "size" categories are VERY often hard to accept from an archaological standpoint. For example if we look at a collection of weapons from a Celtic influenced military in roughly 300BC (The Hjortspring bog find), it is very clear that there exists larger "spears" with wide heads which likely cuts very well etc (centre left in picture below), and then more narrow ones, but still long heads (left as well), and also smaller ones (right side of picture, arrow heads in the centre). BUT it is also clear that it is a VERY gradual thing with no clear boundaries.

http://files.guidedanmark.org/files/462/152977_Hjortspringfund-spydspidser-Natmus.jpg?qfix


You're looking for la Tene swords (which are classified by numbers - "la Tene II" for example), but they weren't really longswords by the proper use of the term.

Clarification: by modern use of the term, "longsword" refer to late medieval "hand a half" sword, which is typically used mixed two handed with some strikes one-handed.

And as Kiero correctly implies we don't really have a "historic" word for celtic swords (since they would be known as "swords" in Celtic). I would slightly disagree with your notion that they are predecessors of "spathas" (but the origin of spathas is a widely discussed topic so its best not to dwell on it).

As evident from the sowrd from Lindholmgård in this picture (https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=31559).

The la tene swords can have a very flat tip (especially in the late period), though more pointy version also exists.

Regarding other weapons: as grave goods and in bog sacrifices very few weapons beyond spear/sword (and shields) are found before 200AD. Axes seem not to have been popular, but might have existed. In any case in finds from 200-450AD it is hard to separate tool axes from weapon ones. Later on you get the narrow bladed axes more easily distinguished as weapons.



They fall out of common use as armour coverage improves. Interestingly, it appears improvements in armour were what allowed them to become a frequent battlefield weapon at all- they generally seem to only be used by heavily armoured elite warriors who can afford to stop using their shield whilst they wield the axe.

They really dont. We have plenty of "developed" dane axes into the 13th century, and then they beign to develop into poleaxes/halberds etc.

Picture of danish axes from Grathe Hede battle in 1157:

http://samlinger.natmus.dk/DMR/asset/167961/thumbnail/1280

"Success" of daneaxes against mail is a tricky question. I think it will have some success, especially against many of the lighter mails from the period.

[Zombimode]

Kiero: Thank you :smallsmile:

Some follow-up questions:


Lots of other types, though the doru was widely adopted. The longche was a heavy javelin that can also be used as a spear (unlike the akontio, which is far too fragile to use as a melee weapon).

The primary Celtic weapon was the spear, theirs weren't like the doru.

Achaemenid cavalry often used cornelwood javelins as both thrown and melee weapons. The material matters, it was much more robust than the wood Greeks used for their spears. Which is why the Greeks adopted cornelwood to make their pikes and lances, once they encountered it.

Do you happen to know the words the Achaemenids used for their spears?
Same question for the celtic spears.





I've got access to a number of historians, I'd have to ask them, though much of the information for that period is spotty. They're often relying on later stuff. They did adopt Hellenistic equipment when they could afford it, in mercenary service to the (Ptolemaic) Egyptians. But for the most part, they continued to use the same stuff they would otherwise - bows, javelins, spears, axes and clubs. Big buffalo or elephant hide shields. Little armour apart from cavalrymen (who would also have swords).

Hm, so nothing standing out like the later Shotels.



You're looking for la Tene swords (which are classified by numbers - "la Tene II" for example), but they weren't really longswords by the proper use of the term.

Yeah, those are exactly the swords I'm thinking of :smallsmile:
I just call them "longswords" in conceptional sense to differentiate them from shorter sword types like the Xiphos.
Do you know a contemporary celtic name for these swords? "La Tene" is the modern name of the place these swords are associated with, not the name a 3rd century BC Galatian warrior would use :smallamused:



Loads of horseman's maces in Mesopotamia and central Asia, the Parthians and others liked them. You should be able to find Osprey books with decent images of them.

Yes, I was thinking of Parthian maces, but Parthians are still some centuries off of the period I'm interessted in. Do you think such weapons were used in hellenistic or earlier times?


Oh, and I got some new qestions:

Daggers. I could not find an egyptian or greek expression for "Dagger". But I can't believe there werent any daggers in use before the romans came up with the Pugio.


Bows. For the greeks Archers were "Toxotai". Toxotai from Crete were especially valued. The Achaemenids had a stronger emphasis on archers and used different bows.
But in both cases I could not find how these weapons were actually called.

[Tobtor]

All those marvelous illustrated books, like the copies of Froissart etc., that we use as our windows into battles like Agincourt and Crecy and so on, were made in Free Cities in Flanders, not in France. France did not have the powerful artists guilds, paper-mills, and scriptoria to produce this kind of stuff on the same scale.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/06/5e/a0/065ea011ed25323f859fd5469e6fb4ef--the-hundreds-military-history.jpg

After 1450 when the movable type printing press arrived in Germany, note where they were producing books and where they weren't:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Printing_towns_incunabula.svg/443px-Printing_towns_incunabula.svg.png

As you can see pretty clearly on that map of 'incunabla' - printed books and pamphlets created before 1500, the cultural epicenter was not in the 'West' i.e. England or France as our media would imply, but in the center.

While I agree with G's overall point of a skewed picture of centre-periphery of the medieval period in public mind, I also think he is prone to overstate things.

He is right about the printing press, but that isnt the only way to measure cultural influence, especially as he includeds "high" medieval era as well (and only exclude Carolingian period). For example Gothic architecture from 1200-1400 century (high medieval).

https://jennymerr.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/map-of-cathedrals.jpg

Similarly if we look at the universities. In the 12th century there would only be universities in France and Italy (and late in England), and it is true that as we go on, Italy dominates more and more. But even in the 15th century the north sea coast is NOT the place to be for universities. It is true that by this time Italy dominates, but it is ALSO true that everywhere in Northern and Western Europe (including those important towns G mentions such as Brügge etc) looked to Paris as the main university. Well after the medieval period in the 16-17th century Paris still was held in high regard across northern Europe as the prestigious place to be.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/universities.gif

http://mste.illinois.edu/courses/ci407su02/students/ssilic/Druga_mapa.jpg

As Vinyadan makes a point about France was a main contributor to literature etc well after the Carolingian period. Also In seem as if G tries to make it out as a southern France thing, and true many of the "troubadours" where from this region, but we also have peole like Chrétien de Troyes from Northern France (in general the ones from the northern part do more longer stories with knights of the round table). We have some important contributions into the first half of the 13th century , but it is true that the importance might be said to decrease during the 100-year war.

I agree with Vinyadan that "italian" became the fancy language in France, but French remained a fancy language outside France (at least in Northern Germany and Scandinavia), much more so than lets say Dutch or German languages, which remained a "merchants language", which better than the native ones in Scandinavia (and other places), but still below French.

So while most of France WAS a rural backwater, Paris was still where influences from Italy was translated into Northern Europe (including the Netherlands).

[Yora]

Always makes me thing we should do a medieval culture and society threat in the Science and Tech forum. This is super interesting stuff outside of the military sphere.

[Haighus]

They really dont. We have plenty of "developed" dane axes into the 13th century, and then they beign to develop into poleaxes/halberds etc.

Picture of danish axes from Grathe Hede battle in 1157:

http://samlinger.natmus.dk/DMR/asset/167961/thumbnail/1280

"Success" of daneaxes against mail is a tricky question. I think it will have some success, especially against many of the lighter mails from the period.
This isn't the type of axe I am referring to when I say "dane" axe. Only one of those (maybe two- one head looks damaged) heads looks like a dane axe, and it is true that they were still used at this time. However, the 12th century is about the time they decline in use and evolve into new weapons, and dissapear in the 13th. I am not saying two-handed axes dissapear- as you say we end up with all kinds of developed polearms based on axes.

There is a specific type of axe, referred to as a dane axe in modern use (and some later period sources) to describe a type of axe found across Northern Europe, mainly in the 10th and 11th centuries. The blade profile is a Petersen type M specifically, and it is defined by a wide, curved cutting edge with a very thin body to the blade. The design goes to great lengths to extend the cutting surface whilst remaining as light as possible. These are not features we see in weapons designed to damage through or penetrate armour.

It is probably fair to say it wasn't specifically improved armour coverage that lead to the decline in use. I do think more widespread use of metal armour amongst troops is likely to be a key factor.

Personally, I think the blade on this weapon is quite similar in concept to early falchions (like the Conyers falchion) and would be unsuited to striking mail, but excellent against cloth and flesh.


On a side note, the discussion about culture, and universities and printing and architecture, is very interesting. Good debate to follow. The difference between the spread of architecture and the spread of printing as shown in the maps above is especially striking. I wonder what conditions caused there to be such a difference in the types of technology devoloped in each region.

[Kiero]

Kiero: Thank you :smallsmile:

Some follow-up questions:

Do you happen to know the words the Achaemenids used for their spears?
Same question for the celtic spears.

I'm not sure, but some of them used a distinctive ball-shaped counterweight (which might be fashioned like an apple), contrasting with the secondary blade of the doru. Spearmen are called Nezagdar.

Apparently "sparos" is one of the Gallic words for spear.


Hm, so nothing standing out like the later Shotels.

Not as far as I'm aware (though I claim no particular expertise in that region). They did make use of quilted armour, though it would have been rare outside of higher-status cavalry.


Yeah, those are exactly the swords I'm thinking of :smallsmile:
I just call them "longswords" in conceptional sense to differentiate them from shorter sword types like the Xiphos.
Do you know a contemporary celtic name for these swords? "La Tene" is the modern name of the place these swords are associated with, not the name a 3rd century BC Galatian warrior would use :smallamused:

"cladio" is a Gallic word for sword. Though they were longer than a gladius or xiphos, they were still worn on the right hip.


Yes, I was thinking of Parthian maces, but Parthians are still some centuries off of the period I'm interessted in. Do you think such weapons were used in hellenistic or earlier times?

The Parthians were following the same path from steppe to conquest of the Persian empire that the Persians themselves and the Medes before them had. The Persian aristocracy still aped the militaristic traditions of the steppe to a degree (though the javelin replaced the bow as their primary weapon), and the mace was a horseman's weapon.

The Seleukids had little meaningful impact on the natives for a long time; they levied their cavalry in the same way the Persians had and while there would have been a process of gradual Hellenisation (since that's how you got ahead), natives were still fielding with the same equipment they had for the Persians.


Oh, and I got some new qestions:

Daggers. I could not find an egyptian or greek expression for "Dagger". But I can't believe there werent any daggers in use before the romans came up with the Pugio.

They had daggers, it's a ubiquitous weapon used by everyone throughout time. The Greek word for a knife "machaira" could also be used for a sword, which isn't terribly helpful.


Bows. For the greeks Archers were "Toxotai". Toxotai from Crete were especially valued. The Achaemenids had a stronger emphasis on archers and used different bows.
But in both cases I could not find how these weapons were actually called.

Western bows, including those used by non-Kretan archers, were weak self bows. Slingers were longer-ranged and more powerful than those archers. Persians and steppe peoples used much more powerful composite/recurved bows.

Kamandar, I believe is the Persian word for archer, but again not sure how you get the bow from that.

[Clistenes]

From what I understand of dane axes, I don't think they would be very effective in a direct strike on mail. They have remarkably light and thin heads, and appear to have been designed to allow the head to be moved around and changed in direction very quickly. The era they were prevalent in does not feature full mail coverage, and many warriors were not well armoured, so I think they were designed to exploit unarmoured portions of the opponent very rapidly. I reckon a skilled dane axe wielder would be able to reposition the head with impressive speed. I have also seen thoughts they were used in an anti-cavalry role, as well as the aformentioned concept of defeating shield walls.

They fall out of common use as armour coverage improves. Interestingly, it appears improvements in armour were what allowed them to become a frequent battlefield weapon at all- they generally seem to only be used by heavily armoured elite warriors who can afford to stop using their shield whilst they wield the axe.

Detailed article on dane axe construction:
http://sagy.vikingove.cz/two-handed-axes/

I'm just speculating here, but I would say that an axe would be more effective against mail than against plate. Rigid plate distributes impact force better than flexible mail, and an axe blade wouldn't slide on mail the same way as when hitting solid plate.

What I mean to say, an danish axe would behave like a warhammer or mace when hitting mail, and you could still use it to cut polearm shafts, light shields, horse limbs and exposed bits of enemies' bodies...

[Galloglaich]

Great post Tobtor


While I agree with G's overall point of a skewed picture of centre-periphery of the medieval period in public mind, I also think he is prone to overstate things.

He is right about the printing press, but that isnt the only way to measure cultural influence, For example Gothic architecture from 1200-1400 century (high medieval).

https://jennymerr.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/map-of-cathedrals.jpg



Very true, but your map (I think) shows an epicenter of architectural development actually centered not around Paris, but around those cities in the Low Countries in what later became the Duchy (effectively Kingdom) of Burgundy, overlapping with what is now modern Belgium. As I kept pointing out in my posts on this subject, Flanders and the rest of the Low Countries (home of Ghent, Bruges etc.) were really important cultural and technological epicenters in Europe, second only to Northern Italy.

The real epicenter for all of this of course was the great Abbey at Cluny (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluny_Abbey), birthplace of the Abbots of Cluny, the Benedictines and later what became the Cistercian Order. In that important period you refer too between the Carolingian and the High Medieval period, The Cistercian Order was far and away the single most important influence on the spread of all forms of technology, from architecture to water powered machinery to advanced agricultural techniques (everything from drainage to breeding to crop rotation) and such creature comforts as advanced water systems and even flush toilets.

If you want to understand that period you should really read about the Cistercians a little.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercians

The period in the beginning of, or just before, the High Medieval period did have some very important cultural and economic influences from France - not just Paris University which was indeed very important, but also the Champagne Faires and the Romantic poetry and so on which were discussing (more on that in a minute).

But France was it's own worst enemy and the never-ending wars for control of the Kingdom undermined a lot of this, as the epicenter economically and culturally shifted South and East.



Similarly if we look at the universities. In the 12th century there would only be universities in France and Italy (and late in England)

And the Iberian peninsula, people tend to forget many of the early Universities were in what are now Spain and Portugal - Salamanca (1134), Seville (1254), Coimbra (1290), Valladolid (1293). Only the first was around in the 12th Century but that was one of very few.



, and it is true that as we go on, Italy dominates more and more. But even in the 15th century the north sea coast is NOT the place to be for universities.

No, what dominated on the North / Baltic sea coasts was the Hanseatic League - the mighty (though very loosely organized) trade cartel of a few dozen Free Cities which was strong enough to defeat the King of Denmark and the King of England on more than one occasion, and even faced down the king of France, the Duke of Burgundy and the Holy Roman Emperor when they felt necessary. (Not saying they always won - they lost battles too, but they basically ruled the Baltic and North Sea for ~500 years which is saying something)

In many ways the northern fringe of Europe was culturally a bit simpler than in the south, but they did play a leading role in some important technological developments, notably shipbuilding (the Cogge and the Hulk and so on) windmills (the type which turn with the wind were developed if not invented in that area) and urban water systems (one of the first effective water towers was in Lubeck was able to deliver pressurized water to the whole city)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/WP_Brauerwasserkunst_4.jpg
The two Lubeck water towers,

Here is a cut-away view of a much later on in Liepizg with a cutaway so you can see how the mechanism works.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/f/fe/Schwarze_Wasserkunst.jpg

This in comparison incidentally to Paris which had outgrown it's public water and sewer systems by the 13th Century and was a notoriously filthy place.

But yes the zones all had different characteristics:

The Northern coastline of Europe was the home of the Hansa and the epicenter of Northern European trade.

Flanders and the Low Countries were a trade, culture and manufacturing (economic, artistic and artisanal / technological) epicenter, not an epicenter of philosophy. Their strength was really in their guild halls. But show me the French painters who can rival the Flemish masters? Paris was impressive, but Paris paled compared to Ghent or Bruges by almost every measurable standard except the University.

Aragon / Catalonia were similar to Flanders - cultural and technological centers. It's from there we get the Catalan Forge and the Barcelona Hammer, new ship designs and navigational tools, amazing innovations like the astounding Catalan Grand Atlas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Atlas).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/1375_Atlas_Catalan_Abraham_Cresques.jpg/1280px-1375_Atlas_Catalan_Abraham_Cresques.jpg


Southern Germany and the Rhineland were again trade, manufacturing, cultural and technological zones, whence we get the printing press most famously. But cities like Basel, Strasbourg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Cologne etc. were also centers of tech and cultural genesis. The banks rose there, they had great artists like Holbein, Memling and Durer, they developed steel armor and many innovations in firearms. And of course Cologne, the largest city in Germany, had a mighty University of it's own.

Northern Italy was the strongest in every category. Florence of course was the epicenter but also ultimately Venice became the military powerhouse of the Mediterranean

Bohemia - guns, mining, art, and literature. Etc.



It is true that by this time Italy dominates, but it is ALSO true that everywhere in Northern and Western Europe (including those important towns G mentions such as Brügge etc) looked to Paris as the main university. Well after the medieval period in the 16-17th century Paris still was held in high regard across northern Europe as the prestigious place to be.

All true - though it depended whom and for what. Paris University remained the 'go to' University for the aristocratic ruling elite to groom their sons in much of Europe - even as far away as Russia incidentally. Kind of like Yale University in the US today. It was also known as a great place to study Canon law. But in many ways Bologna, the first ever true University, remained the most important, to learn civil law (specifically late Roman / Byzantine law sources like 'The Digest'). People generally went to Bologna if they could for many subjects. For medicine, the Liberal Arts, Cologne, for the Seven Liberal arts or Optics Perugia or Jageillonian / Krakow, to learn Jewish or Arabic Seville and so on.

I should point out that in spite England being a backwater, Oxford and Cambridge also remained very important Universities as well - particularly among the Franciscans. It's from there we get Roger Bacon, William of Ockham, and Jean Wycliffe among other very important medieval scholars.

Paris undermined it's own credibility by cracking down (or attempting to) on the study of Aristotle / Averroes in the 13th Century - on two different occasions no less, causing much of their student body to flee to dozens of other Universities and found some new ones, which was a common pattern for Universities to wax and wane and lead to the founding of rival schools as students abandon it over some kind of controversy. But Paris is the only one I know of which made such a concerted attempt at censorship and it blew up in their face.


Of course that may be due to one of the main differences between the "Paris Style" University and the Bolognese style, in the Bolognese system the students were in charge. Lunatics running the asylum...

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/universities.gif

Another great map though I guess that one only goes up to 1400 as it left off Rostock, Griefswald, Erfurt, Basel and several others. But it's another nice map.



http://mste.illinois.edu/courses/ci407su02/students/ssilic/Druga_mapa.jpg

Also In seem as if G tries to make it out as a southern France thing, and true many of the "troubadours" where from this region, but we also have peole like Chrétien de Troyes from Northern France

The three main centers of the Romantic literature movement, so to speak, in France were

1) Langedoc
2) Brittany
3) Provence

all effectively 'outside' regions in France and roughly in that order. Langedoc was wiped out, or at least broken by the brutal Albigensian Crusade. Brittany was devastated by the 100 Years War and it's violent precursors. Provence continued to bubble with some of this stuff, but probably helped by it's proximity to Italy (and it was half Italian anyway so ..)

When to comes to literature though you can't really compare the Chanson du Roland to Dante, Petrarch or Boccaccio. The development of vernacular literature (and the use of the 'vulgar' languages beyond just book-keeping and receipts and so on) into a high level rivaling or surpassing anything which had been achieved by the Classical geniuses of Greece and Rome, clearly first happened in Italy, and especially in and around Florence. Not in France. Later this spread into Flanders, parts of Germany,

Public education in City-States and Free Cities
And there are reasons for this. The cultural flowering of Florence 'Fiore' had structural antecedants. For example, Florence was paying for the schooling of 8,000 boys and girls per year in the late 13th Century according to the Nuova Chronica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuova_Cronica) of Giovanni Villani (see here (https://books.google.com/books?id=lqCYBvufYj0C&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=Nuova+Cronica+literacy+florence&source=bl&ots=yDEV1Trheh&sig=qYeth-7TYgdM20Il7Sj0YzeJ0Gs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAz6yl_8PYAhVLwFQKHWLkARsQ6AEINzAC#v=on epage&q=Nuova%20Cronica%20literacy%20florence&f=false) for more on this). That many literate people, along with the largely uninhibited education system of the craft guilds, contributes to cultural and technological genesis.



I agree with Vinyadan that "italian" became the fancy language in France, but French remained a fancy language outside France (at least in Northern Germany and Scandinavia), much more so than lets say Dutch or German languages, which remained a "merchants language", which better than the native ones in Scandinavia (and other places), but still below French.

I'm not sure that is entirely the case, as it varied a great deal from place to place. In the cities, the German dialects were by far the most important. Even ones on the Rhine which were bilingual, the local German dialect took precedence over French. In fact there was a trade language on the Rhine and special dialects within the towns themselves. In Cologne there are still people who speak Kolsch for example.

In the Northern Coasts, Low German was a trade language the same way that High German was for Southern Germany. But the towns also had their own dialects and their own literature. Like in Florence, almost all the big Free Cities in German, Flemish, and Polish, Czech or Prussian (etc.) speaking zones had their own secular grammar schools and educated their children. They had their own unique literature like dirty noire fiction (see here (http://www.medievalists.net/2011/06/erotic-tales-of-medieval-germany/) for more on that)



So while most of France WAS a rural backwater, Paris was still where influences from Italy was translated into Northern Europe (including the Netherlands).

That is an interesting point - but what about Oxford and Cambridge? Or Cologne or Prague or Krakow? I know that Krakow in particular had a very strong link to Bologna and Padua. Or later on, Uppsala? Rostock?


Fencing manuals and armored combat
one other point I wanted to make, without getting deep into it as this post is already way too long- you mentioned before how HEMA and fencing manuals from the late medieval period are influenced by armored combat. It's true in a sense but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion on this.

If you look at the fencing manuals we have found so far from the medieval period, starting with the 1.33 and going to say, 1550, (or you could cut it off earlier like 1500 with similar results) most of what is in these manuals focus on what we call today 'blossfechten' in the German language system, as does almost all of the modern HEMA revival.

Though to prevent injuries we fence with fencing mask and padded coats and hard plastic gloves and so on, the fencing you see in HEMA tournaments is mostly unarmored fencing.

Depending on how you count them (for example, if you count copies or very similar 'hacks' of a given manual as a separate manual) I think only about 20-30% of the material in the fencing manuals we have found so far deals with armored fencing or 'harnischfechten' as they call it in the German language fechtbucher. maybe another 10% is Rossfechten or fighting on horseback, and some of that is in armor and some isn't. The rest is basically unarmored civilian fencing.

As you probably know, harnischfechten or fighting in armor is totally different, the swords are treated kind of like crowbars or short spears, the fight ends up mostly grappling - it's a totally different game.

We kind of assume that the blossfechten or unarmored fencing also includes what you might call semi-armored or partly armored fencing. For example in my own published research I demonstrated that in Italian cities people often wore mail armor under their clothes and frequently carried gauntlets as well, in case of a violent encounter on the street. Even on the battlefield people of often didn't have full armor - infantry for example rarely wore leg armor and most people fenced with open visors.

We are only now beginning to understand the real context of the fencing manuals and it is in part, a mystery, but the fencing involved seems to relate to a broad continuum from the private duel or judicial combat, through various types of low-intensity encounters on the road, in the periferies of court, or on the city streets, through full scale war. Which as you (or somebody) noted, was itself often a matter of small raids and ambuscades as they say.

As for that argument of sword and shield vs. sword and buckler, i was saying something very specific. I think one on one, all things being equal, someone trained in the the I.33 system with sword and buckler usually beats a 'sword and board' guy. I.33 is a very different and to be blunt, strange and counter-intuitive system. It's not regular buckler fighting.

But I can totally understand why HEMA people moving into re-enactment combat would shift back to a big shield because in a group fight, a big shield is better (especially if you don't have full plate armor)

Weapons for the strong or athletic

I can tell this triggered the fancy of a lot of people. I can't speak for warfare in all seasons and all places, in HEMA, the thing that matters is not strength, but quickness and precision. If you are somebody naturally agile and precise, somebody who could juggle say or do acrobatics, you will be well suited physically to HEMA. Being tall and long-limbed helps too, as does endurance, but quickness is really the be all end all with HEMA. Swords aren't that heavy. You do need strength but it's more the strength of a gymnast than of a power-lifter.

The notion of the strong guy swinging the massive hammer or giant axe in combat is a hugely popular fantasy trope, but I suspect it's something that vanishes as you approach reality. Or at least, becomes much rarer.

What I would say is this though - if you are a natural athlete (the emerging HEMA 'type' is like something in between a basketball player and a soccer player maybe) a simple to learn weapon like say, the saber, is a good option. Conversely, other weapons like the rapier or the longsword (or I suspect, the katana) which are harder to learn, seem to have a nearly infinite scope for advancement.

So you do see older people in their 40's and 50's, who can still compete in HEMA and fight well because skill and knowledge / training can kind of cut corners off of time and cause nasty surprises even for quick and athletic opponents. They may not win the biggest tournaments but you do see them in the quarter and semi finals sometimes. I myself am almost 50 years old and I managed to do pretty well in my last longsword tournament (May 2017). Thanks to some evil tricks I learned a long the way.. :smallbiggrin:

If it was say, dussack or saber I'm not sure I could have done as well.

G

[HeadlessMermaid]

Oh, and I got some new qestions:

Daggers. I could not find an egyptian or greek expression for "Dagger". But I can't believe there werent any daggers in use before the romans came up with the Pugio.

Bows. For the greeks Archers were "Toxotai". Toxotai from Crete were especially valued. The Achaemenids had a stronger emphasis on archers and used different bows.
But in both cases I could not find how these weapons were actually called.
Greek for dagger/knife: as Kiero said, machaera (μάχαιρα, plural machaerae) was one common word, though it could also mean sword. Other common words were xiphidion (ξιφίδιον, plural xiphidia), which literally means "little sword" and doris (δορίς, plural doridae), which might mean "little spear", but I'm not sure. Less common, parazonidion (παραζωνίδιον, plural parazonidia), meaning a dagger you wore at the girdle - a side-arm thing, it literally means "little (something) by the belt" - or paraxiphis (παραξιφίς, plural paraxiphidae), knife worn beside the sword. And the Latin pugio was borrowed to Greek at some point and turned to phugion (φουγίων, plural phugiones), though it was even less common.

Note that all those words didn't refer to different types of knife or dagger, they generally mean "thing that cuts and is smaller than a sword". :smalltongue:

For bow: toxon (τόξον, plural toxa) and vios (βιός, plural vioi).

[Haighus]

https://jennymerr.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/map-of-cathedrals.jpgVery true, but your map (I think) shows an epicenter of architectural development actually centered not around Paris, but around those cities in the Low Countries in what later became the Duchy (effectively Kingdom) of Burgundy, overlapping with what is now modern Belgium. As I kept pointing out in my posts on this subject, Flanders and the rest of the Low Countries (home of Ghent, Bruges etc.) were really important cultural and technological epicenters in Europe, second only to Northern Italy.

Excellent post as usual, and lots of really great info in there. However, I can't help but notice that the densest and earliest cluster of gothic architecture on that map is in the region controlled by the French king, and surrounded by Burgundy and the Low countries, at least when compared to this map of Burgundy at the height of it's power under Charles the Bold (from Wikipedia, so not sure of it's ultimate accuracy). There is a lot within the Low countries too, so they are certainly close in that regard, but I think it is unfair to downplay France.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Karte_Haus_Burgund_4_EN.png/800px-Karte_Haus_Burgund_4_EN.png

[Vinyadan]

Well yes, Gothic style was first used for the choir area of St. Denis by abbot Sugerius, and the abbey of St. Denis was strictly bound to the French kings, who were buried there from the X century onwards. Gothic style was first known as French style, "opus francigenum".

[Galloglaich]

In Medieval/Renaissance Spain there was a kind of grey zone between true nobility and mere commoners. Being of noble blood granted you juridic and fiscal privileges, and you could enjoy them without having any title (not even squire or knight). Nobility was so strongly associated to those privileges that, in Castile, the name for commoners was pecheros, literally "tax-payers"

People could access those privileges or at least some of them by getting college degrees, jobs as bureoucrats or administrators, or serving the crown. If your family managed to live that way for several generations, people would eventually forget your low class origins and consider you noble by blood...

In some cases, whole villages, towns, cities or even whole regions could be granted those juridic and fiscal privileges, and their inhabitants would be legally considered hidalgos (nobleborn) even if nobody showed them deference or treated them as nobles...

On the other hand, for a long time caballero (knight) was sinonymous to cavalry soldier (caballero literally means "horseman"). Men could become caballeros without becoming nobility (but becoming a caballero would grant you some degree of social respect, which could in turn help to achieve true nobility). The lowest rank among caballeros were the "brown knight" or "villain knights", who were heavy cavalry who served the cities (rather than a lord) or rich peasants who got some fiscal privilege or something else in exchange for military service as cavalry. Some of them were professional raiders who made a living stealing cattle from the muslim or taking prisioners for their ransom. "Brown knights" weren't considered nobility, but they had were socially ranked above commoners, anyways...

During some period of time, rich men in Castile were required to keep a horse, mail and weapons and fight as heavy cavalry, even if they were commoners; they were called caballeros de fortuna, "knights of wealth". Like "brown knights", they weren't considered true nobility. Very soon, they were allowed to pay a special tax to avoid the fighting...

It seems that in Spain being a trained cavalry soldier was often profitable enough that it was worth meeting the material requirements, and they were enough in demand that kings were willing to show some latitude when handing out knightly ranks...

As for true nobility, they were traditionally divided among powerful landholding nobility (magnates, ricoshombres...etc., meaning "big men", "rich men"... etc.) and mere knights who served them. In Aragon's parlament there even were four states (rich, titled nobility, mere knights, churchmen and commoners) rather than three like in the rest of European parlaments (nobility, churchmen and commoners).

If you were from a knightly family, but you weren't a knight, you were still a hidalgo, "nobleborn" and enjoyed certain privileges. Besides, being soldiers, hidalgos could take a few prestigious jobs like college teachers, scholars, medical doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats... etc., without losing their social rank, but they would be demoted to pecheros ("commoners") if the stopped living like nobles and took less prestigious jobs...

During the XVI century the title of caballero became completely divorced from service as heavy cavalry, and became just an honorary title granted by the king to acknowledge valuable service (kind of like the modern British title of Sir). You couldn't be just a knight, you had to be admitted into one of the Knightly Orders (the king was the head of all knightly orders). The knights were the social rank in between mere hidalgos and titled nobility; all they got from being knights was social recognition: They could wear the sigil of their order on their clothes, and use their own coat of arms in their coach, above their door and in other places...


Just wanted to say in general, I'm really impressed with the quality of the posts lately and the tone of the discussions. We have really come a long way. There is some impressive expertise in this thread now, the Greek / Roman / Classical stuff, pure fencing stuff, Japanese and Chinese, Central and Northern Europe, and this post which is a great example of impressive knowledge on the Iberian peninsula.

Cistenes this is a great and fascinating post. What I notice reading it is that there seems to be a structurally similar but socially different 'fighting layer' in Castillian / Iberian society than what I'm familiar with in in Italy, Flanders, or Central Europe (which were all also unique).

Very briefly without getting heavily into it, I would speculate that the popularity of fighting on the front line had shifted a little bit after some of the developments in the 13th Century, particularly some of the major defeats of aristocratic led heavy cavalry ~ 1300 (Golden Spurs, Bannock-burn, Morgarten etc.) and in the 14th Century, the onset of cannon, firearms, war-wagons, ever more powerful crossbows and pike columns... all contributed to what I think was perceived as an unwelcome random element in war and also, the increasing possibility of being defeated by commoners.

Simultaneously, thanks to the cultural growth of the same time period, court life had become more complex and there were many other ways to gain status besides warfare. Tournaments for example, or even dancing, diplomatic achievements, the planning (as opposed to the active participation in) sieges and battles, and so on.

As a result, fewer true nobles of good families necessarily wanted to achieve glory by the edge of the sword and the tip of the lance.

And while there had always been elements of commoners among the knightly heavy cavalry (including the serf-knights in Germany and elsewhere) in the Late Medieval period various systems seemed to come in place in which a sort of middling, ambitious class of fighters who had some status, but were not exactly settled - yeomen peasants, rural 'not quite noble' gentry, trabants (bodyguards), burghers with militia experience, veteran mercenaries and so on, who were knighted (or 'squired') one way or another.

I suspect these people comprised a lot of the "upper-middle" military fighting class, especially cavalry but also ship captains and castellans and so on, but it seemed to take distinct and unique forms in say, North-Italy (varying by City State or Seignoral / Clerical domain), German-speaking Central Europe, Hungary, Northern Europe, Bohemia, Poland and so on.

By the 16th Century even nations renowned for their heavy cavalry like France and Poland, seem to have settled on a kind of in between class of semi-respectable men for their royal heavy cavalry (the Gendarmes and the Winged Hussars respectively)

I also incidentally, suspect this same demographic in each region overlaps fairly closely with the people who actively practiced the fencing / martial arts systems of the time like the Kunst Des Fechtens.

Anyway just some random thoughts.

G

[Galloglaich]

Excellent post as usual, and lots of really great info in there. However, I can't help but notice that the densest and earliest cluster of gothic architecture on that map is in the region controlled by the French king, and surrounded by Burgundy and the Low countries, at least when compared to this map of Burgundy at the height of it's power under Charles the Bold (from Wikipedia, so not sure of it's ultimate accuracy). There is a lot within the Low countries too, so they are certainly close in that regard, but I think it is unfair to downplay France.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Karte_Haus_Burgund_4_EN.png/800px-Karte_Haus_Burgund_4_EN.png

yeah true, good point - I don't mean to say France never had any cultural influence, they clearly did from Charlemagne through ~1250, and notably with the Gothic Architecture, just that it was waning rapidly in the High Medieval period.

I think the single most impressive Gothic Cathedral - which at 142 meters / 460 feet was the largest man made structure in the world when they finished it, was built by the Free City of Strasbourg (finished in 1439) which was at the time (more or less) German - Rhennish or Alsatian. Anyway German-speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Nuremberg_chronicles_-_ARGENTINA.png/640px-Nuremberg_chronicles_-_ARGENTINA.png

These old maps give some sense of the stupendous scale of it.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Absolute_Strasbourg_1644_Merian_01.jpg/745px-Absolute_Strasbourg_1644_Merian_01.jpg


G

[Haighus]

I'm just speculating here, but I would say that an axe would be more effective against mail than against plate. Rigid plate distributes impact force better and flexible mail, and an axe blade wouldn't slide on mail the same way as when hitting solid plate.

What I mean to say, an danish axe would behave like a warhammer or mace when hitting mail, and you could still use it to cut polearm shafts, light shields, horse limbs and exposed bits of enemies' bodies...

I agree with your assessment of it being better agaisnt mail than plate. I am unsure as to what extent they would behave like a mace because the heads are quite light and the blades are long. Most of them fall into a range of 600-800g (this is an estimate when accounting for material lost through rusting), and the heaviest discovered is less than a kilogram. This isn't including the weight of the handle so the axes would be heavier overall. The handles are relatively short (for a polearm) at 80-120cm, with most being between 100-110cm. They certainly would not behave like a poleaxe or other two handed warhammer type of weapon, as they have a shorter handle, and a much wider blade. I think the length of the blade on a dane axe would cause the force of a blow to be fairly dispersed when hitting mail, even with the curve, and any padding underneath (including thick clothes) would take out a lot of the impact.

[Galloglaich]

Wasn't Dijon a major city for the Duchy of Burgundy at some point? I guess I'm a little confused...

[Yora]

Simultaneously, thanks to the cultural growth of the same time period, court life had become more complex and there were many other ways to gain status besides warfare. Tournaments for example, or even dancing, diplomatic achievements, the planning (as opposed to the active participation in) sieges and battles, and so on.

As a result, fewer true nobles of good families necessarily wanted to achieve glory by the edge of the sword and the tip of the lance.

And while there had always been elements of commoners among the knightly heavy cavalry (including the serf-knights in Germany and elsewhere) in the Late Medieval period various systems seemed to come in place in which a sort of middling, ambitious class of fighters who had some status, but were not exactly settled - yeomen peasants, rural 'not quite noble' gentry, trabants (bodyguards), burghers with militia experience, veteran mercenaries and so on, who were knighted (or 'squired') one way or another.

I suspect these people comprised a lot of the "upper-middle" military fighting class, especially cavalry but also ship captains and castellans and so on, but it seemed to take distinct and unique forms in say, North-Italy (varying by City State or Seignoral / Clerical domain), German-speaking Central Europe, Hungary, Northern Europe, Bohemia, Poland and so on.

By the 16th Century even nations renowned for their heavy cavalry like France and Poland, seem to have settled on a kind of in between class of semi-respectable men for their royal heavy cavalry (the Gendarmes and the Winged Hussars respectively)

Not entirely sure here, and I might be purely speculating based on bad assumptions, but I frequently see it described that with the ending phase of the middle ages, technological progress as we know it today really started to set of. Which is why we make thedistinction between the middle ages and modernity around this time. If I am not mistaken, around this time armies get larger and wars covering larger areas again, as it had already been in antiquity. With increased complexity, warfare and management have to shift from an art that can be learned on the job to a science that requires formal education. And you simply can not afford to go into a war with your troops commanded by landowners when the enemy army is lead by professional logistic experts and siege engineers. Aristocracy, by nature, is a very small fraction of the entire population. It's a very limited pool of possible recruits. If you need the very best men for the higher positions that you can possibly get, you have to cast your nets wider. And if needed be, you hire and equip someone to do the jobs that you can't all adequately fill yourself.
With Germany and Italy, you have the additional factor of very small principalities where the pool for potential candidates with the right talents would be even smaller.

[Haighus]

Wasn't Dijon a major city for the Duchy of Burgundy at some point? I guess I'm a little confused...

It looks to be in the middle of the true Duchy of Burgundy (not the other land holdings of the Dukes of Burgundy), so it appears so. I'm not sure what is confusing, unless you are referring to Vinyadan's post about St Denis?

[Galloglaich]

Not entirely sure here, and I might be purely speculating based on bad assumptions, but I frequently see it described that with the ending phase of the middle ages, technological progress as we know it today really started to set of. Which is why we make thedistinction between the middle ages and modernity around this time. If I am not mistaken, around this time armies get larger and wars covering larger areas again, as it had already been in antiquity. With increased complexity, warfare and management have to shift from an art that can be learned on the job to a science that requires formal education. And you simply can not afford to go into a war with your troops commanded by landowners when the enemy army is lead by professional logistic experts and siege engineers. Aristocracy, by nature, is a very small fraction of the entire population. It's a very limited pool of possible recruits. If you need the very best men for the higher positions that you can possibly get, you have to cast your nets wider. And if needed be, you hire and equip someone to do the jobs that you can't all adequately fill yourself.
With Germany and Italy, you have the additional factor of very small principalities where the pool for potential candidates with the right talents would be even smaller.

Yeah I'm not sure if you are talking about the shift from High to Late Medieval or Late Medieval to Early modern, but that is almost the diametric opposite of how i see the latter.

Warfare definitely got more complex throughout the 12th - 15th Centuries, I think peaking in many ways in the 15th or early 16th, but after that it really started getting much simpler. 17th Century pike and shot warfare is much less complex than the kind of battles you see in the Italian Wars or the Burgundian Wars or the Hussite Wars or the wars of the Black Army.

Whereas elite infantry including pike columns in the Burgundian Wars routinely performed complex flanking maneuvers, reacted almost instantaneously to enemy contact and retreated in order under fire and so on, and you saw a very wide range of troop types. Light, medium and heavy cavalry; light and heavy-armed scouts; skirmishers armed with javelins and darts, armed with crossbows, armed with two-handed swords and halberds, armed with arquebus or musket; rodoleros, heavy and light pikemen, heavy and light halberdiers. All kinds of special war machines ranging from war-wagons and war-mantlets to wheeled volley guns with 200 barrels and a hundred different types of cannon ranging from tiny trestle guns and breach-loading howitzers to long range serpentines and bombards. Excellent tempered steel armor was within the financial reach of most basic soldiers - to distinguish themselves Aristocrats had theirs gilded or etched in silver.


These are from the 1450's -1460's

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/19/b6/2c/19b62c399ade08365134a5635cc634de--history-books-duo.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d6/72/d4/d672d465f90cd653013136b084bbcaea--bern-military-history.jpg

https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4/259554014.50/0_115543_1340b04a_XXL.jpg

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fW9WOHe4hYs/V8wRtOm2zbI/AAAAAAAADgI/PyFqHdWSReUIVApMK-7mxwCNmlps3hVVACEw/s1600/maximilian%2Borgan%2Bgun.jpg

https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/16122/259554014.50/0_115546_b12687f2_XXL.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Philipp_M%C3%B6nch_-_Kriegsbuch_-_cod._pal._germ._126_-_070.jpg/564px-Philipp_M%C3%B6nch_-_Kriegsbuch_-_cod._pal._germ._126_-_070.jpg

These won't embed but are worth a look -from the Ludwig von Eyb Kriegsbook, 1508

http://digital.bib-bvb.de/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1515284419437~232

http://digital.bib-bvb.de/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1515284446165~733

http://digital.bib-bvb.de/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1515284457211~136

by the 30 Years War most infantry, especially pike columns, were static. There were only a few distinct types of cavalry and infantry broke down basically into pikemen and gunners (arquebus / caliver vs. musket). There were fewer types of cannon and far fewer breach loaders (except on ships and in fortifications, basically). Fewer troops wore armor and those who did mostly wore crude iron armor that weighed so much it was a major hindrance.

Of course technology advanced, but the larger armies of the 17th Century seemed to use simpler tactics and simpler, cheaper kit, for the most part.

By comparison armies of the Late Medieval period were small, expensive and hard to control. But quite effective - look at how the comparatively tiny Black Army fended off the might of the Ottoman Empire.


I don't think the changes you see from medieval to Early Modern are the inevitable result of changes in technology and the Art of War, to the contrary I think they are the result of massive political and economic changes resulting from the opening of the Atlantic and Pacific, the establishment of chattel-slavery based agriculture in the Caribbean and American Continent, and the wars of the religion in Europe.

In terms of military organization essentially a shift from skilled but chaotic to less skilled but more controllable.

G

[Galloglaich]

It looks to be in the middle of the true Duchy of Burgundy (not the other land holdings of the Dukes of Burgundy), so it appears so. I'm not sure what is confusing, unless you are referring to Vinyadan's post about St Denis?

I think I was remembering a slightly more continuous border like you see here in 1470:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Europe_in_1470.PNG/553px-Europe_in_1470.PNG

which overlaps a little bit better in the way I was remembering

https://jennymerr.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/map-of-cathedrals.jpg

of course borders shifted constantly with the wars in the 14th-15th Century

G

[Galloglaich]

By the way, 15th Century Kriegsbucher (war manuals) are always full of wonderfully bizarre kit. This is my new favorite

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Philipp_M%C3%B6nch_-_Kriegsbuch_-_cod._pal._germ._126_-_079.jpg

[Max_Killjoy]

It also sounds like quantity overtook quality for a number of reasons, perhaps greater population allowing larger armies to be conscripted in place of smaller professional / well-trained forces, which overlaps with increasingly effective firearms?

[Galloglaich]

It also sounds like quantity overtook quality for a number of reasons, perhaps greater population allowing larger armies to be conscripted in place of smaller professional / well-trained forces, which overlaps with increasingly effective firearms?

I think increasingly simple to use firearms - especially your basic matchlock, meant that unskilled (or much less skilled) labor could be used and still be dangerous. Just a wild guess here but I suspect ten thousand peasants with matchlock muskets probably cost the same in 1620 as 2,000 trained marksmen did in 1520, and were a lot less likely to just march away or go on the rampage if you ran out of money.

Ten thousand pikemen in 1620 may not have had the ability to maneuver on the field the way landknechts or Swiss or Bohemian armies of 1520 could, but they probably cost an even tinier fraction to feed, pay and equip and were still capable of protecting your cannon from cavalry.

I think for Monarchs like the King of France, it made sense to use armies with these kinds of troops - unskilled labor caused a lot less trouble and allowed for economies of scale. Medieval armies could be very effective even in quite small numbers, but from the point of view of a Monarch they could be a nightmare in terms of command and control.

G

[Clistenes]

Just wanted to say in general, I'm really impressed with the quality of the posts lately and the tone of the discussions. We have really come a long way. There is some impressive expertise in this thread now, the Greek / Roman / Classical stuff, pure fencing stuff, Japanese and Chinese, Central and Northern Europe, and this post which is a great example of impressive knowledge on the Iberian peninsula.

Cistenes this is a great and fascinating post. What I notice reading it is that there seems to be a structurally similar but socially different 'fighting layer' in Castillian / Iberian society than what I'm familiar with in in Italy, Flanders, or Central Europe (which were all also unique).

Very briefly without getting heavily into it, I would speculate that the popularity of fighting on the front line had shifted a little bit after some of the developments in the 13th Century, particularly some of the major defeats of aristocratic led heavy cavalry ~ 1300 (Golden Spurs, Bannock-burn, Morgarten etc.) and in the 14th Century, the onset of cannon, firearms, war-wagons, ever more powerful crossbows and pike columns... all contributed to what I think was perceived as an unwelcome random element in war and also, the increasing possibility of being defeated by commoners.

Simultaneously, thanks to the cultural growth of the same time period, court life had become more complex and there were many other ways to gain status besides warfare. Tournaments for example, or even dancing, diplomatic achievements, the planning (as opposed to the active participation in) sieges and battles, and so on.

As a result, fewer true nobles of good families necessarily wanted to achieve glory by the edge of the sword and the tip of the lance.

And while there had always been elements of commoners among the knightly heavy cavalry (including the serf-knights in Germany and elsewhere) in the Late Medieval period various systems seemed to come in place in which a sort of middling, ambitious class of fighters who had some status, but were not exactly settled - yeomen peasants, rural 'not quite noble' gentry, trabants (bodyguards), burghers with militia experience, veteran mercenaries and so on, who were knighted (or 'squired') one way or another.

I suspect these people comprised a lot of the "upper-middle" military fighting class, especially cavalry but also ship captains and castellans and so on, but it seemed to take distinct and unique forms in say, North-Italy (varying by City State or Seignoral / Clerical domain), German-speaking Central Europe, Hungary, Northern Europe, Bohemia, Poland and so on.

By the 16th Century even nations renowned for their heavy cavalry like France and Poland, seem to have settled on a kind of in between class of semi-respectable men for their royal heavy cavalry (the Gendarmes and the Winged Hussars respectively)

I also incidentally, suspect this same demographic in each region overlaps fairly closely with the people who actively practiced the fencing / martial arts systems of the time like the Kunst Des Fechtens.

Anyway just some random thoughts.

G

Spanish society was similar in some ways to other European countries', but it had some differences due to its history.

First of all, you have the take into account the development of the frontier society in the borders between the Muslim and Christian kingdoms. If you travel across Andalusia, almost all villages and towns are the same: a tower or castle (sometimes an hermitage) on top of a hill, surrounded by a wall, and a village at the feet of the hill. The wall was called an albacara, and the peasants took refuge there with their cattle, money and valuables when the village was raided.

Raiding for cattle, money, slaves, ransom and even wives was a way of life. Sometimes the muslims raided your village, sometimes you raided theirs. There is an old poem about christian knight who kidnapped a muslim girl, intending to make her his wife, only to realize, upon arriving home, that she was his younger sister, which the muslims had kidnapped during a raid several years before (awkward...).

Of course that environment encouraged commoners in frontier settlements to learn to fight, both to defend themselves and to raid enemy lands... You may have read about the famous Almogavars: Before becoming mercenaries, they were common-born shepherds who became raiders and explorers (Alfonso X of Castile gave knighty social rank to the leaders (adalids) of his almogavars, and made them vassals of the crown; adalids always had to start their career from the bottom; an adalid couldn’t just pass his rank down to a child).

Some of those settlements had their own local lord, but others were vassals to the king, to a knightly order or to a powerful noble who lived elsewhere. Villages and towns founded by the king were considered direct vassals of the crown (as a collective), and their inhabitants were villanos, free peasants (as in, not serfs). In exchange for their freedoms, they had to keep their own militias, including caballeros villanos, the “brown knights” or “villain knights” I wrote about.

A class of village and town-dwelling warriors emerged, above mere commoners, but not quite nobles. Over time, they became a sort of warlike urban middle class/low nobility. By the XIV they had become completely assimilated into the low nobility, and a new generation of non-noble knights, the “knights of wealth” (rich commoners who were required by law to keep knightly equipment) was created.

In most of Spain that urban low nobility came to control most of the villages, cities and towns, pushing down artisans, and avoiding the creation of a successful, powerful burgher class. They hogged administrative posts, bureocratic jobs, magistratures...etc. for themselves, and led cities' and towns' politic life. When historical sources mention that cities and towns supported one pretender or another, or that a city rebelled against a king or that they sent troops to war, or representatives to the parlament, that urban aristocracy were the ones taking the lead...

Due to their origins, that urban low nobility didn't identify as merchants, artisans, guildsmen or whatever... they saw themselves as nobility. They owned land, and they traded when they could, but they self-identified as hidalgos.

Also, bankers, merchants and many artisans were looked upon with suspicion (because those jobs used to be dominated by the Jew minority), so they had trouble becoming city leaders, unless they ditched their jobs and took more respectable professions...

Respectable commoners who accumulated wealth aimed to join the hidalgo class. Getting college degrees and jobs as magistrates or bureaucrats they got to be acknowledged as "honourable people", and over several generations, as hidalgos. Sometimes, rich people could just buy hidalgos social rank from the king.

That class defended their own interests, which weren't those of peasants, but they weren't the same of titled nobility either. In Aragon, the Courts (Parlaments) had four states: Knights were seen as separate state from high nobility.

During the sucession wars and aristocratic rebellions of the Late Middle Ages those urban (I call them "urban", but they lived in villages and towns that often were tiny rural settlements by our modern standards) formed their own armies, called "Hermandades" (Brotherhoods) to protect their settlements against the feudal armies of the high aristocracy, and the Brotherhoods became so powerful that they managed to threaten the power of kings and high nobility. However, they tended to align themselves with a princely faction or another rather than work together to build their own power, so they were reined by the kings once civil wars stopped... During the Catholic Kings' reign, the many Brotherhoods were unified under royal command and reformed into Castile's rural police, the Holy Brotherhood.

At the same time, Spanish society was, during long periods, a caste society of sorts, with Christians, Muslims and Jews living side by side without mixing with each other. Kings and nobles usually didn't want to exterminate the conquered Muslims (and Jews), who were useful workers, but didn't want to live surrounded by many of them, so they often pushed them out of cities and of the best lands around them and into the worst, more faraway lands, or into the mountains. On the other hand, they often kept around those who were useful to them, like Valencian horticulturists, Andalusian masons and builders, Jew scholars, accountants, bankers, merchants and physicians, and all kinds of artisans (shoemakers, leatherworkers, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, weavers, silkmakers...etc.). The upper levels of Muslim and Jew society could even join upper Christian society, if they converted: The dukes of Medina Sidonia are descended from a muslim noble family that converted to Christianism, and rabbi Selemoh-Ha Leví, became the bishop Pablo de Santa María after being forcefully converted (his son Alfonso became a bishop too...).

So even (old blood) Christian commoners felt somehow like nobility, because they were a part of the conquering race, rather than of the conquered people. They identified more with Christian knights and hidalgos than with their Muslim or Jew neighbours, or with “new blood” Christians of Jew or Muslim ancestry (people of Muslim ancestry were accepted more easily and more quickly than those of Jew ancestry, because there were so many Muslims that everybody had some Muslim ancestors...). They knew that (most) nobles were descended from mere peasants who had distinguished themselves in war, so they saw the gap between nobles and old blood Catholics as less important than the one between old blood and new blood Catholics…

They even showed contempt towards high-class people who were known to be descended from Jews or Muslims; that contempt was one of the factors that provoked the creation of the Spanish Inquisition and the Laws of Blood Purity (“Blood Purity” technically wasn’t based on race, but on the honour of your ancestors; the longest time your family had been good, devoted Christians, the “cleaner” was your blood, hence black Ethiopians, who had been Christians for centuries, had “pure blood”, but white Jews didn’t… ); the Catholic Crown hoped to rein on those social tensions and use the Inquisition and he laws of Blood Purity as tools to strengthen their own control over society (by being able to socially and politically destroy their enemies; they were quite willing to ignore the Jew ancestry of their own supporters…).

Sancho Panza (an old blood commoner) told his master Alonso Quijano (an hidalgo) that his own blood was as good as that of a count, because he was a good Christian from a good old Christian family, and Alonso Quijano didn’t punish him for his insolence, but rather agreed with him…

In another chapter of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza dared to contradict a friendly duke who was hosting them, and told him to his face that important people should spend less time hunting and more time tending their duties… Sancho Panza shows an enormous amount of confidence for an uneducated, poor, lowborn commoner....

Spaniards noticed the pronounced social gap between French commoners and French nobility, and considered it a flaw of French society (of course, they put the blame on French commoners for not being honourable enough).

[Galloglaich]

Spanish society was similar in some ways to other European countries', but it had some differences due to its history.
.

Fascinating post as usual, thanks.

The Almogavars are fascinating on a technical level, since in spite of being light infantry armed mainly with spears and javelins and not too much armor, they were capable of defeating Latin knights and Muslim cavalry too. Tough as nails. What's the motto? Desperta Ferro!,Aur Aur! The Iron Awakes!

I hear Catalans still aren't welcome in Greece or the Balkans due to the depradations of the Catalan Grand Company.

Another interesting point you touch on is the many military orders in Spain / Iberia. Much more than in most other places.


In many respects though, for example the raiding and the constant risks of being on the frontier, it's very similar to the Baltic zone i did my book on. More variegated there perhaps because in the Baltic you have Muslim Tartars and other Steppe nomads but also Pagan Lithuanians, Russians, Czech heretics and all sorts of others so the threats are very multi-faceted.

Iberia of course was quite complex with all the mini-kingdoms.

The big difference, or one big difference seems to be how urbanization seems to have been thoroughly cowed by the gentry in Spain whereas in the Baltic many of the towns - Danzig, Riga, Novgorod, Krakow, Wroclaw and Prague to name a few, seem to have remained Free for a long time and retained that warlike independence and distinct burgher culture.

was there something different about Aragon / and the Catalan areas regarding the urban settlements, like Barcelona, Valencia etc., ? There seems to be a lot of technical innovation which comes out of that region in the 13th - 14th Century though it tapers off in the 15th.

G

[Clistenes]

Fascinating post as usual, thanks.

The Almogavars are fascinating on a technical level, since in spite of being light infantry armed mainly with spears and javelins and not too much armor, they were capable of defeating Latin knights and Muslim cavalry too. Tough as nails. What's the motto? Desperta Ferro!,Aur Aur! The Iron Awakes!

I hear Catalans still aren't welcome in Greece or the Balkans due to the depradations of the Catalan Grand Company.

Another interesting point you touch on is the many military orders in Spain / Iberia. Much more than in most other places.


In many respects though, for example the raiding and the constant risks of being on the frontier, it's very similar to the Baltic zone i did my book on. More variegated there perhaps because in the Baltic you have Muslim Tartars and other Steppe nomads but also Pagan Lithuanians, Russians, Czech heretics and all sorts of others so the threats are very multi-faceted.

Iberia of course was quite complex with all the mini-kingdoms.

The big difference, or one big difference seems to be how urbanization seems to have been thoroughly cowed by the gentry in Spain whereas in the Baltic many of the towns - Danzig, Riga, Novgorod, Krakow, Wroclaw and Prague to name a few, seem to have remained Free for a long time and retained that warlike independence and distinct burgher culture.

was there something different about Aragon / and the Catalan areas regarding the urban settlements, like Barcelona, Valencia etc., ? There seems to be a lot of technical innovation which comes out of that region in the 13th - 14th Century though it tapers off in the 15th.

G

The Aragonese kings were weaker than their Castilian counterparts. They went through a period of nasty civil wars and aristocratic revolts, during the Late Middle Ages, but while the Castilian kings kept fighting until getting the upper hand, the Aragonese kings chose to focus in the expansion of their Mediterranean empire, and ceded more power to nobility... Aragonese cities and territories were more autonomous than Castilian ones, their courts were more independent from the crown, and it was harder to raise taxes...

Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia were in fact three different territories with their own history and with separate parlaments. Their societies were also quite different...

Aragon started as a county that broke from the kingdom of Navarre with the help of the Pope, Catalonia started as the Frankish Marca Hispanica, and later broke in small independent counties until being reunited under the crown of Aragon thanks to the marriage of the Count of Barcelona and the Queen of Aragon.

Valencia was a muslim kingdom which was conquered by the Aragonese kingdom relatively late...

Barcelona was a populous, rich merchant city, but the kingdom of Aragon, Lleida and Girona were quite thinly populated and were quite rural. Even today, 6 out of 7,5 million inhabitants of Catalonia live in Barcelona, Tarragona, and the strip of coast in between both cities. As for Aragon, it has just 1,3 million inhabitants...

Valencia's agriculture is more productive than Aragon's, and it is quite more populous, but it has never been a trading powerhouse like Barcelona, save during the civil wars of the XV-XVI centuries, which badly damaged Barcelona's economy, leaving Valencia relatively intact...

It seems that, overall, low nobility was more influential under the Aragonese Crown than it was in Castile, probably because there weren't such powerful aristocratic great houses as in Castile... the power was more distributed. Their Courts (parlaments) had four estates (High Nobility, Knights, Church and Commoners).

Aragon had a society a lot like that of Castile. Barcelona, on the other hand, had a powerful merchant bourgeoisie, well connected and very influenced by their Italian counterparts and role models. It seems that is was more normal for their nobility to engage in trade than in Castile (normal, taking into account the amount of money that could be made that way).

The social class of non-noble educated, rich commoners, "gentes honradas" was bigger under the Aragonese Crown than in Castile, but, on the other hand, it seems their low nobility (hidalgos) was smaller... maybe because the existing knightly families (wich held more influence than their Castilian counterparts) resisted the crown giving noble status to their "lessers"?

The Aragonese nobility supported the conquest of Valencia, but resisted the Mediterranean expansion; they got lands close to their own from the conquest of Valencia, but the conquest of Majorca, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples...etc., meant they were called to fight as feudal vassals to faraway lands, and that the cities were asked for money.

Barcelona's bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about Mediterranean expansion, and they took the opportunity to expand their trade net. They supported the mediterranean campaigns of James the Conqueror and of his son Peter II of Aragon, and they supported Ferdinand I against the nobles.

Mediterranean expansion was both a cause and a solution for Aragonese kings' woes: They got lands, booty, they could distribute lands to their loyal vassals, get the support of Barcelona's merchant bourgeoisie, and had an excuse to amass armies loyal to them.

On the other hand, the demand of money and manpower angered their vassals.

In the end, they ceded parcels of power to their vassals in exchange for being allowed to keep their Mediterranean conquests going on...

Valencia benefited from the situation. Burguers from both Aragon and Catalonia went there escaping the civil wars, and they turned Valencia into the center of the Aragonese Crown's Mediterranean trade net...

[LordEntrails]

For those of you who haven't seen one of these time lapse maps of Europe, you'll probably find them very interesting. Thought given the discussion upthread some of you might enjoy.

3000BC - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53bmKYXliA
1000AD - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1i1e6h
See also; http://www.openculture.com/2016/10/the-history-of-europe-5000-years-animated-in-a-timelapse-map.html

[Galloglaich]

The Aragonese kings were weaker than their Castilian counterparts. They went through a period of nasty civil wars and aristocratic revolts, during the Late Middle Ages, but while the Castilian kings kept fighting until getting the upper hand, the Aragonese kings chose to focus in the expansion of their Mediterranean empire, and ceded more power to nobility... Aragonese cities and territories were more autonomous than Castilian ones, their courts were more independent from the crown, and it was harder to raise taxes...

Fascinating, thank you. That fits with my data really well - Barcelona in particular keeps showing up as an influential city, almost like a Free City or a City-State, and a major center of innovation, though then they seem to fade a bit ~ 1400. I found this baffling since the Spanish monarchies always seemed so strong and authoritarian.

So I guess with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and the end of the reconquista / unification of Spain, Barcelona got reigned in and lost her independence, or was that before? You said something about civil wars?

Was Barcelona using a lot of Almagovar mercenaries, Castillian style infantry and cavalry or did they have their own distinct type of troops?

Did they have any unique types of ships that you know of?

What about the revolt of the comuneros can you summarize that? Ate there any aspects of that story that typically get left out of the popular histories?

G

[Clistenes]

Fascinating, thank you. That fits with my data really well - Barcelona in particular keeps showing up as an influential city, almost like a Free City or a City-State, and a major center of innovation, though then they seem to fade a bit ~ 1400. I found this baffling since the Spanish monarchies always seemed so strong and authoritarian.

So I guess with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and the end of the reconquista / unification of Spain, Barcelona got reigned in and lost her independence, or was that before? You said something about civil wars?

Ferdinand and Isabella didn't rein in Barcelona's independence, and didn't need to. Barcelona's bourgoise were supporters of the Aragonese crown, and hence, of Ferdinand. Isabella lent Ferdinand many troops for his italian campaigns, which was good for Barcelona (more control over Italy meant more Mediterranean trade for Valencia and Barcelona), so they liked her too...

The civil wars were sucession wars for the Aragonese crown and aristocratic rebellions by aragonese nobility. It was quite a mess. In the end, a Castilian prince, Ferdinand of Trastamara, became the king of Aragon with the support of Barcelona's bourgoise. That Ferdinand I of Aragon was the great-grandfather of Ferdinand the Catholic, the one who married Isabella.

Barcelona was badly affected by those civil wars, and many merchants and artisans flew to Valencia, which took the economic lead from Barcelona.

Later, the Portuguese explorations, the discovery of America, Ottoman aggresion, the loss of power of the Italian merchant city-states, the Italian Wars...etc., caused a reduction of Mediterranean trade in favour of Atlantic trade, and both Valencia and Barcelona were badly striken... why would a Flemish or Venetian trader go to Barcelona, when American silver and Chinese silk and porcelain went to Seville, and Asian spices went to Lisboa?

But Barcelona and most of the Aragonese Crown's territories kept their privileges for a long time. As a matter of fact, they contributed very little to Spanish armies and finances. During the XVII century, when France became more powerful than Spain and the Sun King threatened spanish territories, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who was Felipe IV's valido (validos were a sort of viziers, but they had no official power at all; their official positions were unimportant stuff like royal lackeys or royal stewards, but everybody knew that they an order from them was an order from the king...) he tried to make Catalonia pay to help support the Spanish armies (he thought it logical, since Catalonia was the territory most exposed to French invasion, and also the one that paid less taxes to support the armies...). Catalonians rebelled, and called for the help of France.

When the Catalans realized that the Sun King was way, way more authoritarian than the Spanish kings, and that he would remove all their judicial and fiscal privileges and freedoms and that he would support French merchants against Catalan ones, they called Spain back...

The Spanish Crown left Catalan privileges alone for years afterwards, but when Charles II the Bewitched died without a heir, asking for a French prince to rule as king of Spain in his will (to appease the Sun King, and avoid a French invasion), the Catalans, who still felt resentful over Sun King's previous invasion (invasion that they had called for, but still...) supported the Austrian candidate (Basques supported the French candidate).

So at the end of the war, Catalonian fiscal and juridic privileges were reduced. They weren't treated worse than other Spanish territories, but their courts were less independent and they had to pay more taxes than before (still lower than other Spanish territories). It wasn't that they were oppressed, but that their previous privileges were reduced.

Basque Country, on the other hand, had supported the winner (the French prince) so they kept their privileges until the XIX century and remained very loyal to the crown. During the XIX century the liberals tried to impose legal and fiscal equality to all Spaniards, and the Basques became rebellious too...



Was Barcelona using a lot of Almagovar mercenaries, Castillian style infantry and cavalry or did they have their own distinct type of troops?

Did they have any unique types of ships that you know of?

Almogavars mostly came from rural, mountainous, thinly populated territories, hence not from Barcelona.

Besides their Almogavar light infantry, the Aragonese Crown was known for its crossbowmen, very similar to the genoese ones. Their cavalry and other troops were similar to Castile, but they produced far less warriors. Ferdinand the Catholic had to borrow Castilian troops for his italian campaigns...

Barcelona wasn't known for being warlike or for having their own army. They just supported the crown with money, manpower and ships. Their ships were galleys, galliots, fustas, carracks...etc., similar to other mediterranean states...



What about the revolt of the comuneros can you summarize that? Ate there any aspects of that story that typically get left out of the popular histories?
G

It was, for the most part, a revolt of the Castilian urban low nobility against the emergent centralized nation-state. They saw their power, privileges, economic and social relevance reduced, and tried to hold to them.

On top of that, Charles I of Spain brought many foreign clergy, scholars and nobles to fill key posts in spanish church, government and administration, and also demanded a lot of money from Castilian cities in order to support his Central European wars and to bribe his way to the Imperial Crown. That pissed a lot a social class that already felt sidelined and in decadence.

Also, the legitimate Castilian queen, Joanna the Mad (who was, well, mad...), had been pushed away from power by her burgundian husband Philip I the Handsome, her aragonese father, Ferdinand the Catholic, and her flemish son, Charles I of Spain... that exhacerbated the feeling that foreigners were stealing power from true Castilians...

The revolt started in Toledo and Valladolid, which used to be economically, culturally and politically very important cities; Castile's heart, if you want. But Charles I spent most of the time out of Spain, treating Spain as a mere source of soldiers and money, Seville was becoming the economic and cultural center of Spain (Spanish monarchs loved to spend time there, and all the money from America passed through Seville)...etc.

[Zombimode]

To Kiero and HeadlessMermaid:

Thank you, that was very helpful :smallsmile:


HeadlessMearmaid:
I noticed your 3.5 Greek Mythology Project.

I'm working on something similar and the questions I'm asking here are related to that.

I've looked over your work but it seemed that my approach and goals are different from yours so I will probably not use much from your work for my campaign. But it is nice to see that other People are interested in Mythology as well :smallsmile:

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm curious about this - but realise it's not a simple question by any measure:

Russia's conventional military strength compared to a small, western nation outside Nato, say Sweden or Finland.

Any takers?

[Galloglaich]

I'm curious about this - but realise it's not a simple question by any measure:

Russia's conventional military strength compared to a small, western nation outside Nato, say Sweden or Finland.

Any takers?

I'm your huckleberry

http://euromaidanpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/KWBzWSg.jpg

Finland
Finland has a fairly formidable military strength, both qualitatively and quantitatively, especially for such a small country, and in combination with their terrain and the history between the two countries, with good tactics and assuming they have made good plans and trained, I think they could cause problems for Russia if Russia invaded. Presumably Russia would prevail in a long, full scale war, but if you look at how much trouble they have had with Ukraine, including what appears to be a fairly substantial commitment of front-line Russian troops (albeit using older tanks etc.) they took a lot of casualties.

Ukraine is a bigger country in terms of population than Finland but they are also much poorer and face drastic challenges with logistics and so on. I think the terrain is a bit more conducive to defense in Finland as well.

Finland has a lot of high quality tanks- about 250-300 Leopard 2A6 if I remember correctly. Since purchasing all of the tanks from Holland they have more than most other European countries, though not all of those have been delivered. They are a little weaker on top-line fighter aircraft (they have about 50 FA-18's) but that is the one place Sweden could help them.

I think it's a cinch that Sweden and Finland would fight together in the event of any Russian invasion of either of them. They could probably count on help from Poland too though that is unclear.

Finland might also get involved, incidentally, if Russia invades Estonia. Estonia like the other Baltic States has almost no army at all, but they are ethnic cousins of the Finns and speak a related language, the Finns see them as natural allies.


http://saab.com/globalassets/commercial/air/gripen-fighter-system/gripen-calendar-images/gripen_calendar_2017_8.jpg

Sweden
Sweden has stripped down their military substantially and really does not have the capability to even slow down Russia on their own. They are counting on the support of Finland, this is essentially their strategic plan. They do have excellent fighter planes (about 70 superb Grippen and probably at least 30 or 40 of the older but still good Viggen which could be brought out of retirement), though not nearly enough of them, and they generally create their own fighting kit - tanks, IFV / APC, mobile artillery, AA guns, planes, all of very good quality - which is remarkable for such a small country (in terms of population). They are very good at design and with their auto and aircraft industry, industrial capacity is considerable. Their main tank though is a variant of the Leopard 2 (like most NATO countries). They only have about 100 of them. Like a lot of 'Western' European countries they have basically stripped their military to the bones as a 'peace dividend' to spend their budget to help weather economic changes of the last 20 years.

So if Finland could hold the line in a Russian invasion, and Swedish air forces could both help the Finns and protect Swedish industry (that is a very big 'IF' because they would be heavily outnumbered). It's worth noting that the Finns also make their own military kit which is also good, especially armored vehicles and so on. The problem would be preventing their factories from being blown up within the first hours of any war.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/9may2015Moscow-01.jpg/640px-9may2015Moscow-01.jpg

Russia
Russia has a huge land army, and is in the process of modernizing it. The bulk of their stuff is still Cold War vintage, MiG -29, T-72's etc. (though as Stalin once said, quantity has a quality all it's own and depending on how you count they have ~ 10,000 of them at least) but their newer armored vehicles, particularly the A-14 armata BMT, look very formidable. The Armata is probably a little better than the M-1 or Leopard 2 series in their current incarnations. But they have only just started building them and don't yet have even a single battalion fully deployed.

Their newer planes etc. are excellent quality and their recent battle experiences in Ukraine and Syria have helped them iron out a lot of the kinks in the new gear.

They are widely believed to have the world's best tactical air defense system in the S-400 (though some would dispute that in favor of the American systems, particularly AEGIS / Standard missile) their new tank looks scary as hell, and their new fighters (Su -30, Su -35, and Mig 35) and fighter bombers (Su -34) all look excellent, but all together they only have about 300 -400 of them, and they still need to defend Mother Russia. They also have ~500 or so second tier but still front line fighters i.e. Mig 29 and Su 27, and another ~400 Su-24 / 25 dedicated attack aircraft (their equivalent of A-10, more or less).

They have superb cruise missiles in vast numbers, a formidable navy (Russian submarines in particular could cripple Nordic sea commerce almost immediately, and can launch cruise missiles).

It's unclear precisely how good their next gen drone, autonomous and so on stuff is, but there are rumors of some very sophisticated ECM / ECCM among other things.

TL : DR I think Finland is tough, well prepared and might be able to blunt a Russian attack at least for a while. Sweden is comparatively weak and could not without help from Finland. But they would probably fight together.

And trust me, they are thinking about it.

G

[Mike_G]

I think the plan was that no NATO country expected to fight alone.

Pretty sure all out invasion of, say, Finland, would bring help (at least in terms of supply) from the rest of Europe and one assumes the US.

[gkathellar]

For what it's worth, any Finnish invasion of Russia would also face all the difficult-to-quantify challenges of invading a country that they have tons of bad blood with. In Ukraine and Syria, there's been at least a nominal ability to drum up local support - this would not be the case with the Finns, whose enmity with Russia goes back more than a century.


I think the plan was that no NATO country expected to fight alone.

Pretty sure all out invasion of, say, Finland, would bring help (at least in terms of supply) from the rest of Europe and one assumes the US.

Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, as seen here (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Major_NATO_affiliations_in_Europe.svg) (NATO states are in blue). Given their proximity to the historical USSR and isolation from western Europe, it would've been a liability to recruit them.

Mind you, they could probably count on at least nominal support from at least some NATO states.

[Galloglaich]

I think the plan was that no NATO country expected to fight alone.

Pretty sure all out invasion of, say, Finland, would bring help (at least in terms of supply) from the rest of Europe and one assumes the US.

Of course - if NATO is still functional. And I don't think Russia has the capacity to really threaten NATO with a major invasion of a major member country like Finland, though the Baltic States could be a different deal.

On the basis of the question though I assumed they meant outside the context of NATO for whatever reason.

G

[Kaptin Keen]

.. very thorough answer that I won't quote in it's entirety, if only to save space ..

Thanks =)

Very close to what I assumed myself. I've seen news reports about large parts of the Russian military being ... essentially inoperable, but I don't know how much stock to put in it. I remember one report of a Russian carrier ship being towed across the black sea towards Syria by tugs because ... inoperable.

So that's one angle I'm curious about: They have tonnes and tonnes of stuff, but how much has rusted into oblivion?

You mention subs, and I have little doubt no local navy has any counter - at all. The seas would belong to Russia.

It's all hypothetical of course. In case of invasion, I'm quite certain Nato would come to the rescue. We don't want Putin controlling either of those countries, nor the baltic states.

In recent history, Russia has deployed against a number of weaker states - Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - with ... highly variable results, at least as reported by western media. So I was wondering how they'd do against a modern military.

[Mike_G]

For what it's worth, any Finnish invasion of Russia would also face all the difficult-to-quantify challenges of invading a country that they have tons of bad blood with. In Ukraine and Syria, there's been at least a nominal ability to drum up local support - this would not be the case with the Finns, whose enmity with Russia goes back more than a century.



Finland and Sweden are not in NATO, as seen here (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Major_NATO_affiliations_in_Europe.svg) (NATO states are in blue). Given their proximity to the historical USSR and isolation from western Europe, it would've been a liability to recruit them.

Mind you, they could probably count on at least nominal support from at least some NATO states.

Huh.

Always assumed Sweden was. I mean, Poland is, and that's close to Russia.

I still very much doubt that an invasion of Sweden would be ignored by NATO.

[Max_Killjoy]

Norway, Poland, and the three Baltic states are all NATO members.

NATO couldn't realistically ignore, or stand idle in the face of, an invasion of Finland and/or Sweden by Russia. For geographic and strategic reasons it would have to respond.

[Mike_G]

I'm far less worried about a Russian invasion than I am of a "separatist movement" by pro Russian factions in, say Lithuania, supported by Russia.

Which is an invasion with a thin veneer of plausible deniability.

Like the Ukraine situation..

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm far less worried about a Russian invasion than I am of a "separatist movement" by pro Russian factions in, say Lithuania, supported by Russia.

Which is an invasion with a thin veneer of plausible deniability.

Like the Ukraine situation..

Ukraine was not a NATO member. Such a move inside a NATO member state has zero barriers to other NATO members getting involved short of the Lithuanian government saying "don't".

[Storm Bringer]

Huh.

Always assumed Sweden was. I mean, Poland is, and that's close to Russia.

I still very much doubt that an invasion of Sweden would be ignored by NATO.

its not been ignored, its just that the Finns and Swedes believed that it would be completely unacceptable to Russia for them to join (which is part of the reason for the issues in Ukraine now). Finland especially, because that would put NATO troops on the border with Mother Russia herself. they felt that the best course was neutrality, but in practice the Russians would likely have ignored that and invaded them anyway if they felt they needed to.

[snowblizz]

TL : DR I think Finland is tough, well prepared and might be able to blunt a Russian attack at least for a while. Sweden is comparatively weak and could not without help from Finland. But they would probably fight together.

And trust me, they are thinking about it.

G

I'll get back to this when I catch up but the word "thinking about it" doesn't even cover it closely. The Finnish army doesn't speak of an if, but of a when is the next time (which is why when Sweden dismantled the Finnish army did not). My favourite anecdote is what a friend who was a deomolitions expert in the army told me, so biased probably. But most motorway overpasses have a metal hook embedded in the concrete supports. Why you ask? That's where you hang the demolition charges for when it's time. We've builot highway overpassses with demolition in mind. That says something about the mental state of it all.

Also they don't expect the Swedish to do jack all. They may hope they do and plan for it, but they don't expect it. We saw where that took us once already. In some quarters "Swedish" means "yellow livered backstabber who only thinks of themselves".




By comparison armies of the Late Medieval period were small, expensive and hard to control. But quite effective - look at how the comparatively tiny Black Army fended off the might of the Ottoman Empire.

I don't think the changes you see from medieval to Early Modern are the inevitable result of changes in technology and the Art of War, to the contrary I think they are the result of massive political and economic changes resulting from the opening of the Atlantic and Pacific, the establishment of chattel-slavery based agriculture in the Caribbean and American Continent, and the wars of the religion in Europe.

In terms of military organization essentially a shift from skilled but chaotic to less skilled but more controllable.

G
I'm reading a book about the development of military education, primarily in Sweden. And the TL DR of it seems to be formal military training and science is developed from about the early Renessaince, starting with technical jobs like artillery and siegecraft. And slowly spreading to other aspects of war, emphais slowly. So in a sense at least from the POV of military scholarship war got more complex over time. But as you say more controllable.


I think the plan was that no NATO country expected to fight alone.

Pretty sure all out invasion of, say, Finland, would bring help (at least in terms of supply) from the rest of Europe and one assumes the US.
That's an assumption most of Europe have decided they can't make anymore.


For what it's worth, any Finnish invasion of Russia would also face all the difficult-to-quantify challenges of invading a country that they have tons of bad blood with. In Ukraine and Syria, there's been at least a nominal ability to drum up local support - this would not be the case with the Finns, whose enmity with Russia goes back more than a century.
Riiight. Like we'd invade Russia. Well, again I mean. Though maybe if the Germans bring better friends along this time around...
Also try a millennia for that enmity. Give or take a century. With the caveat that back in 1018 there was neither much of a Finland nor a Russia (which are both constructs of much later date), but various conflicts have been played out (and they tended to be vicous) in the border regions since medieval times. The two occupations in the 1700s are still remembered.



Mind you, they could probably count on at least nominal support from at least some NATO states.
The European Union has a defence clause in which all other members are required to help defend if a member state is attacked. Though ultimately the guarantor for all of this is the US. And yes this scares us a lot thank you very much.



You mention subs, and I have little doubt no local navy has any counter - at all. The seas would belong to Russia.
I'm sorry but that's utter bs. Both Sweden and Finland have spent the last 2 centuries focused on the problem of a powerful Russian navy in the Baltic. I'll point out that during WW2 Finland kept much of the Soviet navy bottled up by mining the Gulf of Finland. The entirety of the Finnish navy, small as it is, focuses around denying acess to waterways and making sure the Gulf of Finland is a naval death trap.


In case of invasion, I'm quite certain Nato would come to the rescue. We don't want Putin controlling either of those countries, nor the baltic states.
2 years ago I would have agreed. I don't think you are aware of how your reputaiton looks from our perspective. Looking at it today I'm not sure you really know what you want, nor if you are capable of doing jack. For all we know you'll send a carrier group to the Southpole to fight penguins instead of where needed. Because someone held a map upside down.


In recent history, Russia has deployed against a number of weaker states - Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - with ... highly variable results, at least as reported by western media. So I was wondering how they'd do against a modern military.Less well. All of those are fragile or largely failed states, 3 of which used to be essentially the same country so share a number of things. The outcome of course is not in doubt, it's a Russian win. However there are wins and then there are the ones king Pyrrhus made famous. All of these examples do come with various deployment problems. Ukraine is also fighting with one hand behind their back e.g. limiting airstrikes against separatists *cough*russians*cough*. We haven't exactly seen the full might of Russia being used.

As to much junk they got lying around. Plenty. Enough that there are real gems hidden away there. There's no way any of the weaker countries bordeirng Russia could withstand a real all out attack using the comparatively few modern assests backed by a wast quantity of not so modren but still probably useful stuff.


Norway, Poland, and the three Baltic states are all NATO members.

NATO couldn't realistically ignore, or stand idle in the face of, an invasion of Finland and/or Sweden by Russia. For geographic and strategic reasons it would have to respond.That's the strategic situation in a nutshell. Any credible defence of the Baltic NATO members requires that Sweden is actively supporting by letting them use their territory in the very least. I don't think anyone around here trusts in the willingness of NATO to stand up for countries just because though.


its not been ignored, its just that the Finns and Swedes believed that it would be completely unacceptable to Russia for them to join (which is part of the reason for the issues in Ukraine now). Finland especially, because that would put NATO troops on the border with Mother Russia herself. they felt that the best course was neutrality, but in practice the Russians would likely have ignored that and invaded them anyway if they felt they needed to. Exactly this. It was essentially considered the opening shots of WW3. Also Russians ignoring all kinds of things and invading is how WW2 started for Finland.

[Zombimode]

New question concerning Hoplites:

There seem to be two styles of grip for the dory:
http://sites.psu.edu/thehopliteexperience/wp-content/uploads/sites/10736/2014/04/Two_hoplites.jpg

What are the differences? Were These two styles even used in the same period?

If I would have to take a wild guess, I would say that the underhand grip provides for longer reach and "stopping power", while the overhand grip allows to use the spear against closer targets and maybe for finer control.

[Max_Killjoy]

its not been ignored, its just that the Finns and Swedes believed that it would be completely unacceptable to Russia for them to join (which is part of the reason for the issues in Ukraine now). Finland especially, because that would put NATO troops on the border with Mother Russia herself. they felt that the best course was neutrality, but in practice the Russians would likely have ignored that and invaded them anyway if they felt they needed to.

The Baltics are NATO members with NATO forces stationed and engaged in exercised there.




That's the strategic situation in a nutshell. Any credible defence of the Baltic NATO members requires that Sweden is actively supporting by letting them use their territory in the very least. I don't think anyone around here trusts in the willingness of NATO to stand up for countries just because though.


The cause of potential failure to honor the NATO mutual defense clause, at least on the part of the US, will be resolved sometime in the next 1 to 3 years, and good riddance. :smallmad: I really can't say more here on that topic, for obvious reasons.

[Mike_G]

The cause of potential failure to honor the NATO mutual defense clause, at least on the part of the US, will be resolved sometime in the next 1 to 3 years, and good riddance. :smallmad: I really can't say more here on that topic, for obvious reasons.

Amen, brother.

[Knaight]

The cause of potential failure to honor the NATO mutual defense clause, at least on the part of the US, will be resolved sometime in the next 1 to 3 years, and good riddance. :smallmad: I really can't say more here on that topic, for obvious reasons.

Closer to 1 to 7, assuming that another cause doesn't replace it. But then, I'm much less optimistic than you are politically.

[Vinyadan]

Russia has deployed in many more states than we normally assume. Almost every single war in ex-Soviet lands has seen Russian involvement, and Westerners often don't even know that those wars happened.

Now, a few years ago, a calculation was made about how long it would take Russia to take over the military forces of Eastern Europe, and the answer was two to three days. However, I don't think that this considered Northern Europe, or the Caucasus.


Ukraine was not a NATO member. Such a move inside a NATO member state has zero barriers to other NATO members getting involved short of the Lithuanian government saying "don't".

Assuming people (US and EU) feel like dying for Danzig. The current situation is a general mess. And this kind of doubt was what pushed France to leave NATO military structure a long time ago, and to develop a fully French-dependent atomic program: the question of whether the US would actually do anything, if the Soviet Union had attacked Europe. From the NATO website (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm):


Even Eisenhower, who was the archpriest of the reliance upon nuclear weapons, began to have doubts towards the end of his presidency. He once said, "Of course," I quote, "in the defence of the United States itself we will certainly use nuclear weapons, but to use them in another situation might prove very difficult." Henry Kissinger later on expressed this much more abruptly when he said that no US president would ever risk the safety of the housewife in Kansas to protect the housewife in Hamburg.

This isn't just a US problem. With nationalist populism on the rise in Europe, we end up with a bizarre situation in which Eastern Europe (especially the countries where where democracy is in crisis) holds on to the democratic US in opposition to a militarily overwhelming Russia, while nationalist populists in Western Europe are pushing for a substitution of the US with Russia for the role of security provider.

Now, it isn't likely that such a swap will ever happen, and I don't think it will, unless it's the US who say "bye" first. But these minority movements do attack support to EU and NATO through arguments that find an audience and resonance in many segments of the population. Add in the fact that a Russian aggression could be construed in very different ways will lead to confusion, as was/is the case in Ukraine. And then, of course, there is the fear of atomic war, or of a conflict like Europe hasn't seen since WWII.

The NATO clause of mutual defense has only ever been called in by the US, after the WTC attack. This means that it was called in by the strongest member against a non-state level enemy. There was very little danger involved. If it were called by the weakest member against the highest level enemy, there would be a lot of doubt. Which brings us back to the question of NATO utility when push comes to shove, this time not just as US protecting Europe, but as the West and US protecting single Eastern European nations.

And EU mutual defense somehow exists at the same time as the occupation of the territory of a member state (Cyprus), so there's that.

If Russia will ever attack Finland, it probably will be after the structures of NATO and EU will have been destroyed, not necessarily by Russia; assuming that Russia will still have the money to invade anything or even rule its own territory in 10-15 years.

(BTW, I don't think Russia will attack Latvia; the attack on Ukraine started the same moment it left the Russian sphere, and had likely been planned after the Orange Revolution in 2004, while the Baltic states have been doing their own thing since decades. The whole "Russian minority" thing looks like a great argument to win consensus at home, but it isn't worth an invasion like the port of Sevastopol was.)

[gkathellar]

That's an assumption most of Europe have decided they can't make anymore.

In some ways, "does NATO get into a Russian-backed civil war?" was an interesting question even several years ago, and it was almost certainly designed to be. Early during the situation in Ukraine, before the Russian presence was so explicit, a lot of foreign policy experts were furiously scratching their heads about how NATO should respond to a similar situation in the Baltic. Obviously things are very different now, but it goes to potential problems that even a stable NATO might face.


Riiight. Like we'd invade Russia. Well, again I mean. Though maybe if the Germans bring better friends along this time around...

Ah, that was a typo on my part. Meant to write, "Russian invasion of Finland." Apologies.


Also try a millennia for that enmity. Give or take a century. With the caveat that back in 1018 there was neither much of a Finland nor a Russia (which are both constructs of much later date), but various conflicts have been played out (and they tended to be vicous) in the border regions since medieval times. The two occupations in the 1700s are still remembered.

I'll keep that in mind - for the sake of understanding by comparison, would it be fair to say there's a China/Vietnam sort of relationship in effect?


As to much junk they got lying around. Plenty. Enough that there are real gems hidden away there. There's no way any of the weaker countries bordeirng Russia could withstand a real all out attack using the comparatively few modern assests backed by a wast quantity of not so modren but still probably useful stuff.

There's an old intelligence truism that says the US gives M16s to its own troops because they're expensive and specialized, and AK-47s to everyone else because they're cheaper than dirt and never break. Hence why a part of me finds old Russian military hardware more fearsome than the modern stuff.


Exactly this. It was essentially considered the opening shots of WW3. Also Russians ignoring all kinds of things and invading is how WW2 started for Finland.

And it's probably a very wise decision on Finland's part in a smaller sense as well, as recent years have seen a dramatic upswing in instability in just about all of Russia's border states that have edged closer to NATO. As you say, Russia does not like having NATO on its doorstep and will preempt membership with military action, just to take membership off the table.

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm sorry but that's utter bs. Both Sweden and Finland have spent the last 2 centuries focused on the problem of a powerful Russian navy in the Baltic. I'll point out that during WW2 Finland kept much of the Soviet navy bottled up by mining the Gulf of Finland. The entirety of the Finnish navy, small as it is, focuses around denying acess to waterways and making sure the Gulf of Finland is a naval death trap.

Neither country has any real navy to speak of. They have substantial coast defences, but nothing even remotely able to fight a full scale sea battle.

Not bs.


2 years ago I would have agreed. I don't think you are aware of how your reputaiton looks from our perspective. Looking at it today I'm not sure you really know what you want, nor if you are capable of doing jack. For all we know you'll send a carrier group to the Southpole to fight penguins instead of where needed. Because someone held a map upside down.

I'd love to respond to that - but that would be 'real world politics', and not allowed. How about I say the US has excellent hardware.

[Vinyadan]

New question concerning Hoplites:

There seem to be two styles of grip for the dory:
http://sites.psu.edu/thehopliteexperience/wp-content/uploads/sites/10736/2014/04/Two_hoplites.jpg

What are the differences? Were These two styles even used in the same period?

If I would have to take a wild guess, I would say that the underhand grip provides for longer reach and "stopping power", while the overhand grip allows to use the spear against closer targets and maybe for finer control.

This is a statue from about 530 BC: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Hoplite_from_Dodona_Antikensammlung_Berlin_Misc._7 470_%289%29.jpg
The Athena Promachos also had this grip. So you can find depictions of Athena based on the statue with this grip in the following centuries.

I often see the low grip used for swords. https://argiveroofing.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/hoplite_at_vase_475bc_boston.jpg There are statues that have lost their weapons and use a lower grip, so they could have been reconstructed with a spear.

The Chigi vase (640 BC) shows different lines handling spears differently, the first lines holding them up, the ones still away from the fight olding them forwards but low, those behind them holding them at rest upwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chigi_vase#/media/File:A_reconstruction_of_the_Chigi_Vase.jpg

Underarm grip on a vase: http://www.allempires.com/forum/uploads/31288/hoplite_pilos.jpg (I think it's from the V century BC, but I am not sure.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Neither country has any real navy to speak of. They have substantial coast defences, but nothing even remotely able to fight a full scale sea battle.

Not bs.


"Sea denial" can be accomplished without what looks like a "real" navy. Big blue-water navies less about local sea denial and more about about force projection. The big US carrier fleet is less about winning fights at America's shores than it is about making sure the fight takes place (and is won) at the other guy's shores and in the other guy's waters way "over there".

The Swedish and Finnish naval and coastal forces are invested in local sea denial in order to deny aggressors (to be blunt, Russia) access to sea lanes and coastal landings. The Finns for example have a large complement of mobile land-based anti-ship missile systems.

A hypothetical Russian invasion of Finland and Sweden would probably succeed at the tactical level eventually, but cost them very dearly in their ability to deal with whatever came next.

[Kiero]

New question concerning Hoplites:

There seem to be two styles of grip for the dory:
http://sites.psu.edu/thehopliteexperience/wp-content/uploads/sites/10736/2014/04/Two_hoplites.jpg

What are the differences? Were These two styles even used in the same period?

If I would have to take a wild guess, I would say that the underhand grip provides for longer reach and "stopping power", while the overhand grip allows to use the spear against closer targets and maybe for finer control.

The blade on the rear of the doru, the sauroter, is a counterweight. It allows you to use it extended further forward in an overhand grip than that diagram is showing. In a proper phalanx, the only way the spear can be held, and not risk stabbing someone behind you with your sauroter, or having your spear trapped under a shield, is overhand. It's also faster to fight, you can "rifle" your spear with flicks of your arm (the same movement as throwing it, though without releasing). Underhand might be used out of formation, though if you always trained and mostly fought a particular way, I'm dubious it would see much use.

If you're going for a Persian Empire-style setup, they made use of a lot of Greek mercenary hoplites as their line infantry.

[Kaptin Keen]

"Sea denial" can be accomplished without what looks like a "real" navy. Big blue-water navies less about local sea denial and more about about force projection. The big US carrier fleet is less about winning fights at America's shores than it is about making sure the fight takes place (and is won) at the other guy's shores and in the other guy's waters way "over there".

The Swedish and Finnish naval and coastal forces are invested in local sea denial in order to deny aggressors (to be blunt, Russia) access to sea lanes and coastal landings. The Finns for example have a large complement of mobile land-based anti-ship missile systems.

A hypothetical Russian invasion of Finland and Sweden would probably succeed at the tactical level eventually, but cost them very dearly in their ability to deal with whatever came next.

... I know.

Look, what I said was
The seas would belong to Russia. Seas. Not coastal areas. I'm well aware the swedish and finns have solid shore defences.

[Max_Killjoy]

... I know.

Look, what I said was Seas. Not coastal areas. I'm well aware the swedish and finns have solid shore defences.

Compare the dimensions of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, with the range of Finnish and Swedish land-based anti-ship weapons alone. They have the capacity to pretty much deny the Baltic to Russian naval operations as long as those mobile, dispersed missile remain active.

[Kaptin Keen]

Compare the dimensions of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, with the range of Finnish and Swedish land-based anti-ship weapons alone. They have the capacity to pretty much deny the Baltic to Russian naval operations as long as those mobile, dispersed missile remain active.

If you ignore everything else ..... then yes. Missiles bases can be bombed, missiles shot down, there's more to firing a missile than looking at range (like target acquisition), and missiles fly the other way too.

But yes - if you look at this in a vacuum where only the range of the missiles matter, then you're perfectly correct.

[Brother Oni]

The blade on the rear of the doru, the sauroter, is a counterweight. It allows you to use it extended further forward in an overhand grip than that diagram is showing. In a proper phalanx, the only way the spear can be held, and not risk stabbing someone behind you with your sauroter, or having your spear trapped under a shield, is overhand. It's also faster to fight, you can "rifle" your spear with flicks of your arm (the same movement as throwing it, though without releasing). Underhand might be used out of formation, though if you always trained and mostly fought a particular way, I'm dubious it would see much use.

Further to this, the overhand grip also allows for more effective face stabbing - it's over a millennia later, but the Bayeux Tapestry shows pretty much every spear used overhand by both Normans and Saxons.

Underhand allows you to get your spear in at different angles to overhand plus makes it easier to stab the legs- this is unlikely to be used in formation fighting due to space issues but skirmishing and duelling could find grips switching.

[LordEntrails]

The one thing I will add to the Russia/Europe/NATO discussion is that distrust and enmity of Russia is still very high in the United States. Yes the populace doesn't want war or violence, but if Russia did undeniably pursue aggression against a NATO or allied country, sentiment and support for US intervention would solidify extremely quickly. IMO

Of course, the challenge is in "undeniably".

[Max_Killjoy]

If you ignore everything else ..... then yes. Missiles bases can be bombed, missiles shot down, there's more to firing a missile than looking at range (like target acquisition), and missiles fly the other way too.

But yes - if you look at this in a vacuum where only the range of the missiles matter, then you're perfectly correct.


I'm not looking at this in a vacuum, or assuming only the range matters. The launchers are largely mobile, on land, smaller and less visible and with more to "hide under" than the Russian ships, and more easily resupplied. And we haven't even touched on Finnish minelaying capacity, or Swedish air-launched anti-shipping missiles, or...

But you keep right on moving those goalposts.

[Kaptin Keen]

But you keep right on moving those goalposts.

Yes. That's what's happening.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes. That's what's happening.


I'll leave whether that sarcasm is ironic or not as a matter for others to judge.





You mention subs, and I have little doubt no local navy has any counter - at all. The seas would belong to Russia.



Neither country has any real navy to speak of. They have substantial coast defences, but nothing even remotely able to fight a full scale sea battle.

Not bs.



... I know.

Look, what I said was Seas. Not coastal areas. I'm well aware the swedish and finns have solid shore defences.



If you ignore everything else ..... then yes. Missiles bases can be bombed, missiles shot down, there's more to firing a missile than looking at range (like target acquisition), and missiles fly the other way too.

But yes - if you look at this in a vacuum where only the range of the missiles matter, then you're perfectly correct.




Meanwhile, the Russian Baltic Fleet, based out of isolated Kaliningrad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Fleet#Under_the_Russian_Federation

It consists of 10 surface combatants, 2 submarines, and support ships.


Beyond that, this is not the thread for engaging your nonsense, so "conversation" officially over. Good day.

[Kaptin Keen]

Beyond that, this is not the thread for engaging your nonsense, so "conversation" officially over. Good day.

You dislike me. You're more than welcome to. I have absolutely no opinion about you except in this thread and the storytelling one, you go hugely out of your way to pick fights with me - for reasons I cannot fathom and aren't exactly curious about.

I'm going to suggest you simply ignore my posts. I'm certainly going to ignore yours.

Meanwhile, I never mentioned the baltic fleet. I can see why you'd pick that one - it plays to your argument - but clearly, that's not the fleet to worry about. This is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Fleet). So when talking about invasion, you'd really have to be rather foolish to think we were discussing a tiny flotilla, wouldn't you agree?

Thanks for this brief discussion. I really hope you'll agree that you and I don't really contribute anything to each other - said without any rancor, it just seems to be true. And a pleasant day to you too, sir.

[Max_Killjoy]

The blade on the rear of the doru, the sauroter, is a counterweight. It allows you to use it extended further forward in an overhand grip than that diagram is showing. In a proper phalanx, the only way the spear can be held, and not risk stabbing someone behind you with your sauroter, or having your spear trapped under a shield, is overhand. It's also faster to fight, you can "rifle" your spear with flicks of your arm (the same movement as throwing it, though without releasing). Underhand might be used out of formation, though if you always trained and mostly fought a particular way, I'm dubious it would see much use.


Does this change with the later, longer pikes, or were they still likely held overhand?

[rrgg]

New question concerning Hoplites:

There seem to be two styles of grip for the dory:
http://sites.psu.edu/thehopliteexperience/wp-content/uploads/sites/10736/2014/04/Two_hoplites.jpg

What are the differences? Were These two styles even used in the same period?

If I would have to take a wild guess, I would say that the underhand grip provides for longer reach and "stopping power", while the overhand grip allows to use the spear against closer targets and maybe for finer control.

In both ancient Greece and the middle ages you can find examples of spears being used both underarm and overarm, sometimes both on the same piece of art. It mostly seems to boil down to personal preference, and as far as I know there are no period documents debating whether one grip was better than the other.

The general consensus among many reenactors as far as I know is that the underarm grip gives more reach and control while the overarm grip gives more powerful thrusts.

As far as the use of pikes goes, by the end of the 16th century the standard posture for engaging infantry was for the right hand to hold the pike near the butt end as far back as possible for control while the left hand is kept very close to the body in order to more easily support the weight of the weapon. According to Robert Barret the correct way to thrust was to step forward with the rear foot and put your bodyweight into rather than thrusting with your arms.

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BHN8F3/military-17th-century-infantry-pikemen-during-an-exercise-colured-BHN8F3.jpg

100 years earlier it seems like there may have been a bit more variety, with the pike sometimes held down low and with both hands wide apart. For instance this illustration from Dolstien's diary of two landsknechts practicing:

https://myarmoury.com/talk/files/pike_practice_121.jpg

a couple more examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albanian_Stradioti_at_Battle_of_Fornovo.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schlacht_bei_Dorneck.jpg

[rs2excelsior]

Does this change with the later, longer pikes, or were they still likely held overhand?

From what I understand, the Macedonian Sarissa were typically held in both hands, underhanded. The shields were strapped to one arm and had a loop around the neck to help support the weight (and also far, far smaller and lighter than the Hoplon). Not sure as to the veracity of that, others may confirm or correct, but I can't imagine a 10-16ft pike being held and used one-handed effectively at all.

[snowblizz]

Meanwhile, I never mentioned the baltic fleet. I can see why you'd pick that one - it plays to your argument - but clearly, that's not the fleet to worry about. This is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Fleet). So when talking about invasion, you'd really have to be rather foolish to think we were discussing a tiny flotilla, wouldn't you agree?
If you are going to be discussing a scenario in the real world it kind of has to exist in the real world. The primary force projector in the Baltic is the Russian Baltic fleet.

Because the Northern fleet is not the fleet that will be doing the invasion. Because it will have to sail around Scandinavia down through the North Sea and squeeze through the Denmark straights guarded by 2 NATO countries to invade countries that can see this happen weeks out. You might as well add the Black Sea fleet and Pacific fleets to the scenario just to make it that much more unrealistic. The Black Sea fleet have similar problems as the Baltic fleet, and is a large part of why Russia is involved in Syria becaus eit provides a base of operations for their navan units withou the NATO bottleneck of the Bosporous. And make no mistake, the entrence to the Baltic is equally problematic. A similar problem exists in getting access to the Northern parts, ie the Gulf of Bothnia where all available sealanes are easily defendable with mines and limited resources. As they were in every conflict from the 1800s.

Which also means if, and the likelyhood is pretty high, such a conflict broadens the Russian Northern fleet is trapped inside the Baltic while large parts of Russian waters are left defenceless. Which of course is why the Baltic fleet isn't that large, it wouldn't be likely to meaningfully be used.

To deny sealanes a much better solution is the landbased ballistic missiles stationed in Kaliningrad which reach right across the southern Baltic, and anti-ship missiles carried by aircraft. Neither of which could be effectively countered. It's actualy also possible to sail relatively protected by land for most of the coast of Sweden provided you know what you do and are a friendly.

I'm not sure about the point of this one upping, it's all moot, drop a few nukes and it matters not wheter the sealanes are controlled or not. The Nordic countries have spend the last 50 years, thiking about, training and purchasing equipment with the sole goal of making aggression as costly as possible so that it leaves the aggressor vulnerable to bigger players.

[Vinyadan]

Since we're talking about it, here's an article about the current situation of the Russian navy, and what can be expected to change in the near future http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-the-russian-navy-more-capable-adversary-it-appears-22009

[Kaptin Keen]

If you are going to be discussing a scenario in the real world it kind of has to exist in the real world. The primary force projector in the Baltic is the Russian Baltic fleet.

Because the Northern fleet is not the fleet that will be doing the invasion. Because it will have to sail around Scandinavia down through the North Sea and squeeze through the Denmark straights guarded by 2 NATO countries to invade countries that can see this happen weeks out. You might as well add the Black Sea fleet and Pacific fleets to the scenario just to make it that much more unrealistic. The Black Sea fleet have similar problems as the Baltic fleet, and is a large part of why Russia is involved in Syria becaus eit provides a base of operations for their navan units withou the NATO bottleneck of the Bosporous. And make no mistake, the entrence to the Baltic is equally problematic. A similar problem exists in getting access to the Northern parts, ie the Gulf of Bothnia where all available sealanes are easily defendable with mines and limited resources. As they were in every conflict from the 1800s.

Which also means if, and the likelyhood is pretty high, such a conflict broadens the Russian Northern fleet is trapped inside the Baltic while large parts of Russian waters are left defenceless. Which of course is why the Baltic fleet isn't that large, it wouldn't be likely to meaningfully be used.

To deny sealanes a much better solution is the landbased ballistic missiles stationed in Kaliningrad which reach right across the southern Baltic, and anti-ship missiles carried by aircraft. Neither of which could be effectively countered. It's actualy also possible to sail relatively protected by land for most of the coast of Sweden provided you know what you do and are a friendly.

I'm not sure about the point of this one upping, it's all moot, drop a few nukes and it matters not wheter the sealanes are controlled or not. The Nordic countries have spend the last 50 years, thiking about, training and purchasing equipment with the sole goal of making aggression as costly as possible so that it leaves the aggressor vulnerable to bigger players.

The baltic fleet isn't going to be invading anything.

[Tobtor]

If you are going to be discussing a scenario in the real world it kind of has to exist in the real world. The primary force projector in the Baltic is the Russian Baltic fleet.

Because the Northern fleet is not the fleet that will be doing the invasion. Because it will have to sail around Scandinavia down through the North Sea and squeeze through the Denmark straights guarded by 2 NATO countries to invade countries that can see this happen weeks out. You might as well add the Black Sea fleet and Pacific fleets to the scenario just to make it that much more unrealistic. The Black Sea fleet have similar problems as the Baltic fleet, and is a large part of why Russia is involved in Syria becaus eit provides a base of operations for their navan units withou the NATO bottleneck of the Bosporous. And make no mistake, the entrence to the Baltic is equally problematic. A similar problem exists in getting access to the Northern parts, ie the Gulf of Bothnia where all available sealanes are easily defendable with mines and limited resources. As they were in every conflict from the 1800s.


I very much agree. While Denmark (and any individual European NATO country) would be definitely not like to join in the war against Russia, I am sure they would stop all acces through their territory from the Russians (both commercial and millitary fleets), thus if Russia would like to enter the baltic with another fleet it WOULD be through an attack on NATO proper (especially since if Russia is attacking Finland then NATO wouldnt feel safe having Russian ships in their territory either).

I am also sure that most Europeans would eventually come to the aid of Sweden/Finland, basically you cannot have a EU country attacked without doin anything (to imagine a Euro-country like Finland in Russian occupation is simply out of the question). The important part here is "eventually". NATO have a system for reacting fast (communication headquaters, plans etc), the EU do not. So if NATO doesn't get involved in a Russian invasion of Finland (lets say some member delays/stops the involveret, (it could be Turkey or some other country), it would take weeks if not months to do a proper counter to Russian attacks.

So I think if Finland could hold out for a few weeks then some help would begin to come, and within a few months more help etc. If NATO got involved this would be days not weeks or months.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you are going to be discussing a scenario in the real world it kind of has to exist in the real world. The primary force projector in the Baltic is the Russian Baltic fleet.

Because the Northern fleet is not the fleet that will be doing the invasion. Because it will have to sail around Scandinavia down through the North Sea and squeeze through the Denmark straights guarded by 2 NATO countries to invade countries that can see this happen weeks out. You might as well add the Black Sea fleet and Pacific fleets to the scenario just to make it that much more unrealistic. The Black Sea fleet have similar problems as the Baltic fleet, and is a large part of why Russia is involved in Syria becaus eit provides a base of operations for their navan units withou the NATO bottleneck of the Bosporous. And make no mistake, the entrence to the Baltic is equally problematic. A similar problem exists in getting access to the Northern parts, ie the Gulf of Bothnia where all available sealanes are easily defendable with mines and limited resources. As they were in every conflict from the 1800s.

Which also means if, and the likelyhood is pretty high, such a conflict broadens the Russian Northern fleet is trapped inside the Baltic while large parts of Russian waters are left defenceless. Which of course is why the Baltic fleet isn't that large, it wouldn't be likely to meaningfully be used.

To deny sealanes a much better solution is the landbased ballistic missiles stationed in Kaliningrad which reach right across the southern Baltic, and anti-ship missiles carried by aircraft. Neither of which could be effectively countered. It's actualy also possible to sail relatively protected by land for most of the coast of Sweden provided you know what you do and are a friendly.

I'm not sure about the point of this one upping, it's all moot, drop a few nukes and it matters not wheter the sealanes are controlled or not. The Nordic countries have spend the last 50 years, thiking about, training and purchasing equipment with the sole goal of making aggression as costly as possible so that it leaves the aggressor vulnerable to bigger players.

And that is why the Baltic Fleet is the one that matters, and that "making ourselves too costly to invade" approach is exactly what I was getting at (that, and refuting the nonsense assertion that Russia would own the Baltic in such a conflict). Yes, Russia could take Finland, but it would likely lose the Baltic Fleet and tie up a chunk of its land forces for way too long in the process (not to mention the occupation, the Finns would likely put up a lot of post-invasion resistance for quite a while). Meanwhile NATO and the EU are both right there with all sorts of reasons to get involved, and Russia less able to fight them.

[gkathellar]

In both ancient Greece and the middle ages you can find examples of spears being used both underarm and overarm, sometimes both on the same piece of art. It mostly seems to boil down to personal preference, and as far as I know there are no period documents debating whether one grip was better than the other.

The general consensus among many reenactors as far as I know is that the underarm grip gives more reach and control while the overarm grip gives more powerful thrusts.

As far as the use of pikes goes, by the end of the 16th century the standard posture for engaging infantry was for the right hand to hold the pike near the butt end as far back as possible for control while the left hand is kept very close to the body in order to more easily support the weight of the weapon. According to Robert Barret the correct way to thrust was to step forward with the rear foot and put your bodyweight into rather than thrusting with your arms.

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BHN8F3/military-17th-century-infantry-pikemen-during-an-exercise-colured-BHN8F3.jpg

100 years earlier it seems like there may have been a bit more variety, with the pike sometimes held down low and with both hands wide apart. For instance this illustration from Dolstien's diary of two landsknechts practicing:

https://myarmoury.com/talk/files/pike_practice_121.jpg

a couple more examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albanian_Stradioti_at_Battle_of_Fornovo.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schlacht_bei_Dorneck.jpg

Anecdotally, I could swear I've seen a training manual illustration where the butt of the pike was balanced against the pikeman's rear foot so that it could be supported one-handed. The setup seemed to allow for a buckler or short sword in the off-hand - maybe a defensive pose to take if someone got in past the pikes?

[Max_Killjoy]

From what I understand, the Macedonian Sarissa were typically held in both hands, underhanded. The shields were strapped to one arm and had a loop around the neck to help support the weight (and also far, far smaller and lighter than the Hoplon). Not sure as to the veracity of that, others may confirm or correct, but I can't imagine a 10-16ft pike being held and used one-handed effectively at all.

I thought that was the case, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those "everyone knows" things that turns out wrong.

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm well aware that the north sea fleet would have logistical troubles on the trip to the swedish coast. I live in Copenhagen - they'd literally have to sail past my windows.

It's a hypothetical discussion. Far as I'm concerned, there is a zero risk of russian invasion of any de-facto Nato allies.

However, the baltic fleet, while not insubstantial, isn't the sort of thing a modern nation needs to be hugely concerned about. I'd say even Denmark could repell them. It's a fleet of frigates and corvettes, with a bit of air and infantry. It would definitely serve to invade, say, Estonia - but not a modern country.

Admiral Kuznetsov, the flagship of the russian navy, travels with a tugboat because it suffers such frequent engine failures.

So, looking at naval power in general, I just don't see any real chance the russians can muster even the attempt at an invasion by sea - the baltic fleet is a joke in that context. Not that I'm any sort of expert, but while they have lots of little warships, I don't see anything resembling the transports for large numbers of tanks, men and supplies.

Or, maybe I just don't know where to look for such figures.

So, far as I can see, any invasion would need either the north sea fleet - or would have to be by land.

Now, I'm not saying the baltic fleet couldn't support an invasion.

Anyways. Hypothetical. Thanks for your replies =)

[Haighus]

Anecdotally, I could swear I've seen a training manual illustration where the butt of the pike was balanced against the pikeman's rear foot so that it could be supported one-handed. The setup seemed to allow for a buckler or short sword in the off-hand - maybe a defensive pose to take if someone got in past the pikes?
I think it is one hand on the pike with the butt wedged against the rear foot, and one hand on the sword hilt ready to draw. Seems to be intended for receiving charges and reacting quickly in case of a 'bad war' close press situation.

[rrgg]

Anecdotally, I could swear I've seen a training manual illustration where the butt of the pike was balanced against the pikeman's rear foot so that it could be supported one-handed. The setup seemed to allow for a buckler or short sword in the off-hand - maybe a defensive pose to take if someone got in past the pikes?

Yes, charge against your right foot and draw your sword.

http://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2014/CKS/2014_CKS_10252_0028_000(jacques_de_gheyn_ii_the_ex ercise_of_armes_charge_your_pike_at_the_righ).jpg? height=400

It's usually brought up in the context of resisting cavalry, with the sword ready to cut down the rider if he makes it through. It may have been used against infantry too in some situations, but in a push of pike it didn't allow for any actual pushing or thrusting

[Kiero]

Does this change with the later, longer pikes, or were they still likely held overhand?

Pikes aren't simply longer spears, they're used differently. The sarissa was used two-handed, with an underarm grip. Only the first few ranks of the phalanx could fight, and their shield was strapped to the arm/shoulder, not used actively.

[Lapak]

This question may be too general, but - what is the minimum number of soldiers to form an effective unit in pre-modern combat? That is, if you’re hoping to get the benefits that come with fighting as a group (forming a shield wall, standing off a charge with pole arms, massed missile fire, peer support of morale that helps keep the group from breaking and running, etc.) what’s the lowest number of basic troops where you might expect to see a result greater than the sum of its parts?

(For context in case it helps, I’m looking at establishing a sergeant-type role that can give greater effectiveness to a squad of troops, but I’m not sure how to define that group.)

[Kiero]

This question may be too general, but - what is the minimum number of soldiers to form an effective unit in pre-modern combat? That is, if you’re hoping to get the benefits that come with fighting as a group (forming a shield wall, standing off a charge with pole arms, massed missile fire, peer support of morale that helps keep the group from breaking and running, etc.) what’s the lowest number of basic troops where you might expect to see a result greater than the sum of its parts?

(For context in case it helps, I’m looking at establishing a sergeant-type role that can give greater effectiveness to a squad of troops, but I’m not sure how to define that group.)

Enough to have more than one file/rank when fighting in formation. If they can only form a single line, you can't really apply any meaningful tactics.

In the hoplite phalanx, the file leader was the guy on the right-most end of the line. He'd be the one who didn't benefit from being covered by a comrade's shield, in addition to his own.

[Lapak]

Enough to have more than one file/rank when fighting in formation. If they can only form a single line, you can't really apply any meaningful tactics.
This is very helpful and gets at the heart of what I am going for, though it then forces me to follow up with ‘how long must a line be to be meaningful?’

Is a square 2 guys wide and 2 guys (that is, 4 total for people in the formation) enough? 5x2? 10x2? Obviously some of this depends on terrain, enemy, and so on, but I am shooting to ID the smallest formation where troop discipline / ability to work as a unit (as opposed to individual skill) has a substantial impact on the outcome.

[Mike_G]

This is very helpful and gets at the heart of what I am going for, though it then forces me to follow up with ‘how long must a line be to be meaningful?’

Is a square 2 guys wide and 2 guys (that is, 4 total for people in the formation) enough? 5x2? 10x2? Obviously some of this depends on terrain, enemy, and so on, but I am shooting to ID the smallest formation where troop discipline / ability to work as a unit (as opposed to individual skill) has a substantial impact on the outcome.

If you're looking for how small a unit can be to function, the Romans had an eight man unit. They'd share a tent, probably have an official senior man in charge, and would be an easy unit to send on a patrol or something like that.

In combat, even two men who train together can support one another and be useful, but if you want a unit that can be sorta independent, I'd say 8-10.

Although you could say something like one crossbowman and two or three guys to help with a pavisse, reloading, carrying ammo is like a unit. The same way a machine gun team is a unit today.

So, two to four guys could be a team, like a crossbowman or knight with some helpers. But I think you're looking for a squad analogue. Like ten spearmen with a leader.

For formation fighting I like 8 as a low number. You can have two ranks of four, which can work in urban or close terrain, and you have enough men to form a square or two front type formation if they do get surrounded.

[Brother Oni]

If you're looking for how small a unit can be to function, the Romans had an eight man unit. They'd share a tent, probably have an official senior man in charge, and would be an easy unit to send on a patrol or something like that.

In combat, even two men who train together can support one another and be useful, but if you want a unit that can be sorta independent, I'd say 8-10.

Although you could say something like one crossbowman and two or three guys to help with a pavisse, reloading, carrying ammo is like a unit. The same way a machine gun team is a unit today.

So, two to four guys could be a team, like a crossbowman or knight with some helpers. But I think you're looking for a squad analogue. Like ten spearmen with a leader.

For formation fighting I like 8 as a low number. You can have two ranks of four, which can work in urban or close terrain, and you have enough men to form a square or two front type formation if they do get surrounded.

Further to the above:

During the Warring States Period, the Qin army had the Wu, a 5 man squad as the basic unit, with 4 soldiers and 1 squad leader.

Samurai armies during the Sengoku period either had 7 (squad leader, 2IC and 5 ashigaru) or 2 (yari samurai and a follower) as the smallest field unit, but organisationally was a bit more complicated (Samurai army composition from an earlier thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20800441&postcount=962)).

During medieval times, knights and men at arms were typically composed as lances; the exact composition of a lance is highly dependent on the period and culture in question (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lances_fournies), but very roughly, it was three men - the knight or man at arm, supported by a fighting squire with a non-combatant squire.

[Tobtor]

This question may be too general, but - what is the minimum number of soldiers to form an effective unit in pre-modern combat? That is, if you’re hoping to get the benefits that come with fighting as a group (forming a shield wall, standing off a charge with pole arms, massed missile fire, peer support of morale that helps keep the group from breaking and running, etc.) what’s the lowest number of basic troops where you might expect to see a result greater than the sum of its parts?

(For context in case it helps, I’m looking at establishing a sergeant-type role that can give greater effectiveness to a squad of troops, but I’m not sure how to define that group.)

As people have mentioned many different sizes of unit exists (depending on time and place). The answer to the part I bolded is 2. 2 people fighting together is MUCH, MUCH better than 1 person. This is both true if they are equiped the same way (two spearmen), but even more so if they have different equipment (spearman/Archer, Sparman/sword-guy etc), as they can make use of the others strangth, and cover their weaknesses.

As is aparent fromt he answers others have provided the unit size is usually related to the organisation of the military. For example Viking age armies was centered around the boat, thus the "styrman" (steers-man, the one steering the ship), would also act as commander on land. This gives that typical "units" was 20-40, as this was a typical size ship-crew (10-20 oars for each side of the ship, one man per oar), though double the number in some cases (double crews where used for internal and close range combats). A few larger ships would have more men (such as the ships of earls and above).

In later periods the army was centered around the "knight" (either the noble orotherwise) and this gave a very idfferent sized unit (also dependinng on period, early knights had a couple of men, later it would be usual to have 5-6 men supporting a knight).

For you "sergeant-type" role, I suggest going with around 8 men (as Mike_G suggests), similar to the Roman organisation.

[Deepbluediver]

Since we're talking about ranks, can someone explain to me why we maintain both commissioned and non-commissioned officers in a modern military?

From what I've read (and correct me if I'm wrong) in the pre-modern era a noble or wealthy gentleman would receive his rank/comission directly from the government or the crown, while NCO's where common men who had worked their way up through the ranks and never rose as high as the former. But what's the benefit to maintaining the division in a modern military force? What difference in role do they have and is it necessary?

[Vinyadan]

Pretty big. The name of nco and co doesn't always translate literally in other languages, where they simply talk about officers and subofficers. But good ncos are considered one of the reasons why Western armies still are that good compared to e.g. the Arab world.
Someone with actual military experience probably will give you a good explanation.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Pretty big. The name of nco and co doesn't always translate literally in other languages, where they simply talk about officers and subofficers. But good ncos are considered one of the reasons why Western armies still are that good compared to e.g. the Arab world.
Someone with actual military experience probably will give you a good explanation.

All I know is by reputation--NCOs take care of implementation, officers give more general orders.

*Lieutenant: Raise the flag!
*NCO: You, you, and you, unfold the flag...

Oh, and NCOs know who their fathers were :smallwink:

[Brother Oni]

Since we're talking about ranks, can someone explain to me why we maintain both commissioned and non-commissioned officers in a modern military?

From what I've read (and correct me if I'm wrong) in the pre-modern era a noble or wealthy gentleman would receive his rank/comission directly from the government or the crown, while NCO's where common men who had worked their way up through the ranks and never rose as high as the former. But what's the benefit to maintaining the division in a modern military force? What difference in role do they have and is it necessary?

Implementation and role mainly. A commissioned officer receives more strategic information and training, additional leadership training to handle all these tasks and is more involved with the administrative side of managing all the men under his command, while the non-commissioned officers handle the day to day running of things, with the more junior NCO ranks managing soldiers at the individual level.

Using a very rough civilian example for terms of duties and roles, commissioned officers would be middle and senior management, while the NCOs would range between junior management and the more senior members of the shop floor staff who know what to do.

In the British Army, we still have commissioned officers as they derive their commission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_(document)) and authority directly from the Crown (the Queen is head of our armed forces).

[Gnoman]

Here's another way to look at it.

Enlisted are doers. Their job is to take the hill, drive the supply trucks, fix the planes, etc.
Officers are leaders. Their job is to decide what hills to take, where the supply trucks need to be sent first, what priorities to assign to fixing what planes, etc.

A non-commissioned officer is an extremely good doer. Their job is to make sure that the hill gets taken without too many losses, make sure that the supply trucks are loaded as efficiently as possible, making sure that the planes are fixed correctly and as quickly as possible, etc.

Where the "why do we have a division between officers and NCOs" usually comes from is comparing the lowest officer grades with the NCO grades. Usually, an experienced sergeant will be far more capable in all ways -including leadership at the platoon level- than the new-minted lieutenant that is his nominal superior. This raises the question of why the sergeant isn't in charge instead.

The reason is that the sergeant is near the top of his grade, while the lieutenant is at the bottom. He is in a learning position as much as (or more than) a command one, with the idea being that he will take what he learns from the sergeant and apply it with a much broader brush once he gets promoted.

[Haighus]

It is actually surprisingly similar to the situation with doctors and nurses. A junior doctor (say F1/house officer level, fresh out of medical school), is generally less capable than a senior nurse, especially in practical ward tasks. However, they progress to a position of greater responsibility with time, and have a similar leadership vs getting things done role.

This is presumably why military doctors get a commissioned rank.

[Max_Killjoy]

It is actually surprisingly similar to the situation with doctors and nurses. A junior doctor (say F1/house officer level, fresh out of medical school), is generally less capable than a senior nurse, especially in practical ward tasks. However, they progress to a position of greater responsibility with time, and have a similar leadership vs getting things done role.

This is presumably why military doctors get a commissioned rank.

IIRC, that also has to do with pay scale, and with expected treatment if captured (for the same reason, female nurses in certain times and theaters were all technically of officer-equivalent rank -- so they'd receive officer treatment if captured).

[Yora]

Isn't training also different? I believe in the German army, you don't normally become a lieutenant by starting as a private and working your way through the ranks. After basic training you go straight(?) to officer school, while you become a sergeant only through experience and rising through all the subofficer ranks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Isn't training also different? I believe in the German army, you don't normally become a lieutenant by starting as a private and working your way through the ranks. After basic training you go straight(?) to officer school, while you become a sergeant only through experience and rising through all the subofficer ranks.

Right. Lieutenants (mostly) are a "just graduated from officer school" (which often includes basic training) rank. Sergeant is a higher "enlisted" rank.

Although there are those who get commissions (become officers) from the enlisted ranks. There's a word for it, but I'm blanking on it.

[Haighus]

Right. Lieutenants (mostly) are a "just graduated from officer school" (which often includes basic training) rank. Sergeant is a higher "enlisted" rank.

Although there are those who get commissions (become officers) from the enlisted ranks. There's a word for it, but I'm blanking on it.

As far as I can tell, it is simply "battlefield commission".

[PhoenixPhyre]

As far as I can tell, it is simply "battlefield commission".

Yeah, I was getting confused with warrant officers and thinking of "brevet" (which is a different thing entirely).

There's also such a thing as a direct commission in the US--doctors/lawyers get these (they go through an abbreviated basic training and then specialized professional training).

[Gnoman]

You may be thinking of the term "mustang", which is a common word in US service for "officer promoted from the ranks". It has become fairly common in speculative fiction as well.

[Galloglaich]

In later periods the army was centered around the "knight" (either the noble orotherwise) and this gave a very idfferent sized unit (also dependinng on period, early knights had a couple of men, later it would be usual to have 5-6 men supporting a knight).

Agreed - in the period ~ 1300 - 1550, from the Southern Baltic down to Bohemia and Bavaria, a 'Lance' was typically 5 or 6 men, but could blow up to about 8.


knight / squire / or man at arms (armored lancer on armored horse)
1-2 lancers (armored but unarmored horse)
1-2 crossbowmen / scouts (armored but unarmored horse)
Possibly one light cavalryman or cavalry archer (unarmored)
1 -2 valets who helped deal with the horses and gear


So 4-8, the exact breakdown depended on what region it was and what kind of enemies they faced. For example when the Teutonic Knights faced the Tartars (Mongols, basically) they would have a larger lance with more missile guys (2 mounted crossbowmen and a cavalry archer if available) if fighting against the Poles or other Germans they would have more lancers and no archer.

Above the level of the lance knights were organized in banners, which might be anywhere from 5 to 50 banners or more.

Medieval urban militias were organized by street, then quarter. A quarter was roughly equivalent to a Fähnlein, roughly 400-600 men depending where and when precisely.

Streets in medieval towns were often organized by craft industry - so you would have one street with butchers, one with bakers and so on. Incidentally, certain crafts seemed to excel in warfare more than others. Butchers for example were almost always prominent in the militias, which kind of makes sense. Cutlers, crossbowmakers, furriers and weavers were also typically prominent though it varied from place to place. Each craft / or lane would also often specialize in different weapons or types of fighting.

Each street or 'lane' would be have it's own sergeant or 'Feldwebel', usually a guild alderman or a merchant, and typically mounted. The quarter would have a commander called the quartermaster (Verteilmeister) who may be from outside the quarter (often from one of the cavalry societies, mainly patricians as well as some of the more elite craft guilds) and fought with a banner carried by an ensign (Fähnrich) usually a youngster from one of the prominent patrician or merchant families. The commander would also typically be called a "Captain" - Hauptmann.

A lane would be organized as a Rotte, something like a squad. Depending on the strength of the troop type (light or heavily armored, and elite vs. less trained) a Rotte might be anything from 6 to 20 men.

Fähnlein and Rotte
Most Central European medieval mercenary companies from 1300-1550 were organized this same way - Fähnlein and Rotte, Landsknecht companies in the 16th Century were as well and I think so were the Reislauffer companies (often on the urban model)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/09/81/0d/09810dab49470d7e2f91e33c85cf7881.jpg

If you want to read more about this kind of unit organization in the late middle ages read up on Landsknechts, they are well documented in English for stuff in this era, and while Landsknecht companies had their own unique aspects, they are similar enough to the other late medieval units that you can get in the ball-park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A4hnlein



For you "sergeant-type" role, I suggest going with around 8 men (as Mike_G suggests), similar to the Roman organisation.

In medieval Germany a sergeant is a Feldwebel. This is not a dig at you, but I think this discussion is a good example of how we always try to figure out (late) Medieval warfare, military organization or training or fighting of any kind -we tend to look at Roman sources (Vegitius etc.) and Early Modern Sources and sources from other regions, but much more rarely do we look at sources from the period itself, for reasons I can guess at but don't know for sure.

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

You may be thinking of the term "mustang", which is a common word in US service for "officer promoted from the ranks". It has become fairly common in speculative fiction as well.

That's very possible.

Completely tangential, but I wonder if Roy Mustang (FMA)'s name has anything to do with this meaning of the word...It kinda fits his "unconventional but successful military officer" image. But I really have no clue.

[Kiero]

Right. Lieutenants (mostly) are a "just graduated from officer school" (which often includes basic training) rank. Sergeant is a higher "enlisted" rank.

Although there are those who get commissions (become officers) from the enlisted ranks. There's a word for it, but I'm blanking on it.

They're warrant officers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_officer). Their officer status comes from neither seniority (NCO) nor commission (CO). They are more senior than all the enlisted men and cadets.

[Brother Oni]

It is actually surprisingly similar to the situation with doctors and nurses. A junior doctor (say F1/house officer level, fresh out of medical school), is generally less capable than a senior nurse, especially in practical ward tasks. However, they progress to a position of greater responsibility with time, and have a similar leadership vs getting things done role.

This is presumably why military doctors get a commissioned rank.

As Max said, this is to do with how salaries work in the military - pay scales with rank, so if you want to attract doctors to join the military, paying them a commensurate wage with what they would earn in the civilian sector is a good start. This generally starts them off in the captain pay scale (OF2), thus they're commissioned as captains.

In the British Army, such specialists (doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc) are known as professionally qualified officers and their entire military training is fitted into a 10 week course (informally known as the Tarts and Vicars course), compared to the 42 weeks for a regular commissioned army officer course.
As I understand the PQO course, they're essentially taught the basics of military life (self reliance, drill, basic weapons, etc) then get sent off to be lawyers/doctors/chaplains, etc. PQOs are neither trained or expected to be combatants, so don't expect that RAMC surgeon colonel to be better at directing an attack on a bunker than that Rifles lieutenant; that said, in light of recent deployments, I believe they have been increasing the amount of 'proper' army training in the PQO course so they're better prepared if they ever come under attack.

[Lapak]

In medieval Germany a sergeant is a Feldwebel. This is not a dig at you, but I think this discussion is a good example of how we always try to figure out (late) Medieval warfare, military organization or training or fighting of any kind -we tend to look at Roman sources (Vegitius etc.) and Early Modern Sources and sources from other regions, but much more rarely do we look at sources from the period itself, for reasons I can guess at but don't know for sure.

G
Thank you for adding this whole comment - it was very helpful! In terms of this part, I think it’s a fair point in general but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the spread of time people have chipped in from (and I’d expect it, since I wasn’t specific beyond ‘pre-modern.’)

I’d be fascinated to hear if anyone has additional time frames or cultures to chip in on. South Asia? How/if the Golden Horde organized at the squad level? Anyone know any sources that give us info on this level of military organization in the Bronze Age?

[Mr Beer]

Since we're talking about ranks, can someone explain to me why we maintain both commissioned and non-commissioned officers in a modern military?

From what I've read (and correct me if I'm wrong) in the pre-modern era a noble or wealthy gentleman would receive his rank/comission directly from the government or the crown, while NCO's where common men who had worked their way up through the ranks and never rose as high as the former. But what's the benefit to maintaining the division in a modern military force? What difference in role do they have and is it necessary?

Excellent training for NCOs is believed to have been one key to WWII era's formidable Wehrmacht, where aggression and flexibility in support of the mission was encouraged at all levels of command. In direct contrast to the Red Army, where NCOs had minimal authority and centralised command was everything.

[Galloglaich]

Thank you for adding this whole comment - it was very helpful! In terms of this part, I think it’s a fair point in general but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the spread of time people have chipped in from (and I’d expect it, since I wasn’t specific beyond ‘pre-modern.’)

I’d be fascinated to hear if anyone has additional time frames or cultures to chip in on. South Asia? How/if the Golden Horde organized at the squad level? Anyone know any sources that give us info on this level of military organization in the Bronze Age?

The Golden Horde and I think all the Mongols and Steppe Nomads in general were organized on the decimal system. The largest unit was the tumen, 10,000 riders, equivalent to a division. Then below that they had units of 1,000 (Mingghan), 100 (Zuut) and 10 (Aravt). Each with their own commander and other leaders, scouts and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumen_(unit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingghan

For Bronze Age, we have Greek records and Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese etc. which gives us a good idea how their militaries were organized, but for places like Northern Europe, as Tobtor would tell us, very little in the way of literary evidence, just archeology.

G

[Deepbluediver]

...This raises the question of why the sergeant isn't in charge instead.

The reason is that the sergeant is near the top of his grade, while the lieutenant is at the bottom. He is in a learning position as much as (or more than) a command one, with the idea being that he will take what he learns from the sergeant and apply it with a much broader brush once he gets promoted.
That seems to explain it very succinctly, thank you. Also thank you to everyone else who replied. It's easy to find information about WHAT online, what ranks are CO vs. NCO, what certain responsibilities are, etc. It's much harder to find information about the WHY.

I'm still a bit curious about why exactly this distinction is necessary- it seems redundant to me, but I've never served in the military so maybe it's just something you don't easily get without direct experience.


Edit: I kind of get the point about nurses vs. doctors and things like warrant officers. Does anyone know of a modern military that has more of a mix of higher-ranking officers between the two factions- promoted through officer school and risen-through-the-ranks? Would there be a problem with the way that work's out.

[rrgg]

On the subject of medieval army organization, it's also worth remembering that administrative organization wasn't always the same as tactical organization. With the "Lance" in particular there tends to be a lot of back and forth about whether the knight actually fought alongside his mounted archers or whether the archers were put in a separate tactical unit. "Companies" tended to be primarily administrative divisions. While they could fight independently, they were frequently well under-strength and with varying proportions of different weapon types.

To organize a even-sided Gewalthaufen then multiple companies would need to be merged together with a sargent major seperating the men out to ensure than the best armored and most experienced pikemen form the front ranks with the lesser pikemen behind them, orderly ranks of halberders or swordsmen in the center to guard the standards, and then any shot separated out to serve as skirmishers. The shot might be organized into 2-4 large sleeves with hundreds of men each, they might be split into small troops of 20-25 men each lead by a corporal, or they might be allowed to operate as even smaller groups or as individuals.

Additionally, while a colonel or head captain would be in charge of the whole infantry square, it was common for him to select individual company-level captains he trusted and send them to perform important tasks like raids, ambushes, scouting, etc. with a select number of picked troops. In Montluc's memoirs he describes taking part in a lot of small-unit actions sometimes with less than 1 or 2 dozen footmen.

[Deepbluediver]

Excellent training for NCOs is believed to have been one key to WWII era's formidable Wehrmacht, where aggression and flexibility in support of the mission was encouraged at all levels of command. In direct contrast to the Red Army, where NCOs had minimal authority and centralised command was everything.
I find it interesting that you say that- what I heard was that Hitler considered himself a great tactician, and (at least in the later stages of the war) insisted that all major decisions run through him, while Stalin started off in the same vein but eventually figured out that things went much better when he left the running of the army to his generals.

[Mr Beer]

I find it interesting that you say that- what I heard was that Hitler considered himself a great tactician, and (at least in the later stages of the war) insisted that all major decisions run through him, while Stalin started off in the same vein but eventually figured out that things went much better when he left the running of the army to his generals.

Hitler was deeply suspicious of the upper ranks of the Wehrmacht, who he felt were effete untrustworthy aristocrats. This creeping resentment turned into complete paranoia following the 20 July plot. IIRC after that he pretty much insisted on running the show, not just because he considered himself the strategic superior of his generals but because he didn't trust them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot

Stalin was a different matter. He left more operational command in the hands of his generals, trouble was at the time of Operation Barbarossa they were largely the incompetent (but loyal) lickspittles that had survived his crippling purge of the officers. A few worthwhile senior staff survived for various reasons (Zhukov was out East, Rokossovsky had to be pulled back out of the torture chambers) and they ended up as generals, marshals etc. while the incompetents were removed.

I believe Stalin did retain a lot of central control right throughout the war though you could be right that he learned to trust his generals more. Once he knew the way the war was going to end, Stalin took the time to have himself heavily publically associated with managing it - something he certainly didn't do during the early disastrous days and months.

Probably the most important difference between Hitler and Stalin as far as managing the war went is that Hitler stuck religiously to his ideology whereas Stalin was happy to ignore it if that's what it took to defeat the Germans. That included re-appointing competent 'traitors' like the aforementioned Rokossovsky, reeling in the powers of the military political officers to interfere with operational matters etc. etc.

[Haighus]

They're warrant officers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_officer). Their officer status comes from neither seniority (NCO) nor commission (CO). They are more senior than all the enlisted men and cadets.

As far as I know, this is only true for warrant officers in the US- they occupy a unique position between NCO and commissioned. There is even a unique NATO rank system for them. Warrant officers in other nations (like the UK) are simply the highest rank of NCO, equivalent to the top US sergeant ranks, and equal in rank to naval petty officers. The UK army has warrant officer class one and two, and the majority of warrant officers have a second role, such as Company sergeant major (class two) or Regimental sergeant major (class one). I think there are also forms of warrant officer in the other branches of the UK military.

As such, UK warrant officers can be promoted to 2nd lieutenants, but it is rare.

[rs2excelsior]

I find it interesting that you say that- what I heard was that Hitler considered himself a great tactician, and (at least in the later stages of the war) insisted that all major decisions run through him, while Stalin started off in the same vein but eventually figured out that things went much better when he left the running of the army to his generals.

There are differences in the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. At the operational (our division has been tasked with taking this town) and tactical (our platoon has been tasked with clearing this city block) levels, the German army heavily emphasized independence on the part of the commanders and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. So a German platoon commander would be ordered what to do by his company commander and largely allowed to figure out how to do it on his own (ideally). Officers and NCOs were extensively trained in how to handle different situations and how to adapt to the unexpected, meaning the junior officers could be trusted to adapt to changing circumstances without needing or being expected to report the situation to higher command and wait for instruction--by which time the situation had likely changed (again, all this is the goal of the Wehrmacht's training programs and whatnot--actual application of this philosophy varied, of course). By contrast, at the strategic level (we're going to invade this country now), Hitler began to meddle more and more in what the generals did, issuing increasingly harmful orders (such as ordering forces in France to refuse to retreat, leading to many German forces being encircled, rather than fighting a collapsing defense and preserving strength for a fight where Allied supply lines were overextended and the Germans had the advantage). On the flip side, Soviet doctrine emphasized adherence to orders and gave commanders, especially at operational and tactical levels, far less autonomy. This was partially due to the purges of the Soviet officer corps between the wars and the fact that Soviet troops were generally much less experienced and trained, at least at the start of Barbarossa.

Additionally, the Soviet officer and NCO corps generally improved with experience as the war went on, while many of the trained and experienced German officers and NCOs were killed and their replacements didn't have the benefit of the same training programs. At higher levels, many skilled German generals were dismissed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_von_Rundstedt) or killed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel)* by Hitler, largely due to his growing paranoia.

Basically, what the German Army wanted and what Hitler wanted were not the same things (and diverged more and more as the war continued). German officers were trained to utilize their own initiative more than their Soviet counterparts, though they were not always allowed to at higher levels due to Hitler's meddling. Soviet officers fairly quickly began to catch up to their German counterparts, substituting wartime experience for peacetime training.

*Technically Hitler didn't have Rommel killed... but he basically gave him the choice of suicide and an honorable funeral or trial, execution, and probable persecution of his family.

[Gnoman]

That's very possible.

Completely tangential, but I wonder if Roy Mustang (FMA)'s name has anything to do with this meaning of the word...It kinda fits his "unconventional but successful military officer" image. But I really have no clue.

No. Roy Mustang is named after the P-51 Mustang. Most of the military characters in FMA are named after weapons or military vehicles - you can see the same thing with Jean Havoc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-20_Havoc) and Riza Hawkeye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_E-2_Hawkeye), for example.

[PersonMan]

I find it interesting that you say that- what I heard was that Hitler considered himself a great tactician, and (at least in the later stages of the war) insisted that all major decisions run through him, while Stalin started off in the same vein but eventually figured out that things went much better when he left the running of the army to his generals.

While I don't have the time to go deeper into it, there was a shift in the Wehrmacht's guiding ideas over the course of the war - the original Auftragstaktik of "alright, lower officers, at the end X time period I want you to have taken X town with Y forces" was the afore-described flexible philosophy that let leaders on the ground use their knowledge from being in the field (to the point that if you were given X order, but it was nonsense due to the situation, you could ignore it and do something else - as long as it worked, you wouldn't be punished). Over time, the Führerprinzip (basically "one guy should be in charge of everything") gained more importance, leading to changes.

[Mendicant]

I'm still a bit curious about why exactly this distinction is necessary- it seems redundant to me, but I've never served in the military so maybe it's just something you don't easily get without direct experience.

I think the others covered the main distinction pretty well. Officers, even junior ones, are trained for a more general role. It's even in the names of some of the ranks--"specialist" and "technical sergeant" vs., well, "general."

That said, I've got some other observations. First, it's also worth noting that not everything in the military is strictly necessary. Modern militaries are subject to historical inertia just like any other human social unit, and their histories trace back directly to European class structures that had pretty sharp lines between the gentry and commoners in all things, not just the army or navy.

Second, keep in mind that the timeline for officers is often longer, so things aren't as parallel as they might seem. For instance, in the Air Force it generally takes 4 years to make captain (O-3) but only 3 years to make senior airman (E-4). A major (O-4) would have something like 10 years in, minimum, while I hit E-5 in just under 5 years, which isn't that uncommon, and could've been an E-6 in that time frame if I'd been in the Army.

Third, while most enlisted people stay enlisted their whole careers, it isn't weird at all for an enlisted person to transition to being a commissioned officer, at least in the US. All the branches have programs specifically designed to do this, where promising enlisted go through a service academy or get a degree and then go through OTS. I had at least 3 captains who were prior enlisted.

Lastly, this division isn't always smooth in practice. Officers in the three lowest grades can get a lot of crap, especially young lieutenants who weren't enlisted first. My brother, who's USAF special forces, has a pretty hilarious story of watching an experienced operator get into it with a lieutenant in another unit, and then turn to the lieutenant's senior NCO and say "how dare you let your lieutenant talk to me this way!" right in front of the LT like he was some kind of badly behaved pet.

ETA: in more healthy relationships, there's often a lot of mentoring from junior officers and their senior enlisted noncoms, who act kind of like training wheels for brand-new officers.

[Vinyadan]

There are differences in the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. At the operational (our division has been tasked with taking this town) and tactical (our platoon has been tasked with clearing this city block) levels, the German army heavily emphasized independence on the part of the commanders and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. So a German platoon commander would be ordered what to do by his company commander and largely allowed to figure out how to do it on his own (ideally). Officers and NCOs were extensively trained in how to handle different situations and how to adapt to the unexpected, meaning the junior officers could be trusted to adapt to changing circumstances without needing or being expected to report the situation to higher command and wait for instruction--by which time the situation had likely changed (again, all this is the goal of the Wehrmacht's training programs and whatnot--actual application of this philosophy varied, of course). By contrast, at the strategic level (we're going to invade this country now), Hitler began to meddle more and more in what the generals did, issuing increasingly harmful orders (such as ordering forces in France to refuse to retreat, leading to many German forces being encircled, rather than fighting a collapsing defense and preserving strength for a fight where Allied supply lines were overextended and the Germans had the advantage). On the flip side, Soviet doctrine emphasized adherence to orders and gave commanders, especially at operational and tactical levels, far less autonomy. This was partially due to the purges of the Soviet officer corps between the wars and the fact that Soviet troops were generally much less experienced and trained, at least at the start of Barbarossa.

Additionally, the Soviet officer and NCO corps generally improved with experience as the war went on, while many of the trained and experienced German officers and NCOs were killed and their replacements didn't have the benefit of the same training programs. At higher levels, many skilled German generals were dismissed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_von_Rundstedt) or killed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel)* by Hitler, largely due to his growing paranoia.

Basically, what the German Army wanted and what Hitler wanted were not the same things (and diverged more and more as the war continued). German officers were trained to utilize their own initiative more than their Soviet counterparts, though they were not always allowed to at higher levels due to Hitler's meddling. Soviet officers fairly quickly began to catch up to their German counterparts, substituting wartime experience for peacetime training.


This difference in authority and decisional power was still there in the 90s, for example, between Arab countries and the USA. Officially, a colonel was a colonel, on both sides. In practice, however, an Arab officer was required to be industrious and execute orders well, and decision-making was expected to come from on-high. So he had the authority to command his men... exclusively with orders given by someone else. This resulted in the paradox that a US sergeant the same authority as an Arab colonel, because he had a power of decision-making that was denied to most Egyptian officers.

[Yora]

Why do navies with no carriers have their own fighter planes? Apparently the German navy got rid of them and now only has helicopters and a few sea surveilance planes, but it used to opperate Tornados and Starfighters as well. Why?

[Max_Killjoy]

Why do navies with no carriers have their own fighter planes? Apparently the German navy got rid of them and now only has helicopters and a few sea surveilance planes, but it used to opperate Tornados and Starfighters as well. Why?

In general, a navy without carriers might still operate fixed-wing aircraft for all the same reasons that a navy WITH carriers would do so, they just operate from land bases instead. The US Navy operates aircraft that cannot work from carriers, using land bases (P-3 Orion for a very long time, for example.)

There's a lot of inter-service nonsense and "that's NOT our mission" and "that's only OUR mission" and so on that goes on, too, so you might have an air force that looks down its nose at doing long-endurance ocean surveillance.

And there's communication and chain-of-command concerns. A navy might want those long-endurance patrol planes under its command so that they can be coordinated with ship schedules and other concerns without going through the other chain of command.

[Yora]

Yeah, with planes that opperate only over water to support ships I can totally get how it's useful. But with air combat jets I don't see the point. (Apparently, the German Navy didn't see it anymore either.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, with planes that opperate only over water to support ships I can totally get how it's useful. But with air combat jets I don't see the point. (Apparently, the German Navy didn't see it anymore either.)

Specifically air-superiority... a navy might have a need to keep enemy bombers off its ships and harbors, and enemy fighters off its other aircraft. And the German Navy's post-WW2 air arm was trained and influenced by the British Royal Navy's air arm, which had carriers and fighters, so there may have been something there as well.

[Galloglaich]

There are differences in the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. At the operational (our division has been tasked with taking this town) and tactical (our platoon has been tasked with clearing this city block) levels, the German army heavily emphasized independence on the part of the commanders and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. So a German platoon commander would be ordered what to do by his company commander and largely allowed to figure out how to do it on his own (ideally). Officers and NCOs were extensively trained in how to handle different situations and how to adapt to the unexpected, meaning the junior officers could be trusted to adapt to changing circumstances without needing or being expected to report the situation to higher command and wait for instruction--by which time the situation had likely changed (again, all this is the goal of the Wehrmacht's training programs and whatnot--actual application of this philosophy varied, of course). By contrast, at the strategic level (we're going to invade this country now), Hitler began to meddle more and more in what the generals did, issuing increasingly harmful orders (such as ordering forces in France to refuse to retreat, leading to many German forces being encircled, rather than fighting a collapsing defense and preserving strength for a fight where Allied supply lines were overextended and the Germans had the advantage).

I'd like to emphasize, I didn't have time to get into it before, but this aspect of the German system has direct links to the very old medieval system. Via the Prussian Empire which itself was in part an outgrowth of the old Ordernstaat, the State of the Teutonic Knights. Frederick the Great made the Prussian system a kind of 'tamed' version of the old medieval system of the Teutonic Knights and other German polities from roughly the same region (the various Marks or frontier zones of the Holy Roman Empire). Clausewitz was also was aware of all this as were important 20th Century German military historians like Hans Delbruck.

The medieval version of military science (and martial arts) as laid out in the war-manuals of those days (specifically medieval as opposed to Early Modern) teaches how to perform tasks and solve problems. These are the seven factors to be aware of when doing a cavalry charge, this is a five part analysis of how you perform an envelopment, this is a list of nine aspects of how a siege works and these are the seven factors which come up, these are the issues you face managing logistics and these are the five most common ways to deal with key crises that typically come up. They teach you what the traits of various types of military kit, various types of personalities, various types of weather and diseases and problems of the camp and so forth. In other words, they try to make you into an engine of war, an engine of solving problems and meeting challenges. The goal is to allow substantial autonomy as well as the ability improvise new solutions.

Later on from around the mid 16th Century and into the Modern era you started to have a much more of a hierarchical system, with specific instructions for everything. To attack a roadblock you do these five things, in this order, with this number of troops and exactly this equipment. It's more like an instruction manual of 'best practices' which does not encourage autonomy, gets into details and doesn't have that much flexibility. But if it's fine tuned enough it can produce results.

This, incidentally, is also the difference between fencing and martial arts manuals from the Middle Ages vs. those from the Early Modern era and later.

The Prussian / German system of the 20th Century was a kind of a hybrid of the Medieval and Early Modern. You still had some training on the nature of war in it's various aspects, but you also have lists on how to conduct an ambush, how and when to perform counter-attacks and so on. These are your tools and as a commander, you were expected to know which ones to use. They are optimized - you can use them as you see fit, but you aren't necessarily supposed to invent variations. You are also damn sure going to follow orders - it may be up to you how you take the block but you will take the block..




On the flip side, Soviet doctrine emphasized adherence to orders and gave commanders, especially at operational and tactical levels, far less autonomy. This was partially due to the purges of the Soviet officer corps between the wars and the fact that Soviet troops were generally much less experienced and trained, at least at the start of Barbarossa.

Additionally, the Soviet officer and NCO corps generally improved with experience as the war went on, while many of the trained and experienced German officers and NCOs were killed and their replacements didn't have the benefit of the same training programs.

The Soviet system also had some ancient antecedents, and they had a unique trait which led to their becoming stronger and stronger over time. Put very simply, they rewarded success and abandoned failure. You can see this clearly in terms of their kit. In the early days of the war, nobody really knew what kinds of tanks or planes would be good and what types would barely work. Was speed or armor more important for tanks (both were important but it turned out armor mattered more). Many guns or one strong gun (Russian 'land battleship' tanks with multi-turrets turned out not to work well). Was maneuverability or speed more important for fighters? The Russians had biplanes and open-cockpit fighters.

The Soviets did this - they put out one tank regiment with BT-7's, one with T-34's and KV1, one with T-35 'land battleships', and so on. The BT-7's got wiped out in huge numbers, while the T-34's did well. They started building more T-34's and they make the T-34 unit into a 'guards' unit. It gets heavily reinforced and is given priority in supplies. Same with the planes. One unit has I-15 biplanes, one has high altitude MiGG 3's, one has LaGG-3's, one has I-16's, one has British Hurricanes, one has American P-40's and P-39's, and another has Yak 1 or Yak 7.

http://miliblog.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/air-russian-origww2-fighters/polikarpov-i-15-biplane-fighter-2.jpg
Not good vs. Me 109

http://www.world-war-2-planes.com/images/Yakovlev-Yak-1.jpg
Good vs. Me 109


The I-15's, I-16 and MiG-3 units are mostly failing, so they are gradually allowed to be attritted to nothing, are shifted to ground attack roles or rotated to lower priority areas. The P-40/ P-39 units do better so they start getting more lend lease fighters (especially P-39, which the Soviets ask for more of) and are made Guards (GIAP) regiments. The Yak 1 and Yak 7 do very well, are made GIAP, and get reinforced with more fighters, the newest available. Yak-1 gets priority production with feedback for changes from the front.

The same correlates obviously with officers and leaders. A general launches a frontal attack with 10 battalions. 6 of the battalions get bogged down and are being decimated, 3 are in stalemate and 1 makes progress. The 6 failing units are basically just given enough supplies to prevent total collapse, their commanders know they are at risk of being jailed. The remaining 4 get priority and the 1 which is breaking out gets extra stuff, new tanks and tank destroyers, more rocket artillery - whatever the commander wants. The commander gets a promotion and after the battle is over and the units are being refitted, he will probably become a division or regiment commander.


This is kind of like the old Ottoman system, and I suspect (I don't know the history well enough) it was probably used by Ivan Grozny (Ivan 'The Terrible'). It starts out weak but gets stronger. It's ruthless but effective.

G

[Incanur]

So I've been thinking about javelins/darts again, and why they declined in prominence in the 15th/16th centuries. Comments on this video (https://youtu.be/cJotBsrqbwI) got me started.

While Todd and Lara's performance seems poor for martial purposes—I'm certainly not suggesting I could do any better—the numbers from modern athletes look more encouraging. The best pitchers manage 165+ J with their fastballs, and plenty of pitchers can do 105 J (85mph fastball). In theory, there should be more overall energy available with a 370g dart versus a 146g baseball. Getting 100+ J with these darts should be quite doable.

I've long known about the high kinetic energy (360+ J) the best Olympic javelin throwers deliver. Now I've found numbers for standing throws. On a battlefield, you wouldn't necessarily want to full-on sprint and nearly fall over to throw your javelin/dart/spear. Standing throws, like baseball pitches, involve more practical motions.

Olympic-level javelin throwers can manage 55-60+m with standing throws. That indicates an initial energy of around 250 J (or more). And that's with a mere 800g javelin. A heavy javelin, like Roman infantry used, should hit harder still, though presumably armor and shield would reduce performance to some degree. 200+ J for a heavy javelin appears quite plausible by the numbers, assuming force and skill (to channel Vegetius (http://www.digitalattic.org/home/war/vegetius/)).

According to Alan Williams, a 16th-century munitions-grade harness of low-carbon steel only requires about 180 J to defeat (2.5mm) with a perfectly perpendicular hit. However, such a hit would be unlikely given the way javelins fly and the curvature of the breastplate. A significantly angled hit would need 250-260 J, plus more for the padding (Williams says 50 J more, but that's from his lance simulator against padding, not an arrowhead or slender javelin point). This all suggests that a 16th-century piker would be mostly safe from heavy javelins but potentially vulnerable to a running throw, a very powerful or accurate standing throw, or a hit to thinner piece.

There are various period accounts of javelins/darts defeating armor, particularly from the 14th century and earlier. One of the other commenters mentioned Ramon Muntaner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Muntaner), who does indeed describe thrown darts that pierced armor (presumably mail, perhaps with reinforcements).

Pierre d'Aubusson supposedly received an incapacitating wound from a hurled spear that pierced his breastplate at the Siege of Rhodes 1480.

I know of two 16th-century military manuals that did recommend some form of javelins or thrown spears for targetiers, though I'm unsure whether these recommendations were ever put in practice. For the most part, the folks who wanted to revive Roman arms focused on the targets rather than the javelins. Raimond de Fourquevaux suggested that dedicated targetiers throw some sort of grenade but said nothing about equipping them with javelins.

Apparently javelins weren't especially effective against armor in the 16th century, at least in Western and Central Europe. I'd guess the forest of pikes displayed by 16th-century infantry formations would be likely to deflect some javelins. That didn't stop the Romans from hurling pila at Greek pikers, but combined with superior armor that may have made hurling javelins not quite worth the trouble.

Javelins and javelineers persisted in small numbers through the 16th century, but they weren't a tactical mainstay.

On the whole, at any given skill and fitness level, I'd estimate that with a standing throw, heavy javelins delivered significantly more energy than heavy arrows from a yew warbow, but not necessarily more than heavy arrows from a Manchu-style bow.

[Tobtor]

On the whole, at any given skill and fitness level, I'd estimate that with a standing throw, heavy javelins delivered significantly more energy than heavy arrows from a yew warbow, but not necessarily more than heavy arrows from a Manchu-style bow.

I agree. Throwing spears or javelins (or even regular spears thrown) does deliver much more energy (though have somewhat larger heads, so needs to make a bigger whole in the armour to penetrate). This is at the cost of shorter range and heavier missiles (thus more expensive and more effort to carry around, so usually brought in lower numbers).

[Tobtor]

The three main centers of the Romantic literature movement, so to speak, in France were

1) Langedoc
2) Brittany
3) Provence

A point of G's I didnt have time to adress at the time, but have now.

Again, I agree with your overall points about the importance of other regions, I was pointing out that "France" (which clearly didn't exist the way it does today), was important both in terms of university and in "culture" (in this case literature). I agree it wasnt as important as Northern Italy (became), but it wasnt as "backwards" and irrelevant as your first post implied. True we do not have as many renaissance painters as in Flanders/Netherlands, but we have the literature from France (I will postulate that medieval French literature was more important than Flemmish/dutch literature from the medieval, they did have more important painters/artist to be sure).

A point about regions: there was a reason to mention Chrétien de Troyes who was from, well Troyes, and thus part of the central French language area (apart from the Langue d'OC and related dialects in the south). So did Marie de France (though she seem to have lived in England, at least at some point). So while the "origin" of the works are from Breton ministrals (as separate from the Troubadours of Langue d'Oc and Provance (and what is today Northern Spain)), the literature preserved about the Knights of the Round table are "French" (showing that no cultural product lives in isolation). It was through the French line they where made accessible to others(such as later English renderings, as well as Icelandic, as we have several romances translated to old norse in Iceland in the medieval period). So we "owe" the stories of King Arthur to the French literature.

During what I consider "high" medievel (sort of 1050/1100-1300/1350, after which it is "late", I know that a shift have happened in northern Europe including more and more of the 16th century, thus also dragging the beginning of the "late" period forward in time), there are also other "known" figures from France important for our understanding of literature, romances etc (Peter Abelard from Nantes, and Héloïse from Paris to name "a couple"). So while French medieval literature is definitely not one of my specialities, I think we can say it was influential (also later Petrarca, I think, said he was inspired by what had previously happened in France).

An interesting side note: people such as Marie de France (whoe-ever she was) and Héloïse, show that leaning was valued also in women, and that it was not purely an "academic" world of monks it is often portrayed (as both seem to have spoken multiple languages, and Héloïse was getting private tutoring from a known learned person, though it must be said to have backfired on her family a bit).

I do agree however, that during the 100-year war, French culture dropped significantly in importance, though I think it gradually came back to at least somewhat important afterwrads, especialy as it was continuesly a "court" language throughout Northern Europe.

On French/German: I agree with what G wrote. German (and to some degree Dutch) was hugely important languages, especially in "trade" (and crafts etc), thus a series of words from many north European languages have German roots, while many scientific and courtly" words are French (when they are not Latin or Greek). So depending on what is studied you can get significantly different conclusions on what was "influential". So again: I didn't disagree with G's statements, just that it required nuances. Earlier scholars focused overly at courts of nobles and got a "french" world, G's interest is medieval towns (among other things), and in his view the medieval northern Eurpe was German. Both are correct, and there was of course some crossovers.

[Haighus]

I agree. Throwing spears or javelins (or even regular spears thrown) does deliver much more energy (though have somewhat larger heads, so needs to make a bigger whole in the armour to penetrate). This is at the cost of shorter range and heavier missiles (thus more expensive and more effort to carry around, so usually brought in lower numbers).

I think the larger heads is important. If I remember correctly, bullets take a lot more energy to penetrate than arrows because of their shape. I would think javelins would similarly need more energy (but to a lesser degree than shot), because of the wider heads relative to arrows. Some very specialised javelins, like the pilum, would be less impacted with the narrower heads, but dual-purpose javelins that can also be used in melee would likely have notably less penetration for the same energy than an arrow.

[snowblizz]

The Soviets did this - they put out one tank regiment with BT-7's, one with T-34's and KV1, one with T-35 'land battleships', and so on. The BT-7's got wiped out in huge numbers, while the T-34's did well.

Hogwash. The BT-7 is a 1935 design developed out of earlier designs (BT1/2, BT-5, the concept is similar to British cruiser tanks who also learned the hard way the idea was bad in modern war). The T-34 is the later development and refining of the earlier BT-7 design (with a couple of stops in between) towards heavier armoured vehicles. Similarly the KV series stems form the unsuccessful T-35s. The same development processes are true for most armies in Europe during the period, light, fast tanks combined with heavy infantry tanks, often multiturreted, all trending towards something with just enough speed but decent armour. What after the war becomes the MBT.
They ended up using lots of bad and outdated equipment because equipment development and production was lagging behind during the financially tough interwar years. That's broadly true for Soviet forces, they had a massive army to equip and limited resources to do it with.

None of the cases where very outdated equipment saw service with new stuff is a case of testing different concepts. It's a matter of not having enough going around of what they knew was better, and consequently were making more of as fast as they could.

They were definitely openminded to new ideas. Sort of. This is the same army that had political officers who shot army commanders who tried to use a concept other than a massive wave of infantry into the teeth of the enemy. At the same time they didn't have the mental baggage of their victorious Western Allies and took to the tank concept readily. E.g. some interesting theories in deep breakthorughs. So you have both incredible intractibility in some aspects and an openness in others. The purges of the officer corps isn't an effective learning system, it's the results of an ideologically insane system. I mean sure, they punished failure, but they punished success too, part of the officer problem was that successful officers tended to become subversives and you quickly ended up with high command echelons fileld with junior officers promoted by bullets.

The flexibility and pragmatism ideologically I agree with. Not in the least allying with Nazi Germany before the onset of the war even though they knew where it would end. IE they considered war with the Nazis for the control of Europe essentially inevitable. During the tipping points they went against their own earlier ideology and toned down political officers and allowed national patriotism to boost soldier morale. But it did take them a rather bad fright and they, unlike the Germans had the resources to weather the massive losses while they learned better.

[snowblizz]

On French/German: I agree with what G wrote. German (and to some degree Dutch) was hugely important languages, especially in "trade" (and crafts etc), thus a series of words from many north European languages have German roots, while many scientific and courtly" words are French (when they are not Latin or Greek). So depending on what is studied you can get significantly different conclusions on what was "influential". So again: I didn't disagree with G's statements, just that it required nuances. Earlier scholars focused overly at courts of nobles and got a "french" world, G's interest is medieval towns (among other things), and in his view the medieval northern Eurpe was German. Both are correct, and there was of course some crossovers.

I'd like to point out the OP mentioned whether medieaval "France" inspired RPGs. Which is what I was agreeing to. That's not the same as downplaying the importance historically of other things. The previous lakc of nuancing in some research is exactly the casue of why RPGs do look like they do. If anyone is familiar with the Warhammer world the country Brettonnia is a similar concept. It's every misconception about medieval times rolled into one fictional country. Just with actual dragons and monsters. It lives side by side with The Empire, a 1500s HRE facsimili with all the tropes of that in full force.

[Vinyadan]

Concerning France, probably the keyword is Louis IX.

[Galloglaich]

Hogwash. The BT-7 is a 1935 design developed out of earlier designs (BT1/2, BT-5, the concept is similar to British cruiser tanks who also learned the hard way the idea was bad in modern war). The T-34 is the later development and refining of the earlier BT-7 design (with a couple of stops in between) towards heavier armoured vehicles. Similarly the KV series stems form the unsuccessful T-35s. The same development processes are true for most armies in Europe during the period, light, fast tanks combined with heavy infantry tanks, often multiturreted, all trending towards something with just enough speed but decent armour. What after the war becomes the MBT.
They ended up using lots of bad and outdated equipment because equipment development and production was lagging behind during the financially tough interwar years. That's broadly true for Soviet forces, they had a massive army to equip and limited resources to do it with.

None of the cases where very outdated equipment saw service with new stuff is a case of testing different concepts. It's a matter of not having enough going around of what they knew was better, and consequently were making more of as fast as they could.


I'd like to see evidence that the KV was derived from the T-35

http://nationalinterest.org/files/main_images/1280px-kv-1_u_dioramy_proryv_blokady_leningrada._vid_speredi-sprava.jpg

http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/t35-soviet-1930s-tank.jpg

Not saying there is no connection in the designs, I'm just saying if there is it's news to me. They may look similar to some extent but KV had much thicker armor, seems like a very different design overall.

I also wouldn't consider the T-34 a direct descendant of the BT-7 or the Christie; influenced certainly, suspension I think right? And the sloping on the front. But there were lots of influences, it's not the same thing as being directly linked.

More broadly though my point is that they had a wide variety of tank and AFV designs available at the start of the war, some as you noted espousing theories like the cruiser tank which turned out to not be viable; others were new experimental designs which didn't pan out at all, some showed some promise but needed to be developed much further (Su-76 for example, which led to the Su-85 etc.)

http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/winterised-t70.jpg
These things looked like they had potential on paper but the small turret and light armor doomed them.

Some were newer, some older; some light, some heavy, some with big guns some with thick armor, some fast, some slow and so on. The T-34 is a newer design from the BT 7 but they had other new designs which they thought would work but didn't. The T-60 light tank for example was designed in 1938 and entered combat in 1941, it's cousin the T-70 was designed in 1941 and didn't enter combat until 1942. Both were produced in large numbers (~6000 and ~8000 respectively). By contrast the T-34 was designed in 1937 and entered service in 1940.

It wasn't intentionally set up as an experiment, it's just how it shook out - at the start of the war there were some tank regiments with BT-7, some with T-26, some with T-35, and some with T-34. Ultimately the T-34 units worked and due to the Soviet system of rewarding success, it was the T-34 units which gained priority, were made into the 'Guards' units and which were positioned as the tip of the spear for the most crucial battles.

Case in point, up to Stalingrad, T-34's and KV's (which actually worried them more) hadn't been seen in very large numbers by the Germans, rarely more than a few dozen at a time. In the counter attack against the Sixth Army salient (meant to cut off the forces in Stalingrad itself) the Soviets deployed 800 T-34's. Very similar concentrations of Katushka rockets (IRRC 1500 launchers?) and their best fighter available aircraft (Yak 1 and Yak 7, P-40's and P-39's, plus the newer models of the Il-2 ground attack aircraft) were also concentrated for this phase of the Stalingrad battle. I think the number of PPsh submachine guns was also exponentially increased in the counterattacking regiments.

The first year of the war worked out into a brutal Darwinian experiment of what worked and what didn't.

G

[Storm Bringer]

That seems to explain it very succinctly, thank you. Also thank you to everyone else who replied. It's easy to find information about WHAT online, what ranks are CO vs. NCO, what certain responsibilities are, etc. It's much harder to find information about the WHY.

I'm still a bit curious about why exactly this distinction is necessary- it seems redundant to me, but I've never served in the military so maybe it's just something you don't easily get without direct experience.


short answer is "little picture" vs "big Picture".
the average Infantry private thinks about the "tiny picture". He is only worried about what is directly in front of him, and what he can personnaly see. He thinks in terms of spacing between him and the rest of his team, of what he can see in his assigned arcs. hes goes where he is told, and does what it was told to do there.

a NCO is concerned with the little picture. his job is to "sweat the details", and make sure that the "tiny pictures" of his squad are correct and the men know enough to do their specific jobs, etc. NCOs deal with squads and platoons, with at most a few dozen soldiers.


junior commissioned officers are worried about a medium-big picture. they are all about making sure that the NCOs have direction, and letting them deal with the nitty gritty of a task, and that the senior officers know enough to make the big decisions. they are also learning their trade, becoming better leaders and getting to understand and intuit what works, why, and how to do it. they deal with platoons or companies of men, often a hundred plus soldiers spread out over several sites. its a somewhat different type of command and leadership, and the stuff that works well for sergeants doesn't always work that well at this level.

also, people just simply don't live long enough for a soldier to work his way up form the very bottom to the very top. youd be hitting retirement age about major/lt col level, even if you were acing every rank. hence, we have to start our leaders at the midpoint if we want them to have a chance of making the highest ranks.


one way to show the difference is to pass on a story about a test supposedly given to officer recruits in the british army. they are taken to a room and given a briefing. At there disposal, they will have a (imaginary) detachment of:

1x Type 33 tactical bridging system, with all parts and ancillaries
1x Bulldozer, mark 14, with all parts and ancillaries
1x Sargent, Royal Engineers (actual person, present in the room and receiving the same brief)
1x Corporal, Royal Engineers
6x Sapper, Royal Engineers*
8x rifle, 5.56mm
2,500 rounds 5.56mm ammo
etc
etc
etc

this goes on for a few minutes listing all the various pieces of kit.


their mission is to put up a bridge at grid AB 1234 4567, and create a suitable entry and exit path form this bridge. the instructors go on for a while listing various specifications for the site, weather, how much ammo each soldier is supposed to carry, and other such stuff, then tell the cadet to take command and issue his orders to achieve this mission.

the kicker is the that all the officer cadet needs to say is "you heard the briefing, Sergeant, go build the bridge. contact me if you run into trouble", or words to that effect.

almost all the (deliberately) long winded briefing was stuff that officers don't need to know or worry about. Officers are not getting paid to ensure that each man is carrying 300 rounds, or that the road is at least 5 meters wide and doesn't have a slope of more than 15 degrees. what they are getting paid for is making sure the sergeants who do need to worry about such stuff know what to do, where, and when, as well as why it needs to be done.

*RE privates are called Sappers. most branches of the British army have a unique title for their privates.

[Galloglaich]

I think in the US military, part of the job of the NCO in general, aside from making sure gear is strait and so on, is to make sure privates don't panic and run away under fire and when they do panic, to rally them and get them back in line.

Officers do this too, and each military tradition around the world has a different version of it (and who does it and how) for example, in WW2 the Soviets had Commisars who would stand there with a pistol and shoot panicked troops who broke and ran from the enemy.

G

[Mike_G]

*RE privates are called Sappers. most branches of the British army have a unique title for their privates.

Most Marines I knew had unique names for their privates.

Or is that not what you meant?

[rrgg]

@incanur

I agree that a strong man with a javelin would usually be capable of more energy than a bow would. However illustrations of these feathered javelins tend to show very large, barbed heads which would have trouble penetrating any sort of armor.

Regarding the efficiency of Manchu bows though, I'm sort of curious how those examples relate to the average bow used by soldiers. According to barnabe rich there were still many in 1599 England who could shoot up to 360 yards with their gaming bows and specially picked arrows, but with livery bows that were made to last longer and "endure weather" and military arrows which were had "ruffled feathers which catch the wind" few could shoot beyond 200 yards. I think Roger Ascham mentioned something similar where he accidentally left two bows strung overnight then in the morning the expensive bow had lost all its force while the cheaper one still shot fine.

[Vinyadan]

Most Marines I knew had unique names for their privates.

Or is that not what you meant?

A "John Thomas" sort of thing? :smallbiggrin:

[Gnoman]

I'd like to see evidence that the KV was derived from the T-35

http://nationalinterest.org/files/main_images/1280px-kv-1_u_dioramy_proryv_blokady_leningrada._vid_speredi-sprava.jpg

http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/t35-soviet-1930s-tank.jpg

Not saying there is no connection in the designs, I'm just saying if there is it's news to me. They may look similar to some extent but KV had much thicker armor, seems like a very different design overall.


There is a tenuous connection.

The Soviets decided to replace the T-35, and had selected two twin-turret (one 76.2mm and one 45mm, intended as an anti-tank and an anti-infantry gun) designs to replace it - the SMK and the T-100. After these designs were nearly finished, there was a proposal to put both of the SMK's guns in a single turret. This saved a great deal of weight, allowing for far greater armor protection. When the Red Army needed to assault Finnish fortifications during the Winter War, the 2 prototype KV-1s had the 45mm gun replaced with a machine gun, and the four heavy tank prototyples (2 KV, 1 SMK, 1 T-100) were sent into battle. The KV proved vastly superior, and the other projects were abandoned.

The SMK was mistaken by German intelligence as a modification of the T-35, and was designated T-35C. There was connection between the T-35 and early designs of the SMK, although most of these had disappeared by the time the final version was built in metal.

[gkathellar]

That seems to explain it very succinctly, thank you. Also thank you to everyone else who replied. It's easy to find information about WHAT online, what ranks are CO vs. NCO, what certain responsibilities are, etc. It's much harder to find information about the WHY.

I'm still a bit curious about why exactly this distinction is necessary- it seems redundant to me, but I've never served in the military so maybe it's just something you don't easily get without direct experience.


Edit: I kind of get the point about nurses vs. doctors and things like warrant officers. Does anyone know of a modern military that has more of a mix of higher-ranking officers between the two factions- promoted through officer school and risen-through-the-ranks? Would there be a problem with the way that work's out.

The distinction arises largely out of necessity. Going with the earlier nurse comparison, one might say that NCOs are to privates as experienced RNs are to LPNs. NCOs, like senior nurses, are professionals with skills surpassing the norm for their career track, who have additional responsibilities and authority to suit. This may result in some redundancy with the COs/doctors, but that's not a bad thing, especially if they're a relative rookie. If anything, the CO fresh out of West Point or the doctor fresh out of med school may end up learning how to actually do a lot of their job from an NCO or senior nurse.

In addition, NCOs have specific utility as a point of contact between privates and commanding officers. Unlike the CO, who is a relative outsider, the NCO is, on some level, a fellow grunt. They develop and maintain individual relationships that serve the unit as a whole. This applies even in paramilitary organizations where everyone comes up through the ranks, like police - a PO is going to be much more open and direct with their sergeant than with any white shirt, because a sergeant is "in the line of duty," in ways that even a hands-on lieutenant is not.

[comicshorse]

This is not strictly in line with this thread but seems the best place to ask. I've recently become interested in the subject of the Barbary pirates. I wondered if those more knowledgeable than me could recommend a book on the subject. Something suitable for a amateur historian and that gives as much an overview of the subject as possible.

Thanks

[Kiero]

Most Marines I knew had unique names for their privates.

Or is that not what you meant?

Jokes aside, he meant that many regiments don't call their most junior enlisted "private". You have Rifleman, Signaller, Fusilier, Sapper, Gunner, Trooper and so on. This is a more extensive list (though I don't think complete):


Airtrooper (AirTpr) – Army Air Corps
Bugler (Bgr) – buglers in The Rifles and formerly also in other Rifle regiments
Craftsman (Cfn) – Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (women as well as men use this rank)
Drummer (Dmr) – drummers in infantry regiments
Fusilier (Fus) – Fusilier regiments
Gunner (Gnr) – Royal Artillery
Guardsman (Gdsm) – Foot Guards
Highlander (Hldr) – The Highlanders
Kingsman (Kgn) – Duke of Lancaster's Regiment
Musician (Musn) – military bands (formerly if a military band had a Bandmaster, they would be known as Bandsman (Bdsm))
Piper (Ppr) – bagpipers in Scottish and Irish regiments
Ranger (Rgr) – Royal Irish Regiment and Royal Irish Rangers
Rifleman (Rfn) – Rifle regiments
Sapper (Spr) – Royal Engineers
Signaller (Sig) – Royal Corps of Signals (formerly called signalman)
Trooper (Tpr) – Household Cavalry, Royal Armoured Corps, Special Air Service and Honourable Artillery Company
Trumpeter (Tptr) – trumpeters in the Household Cavalry (and formerly in all cavalry regiments)

[Mike_G]

Jokes aside, he meant that many regiments don't call their most junior enlisted "private". You have Rifleman, Signaller, Fusilier, Sapper, Gunner, Trooper and so on. This is a more extensive list (though I don't think complete):


Oh, I realized that. I just wanted to make a **** joke.

Once a Lance Corporal....

[HeadlessMermaid]

This is not strictly in line with this thread but seems the best place to ask. I've recently become interested in the subject of the Barbary pirates. I wondered if those more knowledgeable than me could recommend a book on the subject. Something suitable for a amateur historian and that gives as much an overview of the subject as possible.
I wish I had exactly what you want, and I'm sorry I don't, but I do have a strong suggestion for a companion book: Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (https://www.amazon.com/Piracy-Ottoman-Mediterranean-Joshua-White/dp/1503602524/), by Joshua M. White. It's an expensive book, but it was published first as a dissertation (with the title Catch and Release: Piracy, Slavery, and Law in the Early Modern Ottoman Mediterranean (https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/94098)), and the PDF was floating somewhere - can't find it right now, maybe you can locate it.

The main problem with Barbary pirates is that, until very recently, researchers kind of ignored Ottoman sources, resulting in a very slanted view. This book brings the Ottoman outlook into the foreground, and that's immensely helpful in disentangling the huge bloody mess that is piracy in the Mediterranean. Because one man's pirate is the other man's privateer (or corsair), and that depends on whom you consider a legitimate state authority (which isn't at all straightforward when it comes to Barbary), and also on what day it is (it's really fluid). Here's a relevant excerpt (http://we-are-rogue.tumblr.com/post/160270345086/pirates-and-corsairs-from-the-point-of-view-of-the).

[Vinyadan]

Oh, I realized that. I just wanted to make a **** joke.

Once a Lance Corporal....

The "drill sergeant".

[rs2excelsior]

Hypothetical: How would a medieval army fight an opponent with flying troops? The army in question consists entirely of humans, and their flying opponents are simply humans+wings--intelligent, capable of wielding weapons, and with no other abilities/strengths a normal human wouldn't have. No magic available for either side. For sake of argument, let's consider that their opponent has both flying soldiers and normal humans as well. And, since "medieval" is such a large time frame, let's consider at either end. Say, maybe Hastings/Crusader era tech (roughly 1000-1100 AD), and late Medieval/early modern (roughly 1400-1500). (Apologies if I get terminology wrong, just looking for rough eras.)

My initial thought was something along the lines of the "pike and shot" formations of the 1600s; i.e. groups of archers (or actual musketmen, if available) protected by blocks of pikemen. Heavy cavalry would be much less useful (except against the "conventional" soldiers). However, large blocks of soldiers would be vulnerable to the flying troops dropping rocks from high above--even fairly small ones should be able to do some damage from a significant height. That indicates a more dispersed formation--but conventional troops could take advantage of that. So, perhaps an archer heavy force, equipped with stakes (such as the English at Agincourt), in loose formation but trained to tighten up quickly when attacked by ground troops? Then you still have the issue of your ground troops threatening the enemy to force them to bunch up while they are peppered by rocks/arrows/other missiles from above. And even the dispersed formation has a potential threat of enemy troops dropping in, isolating a few enemies, and then flying back out--though it'd probably be fairly risky for all involved.

How would medieval weaponry (bows, crossbows, early muskets) fair against a flying target in general? From earlier discussions, many muskets in this era seem to be very large caliber, which likely is not best for firing upward. Was there any artillery that could be turned against a flying enemy? (The only one I can think of is the ballista, which as far as I know was not used in the medieval era.)

It's not exactly in line of this thread (we don't have winged people in the real world), but given that everything else is real-world I figured this was the best place to ask.

[Kiero]

Oh, I realized that. I just wanted to make a **** joke.

Once a Lance Corporal....

I figured you did, but I thought it an interesting enough little data point to put up the list.

[Haighus]

Hypothetical: How would a medieval army fight an opponent with flying troops? The army in question consists entirely of humans, and their flying opponents are simply humans+wings--intelligent, capable of wielding weapons, and with no other abilities/strengths a normal human wouldn't have. No magic available for either side. For sake of argument, let's consider that their opponent has both flying soldiers and normal humans as well. And, since "medieval" is such a large time frame, let's consider at either end. Say, maybe Hastings/Crusader era tech (roughly 1000-1100 AD), and late Medieval/early modern (roughly 1400-1500). (Apologies if I get terminology wrong, just looking for rough eras.)

My initial thought was something along the lines of the "pike and shot" formations of the 1600s; i.e. groups of archers (or actual musketmen, if available) protected by blocks of pikemen. Heavy cavalry would be much less useful (except against the "conventional" soldiers). However, large blocks of soldiers would be vulnerable to the flying troops dropping rocks from high above--even fairly small ones should be able to do some damage from a significant height. That indicates a more dispersed formation--but conventional troops could take advantage of that. So, perhaps an archer heavy force, equipped with stakes (such as the English at Agincourt), in loose formation but trained to tighten up quickly when attacked by ground troops? Then you still have the issue of your ground troops threatening the enemy to force them to bunch up while they are peppered by rocks/arrows/other missiles from above. And even the dispersed formation has a potential threat of enemy troops dropping in, isolating a few enemies, and then flying back out--though it'd probably be fairly risky for all involved.

How would medieval weaponry (bows, crossbows, early muskets) fair against a flying target in general? From earlier discussions, many muskets in this era seem to be very large caliber, which likely is not best for firing upward. Was there any artillery that could be turned against a flying enemy? (The only one I can think of is the ballista, which as far as I know was not used in the medieval era.)

It's not exactly in line of this thread (we don't have winged people in the real world), but given that everything else is real-world I figured this was the best place to ask.

I think to answer this adequately, more info is needed on the flying capabilities of the winged humans. How fast can they fly? How high? What is their load bearing capacity when under wing? How much endurance do they have- do they need breaks often? Do their capabilities change much with altitude? How fragile are their wings, and what degree of damage is required to bring one down? All of these will significantly affect their ability to wage air-to-ground warfare. As an additional point, to what extent is their walking strength affected by not using those muscles as much? Generally, using a muscle group less causes them to decondition more, so you may expect these flyers to be poorer at cross-country endurance and sprinting when caught on the ground if they spend a lot of time practicing flying.

In terms of artillery, I imagine late medieval ground forces would use things like organ guns, but mounted on what is essentially an AA mount to pepper flying formations with shot. Again, this depends on altitude- it is possible the flying troops can attack from a range greater than it is possible for medieval humans to retaliate against. At which point, they could only be defended against with shields, and attacked when they are resting on the ground. Cats, similar to the style used in sieges, could also be important to protect equipment from aerial bombardment. I think this would essentially be war wagons with roofs.

[rs2excelsior]

I think to answer this adequately, more info is needed on the flying capabilities of the winged humans. How fast can they fly? How high? What is their load bearing capacity when under wing? How much endurance do they have- do they need breaks often? Do their capabilities change much with altitude? How fragile are their wings, and what degree of damage is required to bring one down? All of these will significantly affect their ability to wage air-to-ground warfare. As an additional point, to what extent is their walking strength affected by not using those muscles as much? Generally, using a muscle group less causes them to decondition more, so you may expect these flyers to be poorer at cross-country endurance and sprinting when caught on the ground if they spend a lot of time practicing flying.

In terms of artillery, I imagine late medieval ground forces would use things like organ guns, but mounted on what is essentially an AA mount to pepper flying formations with shot. Again, this depends on altitude- it is possible the flying troops can attack from a range greater than it is possible for medieval humans to retaliate against. At which point, they could only be defended against with shields, and attacked when they are resting on the ground. Cats, similar to the style used in sieges, could also be important to protect equipment from aerial bombardment. I think this would essentially be war wagons with roofs.

All of that is very true--I'd thought of endurance and weight bearing capability as I was typing. Just to keep things interesting, I think limiting them to flying under bowshot would be better (or, if they fly higher, they also can't effectively attack). Probably limited to light armor and light loads as well.


Organ/Volley guns are a good idea--I hadn't thought of that. It'll take them a long time to reload, though.

Is there evidence that late medieval cannon used anything other than solid shot? Something along the lines of grapeshot or cannister would likely be pretty effective against low-flying enemies. Grapeshot moreso, as it tends to have better range.

[Vitruviansquid]

Hypothetical: How would a medieval army fight an opponent with flying troops? The army in question consists entirely of humans, and their flying opponents are simply humans+wings--intelligent, capable of wielding weapons, and with no other abilities/strengths a normal human wouldn't have. No magic available for either side. For sake of argument, let's consider that their opponent has both flying soldiers and normal humans as well. And, since "medieval" is such a large time frame, let's consider at either end. Say, maybe Hastings/Crusader era tech (roughly 1000-1100 AD), and late Medieval/early modern (roughly 1400-1500). (Apologies if I get terminology wrong, just looking for rough eras.)

My initial thought was something along the lines of the "pike and shot" formations of the 1600s; i.e. groups of archers (or actual musketmen, if available) protected by blocks of pikemen. Heavy cavalry would be much less useful (except against the "conventional" soldiers). However, large blocks of soldiers would be vulnerable to the flying troops dropping rocks from high above--even fairly small ones should be able to do some damage from a significant height. That indicates a more dispersed formation--but conventional troops could take advantage of that. So, perhaps an archer heavy force, equipped with stakes (such as the English at Agincourt), in loose formation but trained to tighten up quickly when attacked by ground troops? Then you still have the issue of your ground troops threatening the enemy to force them to bunch up while they are peppered by rocks/arrows/other missiles from above. And even the dispersed formation has a potential threat of enemy troops dropping in, isolating a few enemies, and then flying back out--though it'd probably be fairly risky for all involved.

How would medieval weaponry (bows, crossbows, early muskets) fair against a flying target in general? From earlier discussions, many muskets in this era seem to be very large caliber, which likely is not best for firing upward. Was there any artillery that could be turned against a flying enemy? (The only one I can think of is the ballista, which as far as I know was not used in the medieval era.)

It's not exactly in line of this thread (we don't have winged people in the real world), but given that everything else is real-world I figured this was the best place to ask.

Let's assume, like in most fiction with flying humans, that your flying humans will basically be able to fly as their main form of long-distance transportation.

The way I figure it, you're screwed. That's all. Simply screwed.

At the most unimaginative level, I suppose flying humans can be used like light cavalry was used historically, only they will be better at it in almost every way. A flying scout will be able to see more than a horseman, a flying raider will be able to hit more possible places in a shorter amount of time than a horseman, and if they were somehow caught by the enemy, a flying soldier can retreat more easily than a mounted soldier.

And how did ancient and medieval people fight light cavalry based armies? Mostly with fortifications. It was difficult to catch and defeat them on the open field, especially if your side does not have enough horses of your own. But fortification doesn't help that much against a flying opponent either, because he can fly onto your walls or just fly over it and drop nasty things like javelins or bombs, if they had the tech. If you are fighting offensively against them, they may use their maneuverability to destroy your baggage train without fighting your main combatants.

True, it's not like the flying humans get to do anything they want with impunity if they can't fly higher than bow range, but even with bows, it is far harder to hit an opponent on substantially higher ground than you and you will hit with less force. Perhaps fortunately, it will be difficult or impossible to fly for a long time in armor, so the lack of force from your arrows would not matter as much. Attempting to shoot a flying enemy adds a new dimension to worry about while aiming.

[Haighus]

All of that is very true--I'd thought of endurance and weight bearing capability as I was typing. Just to keep things interesting, I think limiting them to flying under bowshot would be better (or, if they fly higher, they also can't effectively attack). Probably limited to light armor and light loads as well.


Organ/Volley guns are a good idea--I hadn't thought of that. It'll take them a long time to reload, though.

Is there evidence that late medieval cannon used anything other than solid shot? Something along the lines of grapeshot or cannister would likely be pretty effective against low-flying enemies. Grapeshot moreso, as it tends to have better range.
I don't know, but it would make a lot of sense in this context, and be a lot quicker to reload than an organ gun. Keeping them within bowshot (would be about 100m altitude or so?) would definitely make it far easier to defend against, but still challenging. Massed arrows would be the best, in a way that doesn't rely on individual accuracy and doesn't allow easy dodging. I reckon the wings would be very large for gliding, and the most vulnerable bit to arrows. Also impossible to armour.

If they cannot fly for extended periods with combat loads, the other option is also to hunt down their eyries once they land. If they are not hugely fast, light cavalry archers could be very useful too.

I think shields and erected canopies like the aformentioned roofed wagons would be sufficient to defend against light loads, although incendiaries could be especially terrifying if they can manage to keep them lit before they are dropped. A further point to this is that thrown weapons would likely to be difficult to powerfully launch from a gliding/flying position, as it would be difficult to put the strength of the whole body into the throw, and may threaten the ability to stay within the air and avoid crashing. As such, weapons would rely on gravity, or their own stored energy like bows.

Let's assume, like in most fiction with flying humans, that your flying humans will basically be able to fly as their main form of long-distance transportation.

The way I figure it, you're screwed. That's all. Simply screwed.

At the most unimaginative level, I suppose flying humans can be used like light cavalry was used historically, only they will be better at it in almost every way. A flying scout will be able to see more than a horseman, a flying raider will be able to hit more possible places in a shorter amount of time than a horseman, and if they were somehow caught by the enemy, a flying soldier can retreat more easily than a mounted soldier.

And how did ancient and medieval people fight light cavalry based armies? Mostly with fortifications. It was difficult to catch and defeat them on the open field, especially if your side does not have enough horses of your own. But fortification doesn't help that much against a flying opponent either, because he can fly onto your walls or just fly over it and drop nasty things like javelins or bombs, if they had the tech. If you are fighting offensively against them, they may use their maneuverability to destroy your baggage train without fighting your main combatants.

True, it's not like the flying humans get to do anything they want with impunity if they can't fly higher than bow range, but even with bows, it is far harder to hit an opponent on substantially higher ground than you and you will hit with less force. Perhaps fortunately, it will be difficult or impossible to fly for a long time in armor, so the lack of force from your arrows would not matter as much. Attempting to shoot a flying enemy adds a new dimension to worry about while aiming.
Flight arrows with wide, barbed heads would be the best here- maximum range, and able to cut large holes in wings (which won't be armoured).

I think the assumption that flying is the means of long distance travel (which is a reasonable assumption) does not also mean they will have combat endurance. Gliding would be the only feasible way to efficiently travel long distances, but in a combat area, this position would expose the flyer to defensive fire the most. They would have to expend a lot more energy moving faster and manoeuvring to avoid fire and present a smaller target than outspread wings, so I would think a plausible flying human would only be able to fight effectively in combat for a relatively brief window, unless deploying on the ground or simply operating bombing runs (which is not safe if they are within bowshot).

[Mr Beer]

You rely on your own flying troops to actually kill flyers I think.

Flyers can simply hover out of reasonable range of attack. If we have gunpowder tech, they will drop bombs with impunity. If not, they will drop weighted darts or lumps of lead. Battlefield flyers should be supplied from a safe distance so they can make multiple bombing runs in a quick period of time. A reasonable sized group of unopposed flyers who can re-supply rapidly should be decisive on the battlefield.

Outside of rapid supply, they become a lot less threatening as a 'auto-kill' weapon. Humans simply can't ferry massive bomb loads around for hours and hours, so they are limited there.

They are however unsurpassed as intelligence gatherers and command + control systems. Even one flyer can change the face of warfare for the simple ability to deliver messages more rapidly than a horse and to overfly enemy territory and report back.

[rrgg]

Hypothetical: How would a medieval army fight an opponent with flying troops? The army in question consists entirely of humans, and their flying opponents are simply humans+wings--intelligent, capable of wielding weapons, and with no other abilities/strengths a normal human wouldn't have. No magic available for either side. For sake of argument, let's consider that their opponent has both flying soldiers and normal humans as well. And, since "medieval" is such a large time frame, let's consider at either end. Say, maybe Hastings/Crusader era tech (roughly 1000-1100 AD), and late Medieval/early modern (roughly 1400-1500). (Apologies if I get terminology wrong, just looking for rough eras.)

My initial thought was something along the lines of the "pike and shot" formations of the 1600s; i.e. groups of archers (or actual musketmen, if available) protected by blocks of pikemen. Heavy cavalry would be much less useful (except against the "conventional" soldiers). However, large blocks of soldiers would be vulnerable to the flying troops dropping rocks from high above--even fairly small ones should be able to do some damage from a significant height. That indicates a more dispersed formation--but conventional troops could take advantage of that. So, perhaps an archer heavy force, equipped with stakes (such as the English at Agincourt), in loose formation but trained to tighten up quickly when attacked by ground troops? Then you still have the issue of your ground troops threatening the enemy to force them to bunch up while they are peppered by rocks/arrows/other missiles from above. And even the dispersed formation has a potential threat of enemy troops dropping in, isolating a few enemies, and then flying back out--though it'd probably be fairly risky for all involved.

How would medieval weaponry (bows, crossbows, early muskets) fair against a flying target in general? From earlier discussions, many muskets in this era seem to be very large caliber, which likely is not best for firing upward. Was there any artillery that could be turned against a flying enemy? (The only one I can think of is the ballista, which as far as I know was not used in the medieval era.)

It's not exactly in line of this thread (we don't have winged people in the real world), but given that everything else is real-world I figured this was the best place to ask.

Honestly there isn't that much they would be able to do. Bows and crossbows might be effective at very short ranges, but even those tend to shoot projectiles with a fairly low velocity. The problems with hitting targets that are up high are 1. as the projectile climbs it loses a lot of velocity, so even if you hit something it might not do that much damage, and 2. if it takes a couple of seconds for the projectile to reach its maximum height and the target is flying at quite a few meters per second then leading your shot is going to be almost impossible, especially if the target is flying erratically.

If the army has access to weapons like arquebuses, muskets, or large punt guns then that's going to greatly increase their effective range against flying targets since bullets move much faster and are harder to see, but even then past a certain point they won't be able to do anything against an enemy dropping stones, darts, or gunpowder bombs from very high up.

On the plus side, the flyers might not be able to carry that much ordinance at a time and from too high up they might not be that accurate with their dropped projectiles either (though they will have a lot of energy when they hit the ground). If the ground army is able to survive the harassment they might still be able to seize objectives on the ground and then send out night patrols or horsemen armed with arquebuses, crossbows, or bows and lightweight flight arrows to find encampments that the flyers are using to rest and resupply. But even then since the enemy has such a huge advantage in mobility and scouting i think they would have a serious uphill struggle ahead of them.

[Vinyadan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_3VZDb7pj4

[rrgg]

btw is it page 50 or page 51 that we start a new thread?


Organ/Volley guns are a good idea--I hadn't thought of that. It'll take them a long time to reload, though.

Is there evidence that late medieval cannon used anything other than solid shot? Something along the lines of grapeshot or cannister would likely be pretty effective against low-flying enemies. Grapeshot moreso, as it tends to have better range.

There is ample evidence that early artillery used canister shot, Either made of rocks or smaller bullets. Smoothbore handguns could be turned into shotguns as well and quickly became very popular for bird hunting. If I remember one early 17th century hunting manual recommend shooting birds from no closer than 40 yards so that the birdshot wouldn't mutilate the body too badly.

These kinds of loads would be very effective at shorter ranges, but hailshot loads typically had a lower velocity than a solid shot and used smaller charges ("for alwaies the more lead the lesse pouder") to keep the weapon from exploding. Aditionally smaller projectiles tend to lose velocity more quickly from air resistance than heavier ones, and round bullets in general already need quite a bit of velocity to do serious damage.

Volley guns might actually be really useful in some situations, even though they would take a really long time to reload. A volley gun compared to a cannon shooting equivalent grape shot is generally going to be much cheaper and lighter, since each individual barrel has to deal with much less force than the whole cannon. A volley gun made of musket barrels for example is going to have essentially the same maximum range as a musket but will shoot far more projectiles at once and in a much tighter grouping than grapeshot could achieve.

[Haighus]

I feel the archery would not be aimed shots, except in very close range, but would be something like clout shooting, where a volley would be aimed in the general direction of the flyers. This would be most effective from fortifications, where the greater ammo supply could be used to prevent the flyers from approaching by laying down volleys of fire whenever they approach. Battlefield conditions would likely require more careful use.


If the army has access to weapons like arquebuses, muskets, or large punt guns then that's going to greatly increase their effective range against flying targets since bullets move much faster and are harder to see, but even then past a certain point they won't be able to do anything against an enemy dropping stones, darts, or gunpowder bombs from very high up.
I do wonder how a late medieval flying human would be able to light and drop a gunpowder grenade whilst flying in an evasive pattern (or earlier for other incendiaries). It would be difficult to carry a flame that wouldn't be put out or significantly increased in size (dangerously) by the airflow. Small lanterns perhaps? This could be heavy though.

[rs2excelsior]

The way I figure it, you're screwed. That's all. Simply screwed.

I mostly agree. Muskets probably even the playing field a bit, but given that no medieval force ever really had to fight an opponent that could fly, it doesn't surprise me that there aren't many options. It actually occurs to me that a classical Roman legion -might- be better at dealing with that kind of threat--the infantry form a testudo and use the array of light ballistae in an anti-air role. The lack of ranged weapons would hurt them (a pilum isn't going to do well except against very low-flying targets), but given the Romans' history they'd probably adapt to it.


You rely on your own flying troops to actually kill flyers I think.

The reason I'm asking is for a fantasy setting where one of the primary antagonist races is a race of flying humanoids--they control a large empire and many subject races, and have been trying to overwhelm the human realms for a couple centuries, but the humans have managed to fend them off (think a Greece/Persia dynamic). So the humans don't really have flying troops short of magic. In game they will be able to use magic/technology to help negate some advantages... but as a baseline I want to look at an army with only the benefits of roughly "standard fantasy tech."


Flyers can simply hover out of reasonable range of attack. If we have gunpowder tech, they will drop bombs with impunity. If not, they will drop weighted darts or lumps of lead. Battlefield flyers should be supplied from a safe distance so they can make multiple bombing runs in a quick period of time. A reasonable sized group of unopposed flyers who can re-supply rapidly should be decisive on the battlefield.

Outside of rapid supply, they become a lot less threatening as a 'auto-kill' weapon. Humans simply can't ferry massive bomb loads around for hours and hours, so they are limited there.

They are however unsurpassed as intelligence gatherers and command + control systems. Even one flyer can change the face of warfare for the simple ability to deliver messages more rapidly than a horse and to overfly enemy territory and report back.

Gunpowder helps the ground defenders quite a bit... but you're right, gunpowder bombs/incendiaries also make the flyers much, MUCH scarier.


There is ample evidence that early artillery used canister shot, Either made of rocks or smaller bullets. Smoothbore handguns could be turned into shotguns as well and quickly became very popular for bird hunting. If I remember one early 17th century hunting manual recommend shooting birds from no closer than 40 yards so that the birdshot wouldn't mutilate the body too badly.

These kinds of loads would be very effective at shorter ranges, but hailshot loads typically had a lower velocity than a solid shot and used smaller charges ("for alwaies the more lead the lesse pouder") to keep the weapon from exploding. Aditionally smaller projectiles tend to lose velocity more quickly from air resistance than heavier ones, and round bullets in general already need quite a bit of velocity to do serious damage.

Volley guns might actually be really useful in some situations, even though they would take a really long time to reload. A volley gun compared to a cannon shooting equivalent grape shot is generally going to be much cheaper and lighter, since each individual barrel has to deal with much less force than the whole cannon. A volley gun made of musket barrels for example is going to have essentially the same maximum range as a musket but will shoot far more projectiles at once and in a much tighter grouping than grapeshot could achieve.

Good to know. It's an easy enough thing to figure out, just wasn't sure when the practice started.

RE volley guns... they'd largely be a one-shot weapon. I agree on all the advantages, but once you get one shot off you're taking several minutes to reload, best case. Probably under attack from flying opponents who both know you can't fire back and have a vested interest in keeping you from firing again. Seems like a difficult thing to pull off.


I do wonder how a late medieval flying human would be able to light and drop a gunpowder grenade whilst flying in an evasive pattern (or earlier for other incendiaries). It would be difficult to carry a flame that wouldn't be put out or significantly increased in size (dangerously) by the airflow. Small lanterns perhaps? This could be heavy though.

Also a good point. I'm sure it could be done, but it wouldn't be easy (unless you cheat and use magic :smallbiggrin: ). How resistant were slow matches used in matchlocks to things like wind velocity?

@Vinyadin: that video is hilarious. I'm guessing the game has the characters coded to scream when they're falling?

Lots of good information to consider for both sides of the equation, thanks everyone!

[snowblizz]

The reason I'm asking is for a fantasy setting where one of the primary antagonist races is a race of flying humanoids--they control a large empire and many subject races, and have been trying to overwhelm the human realms for a couple centuries, but the humans have managed to fend them off (think a Greece/Persia dynamic). So the humans don't really have flying troops short of magic. In game they will be able to use magic/technology to help negate some advantages... but as a baseline I want to look at an army with only the benefits of roughly "standard fantasy tech."

Gunpowder helps the ground defenders quite a bit... but you're right, gunpowder bombs/incendiaries also make the flyers much, MUCH scarier.

Funnily enough the earliest use of "cannon" in Europe fired arrows. Big ones, more like a ballista arrow.

With gunpowder, something like the Korean Hwacha (sp?) would be terrifying for fliers I imagine, burning arrows, going any and everywhere. Most simple fireworks would also work I'd think. Not going to like fireworks buzzing past or into your wings.

Fortifed places I guess would be the answer, probably warwagons covered with "armour" could work for campaigns. It all comes down to how much you want to endow the fliers, it's going to be hard to defend if you give them too much ability.
Just because fliers can fly over the walls doesn't mean they can do more than drop stuff. A medieval fort isn't complete without the hoardings providing cover already. Land in the courtyard all you want it's going to be a killing ground. And it's trivial to stretch nets or wire (ooo barbed wire anyone), more likely, over exposed areas making landing "behind" the lines much less feasible.

On medieval tech I think it's going to work on a sort of mutally assured destruction principle. To be effective you are putting yourself in the riskzone. It's likely possible to snipe individuals flying in too close, but most effective defenses are going to be more of the mass variety.

I guess it sorta boils down to are you fliers going to be Stuka divebombers or not. It's not trivial to hit stuff on the ground anyway so just because you can drop smallish rocks over enemy troops doesn't mean you necessarily have to be more than nuisance. In a a sense if you want some parity flying low enough for bows if the flier actually wants to hit something is a reasonable compromise. It's going to be a touhg job flying back and forth all day dropping rocks on people.

Impact detonators are a very late development so the worry of flying around with lit bombs or trying to light a fuse is a real problem. Maybe only the tricksy humans have figured out gunpowder, that's not an unreasonable fantasy trope. Maybe birdpeople poop lack essential potassium-compounds.:smalltongue:

[PersonMan]

btw is it page 50 or page 51 that we start a new thread?

Page 50. I think one can theoretically fill the 50th page, but it's easier to decide on and make a new thread at the beginning of page 50 than it is to start doing so once you're already in 'can just be locked immediately by a mod' territory. And that means having to ask for an unlock to get access to the first post for copy-paste.

[Haighus]

Fortifed places I guess would be the answer, probably warwagons covered with "armour" could work for campaigns. It all comes down to how much you want to endow the fliers, it's going to be hard to defend if you give them too much ability.
Just because fliers can fly over the walls doesn't mean they can do more than drop stuff. A medieval fort isn't complete without the hoardings providing cover already. Land in the courtyard all you want it's going to be a killing ground. And it's trivial to stretch nets or wire (ooo barbed wire anyone), more likely, over exposed areas making landing "behind" the lines much less feasible.

Further on the subject of nets- how feasible are barrage balloon type setups with medieval tech? This could be used to create area denial if the flyers are restricted in altitude- hanging large nets between the balloons. Tall masts could work too.

[Mike_G]

If the flyers are more or less human sized, they'd have to have huge wings, which are vulnerable and can't be armored. They're also already pretty heavy, so with armor it would be hard to keep them airborne. Ditto for a big payload of missiles.

I think they would be great for scouting, or for strategic movement, to just bypass a defended area and land wherever. You could easily get around the enemy army and hit the supplies, crops, towns, whatever. Or quickly seize vital passes, river crossings and so on, forcing the enemy to fight where you wanted them to. And if you start losing, you fly away.

But I think the limits of armor and lifting ability will make them less useful in pitched battle. Once you have reliable explosives, they're scary, but of they just dropping rocks, they're a nuisance.

Not sure you could shoot a bow while flying. You have to get your whole body into the pull, so I don't think you could just have flying Parthians.

[Max_Killjoy]

If the flyers are more or less human sized, they'd have to have huge wings, which are vulnerable and can't be armored. They're also already pretty heavy, so with armor it would be hard to keep them airborne. Ditto for a big payload of missiles.

I think they would be great for scouting, or for strategic movement, to just bypass a defended area and land wherever. You could easily get around the enemy army and hit the supplies, crops, towns, whatever. Or quickly seize vital passes, river crossings and so on, forcing the enemy to fight where you wanted them to. And if you start losing, you fly away.

But I think the limits of armor and lifting ability will make them less useful in pitched battle. Once you have reliable explosives, they're scary, but of they just dropping rocks, they're a nuisance.

Not sure you could shoot a bow while flying. You have to get your whole body into the pull, so I don't think you could just have flying Parthians.

I think the same chest and back muscles would be used for flying and for drawing a bow.

(I don't think people generally consider the muscles used for flying -- the raw power to get lift is in the chest and back more than the wings themselves.)

[snowblizz]

I'd like to see evidence that the KV was derived from the T-35

Not saying there is no connection in the designs, I'm just saying if there is it's news to me. They may look similar to some extent but KV had much thicker armor, seems like a very different design overall.
Replacement of in concept rather than mechanically the same mahcine. That's basicaly how the book on armoured vehicles describes it. It covers lots of vehicles and not in too much detail unfortunately. Some of the crosslinking is abit unclear, which si what caught me out on this one. It was really the Bt-7->T-34 that was the clearer direct path.


I also wouldn't consider the T-34 a direct descendant of the BT-7 or the Christie; influenced certainly, suspension I think right? And the sloping on the front. But there were lots of influences, it's not the same thing as being directly linked.This the author states outright though and it covers it a bit more. Suspension and basic design. As it described it starts of as the BT-7, two designs A-20 and A-30 morphing into the T-32 which becomes the T-34. More or less how it's described. A BT-7, with more armour, sloping, a bigger gun, chanigng the setup of being able to run without tracks and you've got a T-34. The Soviet designers seemed to think so.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/T-34_prototypes.jpg



IIt wasn't intentionally set up as an experiment, it's just how it shook out - at the start of the war there were some tank regiments with BT-7, some with T-26, some with T-35, and some with T-34. Ultimately the T-34 units worked and due to the Soviet system of rewarding success, it was the T-34 units which gained priority, were made into the 'Guards' units and which were positioned as the tip of the spear for the most crucial battles.

The first year of the war worked out into a brutal Darwinian experiment of what worked and what didn't.

G
How you initially described it made it sound like they had vast division of the various types and were just experimenting to see what worked. Which is really what I wanted to object to. The T-35s e.g. only ever amounted to 65 vehicles. And had military higher echolons (and the dsigners of the KV-1) prevailed there might not have been a T-34 in development.
The Winter War had already showed how deficient the Soviet mainline tanks were so a lot of replacement process were underway. Operation Barbarossa more or less cleanslated the Red Army in terms of men and materiel. What was elft had a lot of dearly paid for experience that was put to good use.

[Galloglaich]

btw is it page 50 or page 51 that we start a new thread?



There is ample evidence that early artillery used canister shot, Either made of rocks or smaller bullets. Smoothbore handguns could be turned into shotguns as well and quickly became very popular for bird hunting. If I remember one early 17th century hunting manual recommend shooting birds from no closer than 40 yards so that the birdshot wouldn't mutilate the body too badly.


The Hussites used 'shot' (like buckshot) in their firearms as early as the 1420's

for that matter the original fire lance (primordial firearm) was basically a combination shotgun / short duration flamethrower

[Vinyadan]

If pulling a bowstring backwards while flapping wings could ruin flight, then the bow could be held with the feet, and the string pulled towards your chest, maybe even with both hands. Crossbows would limit this problem somehow.

I wonder how much lack of modern communication would limit the potential of a flying army.

Also yes, the game had both war cries, grunts while striking, and screams of terror when falling :smallbiggrin:

[Galloglaich]

If pulling a bowstring backwards while flapping wings could ruin flight, then the bow could be held with the feet, and the string pulled towards your chest, maybe even with both hands. Crossbows would limit this problem somehow.

I wonder how much lack of modern communication would limit the potential of a flying army.

Also yes, the game had both war cries, grunts while striking, and screams of terror when falling :smallbiggrin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGoT9eO7vU8

[Haighus]

If pulling a bowstring backwards while flapping wings could ruin flight, then the bow could be held with the feet, and the string pulled towards your chest, maybe even with both hands. Crossbows would limit this problem somehow.

I wonder how much lack of modern communication would limit the potential of a flying army.

Also yes, the game had both war cries, grunts while striking, and screams of terror when falling :smallbiggrin:

I think crossbows would be more impractical- they are heavier, the bolt is harder to keep in place when aiming down (or upside-down!), and the methods of loading that are most possible (crannequin and maybe windlass) are fiddly, and could be dangerous to the wielder to use underwing. Especially so on powerful crossbows, where attaching the crannequin wrong can result in lethal injuries. Belt hooks are obviously very difficult when flying, and hand drawing has the same draw backs as using a bow.

I am not sure if using the feet to draw is practical either- this would require fairly stationary flying to resonably aim, which would invite retaliation. Realistically, only light crossbows and low-draw-weight bows would be useable. I think rocks and javelins, which could be dropped, would be most useful (and incendiaries if the fuse can be worked out for flight). Constant resupply would be necessary to make up for their light load bearing of course. An interesting option could be nets to disrupt troops?

[Mr Beer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Dog_(bomb)

They could be dropping these projectiles, less than 0.5 oz each and hit with the force of a 0.50 calibre bullet.

[Mike_G]

I still think the idea of bombers is less useful until you get better bombs.

But the usefulness as scouts, messengers and to strike behind enemy lines like paratroopers or commandos or helicopter infantry is huge. They could be used to resupply besieged towns, set fire to enemy supply depots, set ambushes well behind the lines and generally make the enemy waste troops guarding EVERYTHING or accept the losses.

I wouldn't waste them in bombing runs on troops that will be trying to optimize anti-air weapons.

[Deepbluediver]

I am not sure if using the feet to draw is practical either- this would require fairly stationary flying to resonably aim, which would invite retaliation.
It sounds ridiculous, but there's a D&D 3.5 race that does exactly that- I think it's the Raptorans from Races of the Wild.

[Vinyadan]

It sounds ridiculous, but there's a D&D 3.5 race that does exactly that- I think it's the Raptorans from Races of the Wild.

That's funny, I was actually thinking of the final scenes from The Mission. Some Indios use their bows by lying supine and drawing the string with their hands, while holding the bow with both of their feet and straight legs.

[Clistenes]

About the winged army, they don't really need powerful bows or crossbows; diving vertically on the enemy army and throwing heavy darts, javelins, pilums and soliferra on them would be more effective than arrows or bolts... A soliferrum thrown from enough height could push through shields, armor and helms...

Arrows thrown against them, on the other hand, would carry little power after rising a few dozen yards, and would fall back on the land-bound army...

The land-bound army would have to use very open formations to avoid being peppered with iron darts from great heights. The flyers would have to fly low to aim at individual targets rather than just bombarding dense, tighly packed groups... but the flyers could still manouver at their pleasure, concentrating their numbers on and destroying whatever section they chose to...

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I figure they're two and a half things you can reasonably do against flyers. The half thing is not getting hit. Either by not clumping together or by having fortifications. Medieval style castles didn't have the best roofs ever, since bow constructions were under utilized, but if you design for a strong roof or use smaller buildings like more modern forts you will get reasonable protection. But this only gets you into a stalemate with them having the map control, and thus more means to end the stalemate. They could go attack some place you want to protect, they could go fetch flasks of oil and torches to firebomb you...

One of the two things (that I can think of now) you can do offensively is saturate the air with projectiles up to around the highest height they can reasonably attack from. Shot seems a good option if you have gunpowder. Maybe load cannons (mortars technically I guess) with it. Some form of catapult could launch a bucket of junk, but I don't think you'd get high enough.

The other thing is be there when they need to land. They attack your fortress, they fire what they have, you follow them back out with heavy cavalry. You destroy the supply train handing out weapons/munition, and from there the light cavalry takes over and stays in pursuit of the fleeing now unarmed flyers until they set down somewhere. Less effective if they have a fortress of their own inside of a few hundred kilometers (you can't even reasonably attack that just after they leave from there on campaign, even if you did manage to conquer the fort in a few days they'd almost certainly get messengers out). Also, they're probably quite a bit faster than horses, that would help them not fall out of the sky.

So yeah, you're screwed.

[Clistenes]

One of the two things (that I can think of now) you can do offensively is saturate the air with projectiles up to around the highest height they can reasonably attack from. Shot seems a good option if you have gunpowder. Maybe load cannons (mortars technically I guess) with it. Some form of catapult could launch a bucket of junk, but I don't think you'd get high enough.

Primitive guns are slow to reload and have a short range plus they would be shooting upwards, so the effective range would be awful...

Flyers, on the other hand, could drop iron darts, grenades and Molotov cocktails from any height; they could attack from beyond the range of your primitive guns...

Cannons would be better, but cannons are expensive, and are hard and slow to move, aim and reload.

The flyers could come from any direction, so you would have to prepare cannons aimed to everywhere and keep shooting without pause. But that would be a static position; soon or later the landbound army would run out of ammo, gunpowder and food, they would have to move and then the flyers would obliterate them.

EDIT: I think the groundlings' best option would be to create subterranean fortresses and come out only at night or under the cover of woods. Send strike teams to the places where the flyers sleep and get their food, ambush and kill as many as they can, and run away before their main force arrives. Also, poison their sources of water and food, burn their crops, if they had them, and spread infectious diseases among their cattle; try to infect the flyers themselves too, if possible.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

EDIT: I think the groundlings' best option would be to create subterranean fortresses and come out only at night or under the cover of woods. Send strike teams to the places where the flyers sleep and get their food, ambush and kill as many as they can, and run away before their main force arrives.

And even then you're surprise-attacking people you can just fly away. A single alarm shout gets the whole bunch off the ground with whatever sharp or heavy objects were around.

I think to do a war against flyers in a fantasy setting you need to give them a drawback. Like maybe they're a bunch smaller then us, or don't have proper hands (but beaks, feet and spurs), or both. I could maybe come up with a decent plan to fight intelligent birds, but not really against flying winged humanoids. (I see now that in the original question the flyers were somewhat less intelligent, so that's a drawback, but they were being armed and sent out by humans and can work in groups, negating a significant part of the drawback immediately.)

In a sci-fi or even a modern setting it gets a lot better, the sky provides no cover (other than height and distance) and very little concealment. A flying soldier on the battlefield is called skeet, after all.

[Galloglaich]

I am itching to reply to this flying monkeys thing, but I want to wait until the new thread

[rs2excelsior]

I think to do a war against flyers in a fantasy setting you need to give them a drawback. Like maybe they're a bunch smaller then us, or don't have proper hands (but beaks, feet and spurs), or both. I could maybe come up with a decent plan to fight intelligent birds, but not really against flying winged humanoids. (I see now that in the original question the flyers were somewhat less intelligent, so that's a drawback, but they were being armed and sent out by humans and can work in groups, negating a significant part of the drawback immediately.)

Actually, I'd said to assume they were just as intelligent as humans (in the actual setting I'm working on a bit moreso--they aren't being armed and sent out by humans, the non-flyers are their subject races).

I figured it wouldn't look very good for the people without flying troops. Seems the consensus ranges from "it's an advantage" to "they'd crush everyone entirely." I think I'm going to limit their strength a bit, as well as hovering endurance, simply to limit their ability to fly out of range and bombard. Their most common type of attack will be dropped metal darts--I hadn't thought about the shared muscle groups for flying/archery, but you're probably correct--I don't think it'd be easy, if possible at all. Maybe some gunpowder/incendiaries, but I think these will be less common. Loose, rapidly-moving formations would probably be the best counter for an open field battle: force the flyers in low to hit, then retaliate with crossbows and muskets. That leaves you vulnerable to heavy cavalry and makes command and control difficult... but with a large amount of ranged weapons you'd hopefully be able to fall back and blunt a charge. Castles and whatnot would be much more protected from above, of course. And there will be magical/technological things that can level the playing field a bit, but as I said before, I wanted a "real-world" baseline to work from.

Thanks for the input, everyone! I didn't think it would look very good for the ground-based army, but given how often I've been surprised by the technology, flexibility, and ingenuity of the medieval era I thought it was best not to assume.

[Vinyadan]

Could a flying monkey squad take a dump over resources like food or water? Or high-altitude poop during the commander's speech?

[Brother Oni]

I am itching to reply to this flying monkeys thing, but I want to wait until the new thread

As requested, Thread 25 is up. :smalltongue: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?548448-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXV)