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Perestroika posted:Be that as it may, I also have a question: What is your take on the Battle of the Teutobourg Forest? I was recently in that area and spoke to a local hobby-historian, and he was of the opinion that the big Battle was merely an invention by some second-in-commands to cover up a series of fuckups and general mismanaging. Not the OP, but this is really far from the truth, and smacks of Romanophilic sentiment. "Obviously those barbarians couldn't have outsmarted Good, True Romans. It must have been Bad Romans who caused our downfall." Funnily, Arminius had been awarded Roman citizenship by this time. Which site did you go to, by the way? The one with the Arminius statue or what is now considered a much, much more likely site in the Kalkriese? I ask because archaeological excavations at the Kalkriese, which show evidence of a large battle between Romans and Germans, offer a very interesting picture of the battle. The excavations have turned up a mile-long sod wall, built around the edge of a narrow, sandy road which rounds a hill, with swamp on the other side. Behind these walls the Germans could easily launch their javelins against the legionnaires packed tightly on the road. The fact that the column of Romans is estimated by Peter Wells to be about 2 miles long means that it would be incredibly difficult to get the back to stop at the same time as the front, so you'd end up with a crush of people as folks who had no idea what was going on tried to keep walking. The heavily armed and armored legionnaires would have been outclassed by the lightly-armored Germans in the dense and wet forest. Further, the legionnaires would have been hard-pressed to fight them 1-to-1, despite being numerically superior, since they were on the march and strung out. Further complicating matters, all their baggage and siege equipment was at the back, stifling any escape. According to Dio Cassius, who is arguably reliable, rain was also unhelpful in spotting an ambush, and the guides they used were from the German tribes. This meant that a) the Romans were unaccustomed to the terrain, and b) the guides could have been working for Arminius from the beginning (though this is idle speculation). Basically, Arminius set up a great ambush and understood how to beat the Romans. Unfortunately he was not very good at making anyone but the Cherusci follow his orders for very long, so the Romans were eventually able to defeat them in a straight battle, and then Arminius went and got himself murdered. That didn't stop the Germans from resisting Roman rule, of course, and Rome was never able to subjugate inner Germania, despite Augustus' clear interest in it. They did control many of the border chieftains through clientage and bribery, however, which is quite a reasonable alternative.
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May 11, 2010 02:54
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Corsec posted:Why did pikemen/phalanx make a comeback in the middle ages after having been beaten tactically by the Romans? Well, it really depends on how you envision a phalanx, since schiltrons and Swiss pike squares did not have much in common with the phalanxes of Macedon. If you just mean 'tight formation of dudes with spears' then they never really fell out of fashion. They were always the best implements for receiving a charge of any sort, and were good primary weapons for giving a charge as well. Though sword and shield do provide some advantage over pikes, as the Spanish rodeleros proved, their cost compared to arquebusiers or others who specialised in opening pike blocks, and their vulnerability to cavalry far outstripped their usefulness. quote:If Genghis Khan had lived 10+ years longer, how much further could the Mongols have penetrated into Europe? Not terribly much farther I'd think. They would face, as at the Mediterranean coast, a very high concentration of castles. The steppe horsemen, more than anything, were miserable siege engineers. Admittedly, many of these castles were not stone but wood, but these still require time and effort to invest. The damp climate of Europe would also prove unfriendly to the glue of their bows, and the unshod hooves of their horses and thus hamper their main tools against their enemies. Europe, through its profound adoption of Vegetian warfare, was actually rather well protected against steppe attack. Panzeh posted:Without stirrups, you can't slam horses into an enemy formation and you'll fall right off if they buck. This is not really true at all. Macedonian, Roman, Carthaginian, and Persian horsemen all managed to ride perfectly well without stirrups, and the Macedonians fielded, in the Hetairoi, some very heavy cavalry. Stirrups allow for standing in the saddle, which is good both for improving visibility and range of motion. Robert Bruce is famous of course for burying his axe in the head of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, likely standing in his stirrups to do so. Far more important in the development of cavalry warfare was husbandry. The horses fielded by ancient armies, outside of Persia, were really quite pitiful compared to modern varieties, and the horses that existed in Northern Europe until the turn of the millenium were not much better. With the rapid spread of Spanish breeds at this time, however, one quickly finds taller, more powerful horses, though still a variety that was smaller and nimbler than many of today's breeds. As armour got heavier, however, the horse too got larger and stronger, until one sees horses capable of carrying both a fully armoured rider and their own full armour. Another factor in the progression of cavalry warfare was the invention of the high-backed saddle, which allows for one to receive much more of the force of a lance blow without risk of falling off. This allowed men to start couching their lances, a practice which started appearing, as far as we can tell, in the mid 11th century. The lance rest, which starts appearing in the 12th century, allowed for heavier lances. With the spread of rigid armour these lances would become heavier still.
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Jul 14, 2010 23:32
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Chade Johnson posted:This isn't true at all. The Mongols made extensive use of Chinese engineers, who had some of the most advanced siege technology of the era. Without it, they wouldn't have been able to advance through Central Asia, let alone the large fortified cities of the Levant. They also used extensive terror tactics, some of the cities in their path capitulated from fear alone. I think I was unclear about I meant. The engineers were Chinese, not steppe, which is my point. They had to rely on auxiliaries, who were not as self-sufficient as the steppe horsemen, which limited their mobility, and were unfamiliar with European terrain limited their ability. The brutality of the Khanate was indeed extremely important in advancing the empire that is certainly true. However, I still contend that their advance into Latin Europe, and likely into Greek Europe, would have been limited by their inadequacy at the art of siege. Their failures at various fortified towns and castles in Hungary and Austria are evidence enough of that.
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Jul 15, 2010 05:59
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GhostStalker posted:I'm just about to finish up a summer course on the history of the Ancient World in a couple of days and I have a couple of questions. While the class basically focuses not on the military history but instead on readings of primary accounts of experiences written during the period, it does touch on it a lot, as they had quite a lot of warfare to write about. So I have a couple of questions regarding the period: Your history is off, though I do somewhat agree with your prof's assessment. Alexander was not totalitarian. He did not have the means or the desire to be totalitarian. He was authoritarian, certainly. His destruction of Thebes is evidence enough of that, but totalitarianism requires a level of control that he would not have been able to exercise, and did not care to. He was certainly a jerk. With his desire to conquer people just because they were there, it's kinda hard not to be a jerk. That said, he still deserves his appellation because he did kick a lot of rear end and form a huge empire. That said, I think his father is superior. Long story short Philip began his reign in 359 with a weakened, disorganised kingdom which faced four serious threats: The Paeonians, the Illyrians, the Thracians (who were supporting a pretender) and the Athenians (also with a pretender). In two years those threats were neutralised, and he managed to turn the tables on the Paeonians and Illyrians. From there he expanded his kingdom through a combination of clever politicking, bribery, and war, incorporating the very profitable gold mines of southwestern Thrace and the excellent horsemen of Thessaly. By the battle of Chaeronea in 338 he not only had control of the Amphyctionic league, an important Boeotian religious/political council, but his empire touched the Adriatic, Black, and Aegean coasts. With the creation of the League of Corinth he effectively controlled all of Greece, save Sparta who, relegated to harsh and unprofitable Lacedaemonia by the Thebans decades earlier, were not worth fighting. He would have gone on to fight Persia were it not for that whole 'being assassinated' thing. Still, I think there is worth in Cleitus' assertions that Philip's accomplishments were greater than Alexander's. quote:2) Related, how come the Sacred Band of Thebes doesn't have the same name recognition that the Spartans do? Thebes is mostly relegated to the background when one learns about ancient Greece, as most teachers focus on Athens and Sparta, maybe making a reference to Thebes if they have the time. We learn all about the Spartan military, how 300 of them stood up against the Persians at Thermopylae, and how the Spartans fought the Peloponnesian Wars with Athens. What we don't learn is how the Spartans for their poo poo wrecked at Leuctra by the Thebans, in which the Sacred Band was instrumental in the victory. There are five reasons, as far as I can tell: 1. The Sacred band is but a unit in the Theban army while the Spartiates were an entire class of people and had great political, as well as military power. 2. The Spartiates and Spartan army did cooler things. They allowed Sparta to dominate the land in the Peloponnesian War, they were instrumental in defeating Xerxes, whose invasion was much greater than that of his father, and they were essential in expanding the Spartan hegemony. The Sacred Band's only real accomplishment was beating an aging and weakened Sparta. 3. The Spartiates were relevant for longer. From roughly 560 with the defeat of Tegea to 371 at Leuktra they were the premier land force in the Greek world. The Sacred Band was only around from 378-338. 4. The Sacred Band was defeated by barbarians. Whatever the modern Greeks say about the Macedonians, their contemporaries considered them barbarians, and being beaten by guys whose language sounds like dogs barking is pretty shameful. 5. The Sacred Band were really, really gay. This is much more important to modern mores, but the association of homosexuality with femininity means a unit of 150 homosexual couples is much less acceptable for manly men to like than Spartans who totally had sex with chicks all the time and never ever had sex with dudes. Totally. Dude. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jul 20, 2010 |
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Jul 20, 2010 01:02
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Also the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes did not really conquer England, they settled there. It's possible many received their land for fighting as auxiliaries in Roman armies; the exact reason for settling in England isn't certain, but it was not a military conquest. More likely the Germans assumed roles of an elite over the native Celtic population, positions that had formally been filled by Romans. Later on, Swedes did something similar in Russia with the Slavs (Kievan Rus) and Bulgars did it amongst the Southern Slavs in Thrace; again, assimilating into an existing hierarchy in the absence of an elite rather than conquering. The Franks are possibly the most well-known group to do something like this, as they accepted Christianity before any other Germanic tribe and then settled into the existing Roman hierarchy in Gaul. This is only true for about 100 years, just like the Normans in France and subsequently in England. After two or three generations there is very little in Rus', Bulgaria, or England to distinguish the conquering peoples from the conquered, save the identity they assume. The Rus' identity, much more than the Bulgarian or Anglo-Saxon English for geographical reasons, was much more diverse but still had strong elements of uniformity. A druzhnik or smerd in Monomakh's Kiev was not too much different to one in Novgorod at that time. Of course, the non-Slavic spice in the ethnicity was different for the two locations, but there is little evidence they saw each other as much different.
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Jul 21, 2010 01:45
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Plate armor did not really come into vogue until the Late Middle Ages, but knights on horseback were the battle-winning element of European and Middle Eastern armies (the latter not always knights in the feudal sense, but still armored cavalry). Yes, they were worthy of the 'posthumous glory' we give them. In fact, armored cavalry was such a powerful force that even at the height of their power the Ottomans maintained a 3:1 ratio of cavalry to infantry in their armies because of how effective it had been in helping their rise; this was one of the reasons they failed to keep up with European powers, who began to use the more versatile and powerful infantry more and more. While milites were important by the time of full plate armour (late 14th - early 17th century) their value was very much on the wane. While some people attribute this to the inherent superiority of infantry which was unlocked by the Swiss, Flemish, and Scots over the course of the 14th century, I do not think this is so. The battles they won on force of polearms and infantry in this period are due in large part to environmental and terrain factors or serious blunders on the part of the enemy commanders. There is also little evidence that these infantry were substantially better than that fielded by earlier armies, which had been defeated with sensible use of cavalry forces. It seems more likely that their importance waned due to the rising cost of maintaining them, compared to the cost of maintaining infantry armies, and the susceptibility of all to gunpowder weapons, especially artillery. This is also a time when royal power was significantly expanding in many European kingdoms, and the landed aristocracy as a whole was slowly de-militarising and shrinking due to a variety of factors I won't go into here. This means that you have a smaller pool of cavalrymen to draw from, and because of the reasonable effectiveness of trained foot you get less interest in maintaining a body of horsemen. Further, decent horse armor doesn't come around until the late 15th century, and is yet again another expensive piece of kit that can all go to waste if someone gets shot. That is not to say that fully armored horsemen were useless in this period, of course. Not at all. Indeed, in hand-to-hand fighting they retained their superiority over infantry, provided they (and their horses) were sufficiently armored. There are at least two occasions, at Ravenna in 1512, and at Ceresole in 1544, of fully armoured Gendarmes riding through whole pike squares and coming out the other side, and throughout the Italian wars the cavalry proved to be an arm capable of decisive action in battle. All this is well and good, of course, but battles rarely win wars. Siege was by far a more important component of medieval warfare, and in the 16th century heavy cavalry did not have much of a role to play. While in the 11th-13th centuries cavalry were excellent at ravaging, intercepting supplies and launching raids the heavier cavalry of the 14th century onward was less capable, and sieges relied less on ravaging and starving out or negotiating with a garrison and more on artillery. Also your point about the Ottomans is misleading. The Ottomans' cavalry during their rise was by and large not fully armored, but rather composed of more traditional Turkic horse archers. They did have heavy cavalry, certainly, but they were not nearly so common. quote:In a similar but contrary vein, video games like to give the Knights Templar some sort of elite status when in fact they lost just about every single pitched battle they were involved in, and many times the defeat could be directly attributed to the actions of the Templar. They were incredibly shrewd bankers and lenders and decent enough at defending the castles they were given, but were completely useless in the field. The Templars were elite. I have never heard a serious suggestion otherwise. It is true they were usually in losing battles but that is due to numerous issues, the most prominent of which is that they were usually absurdly outnumbered. They operated as strong, cohesive units and, at their core, had a level of discipline and unswerving loyalty to the Latin Church that was unseen in Western knights. They trained often and vigorously as evinced by their Rule. They were held to a standard higher than other knights, and as battlefield tools they showed it. They were not invincible, and indeed were often poorly led, but they were better than the average knight. That is not to say that your average knight of the period when the Templars were active was anything shabby, of course. They were by and large very skilled at war, but Templars had a little bit extra.
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Jul 21, 2010 21:20
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:You have it flipped around. Timariot cavalry, which made up the majority of the Ottoman military, was armored in chain and was a shock troop first and foremost. It was comparable to the medium cavalry that the Byzantines, then the Hungarians, employed against it. The skirmishing cavalry employed by the Ottomans were mostly Tatar and Kurdish auxiliaries. These played a hugely important role in Ottoman conquests but were not the core of the Ottoman force. Cavalry played such an important role in the rise of the Ottomans that they refused to change and fell behind the infantry and artillery revolutions; they saw infantry as a supporting force and did not use artillery in the field because it restricted mobility, preferring comically large cannons that could only be used in siege. The only standing infantry until late in the Early Modern era were the Janissaries, who only made up about a quarter of Ottoman strength at any given time. Whoops, so I do. For some reason I was convinced the Timariot Sipahi were archers. Probably just confused with the Seljuks. My bad. quote:Outside of Templar sources, nothing in the record bears this reputation out. A strict adherence to a monastic rule in their daily lives hardly proves anything about their abilities on the battlefield. The discipline you claim they showed runs contrary to what most chroniclers of the day had to say. Rather, in several major battles they were glory and booty seekers and brazenly refused to operate in coordination with other Christian forces; they were often outnumbered because they would rush ahead of their allies, and there is no way to tell if they were indeed better in combat than the average knight, though the evidence of their performance on the battlefield leaves one questioning that assertion. What do you consider 'Templar sources'? If you mean sources written by Templars or Cistercians like Bernard of Clairvaux, there is plenty of other record that bears out their good reputation. It was the Hospitallers, for example, and not the Templars who broke ranks at Arsouf and charged the enemy without Richard's order. The Templars were heavily involved in the successful battle of Montgisard, and Ralph of Diss, a non-Templar observer, said this of the Templars in the battle, quote:Odo the Master of the Knighthood of the Temple ... had eighty-four knights of his Order with him ... Spurring all together, as one man, they made a charge, turning neither to the left nor to the right. Recognising the battalion in which Saladin commanded many knights, they manfully approached it, immediately penetrated it, incessantly knocked down, scattered, struck and crushed. Saladin was smitten with admiration, seeing his men dispersed everywhere, everywhere turned in flight, everywhere given to the mouth of the sword. He took thought for his own safety and fled, throwing off his mailshirt for speed, mounted a racing camel and barely escaped with a few of his men. An anonymous pilgrim's account written between 1167 and 1187, the Tractatus de locis et statu sanctae terrae, has this to say quote:The Templars are excellent knights, wearing white mantles with a red cross ... They go into battle in order and without making a noise, they are first to desire engagement and more vigorous than others; they are first to go and last to return, and they wait for their Master's command before acting ... As one person, they strongly seek out the units and wings of the battle, they never dare to give way, they either completely break up the enemy or they die. In returning from the battle they are the last and they go behind the rest of the crowd, looking after all the rest and protecting them. But if any of them turns their back on the enemy or does not act with sufficient courage, or bears weapons against Christians he is severely disciplined. That isn't to say that the Templars weren't occasionally impetuous, but this was dependent on the personality of their Master, to whom they were very obedient. They didn't always operate in the interests of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, that's certainly true, as when they ambushed and murdered the Hashishin envoy in 1173 or while under the control of Gerard de Rideford. It is also certain, though that until the mid-13th century, when fervor for crusading and charitable donations to the order dropped off, the Templars were warriors first and foremost.
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Jul 21, 2010 23:36
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lilljonas posted:Lamellar armour took over after the chainmail that the Vikings loved so much. Mail was never replaced by lamellar. The lamellar was used to augment the mail, and very rarely to augment textile armour. However, mail remained by far the most prevalent form of metal armour through the high middle ages, and deservedly so. I also think you overestimate the skill of Scandinavian farmers at war. I doubt very much they were better trained than their Central European counterparts since neither group was heavily used as professional soldiers. Other than that I agree with your assessment. The theme of the high middle ages in upper Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden) is a decline in Scandinavian power abroad. The loss of the Scottish Isles, the defeats in Karelia and Rus' are symptomatic of this decline in the face of other rising powers. True some of the cities recover power thanks to the Hanseatic league, but that, by and large, seems to benefit the Germans and the Novgorodians more than the Scandinavians. In Denmark things are a bit different, typified through the 12th century by forceful Christianisation of the Slavic natives in nearby territories. The man who exemplifies this most is perhaps Archbishop Absalon. It's telling that though his gravestone shows him in episcopal robes, but his statue in Copenhagen shows him armed, on horseback. Denmark expanded Southward too, albeit for a relatively brief period, over the Baltic coast of Pomerania and Prussia. Most often, though, Scandinavian warfare was typified by internal struggle in the High Middle Ages.
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Aug 7, 2010 15:42
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Canemacar posted:And I can confidently say you're full of poo poo. There is a reason the man is reviled in the parts of the country he oh so nobly pillaged and ransacked. First off, he destroyed the infrastructure of a country (for the CSA was to contemporary southern minds a separate nation) that had been at war with his nation for years. The intrinsic ties of the rebel war machine with its civilian population is entirely the fault of the civilians, specifically the southern gentry who were his main target, and to expect them to be totally protected when they were the driving force behind the war is stupid. Further, he should be commended for doing it in a way that espoused so much mercy. With any other general, the killing, rapes, and destruction would have been exponentially more horrendous. Look at Korea or the Second World War in almost any theatre and realise that civilians will always get hosed, no matter how benign the motives, but this is even more the case when they are so inextricable from the nation's war machine. Beyond that, how sad should we feel for people that fought and killed, or sent other people to fight and kill, for the privilege of owning other people? Mustang posted:Maybe I'm biased since my ancestor deserted the CSA to fight for the Union Your ancestor is awesome.
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Aug 9, 2010 17:22
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:While the bit about cavalry is true (he invented the technique known as the caracolle, where cavalry fired pistols before closing with steel) Almost exactly the opposite is true. The caracole is a 16th century technique which died out over the course of the 30 Years War. The caracole itself was a technique wherein the front rank of pistoliers would fire, then go to the back of the line, as it were. Though they may eventually close with melee weapons, that was not the purpose of the formation at all. Other than that I agree completely with your post.
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Aug 28, 2010 15:42
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What are some good books about the Byzantines? These books are by far the best on Byzantine warfare that's come out any time recently. Even better though should be the aftermath of this conference. A collection of the lectures should be coming out in the next year or two, and it should be excellent. In the mean time, Byzantine warfare is largely ignored. David Nicolle does some stuff, but he's not very competent. In the mean time there are a few decent articles on the De Re Militari site: http://www.deremilitari.org/articles/
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Sep 3, 2010 05:05
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Dreylad posted:How good are the Oxford/Cambridge Warfare book series? Are they central to military historiography or are they kinda general student consumption? They were the major books we used in a History of Warfare class I took awhile ago, and I haven't really read any general war history books outside of Canadian military history. In my medieval warfare work I don't think I've come across this series. Could you link an example? That said, I am of the (hyperbolic internet) opinion that The Western Way of War is probably the worst thing to gain academic traction in recent years. Its key architect, Victor Davis Hanson, chooses his examples with such oblivious good fortune or meticulous precision as to suggest perennial Western military superiority, but his conclusions at almost any level fall apart when presented with military events outside his selections. It's gross neocon pandering.
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Sep 4, 2010 02:22
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Mr. Sunshine posted:For one thing, they crushed the Austrians so bad that their empire fell apart. What? It was the Russians who crushed the Austrians. And the Turks. And they could have crushed the Germans in the first year of the war if one of their dead officers hadn't been carrying the plans for the Corps on his person. They were exceptionally innovative as well, basically inventing storm troopers and radically improving artillery tactics.
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Sep 6, 2010 03:33
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Cjones posted:Guessing this will never get answered? I know almost nothing about Spain post-Death, sorry. http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_spanish.html this article is supposed to be pretty good though.
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Sep 8, 2010 03:20
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Saint Celestine posted:Since I think this is one of the first cases after world war 1 that chemicals were used in a battlefield? (Agent Orange in Vietnam dosent count) This is incorrect. The Italians used it extensively against the Ethiopians in the 30s, the British probably did against the Kurds in the 20s, and the Japanese certainly used them against the Chinese in the 30s and 40s. Come Cold War time their actual use decreased substantially, though there was plenty of testing, and the Egyptians used chemical weapons in Yemen in the 60s. I'm sure I'm forgetting some examples.
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Sep 13, 2010 02:56
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lilljonas posted:Never? In fact, ratio of violence towards civilians compared to uniformed soldiers only increased during the 20th century. On what grounds do you base this assertion? You say violence toward civilians, are you including accidental violence (collateral damage) in that? Are you referring to any particular armies? The 20th century does not seem especially predisposed to the kind of violence Hydrolith is talking about, and for every Rape of Nanking in the 20th century there is a sack of Aquilonia and Messana and Oreus and Opus in any other century, and that's just in Europe. quote:There hasn't been a time when all wars were about rape, pillage and plunder, and there hasn't been a time when war has not included rape, pillage and plunder. There was never a war that is truly about rape, pillage, and plunder, but incidents of the latter decreased gradually, in wars between 'civilized' nations, I would say some time after the Peace of Westphalia. I'm shooting low because I have ignored the 18th century entirely. In part I agree with Alekanderu's assertion that the creation of easily accessible media has something to do with this, but I also think that there are other factors. When people are often the victims of cruelty they are more likely to engage in it, and support it, themselves. In the 18th and 19th century so much of war was fought in the colonies, away from the main political populace, the tolerance for such depredations slackened. Further, post-Napoleon and probably pre-Napoleon, pillage lessened for reasons other than civilian tolerance. Most notably this was because it was no longer the primary means of securing provisions and pay for troops. To say that 11th and 12th century warfare, in which ravaging was not an accident but an essential strategy, held the same level of pillage as 20th century wars, be they little Panamas or big World Wars, is patently false.
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Sep 17, 2010 17:49
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lilljonas posted:Good points. This is all pretty eurocentric however. If you look at 19th and 20th century warfare in for example Africa, it is not much different. The wars in Congo/Zaire, Côte D'Ivoire and Sudan to name a few have pretty much been all about rape, pillage and systematic genocide of civilians. And as mentioned before, the ratio of civilian to soldier deaths in Iraq is worse than the worst wars you can drag up from Antiquity or the Middle Ages. It is fairly Eurocentric, but that's because that is where the changes are often taking place. I agree that much of the rest of the world is still probably as brutal as it ever was, but the fact that some nations are avoiding massacre is still relevant. Also, I think I misunderstood you. I thought you meant the ratio of violence committed against civilians compared to total number of uniformed soldiers, rather than the number of violent acts committed toward said soldiers. Problematically we have very little in the way of reliable data for the medieval and ancient periods even for the stuff that was actually reported, along with who knows how much unreported death. I can't really respond to your last point. The lack of uniforms also makes this problematic. That said, what is clear from battles like Zama, Arsuf, and Hastings for which we have semi-reliable data, is that once a rout begins an enemy force can be almost totally eliminated with very little risk to the attacking forces. Descriptions we have of sacking cities and raiding the countryside show very little or nothing in the way of resistance from civilian populations. In the medieval period this, admittedly, might be due to ecclesiastical sources, or sources politically biased toward the besieger, exaggerating the helplessness of civilians in order to garner sympathy or to emphasise the righteousness of the attacker. The physically impossible knee-deep bloodbath that is described in the sacking of Jerusalem was written precisely because, as Richard Abels argues, the author sought to glorify the slaughter of heathen peoples. How some fairly basic and reliable logic took Western churchmen to this conclusion is a story for another time. edit: I wish I could find that woodcut of Landsknechts with babies on halberds because it would be so appropriate. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Sep 18, 2010 |
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Sep 18, 2010 01:21
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EvanSchenck posted:The US army is just sufficient to project American power anywhere on the planet if we need to do so. Compare Desert Storm to the current nation-building projects. The military was definitely sufficient to trash the Iraqis in 1991. Conversely, even though the occupation of Iraq has finally come to more-or-less successful "conclusion," the country was totally out of control for the first half of the occupation, and the effort strained the army's capabilities to the utmost, with some tragic results (e.g. the US military often blows up civilians by accident because insufficient manpower obliges us to use firepower instead). You're comparing two different militaries. Rumsfeld radically cut down the size of the military in 2001 and 2002 and moved away from boots on the ground toward planes in the air, which was exactly the wrong thing to do for the rebuilding of Iraq. This was, of course, at a time when the plan for Iraq was to topple Saddam and then ____________, so I suppose there was some logic in that decision. Still, the Soviet-invasion-ready military of 1990-91 was thoroughly different from 2003's force. Both are, again, different from the force we have with us today. Of course, if you were bringing these up to emphasise the difference in force composition and size then I totally agree and you should just ignore me.
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Sep 28, 2010 20:32
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The number of the boots on ground is less important than what the boots on the ground actually do, though. Certainly it's true that the US military relied on goodwill-destroying kinetic responses like indirect artillery fire and air strikes to respond to incidents before 2006-2007, but I think that was a problem not of numbers but of doctrine. I agree with this certainly, but let's not forget that one of the most important pieces of doctrine regards the visibility of police or police analogues. In a place where the local military has been eliminated (Iraq in 2003-6, and through bureaucratic means no less) or is insufficient in size (Afghanistan) your own men will need to pick up the slack.
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Sep 28, 2010 22:02
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I disagree with your assessment, bewbies, in a few places.bewbies posted:The main reason for this is the longbow's amazing effectiveness at useful combat ranges. This is due to several factors: its rate of fire (a trained longbowman could fire 10 rounds per minute at a maximum, with a useful ROF of 6 rpm), its accuracy at distance (a platoon of longbowmen could reliably hit a man size target at 300m, and the arrows carried their energy more efficiently to that distance), and the effectivness of the projectile (for a given amount of energy, arrows were generally much more effective than contemporary bullets). Basically, if you put a platoon of longbowmen and a platoon of Napoleonic soldiers in a field and had them battle to the death, I think the longbowmen would win without casualties. There are a few problems with these statements. While you are correct about rate of fire, your point about accuracy is mostly false. In the tests shown in Strickland & Hardy's "The Great Warbow" only the lightest of arrows could even reach that far, and even then without enough energy to kill. I think you mean 200 metres. It was not a man-sized target that they practised on but one at least 2 metres in diameter. A man-sized target would be, given the parabolic trajectory, an even smaller target than if firing straight on. Arrows were less affected by drag, it is true. However, Alan Williams' tests in "The Knight and The Blast Furnace" show that guns imparted absolutely tremendous amounts of energy by comparison, to the point that it really doesn't matter out to the maximum range of these arrows, because the gun will still kill you quite readily. I know you're just speaking informally with your last point, but it's worth mentioning that not all Napoleonic platoons are created equal. Portuguese Cacadors and Jager regiments had rifles, which increased the individual soldier's accuracy quite substantially, even without minie balls. Beyond that, tests in the 1790s by the Hanoverians showed that at 100 paces a target representing a line of infantry was hit 75% of the time by men armed with muskets. That number dropped to 37% at 200 and 33% at 300. The point stands, however, that muskets were by no means so inaccurate that a group of bowmen could kill them with impunity. It is also worth mentioning that, depending on the size of the field, the musketeers could fire without any fear of being hit until the longbowmen moved up to engage them. quote:That said, in terms of operational military application, firearms were pretty decisively superior from the introduction of the matchlock onwards. The biggest reason for this was the simplification of training: it took decades for a longbowman to become militarily useful, but it took only a few minutes to train a conscript to use a firearm. Ammunition was lighter and easier to carry, and firearms were better suited than were bows to martial combat (especially after the adoption of the bayonet). I mostly agree with you, though it didn't take decades to train a serviceable longbowman, but closer to half-a-dozen years, if that. Still, the week of instruction necessary to create an adequate arqubusier is a substantially shorter period. I also do not know what you mean by martial combat, but it sounds like you mean hand-to-hand fighting. I really do not think this is the case, as longbowmen often carried personally-acquired secondary weapons, such as swords and bucklers or war hammers. In some arrangements they were even given pikes as weapons for close fighting, which are undeniably superior due to reach alone to muskets mounted with bayonets. quote:This of course is why we saw the rise of the conscript army and the professional officer soon after the introduction of military firearms (the New Model Army being the most prominent example). I wouldn't call 200 years "soon after". It took a significant change in ideas about governmental authority and nation identity, and a great deal of centralisation of power, for any of this to be possible. In an odd twist, professional armies led by officers showed up in Europe well before conscription in units such as the French Gendarmes or Spanish Tercios. This twist only works, of course, assuming one doesn't count the infrequently-used medieval levy as conscription, and the semi-permanent stipediaries of the familia regis as professionals. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Oct 18, 2010 |
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Oct 18, 2010 23:24
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bewbies posted:I should have been more specific: I was referring to a unit equipped with Edwardian-era bows, the 200+ lbs draw weight. In the Strickland and Hardy book, their tests were conducted with a 150 lbs bow, which was still able to shoot a full weight arrow 250m. The biggest bows (eg, not like the ones recovered from Mary Rose) could easily kill even lightly armored troops at 300m, and could fire a lighter arrow out past 400m. Could you please present a source for the 400m point? I have not seen any sources claiming that as an engagement distance in war. While I know there were Mongol archery contests that had arrows going out that sort of distance and beyond it was my understanding that these were flight arrows designed for range, not killing. I also question, somewhat, your point that they could kill lightly armoured men at 300 metres. What do you mean by 'lightly armoured'? quote:As for accuracy, I was not describing a single archer hitting a man-sized target, but rather a fire platoon element. They would have had no difficulty scoring a hit on a man at 300m, let alone a tightly packed formation. Fair enough, though I haven't seen reference of archers being organised by platoon. For the sake of argument, what size of group are we talking about? quote:The issue wasn't really energy so much as accuracy. At the maximum range of a 200 lbs longbow, a smoothbore musket, even fired in volleys, was simply not an effective weapon. That is certainly true, but that does not mean it was harmless. Consider the battle of Killiecrankie, where the initial engagement distances were at least 400 metres and MacKay's troops were firing uphill no less. The damage done was, obviously, minor, but it stands that they were not forced to close with the Jacobites in order to fire upon them. quote:First, to discuss the oft cited Hanoverian test, I've not yet seen a proper explanation of these results. Quite simply, we do not know what "33% at 300 paces" really means: does it mean that 33% of the balls hit the target at 300 paces, or does it mean the formation firing a volley hit the target collectively 33% of the time? Considering that the British, during the Brown Bess era, thought "as a general rule, musketry fire should not be made at a distance exceeding 150 yards and certainly not exceeding 200 yards, as at and beyond that range it would be a mere waste of ammunition to do so", I must conclude that the latter is the case. Philip J. Haythornthwaite's "Napoleonic Infantry" is my source for this, and he doesn't elucidate on the Hanoverian results either, sadly. He does, however, provide a few other tests. quote:a musket achieved a range of 1,030 yards at 45 degrees elevation, but such statistics are irrelevant to what happened on the battlefield, where 300 yards might be regarded as the maximum practical range. The 1841 test showed that at 150 yards a target twice as high and twice as broad as a man was hit three times out of four, but not at all at any greater range, nor were any hits registered on a target twice as wide at 250 yards. However, the archers at the butts were also not under fire, likely with well-maintained equipment, so their accuracy was also substantially increased. quote:Is there a definitive source on this? Most longbowmen were trained from childhood (much as knights were), which is what I was loosely quoting; if you have something more concrete on how long it took to train a previously untrained adult I'd like to see it. I have not seen much evidence of children being trained with the longbow as a matter of course. Lattimer speaks of it, but he only assumes that other children were trained as he was. Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, meanwhile, makes mention of it mainly in ancient times, and does not justify it on martial grounds but on morals and health. I say half-a-dozen years based on the medieval and early modern precedent of 14 years of age being legal adulthood, at which point Henry's law expects them to practice with bows, and men of 18+ years commonly participating in military activity. I'm not thinking of a good archer at all, merely one who is serviceable. quote:I cannot find a record of a substantial force of bowmen fighting with pikes; I'm sure this was done in a limited capacity (although in that case I would argue they become more like heavy infantry with bows rather than bowmen, and the effectiveness of them as longbowmen would have been accordingly reduced due to their having to carry a massive pike in lieu of ammunition). In any case, I think by any reasonable measure that a musket/bayonet armed force was more dangerous in CQB, due both to the power of the firearm at close range and due to the effectiveness of the bayonet/musket combination as a hand to hand weapon; longbowmen and their "personal weapons" would have been very ill-suited to taking on a well disciplined Napoleonic platoon at hand-to-hand ranges. Also of particular note, bayonet-equipped infantry was less vulnerable to cavalry, which of course was the greatest threat to the bowman. The double-armed man was certainly not employed en masse, no. I am not so sure about the ineffectiveness of archers in a melee. While this was certainly true of earlier groups of bowmen the Plantagenet longbowmen seem to have taken part in quite a lot of close-in fighting. Most famously they did this in Agincourt against a French force severely hampered by terrain, weather and floundering horses, but they also engaged more formidable foes at the battle of Auray. After finding their arrows had little effect on the well-armoured French men-at-arms they threw down their bows and took up their close-range arms. They were certainly vulnerable to cavalry, of course, but they were by-and-large experienced fighters. While a close range musket blast would do horrendous damage to a group of charging archers, I was thinking of strict bayonet vs. whatever the archers had. EvanSchenck posted:Arguably the success of the longbow was due less to its superiority as a weapons system and more to the difference in ability between French and English leadership--the Plantagenets being very good, and the Valois and their deputies being indifferent at best and crap at worst. I agree in cases where the longbow proved extremely successful, such as the battles cited, but not for the course of the whole war. The French had access to some extremely skilled generalship in the form of Bertrand du Guesclin, as well as strong leadership from Joan of Arc and the 2nd Earl of Buchan. quote:Later Spanish tactics had troops armed with the arquebus acting as skirmishers. They lingered near the tercio pike squares, firing on the enemy to disrupt his formation, inflict the odd casualty, and prevent opposing archers from targeting the relatively unprotected pikemen. When the enemy threatened, they retreated behind the cover of the pike squares, and after the wave broke on the rock of the tercio, they advanced again to fire and prevent the enemy from reforming, etc. All the "work" was done by the pikemen, the arquebusiers just helped them out as a screening force. I think you're selling the arquebus short. Consider Bicocca, where they fired into the Swiss pikes and absolutely devastated them, or at Ceresole where, mixed with the pikemen, they wrought terrible damage on the opposing forces.
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Oct 19, 2010 21:33
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pigdog posted:Speaking of early firearms, why wouldn't have they been used to fire small diameter shot (like a modern smoothbore shotgun) instead of ball ammunition? The early arquebus was basically a huge fuckoff shotgun, so loading that thing with heavy buckshot woulda been awesome even at range. Or not? That's what the blunderbuss is for, but those don't show up until the 1600's. That said, the use of shot instead of a single round ball prior to that seems to have been extremely rare if it was done at all, likely because of the ineffectiveness of shot at ranges where you would normally fight as an arquebusier, and the reduced power of shot would make it more difficult to pierce armor. It is definitely round ball, for example, that shot off Götz von Berlichingen's hand. It was not, as wikipedia implies, a carriaged gun but a hand cannon.
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Oct 21, 2010 17:32
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bewbies posted:Sure. This all makes sense, thank you for the info. I am leery of using Hardy as a source generally, because he is very strongly biased in favor of the longbow. However, without seeing the actual source that he draws from, or throwing out another length for a pace, I can't contest it. quote:Essentially any sort of leather, mail, or light plate armor that was less than 1mm thick. The typically cited penetration of a proper arrow at 300m was an inch into oak, which would have been sufficient to penetrate any of the above. Thicker plate armor is obviously a completely different monster of course. Mail is actually quite resilient to arrows if supplemented (as it always was) by the all-important textile armour underneath. There is plenty of evidence, and Strickland goes into it pretty thoroughly in Warbow, that mail armour was fairly resilient to arrows, especially at range. Close in is another story, of course, and there are examples of arrows piercing folk at the armpits from fairly early on, so they weren't impervious by any means. Leather armour I'm less sure of, since it was uncommon in the West, where textile armours were often preferred, and Eastern European sources are largely too vague or too destroyed to provide much detail. As for light plate, I again have my doubts, but the sources do not specify who had light plate and who had heavy plate so I cannot say for sure. Strickland also points out that no adequate tests on arrow penetration vs. mail have been done to date. Where are you getting the 1-inch penetration into oak? It sounds like an extrapolation from Gerald of Wales' account of an arrow penetrating a handspan through an oak door, which is fairly plain exaggeration from a propagandist. quote:I was thinking of a modern platoon size, 40 firers or so. OK. quote:I'm not totally sure what your point is here. Of course a smoothbore musket is physically capable of shooting long distances, but it isn't a militarily useful tactic. My point is simply that I think in your hypothetical scenario the longbowmen would not escape without casualties, given the numbers employed. quote:This is probably a good estimate; that said, in speaking of the monster bows with which I did the calculations above, I would bet the training would have to be almost daily in order to get the necessary strength in a 4-6 year time period. No arguments here. quote:I suppose I'm operating under an assumption that Napoleonic-era conscripts would be somewhat categorically more formidable in CQB just due to the fact that they would be in a proper formation and as such they could conduct a coordinated charge. If we're talking about 1 v 1 kind of fighting my money would probably be on the medieval soldier. There is value in that, but I'm not sure if the disadvantages of the bayonet as a weapon would be adequately compensated for. I am also not sure that the archers could not themselves execute a competent charge. Really, I am just taking the coward's way out and you are probably right. 
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Oct 22, 2010 17:08
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QuentinCompson posted:Given that the people who ended up governing the Republic were not at all aligned with or related to the people who governed the Ottomans, I don't see how your comparison is relevant. You're, to a point, barking up the wrong tree. I'm going to speak from the position of ignoring the involvement of Şükrü Kaya in the genocide and the government of the republic, since that is not the real issue. Just because a few of the key architects were assassinated or ousted doesn't mean all the menials, the concentration camp commanders, etc. suffered the same fate. They were mostly soldiers, and many of them survived to live regular lives in the republic. The Turks being as nationalistic as they are, have a real problem acknowledging that their parents, their grandparents, were involved in such a hideous act. Hell, the Erzurum massacre not only involved soldiers but had popular involvement as well. The comparison is wholly relevant. As an aside the Russian Imperial Army was actually a pretty decent fighting force at a few points in the war, and consistently in the Caucasus. Not German quality but not too shabby. I'll write more about this at a later date. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 25, 2010 |
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Nov 25, 2010 17:05
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Comrade_Robot posted:I don't know if you're at all familiar with Frederick W. Lanchester's 1914 model of concentration of force. (This discussion follows the overview from Hughes' _Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice_) Essentially, he said that in 'ancient conditions' limited range and mobility pitted one man against the other in essentially a series of duels (1000 men meeting 1000 men would result in a draw, 1000 men against 750 would result in 250 of the larger force left. Essentially, all else equal, the larger force would suffer roughly equal casualties after the elimination of the smaller force. This bars psychological conditions; IIRC (from Keegan) a majority of the casualties in ancient warfare came during the 'pursuit phase', when one side was running away. This part of Lanchester's model for battlefield activity is pretty patently wrong. It sounds like it is based on the thoroughly wrong preconceived notions of his time. Getting truly ancient, and going back to Greek hoplite warfare should dispel any notions of that, and unit actions continued through the ancient period, the medieval, and the early modern. The idea of ancient warfare as a series of duels came from the all-too-serious reading of some medieval heroic literature, like the Arthur stories, and some ancient, like the Iliad, as well as misreading of chronicles that emphasized the works of one person without mentioning the men that were with him. Beyond that I think the need to quantify war into mathematical models that are so simplistic is a bit useless. Of course, I personally feel that war is impossible to quantify mathematically due to the difficulty of quantifying morale, motivations, skills, these sorts of things, and the effect of governmental feeling, which has as much to do with the outcome of most wars as the warriors themselves. Spartan421 posted:Remember how the thread died the first time? I do. (incredibly specific bullshit no one cared about except for the two people going back and forth) God forbid we have serious debate here. Let's get some rpg-level writeups of Gaugamela, stat.
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Nov 28, 2010 18:36
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AgentF posted:How did the US get troops/vehicles into Afghanistan? They would have had to pass through some other country to get there, I imagine. There are these great metal birds in the sky these days, you may have seen them yourself. People climb on the back of them (I think?? Someone help me out here) and if you feed them the right food they can take you great distances.
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Dec 4, 2010 06:17
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Mirconium posted:This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) There are only about 35 grams of salt per litre of sea water. That is not a very good exchange rate, especially since once upon a time salt was necessary for food preservation, and was extremely heavily used by everyone, from kimchee to bacalao. It is not hard to see why some dudes might just want to take some by force when they ran out, rather than risk all their food spoiling and death by starvation.
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Dec 7, 2010 06:07
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bewbies posted:I'd argue the Seven Years' War (or in Amurka the French and Injun War) was the first "world war" in a useful sense, between 15 and 20 different nations participating (depending on how loosely you define Indian nations) and fighting across 4 different continents. Perhaps but 18th century warfare is the most boring thing on the planet so it doesn't count.
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Dec 13, 2010 16:08
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Kemper Boyd posted:The battle of Poltava is a fascinating one because it was pretty much the battle that decided the future dynamics of Europe for 300 years. Not to mention that despite the fact that the Swedes were outnumbered and outgunned, they almost broke the Russians. It is interesting as a political event but the battle itself is not.
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Dec 16, 2010 19:59
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lilljonas posted:Controlling the entire northern Baltic Sea trade would have been extremely lucrative, as a large amount of trade from Russia went through the Baltic. I don't know all that much about the 18th century but I do know that after Stolbovo in 1617 Sweden had taken all of Russia's Baltic possessions. I would like to know what kept them from controlling northern Baltic trade and why they did not prosper off of it in the intervening 80+ years, if not the Russians.
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Dec 17, 2010 06:31
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Rabhadh posted:As much as I hate to bring things back to WW2, I have to ask, was Hermann Göring actually useful/good for anything? Being a figure of fun. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1759515648312728369
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Dec 17, 2010 17:00
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Sun Tzu is pretty much common sense in book form. Embraced? It's difficult to say that it's been embraced per se, but most of the principles therein are utilized in Western doctrine. It's not like military strategists couldn't figure out 'attack where your enemy is weak' without a 100 page advice pamphlet written by a Chinese general before the birth of Christ, though. More to the point, why would they bother with Sun Tzu when military manuals like Vegetius', among others, were already widely read in the West? They were just as useful or even more so, being written closer to the reader's time.
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Dec 20, 2010 14:31
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Boiled Water posted:Some of it is also not very advisable. Like summary execution of officers and such. Also his preference for battle-seeking and siege avoidance runs entirely contrary to the preferred methods of late Roman and medieval warfare.
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Dec 20, 2010 15:26
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Boiled Water posted:Here's a military question: Who is favored in a siege? Is it the sieging party or the siegee? That depends on a huge number of factors. Can you perhaps be more specific? Time period, type of fortification, available supplies, available weapons, all these can make a huge difference. And how do you mean 'favoured'? Who is more likely to be ultimately successful? Whose victory would be more costly in terms of dead guys?
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Dec 20, 2010 17:48
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Not to mention that "The East" and to a lesser degree "The West" are moving targets. Beijing and Tokyo are The East but so is Moscow, Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Baghdad, and Agra, depending on who's talking. Ignoring Western colonies, The West nearly always stops at the Mediterranean and is also usually bounded by the Oder, but sometimes by the Urals, or, more recently, the Bug. American Indians/Native Americans and Africans south of the Nile or the Sahara are not usually considered in these discussions. If that seems like a huge oversight that's because it is and the idea of a specific and continuous Western way of war is Bad and Dumb.Admiral Snackbar posted:I personally can't stand Hanson's arguments, but as far as a list of "Western" victories over "Non-Western" opponents, the examples he chooses are OK, such as Salamis in 480 BC, Gaugamela in 331 BC, Lepanto in AD 1571, and Rourke's Drift in 1879. The examples he chooses are terrible, since they are not only cherry picked but taken so far out of context so as to render them meaningless except for the purpose of promoting this ideology. Yeah Cannae is an example of Western warfare which includes Decisive Battles and Discipline (but also Dissent somehow) *ignores literally everything else that happens in the 2nd punic war* Hell, the fact that he focuses on battles, then has nearly an 800-year gap between battles, twice, should set off gigantic warning bells. This is even less forgivable when one of those gaps holds the division of the Empire and entire Migration Period while the other has the Great Schism and the Crusades, events that are more essential to the definition of "The West" than any fairytale bullshit with ~Technology and Reason~. edit: Or did you mean that the example cultures he chooses are identifiably "Western" and "Non-Western"? Because I disagree with that, too. The continuity between the "western-ness" of the Athenians to the Macedonians, who were considered Barbarians by the Athenians, then to the Romans, considered Barbarians by the Macedonians, then the Franks, considered Barbarians by the Romans, is not really reasonable. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jan 2, 2011 |
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Jan 2, 2011 06:35
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Admiral Snackbar posted:Just to be clear, I 100% disagree with everything Hanson stands for and espouses. I only listed those battles for surf rock's benefit since I thought they more or less represented what he was looking for. It's all good. I just get so mad at the idea my eyes start shooting gouts of flame then I black out and when I wake up there is a post in front of me. And you are absolutely right, the idea that the Franks at Tours were somehow more legitimate successors to the legacy of the Greeks and Romans than their Constantinopolitan contemporaries is ridiculous. The Byzantines not only considered themselves Roman, but possessed exponentially more Classical text and were far more familiar with it thank the Franks.
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Jan 2, 2011 16:09
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The Arabs that the Franks were fighting at Tours possessed exponentially more Classical text and were far more familiar with it than the Franks, as well. I'm not sure that's the case. By my understanding Arab translation efforts didn't really start until the mid 8th century, after Tours. Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic Golden Age, isn't even founded until thirty years after the battle. The Arabs did some lovely things but in 732 they hadn't quite settled down to study what they had snagged from the Byzantines yet. Then again, I'm not totally familiar with what the Arabs were up to at this time, so if someone could point me to some sources I'd be more than obliged. Unrelated question: What should I know about Simon Bolivar's campaigns?
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Jan 3, 2011 01:46
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dividebyzero posted:Basically, had Saakashvili himself not bungled the initial invasion, and the Georgians succeeded in capturing Tskhinvali and pressing north to block off the routes from the Roki Tunnel, the war would've lasted much longer and been far bloodier, mostly for the Russians. What did Saakashvili do to gently caress it up? edit: I mean, aside from starting the war in the first place. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jan 3, 2011 |
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Jan 3, 2011 16:49
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dividebyzero posted:Saakashvili turned a limited response to harassing artillery fires from S. Ossetian rebels (some retaliatory fires at first) into a full-scale invasion over the course of 24 hours. Whether or not the Georgians were actually prepared to execute an invasion in advance is a subject of wide debate (the Russians insist they were), but judging by the ad hoc nature of the Georgian escalation, especially coupled with the fact that Georgia's best troops were in the middle of Iraq when the shooting started, it appears to me that Saakashvili didn't have his poo poo together before pressing on with the invasion and doomed it from the start. But by massing troops on the border in order to prepare for the invasion, wouldn't they have tipped the Russians off anyhow? Moscow had lobbed some paratroopers into Abkhazia as peacekeepers earlier in the year, so it's not as if the Russians weren't already willing to put some of their best troops in the theatre and keeping an eye on the bigger picture. Not only that, but Saakashvili came in on a platform of bringing Georgia's ethnic minorities under Tblisi's rule, so its not as if they would have passed it off as administrative shuffling. I'm just not seeing how, without political or military support from another country like the US, the Georgians weren't doomed anyway. quote:*cough* 'Ukraine is not a real country' Well this is actually a fairly easy argument to make. Ukrainian nationalism firmly bases itself in Kievan Rus'. As long as their concept of nationality is entrenched in that cultural and political heritage, there are some things they should concede: By the 16th century, with the fall of Constantinople and the transition of places like Novgorod, Suzdal, and Vladimir to Muscovite control, and Galicia, Chernigov, and Kiev to Lithuanian control, Moscow was the only legitimate successor to the Riurikid throne left standing. So the argument goes that if they want to be descendants of Rus' they had better be willing to serve the Grand Prince. Ukrainian nationalism, as a movement, has also not helped its own case by being a transparent tool of Poland, as it was under Pilsudski. Another question: Do you have any idea how well the Russian ballistic missile brigades performed in 2008?
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Jan 3, 2011 19:46
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Paxicon posted:Perhaps this is the wrong thread, but you seem well-informed on historical weapons. A question that's always bugged me is why pre-rifling firearms trended to grow longer and longer until we have the half-pike bayonet musket. Was it only a deliberate effort to make the musket a melee weapon on its own or does a longer firearm have some benefit for the shot? Let's clear a few things up: Longarms, excluding those explicitly designed to be short, stop increasing length well before the invention of bayonets, either socket or plug. From about the late 16th century, with the widespread adoption of matchlock muskets, to the long-serving Brown Bess of the 18th and 19th centuries lengths remained fairly similar, at between 40" and 45" of barrel. Longer firearms, past a minimum needed to impart direction (for argument's sake let's say 2") are not mechanically more accurate. That is determined by other factors like barrel quality, powder quality, and bullet quality. The increased weight of the firearm with a longer barrel does make them slightly easier to keep steady, though they tire you out more quickly, effectively negating any battlefield advantage that provides. It is also easier to shoot accurately with more distance between the front and rear sights, because you can see minor changes in your sight picture better that at a shorter distance. Not really applicable to the weapons in question. Last, weapons with stocks are also easier to shoot accurately than those without. Arquebuses had stocks, albeit rather crappy ones. Still, better than nothing. None of this is mechanical, it is all user-based. The bullets did not "bounce around" inside the barrel. Because they were seated against the powder, they would follow whatever direction said powder pushed them in. If they were undersized or not wrapped in wadding they were more likely to veer off in one direction or other because they had uneven force applied to their surface. Ammunition was not made by swaging until the mid 19th century at the earliest. It was instead, in the period in question, made by pouring molten lead into moulds like these.  With all that sorted The length increased over the course of the 15th and into the 16th centuries for two reasons: It was understood that gunpowder expands when it burns, and the more it burns in a confined area, like a barrel, the faster it, and thus the bullet, went. This, however, is only true so long as the powder continues to burn. Once it stops burning the bullet has nothing but its own inertia to propel it forward. At this stage more barrel simply impedes the bullet through friction. This provided the drive to make the barrels longer, but not too long. The second reason was that it had become easier to make steel of adequate quality for musket barrels. This means that the barrels can get thinner and longer without fear of cracking under the pressure of firing or the wear and tear of everyday handling. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 5, 2011 |
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Jan 5, 2011 19:07
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