Post: #1

Im sure some history buffs here can enlighten me.

Rome fell in part due to barbarian tribes. In these tribes everyone was basically a warrior. They did farm and hunt and make artisan products but when their chieftain called everyone took up the sword.

Those settled in Europe was mostly the Franks, Saxons and some I did not know.

Somewhere along the line came Charlemagne who kicked lotta arses and founded France and Germany at the time.

Then came feudalism where either you are a knight or a lowly farmer/peasant.

Armies in this period were problematic due to lack of professional soldiers. There was never enough knights or their men at arms, and peasant levy would flee at the first sight of trouble.

What I dont understand is, how did the barbarian man get reduced to simple, meek and pathetic peasants like that? From a warrior culture with a militarised society where children learned to fight soon as they could walk, Europe became a society where the elite military aristocrats ruled while the 90% left arent even allowed to bear arms.

Sure there was this whole thing with the rise of heavy cavalry and knights on a scary destrier with a big lance carrying 40kg of arms wreak everything in is path, but history has long proven that disciplined, well armed infantry can easily resist even heavy cavalry charges.

Post: #2

There's a lot of moving parts to that issue. It's not quite as simple as "Roman Empire falls, Patriarchy snaps its fingers and all those barbarians became peasants."

For a start, there is most of a millennium between the fall of the Western Roman Empire to about the height of medieval Europe: 476 AD to 1200 AD. During all of that time, science and technology are not sitting idle; there's a gradual but constant redevelopment of agriculture, which is the key to settlement and one of the biggest reasons for societal change across Europe of the time. In fact it's really, really awkward to try and talk about medieval and "dark age" Europe as one morass of knights standing over peasants, because the situation had dozens of different variations on the theme, some significant, depending where in Europe you went.

Even the phrase "barbarian tribes" is so massive and so general it's hard to know where to begin with it. Do we mean the Vikings/Norsemen/Normans out of Scandinavia? The Goths? The Ostrogoths? The Picts? Celts?

However, the evolution of peasantry actually comes out of the late Roman Empire. The fall of the Western Roman Empire was not sudden and not a period of utter chaos; from 410 when the Goths first sacked Rome to 476 there was a basic disintegration of central control from Rome, but Roman custom, law, and culture still pervaded those countries which had formed the Empire. Even some English law these days still draws its source from the Roman occupation of Britain. Peasantry -- in essence, slavery in a modified form -- came first from the Romans, and it was adopted as the most efficient means of getting the most out of the land, under the manorial system.

In essence, as migrating tribes stabilised and found good spots to conduct what was primitive agriculture of the time, it made more and more rational economic sense to specialise into different roles: warriors to protect the people, farmers to till the land, and the clergy to minister to their spirits. And in fact peasants did fight in armies -- but generally as cannon fodder, since they hadn't devoted their lives to learning how to swing a sword. And there was a good reason to have a sort of warrior caste to fight for them -- because you needed a massive agricultural workforce to get a decent return out of the land. When medieval towns started rising it took roughly 10 agricultural workers to support one townsman.

I suspect you're also romanticising the practices of the barbarian tribes too, somehow suggesting that "these guys farmed, hunted, traded and were kickass warriors as well." Not so. Consider what Julius Caesar had to say about the Germanic tribes -- the barbarians -- that he ran into while on the Gallic warpath:

Quote:They do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh; nor has any one a fixed quantity of land or his own individual limits; but the magistrates and the leading men each year apportion to the tribes and families, who have united together, as much land as, and in the place in which, they think proper, and the year after compel them to remove elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons-lest seduced by long-continued custom, they may exchange their ardor in the waging of war for agriculture; lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more powerful drive the weaker from their possessions; lest they construct their houses with too great a desire to avoid cold and heat; lest the desire of wealth spring up, from which cause divisions and discords arise; and that they may keep the common people in a contented state of mind, when each sees his own means placed on an equality with [those of] the most powerful.

Noble, Walden-ish aims, perhaps, but it also made them utter savages, backward primitives compared to the technologically and culturally advanced Romans who didn't have to make their entire people endure the constant existential threat of war.

Not all barbarians took up the sword in war anyway. Barbarian tribes on the warpath often had a very large noncombatant contingent. Their raiding parties -- and this is seen with the Vikings especially -- were comprised wholly of young, strong, fit men. And one might note that the barbarian tribes had very little problem with the idea of slavery, too, which gave them a workforce which allowed them to specialise as well.

In short, the great, virile, barbarian fighter and fucker ™ slowly became a peasant because they adapted over time using Roman principles of organisation. The professional military men may not have been under the control of a democratic government, but their role didn't differ much from your average Roman legion. And in addition, the barbarian tribal structures simply could not sustain larger populations; they lacked the logistical ability to make nations of themselves. They did this simply because the manorial system worked better to make their lives better.

Post: #3

Nice breakdown man.

So essentially you are saying, for large civilization to work, the barbarian warrior-farmer system (even given that not all barbarian men were warriors) simply cannot sustain a large population and a thriving economy?

I guess this is true if you look at the Greek city-states. Hoplites-farmers only worked for small city states. Sparta while having all the male population as pro warriors, was a financial and economic failure.

Then how do we explain the Huns' success? There were a shit ton of them invading everyone and yet their economy is non-existent.

Post: #4

Quote:Then how do we explain the Huns' success? There were a shit ton of them invading everyone and yet their economy is non-existent.

Because they were the equivalent of land pirates, a plague of human locusts. (And this is assuming the Huns were in fact one people - the actions of many tribal groups have been ascribed to them over the years, but it doesn't necessarily mean they were all part of the same organisation.)

The Huns had some of the best horsemen in the world, and ranged over a vast area, but they didn't conduct much agriculture themselves: they extracted tribute from nations that could not defend themselves against cavalry, and they covered enough territory that they could move from place to place and still bully local populations into submission in rotation. This, indeed, was a refinement Western Europe did come up with later on to control or mitigate the depradations of similar locust-like raidings from the sea, i.e. the Vikings - castles were built as military strongpoints and refuges for the civilian population.

More to the point, that sort of immense, predatory migration is not sustainable for long. The Huns' presence in Europe starts in 370 when they first appear near the Caspian Sea, becomes a threat when they unify in 420 under their first king, reaches its high point under Attila in 445, and ends in 470, shortly after Attila dies. Their distinction was in their mobility, which was over a very wide geographic area and which was never seriously contested, but neither did it allow them to last long. They were a flash in the pan in imperial terms; the Western Roman Empire (and the Eastern, for that matter) outlasted them.

Post: #5

It's funny you ask this because the topic is discussed in the first chapter of Thucydides, which I just started reading last night for the RVF book club.

Political instability makes life harsher and it's difficult to develop agriculture and accumulate wealth. Basically you know that any day now a neighboring tribe might show up and claim your land so there it is too risky to invest in improving that land.

The barbarians were not a force unified by culture. It was mostly each village for itself and occasionally a chieftain would come along who could unify young men to join in raids or invasions.

Post: #6

Paracelsus, seriously impressive. You seem to be one of the most read members here. I really enjoyed the book about the Polish fighter pilots and the truth about how awesome the Polish soldiers, airmen and sailors were. I'd give more rep points if I could.

Sort of buzzed right now. Surprised I didn't do the drunk I love you man stuff lol

Post: #7

I suggest reading John Glabb "The fate of empires".
In 26 pages he outlines how empires rise and fall, and even refers to the Roman empire.

Post: #8

Beautifully written Parcelus. +1 from me.

Post: #9

Hey Paracelsus, would like to further pick your brain about this matter, but lets post here so everyone can benefit.

1- How did it gradually come to the fact that peasants were banned from owning weapons? Obviously it was to prevent insubordination and keep the power to the ruling elite. But the ruling elites in barbarian tribe has always been warrior and had the shiniest gear. Why all of the sudden make it illegal to own arms? Wouldnt that make your population more vulnerable to external threats as well as more difficult to raise/conscript an army?

2- Not entirely related to the OP, why didnt the Huns weaponry became useless in the Western setting?

Their primary weapon was the composite bow, and a lot of research show that archers were not popular in the Western Roman army because wet climate dissolved the glue and warp the bow making the weapon useless. Hence the adoption of the longbow by the English.

Post: #10

I'm not really hanging around this site at the moment, but thought I'd come back on this one.

1) This probably needs a better definition of terms, because again it's a very, very wide period and a very, very wide category you're discussing. I suspect by the word "weapon" you mean "swords." As it is, there are a large category of things in the medieval period that can be classed as weapons, and peasants were not banned from owning them. The main reason peasants didn't have swords -- was because they couldn't afford them.

Let's be clear about something: in the High Middle Ages your average knight's sword, the longswords probably best represented by Type XII and Type XIII in the Oakeshott typology were not just sharpened bits of metal. They were precision instruments, typically no heavier than maybe 2.5 kg or so, expertly crafted in such a way that the very balance of the weapon changed as you swung it - what we call dynamic balance. John Clements from ARMA has done probably the most exhaustive attempts at reconstructing medieval swordsmanship technique -- read his books Medieval Swordsmanship or Renaissance Swordsmanship -- and from all the literature we have available to us, longswords were optimised as killing devices, carefully put together with metal folded over again and again and balanced so the centre of gravity fell right where you gripped it. They were marvels of engineering and blacksmithing for their times.

But as a result, they were prohibitively expensive to make and held their value very well. We have records of swords being used as collateral for loans. A man with a good suit of armour and a longsword in our tim would be a man with a late-model Ferrari and a mansion overlooking the French Riviera. The average peasant had nowhere near that kind of money.

As said, peasants were not banned from owning weapons. That would have required them to hand over most of the instruments they could use for their jobs: axes, homemade spears, staves, pitchforks, etc. Just about anything with a cutting edge, a long shaft, or a heavy head could be used as a weapon. As an outlier, James Michener in his moving book Poland describes one Polish peasant who, when called up for war, goes out into the woods near his home. He finds a thin tree -- one he's been growing since he was a young man, at his father's direction, one into which he has inserted bits of obsidian and rock as the tree grows, such that by the time he visits the tree again, the tree has grown around the pieces and grips them in place hard. He cuts the tree down, removes the branches, and has his weapon. Peasants would often bring their own improvised weapons when brought into battle.

On top of that there is the fact the nobility didn't need to ban peasants from owning weapons. For example, longbows were very popular across many strata of English society -- Englishmen were required to practice daily with them -- but the nobility never seemed that worried about a Grey Goose shaft whistling into their backs. That was a result of reasonably fair treatment for the time and probably the brutal penalties that applied if you assaulted someone in the nobility -- it being almost a religious crime, since societal structure was gummed up with religious belief to an extent. Even a mob of peasants was not really a serious threat to the nobility; a nobleman need only call up his own levies to meet a disorganised infantry force, and the rebellion would be over. Remember, knights trained from early childhood, and peasants simply didn't have the time or inclination to train for military strategy and combat on a battlefield. Mounted knights were really not outclassed on the battlefield until organised groups of pikemen started to evolve, and when ranged weaponry started to get more effective - Agincourt being the most notable example of that.

2) I can't say I've ever heard of the Roman underuse of archers being because the bows were not usable in wet climates. It rather seems to have been a combination of (a) under-reporting of Roman auxiliaries to the legions, who used bows a lot, and (b) the fact the Romans already had an effective ranged weapon they used in battle a lot: the pilum. The Romans were still using javelins until 300 AD if not later on, and for their style of combat -- heavy infantry, little engagement by mounted skirmishing, as the Huns and many Eastern nations were good at -- pilum throws worked better. Added to that, the Eastern nations they fought -- Scythians, Persians -- were simply ahead on bow technology; they came up with compound and recurve bows first.

Post: #11

Uncivilized nomads always represent the first stage of civilization. They seek out fertile lands and places, try to conquer them, and then slowly adopt the refinements of civilization. They slowly become sedentary themselves, mixing with the existing population, and gradually assimilating.

So the Dorians migrated into the ancient Peloponnesus (Greece), the Aryans on the indigenous Indians in north India, the Arabs bursting out of Arabia in the 7th century to conquer the Near East, the Hyksos in ancient Egypt, etc. It's a common pattern.

The Germanic peoples of Western Europe gradually over hundreds of years moved into the boundaries of the empire. Over time, this process created the various barbarian kingdoms that would, over more centuries, become nations.

These things took a long time. It's easy to forget this. History books accentuate the unusual or the extraordinary. The average person living in those times would not have noticed these slow historical processes.

.

Post: #12

^^^^^^

Exactly. For whatever reason, the "Dark Ages" (Christ, I hate that term) and the medieval period seem to be identified in peoples' minds as one static period of riding around on horseback with swords, with an occasional road trip into the Holy Land to lop off the odd Muslim's head. Said era abruptly ending when Columbus sets foot in America in 1492.

I mean, if we're counting from the date of the fall of Rome (476 AD) through to Columbus, that is over one thousand years. By way of comparison, try and imagine someone saying that there basically weren't any societal changes from, say, the year 1800 to the year 2000. The time period is compressed -- 200 years -- but the advancement of technology and civilisation is, to my mind, roughly equivalent as between 400-1492.

Another point about the "Dark Ages" is that they weren't dark. Western Europe from 500-1500 was a slowly but constantly developing civilisation; I like Joseph and Frances Gies' "Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel" a short but illuminating text on this subject.

This characterisation of the Dark Age/medieval period as backward partially comes from bad press during the Enlightenment, I've come to understand. Scholars of that period thought of their own time as (surprise surprise) enlightened because they had made reason their metaphorical God, and they looked down (somewhat prematurely, in my view) on the faith-centred medieval and Dark Age periods as eras of ignorance. As a result, their beliefs coloured their writing, and until recently at least our ideas about medieval civilisation were coloured by theirs.

Added to that is I think a certain overawe for Roman achievements. We have to bear in mind that the Roman Empire was not an Atlantean supercivilisation. As with all civilisations, it had its technological and philosophical blind spots. The Romans were masters of civil engineering, but they were seriously backward on chemistry and the more theoretical branches of knowledge because their psychology was focused on the practical and the pragmatic. Before them, Greek civilisation had its own blind spots. I cannot recall exactly where the quote comes from, but one mathematician provided a salient argument that because of a particular line of thought the Greeks took in reference to mathematics and science, it set back the "progress" of science for literally hundreds of years. The same person speculated that had the Greeks taken one course rather than the one they did, we might already be in starships with Greek lettering along the side.

Every civilisation made its mistakes: ours will, too.

Post: #13

(09-25-2015 12:58 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  I'm not really hanging around this site at the moment, but thought I'd come back on this one.

1) This probably needs a better definition of terms, because again it's a very, very wide period and a very, very wide category you're discussing. I suspect by the word "weapon" you mean "swords." As it is, there are a large category of things in the medieval period that can be classed as weapons, and peasants were not banned from owning them. The main reason peasants didn't have swords -- was because they couldn't afford them.

Let's be clear about something: in the High Middle Ages your average knight's sword, the longswords probably best represented by Type XII and Type XIII in the Oakeshott typology were not just sharpened bits of metal. They were precision instruments, typically no heavier than maybe 2.5 kg or so, expertly crafted in such a way that the very balance of the weapon changed as you swung it - what we call dynamic balance. John Clements from ARMA has done probably the most exhaustive attempts at reconstructing medieval swordsmanship technique -- read his books Medieval Swordsmanship or Renaissance Swordsmanship -- and from all the literature we have available to us, longswords were optimised as killing devices, carefully put together with metal folded over again and again and balanced so the centre of gravity fell right where you gripped it. They were marvels of engineering and blacksmithing for their times.

But as a result, they were prohibitively expensive to make and held their value very well. We have records of swords being used as collateral for loans. A man with a good suit of armour and a longsword in our tim would be a man with a late-model Ferrari and a mansion overlooking the French Riviera. The average peasant had nowhere near that kind of money.

As said, peasants were not banned from owning weapons. That would have required them to hand over most of the instruments they could use for their jobs: axes, homemade spears, staves, pitchforks, etc. Just about anything with a cutting edge, a long shaft, or a heavy head could be used as a weapon. As an outlier, James Michener in his moving book Poland describes one Polish peasant who, when called up for war, goes out into the woods near his home. He finds a thin tree -- one he's been growing since he was a young man, at his father's direction, one into which he has inserted bits of obsidian and rock as the tree grows, such that by the time he visits the tree again, the tree has grown around the pieces and grips them in place hard. He cuts the tree down, removes the branches, and has his weapon. Peasants would often bring their own improvised weapons when brought into battle.

On top of that there is the fact the nobility didn't need to ban peasants from owning weapons. For example, longbows were very popular across many strata of English society -- Englishmen were required to practice daily with them -- but the nobility never seemed that worried about a Grey Goose shaft whistling into their backs. That was a result of reasonably fair treatment for the time and probably the brutal penalties that applied if you assaulted someone in the nobility -- it being almost a religious crime, since societal structure was gummed up with religious belief to an extent. Even a mob of peasants was not really a serious threat to the nobility; a nobleman need only call up his own levies to meet a disorganised infantry force, and the rebellion would be over. Remember, knights trained from early childhood, and peasants simply didn't have the time or inclination to train for military strategy and combat on a battlefield. Mounted knights were really not outclassed on the battlefield until organised groups of pikemen started to evolve, and when ranged weaponry started to get more effective - Agincourt being the most notable example of that.

2) I can't say I've ever heard of the Roman underuse of archers being because the bows were not usable in wet climates. It rather seems to have been a combination of (a) under-reporting of Roman auxiliaries to the legions, who used bows a lot, and (b) the fact the Romans already had an effective ranged weapon they used in battle a lot: the pilum. The Romans were still using javelins until 300 AD if not later on, and for their style of combat -- heavy infantry, little engagement by mounted skirmishing, as the Huns and many Eastern nations were good at -- pilum throws worked better. Added to that, the Eastern nations they fought -- Scythians, Persians -- were simply ahead on bow technology; they came up with compound and recurve bows first.

They should have just fire the guys running History Channel and Discovery and make Paracelsus and Quintus directors.

Nice to see somebody as passionate about medieval history as myself, only much much more knowledgeable

So instead of being productive at work Im watching youtube videos and swordmanship

Lucky that Im in Paris and they have the best medieval military museum here. I think you will enjoy the collection of photos I took:

http://s1158.photobucket.com/user/Dalara...t=3&page=1

As you can see there are a lot of swords that were actually used and swords who are more decorative. I do wonder though if the shiny fancy swords shown (they are all original items) could actually be used for combat?





Despite being a kenjutsu practioner, I have to concede that technology wise the longsword is a superior weapon (contrary to popular belief that katana can slice through armor) Though Jap swordsmith did their best with the shitty iron they had at the time.


Regarding weapons, yeap most of the time its simply because weapons were not affordable for the peasants. But you can see from the collection above the billhook, used to deadly effects by infantry against armored knights. I wonder if peasants are allowed to use these or only man at arms?

In theory a lot of peasantry weaponry could be used against knight in armor. The voulge and pitchfork are easily anti-cav weapons, but most peasants would shit their pants and pass out when they see a freaking steel man atop a destrier riding at them full speed. I think this is the reason cavalry was so effective: its terror warfare.

At the battle of Tours where Charles Martel successfully fended off the Caliphate and preserve Europe (not like the traitorous SJW goverment of France now...) Frankish infantry with heavy armor, good training and discipline resisted wave after wave of Arab heavy cavalry with lances and stirup, so I think its not about cavalry being superior in itself. Its the moral effect on otherwise poorly trained infantry.

Also crossbow were banned by the Pope because it allows untrained peasants to kill knights in armor. Or, because it was "too brutal be used against fellow Christians". Which one is correct?

Post: #14

(09-25-2015 07:34 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  Lucky that Im in Paris and they have the best medieval military museum here. I think you will enjoy the collection of photos I took:

http://s1158.photobucket.com/user/Dalara...t=3&page=1

(09-25-2015 07:34 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  As you can see there are a lot of swords that were actually used and swords who are more decorative. I do wonder though if the shiny fancy swords shown (they are all original items) could actually be used for combat?

Difficult to say. At a guess they're probably from a much later era than the medieval given their condition; the world doesn't have many good specimens of medieval longswords, for reasons that're probably pretty obvious when you take a look at the first picture.

But as I said, those thinner blades have more the look of coming from the Renaissance era, say 1600-1700 or so. By that stage armoured combat was on the way out or gone completely; you can tell that from the steadily more ornamental suits that came out in that era. Gunpowder had made its way West, you see; the first arquebuses were primitive, but they were enough to punch dime-sized holes in plate armour. Swords were still around, but it had become more fashionable or required among the nobility to have two weapons -- one large blade and one smaller one for personal defence, i.e. defending yourself in the street. Forging techniques had come along, too, but since nobody was wearing plate armour anymore, you could afford to start producing and using lighter blades.

The Olympic sport of fencing is an unrealistic, heavily stylised representation of this era of personal combat. It bears about as much relation to the reality of Renaissance swordsmanship as a wagon does to an automobile. We have more surviving texts on Renaissance swordsmanship because they're closer to us in time, but what does survive is a full combat art, using every advantage available to the swordsman including locking up swords and lopping the odd finger off to stop the fight.

So in short, those sorts of weapons could certainly be used in combat - just not likely during the medieval period.

(09-25-2015 07:34 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  Despite being a kenjutsu practioner, I have to concede that technology wise the longsword is a superior weapon (contrary to popular belief that katana can slice through armor) Though Jap swordsmith did their best with the shitty iron they had at the time.

Don't undersell the artistry or the combat art. At least kenjutsu has a decent-ish picture of where its techniques and movements came from, handed down with a good deal of fidelity across the centuries. Medieval and Renaissance swordsmanship basically has had to be reconstructed from a pittance of materials, simply because the arts were simply abandoned as new weaponry and new technology came along.

Quote:Regarding weapons, yeap most of the time its simply because weapons were not affordable for the peasants. But you can see from the collection above the billhook, used to deadly effects by infantry against armored knights. I wonder if peasants are allowed to use these or only man at arms?

In theory a lot of peasantry weaponry could be used against knight in armor. The voulge and pitchfork are easily anti-cav weapons, but most peasants would shit their pants and pass out when they see a freaking steel man atop a destrier riding at them full speed. I think this is the reason cavalry was so effective: its terror warfare.

At the battle of Tours where Charles Martel successfully fended off the Caliphate and preserve Europe (not like the traitorous SJW goverment of France now...) Frankish infantry with heavy armor, good training and discipline resisted wave after wave of Arab heavy cavalry with lances and stirup, so I think its not about cavalry being superior in itself. Its the moral effect on otherwise poorly trained infantry.

I think you more or less answered your own question there. Billhooks were actually farmers' tools, though the English used their more military applications. The thing was, though, the issue of training. Peasants had no military training and had no indoctrination which would build up their wills to hold to military discipline. I think the nobility thought (or knew) there was bugger-all chance of the peasantry organising in a way to pose even a reasonable threat to them. Jack Cade's rebellion, in 1450, was probably the biggest, and it never required the English king to turn out an army against them - for the most part the rebels were an undisciplined lot and turned to looting London once they'd captured it. And it wasn't a rebellion against the nobility as much as it was a rebellion against Henry VI - one king.

One might also note, about the contented state of the peasants, the ironic truth: the supposedly downtrodden, cringing peasant actually worked less days per year than modern man does, and -- because of the availability of electric lighting now -- worked a damn sight less hours too. The Church imposed mandatory religious holidays, which were often festivals. You can still see elements of this in the Catholic Church -- every other bloody week there is a feastday of one saint or another. In the medieval period it may have been up to 150 days out of the 365 of the year.

Quote:Also crossbow were banned by the Pope because it allows untrained peasants to kill knights in armor. Or, because it was "too brutal be used against fellow Christians". Which one is correct?

According to popular history, Urban II first banned the use of crossbows against other Christians in 1096, just ahead of the First Crusade. He didn't ban its use against Muslims. This, however, is a contentious point - some scholars say it's an urban (pardon the pun) legend. Either way, the first verifiable ban on crossbows came under Innocent II in 1139 at the Second Lateran Council, canon 29, as follows:

Artem autem illam mortiferam et Deo odibilem ballistoriorum et seagittariorum, deversus christianos et catholicos de cetero sub anathemate prohibemus.

Quintus can probably correct the Council's Latin here but it basically means:

Hateful to God, and the deadly and murderous art of ballistoriorum seagittariorum (crossbow archery), turned away Christians and Catholics to the rest, we forbid under pain of anathema.

No reference to class warfare as such, it was just seen as a sort of weapon of mass destruction - similar to how the first thing the Geneva Conventions forbade was the use of grapeshot in war.

Post: #15

Peter Frost and others have written about this process and talked about the extent to which it is genetic.

There is a great deal of genetic predisposition towards violence. If you live in a small tribal society and are violent, you can be the top guy around. That same predisposition in a lawful society will send you to the gallows though.

So the Romans, originally themselves fierce and brave warriors, after centuries of strong and effective government, weeded out their most violent men. The same men who made them fierce warriors would probably also be the most likely to flip their shit and murder someone during peacetime. So they would be executed by the state.

Reading later Roman writers you can see how the entirety of Roman society became less belicose and more refined, people wanted to fight less and wanted to enjoy carnal pleasures more. To the point that Romans had to conscript recently conquered barbarians into their armies.

Well, eventually Rome fell to these same barbarians, but they too set up governments and over time, you see the bellicose German tribes turned into todays Germany which welcomes invaders with open arms and cash payments.

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/07/...ation.html

Frost has written a lot about how this process played out in other European states that have enjoyed effective government for centuries on end, how homicide rates have steadily dropped over the past 1,000 or 800 years, as the records permit us to see. Here we see the homicide rate in England over time. Frost cites estimates that from the year 1,200 AD onwards, England executed about 0.5% of its male population a year, undoubtedly most of them being themselves among the most violent of their own era. That process over generations was able to genetically pacify Britain.



http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/12/...urope.html

Further reading on the same subject:

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/11/2...-violence/

Quote:In 1300 the homicide rate was about 50 per 100,000 people, or 0.5 per thousand. Homicide must have caused on the order of 1 to 2 percent of all deaths and a much higher proportion of deaths of young adult males. Our assumption of a Normal distribution of the underlying trait immediately implies that the threshold was 3.3 standard deviations greater than the mean (from any table of the Normal distribution). Natural selection, social selection we would say in this case, disfavors homicide and the distribution is shifted so that the homicide threshold is surpassed by only 1 in 100,000 people rather than 1 in 2,000. By the year 2000 the homicide threshold is at 4.3 standard deviation from the population mean. In other words selection has moved the distribution 1 standard deviation in 700 years or 28 generations.

Post: #16

Artem autem illam mortiferam et Deo odibilem ballistoriorum et seagittariorum, deversus christianos et catholicos de cetero sub anathemate prohibemus.


About this sentence. I would render it this way:

We prohibit under a curse, however, this deadly practice of ballistae and arrows, hateful to God, as having finally turned away [i.e., corrupted] Christians and Catholics.


Comments:

This obviously is an edict forbidding the use of the crossbow, which in those days was considered a supremely deadly weapon. It is clear from the original text that the papal edict felt that the efficiency of the crossbow as a killing machine made it a profoundly immoral weapon.

There are a couple misspellings in the Latin you have written here. I believe it should read "ballistarum sagittarum" instead of the spelling you have here.

"Ballistarum" is an inflected form (genitive plural) of the word "ballista" which was an old Roman siege weapon, that looked like a huge crossbow.

This is what a ballista looked like. The plural form of ballista is ballistae.

   


"Sagitta" is the Latin word for arrow.

I am assuming "catholicos" has its medieval religious meaning of "Catholic" and not its classical meaning of "general principle." Catholicum used to mean in classical Latin just "general principle." I'm going to go with the religious meaning of the word "catholicum."

Another thing is that it is not clear whether the phrase sub anathemate (under a curse) modifies the "we prohibit" or whether it modifies the idea that the crossbow has corrupted or turned away Christians from path of God. I have opted for the former choice.

The crossbow was unknown in ancient combat, and so there was no classical Latin word for it (as far as I know). This phrase "ballistarum sagittarum" is apparently a medieval neologism for the hand-held crossbow.

Just shooting from the hip here...

Post: #17

Why didn't we manage to preserve medieval sword combat? As the defining art of the ruling caste you would think they would be well documented. Certainly Western fencing evolved a lot more than kenjutsu, but that shouldn't mean documents just disappear.

Also if any of you know a good video reconstruction of how a real 1200 circa battle would look like? Most of the stuff I see are rubbish with a lot of soldiers dueling. Melee combat in battle should be really swift and brutal. You don't have the time to do all the fancy parry and pirouettes against a single opponent because there's another guy there to stab you in the back.

Post: #18

(09-28-2015 03:59 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  Why didn't we manage to preserve medieval sword combat? As the defining art of the ruling caste you would think they would be well documented. Certainly Western fencing evolved a lot more than kenjutsu, but that shouldn't mean documents just disappear.

This is probably going to turn into an extended advertisement for John Clement and his self-published book Medieval Swordsmanship. Let's start with the caveat that Clement is not an academic historian by any means -- but the specific field of medieval combat techniques is not one that limp-wristed academics have a lot to do with, and the whole area has a poor image thanks to overweight "warriors" in the Society for Creative Anachronism who try and interest people in the medieval period with all the fidelity to detail of your average live-action roleplaying group.

As said, Clement is an amatuer historian, but he's an amateur who takes the field seriously and who has done the hard yards both reading pretty well all the surviving manuals out there and working hard on replicating them in actual combat. This isn't easy since they were unashamedly killing arts, none of this "no hits below the thigh" or "no head shots" that most "medieval swordsmanship" seems to take up. As you'd know from kenjutsu -- there's precious little space for flashy moves and doing stupid spins in combat and whatnot. For what it's worth, Clement's observations about medieval combat technique do seem to match up well with observations made by more "orthodox" scholars who've had an interest in the weaponry and strategies employed.

Clement's take on why the arts weren't preserved:

Quote:Those who did most of the scribe work during the time were typically monks, whose interests did not typically include the details of how to fight. They were concerned far more with laws, official documents, and theological matters. Furthermore, those who would be the most interested in such a subject (knights and men-at-arms) were themselves generally illiterate and not that concerned with "bookish" learning. Why spend time reading about a subject that you had real-life experience in almost daily and had been exposed to since childhood? It might perhaps be the equivalent today of someone spending the effort to create a detailed Internet Web site dedicated to how to dial your telephone or how to park your car. For such pragmatic skills, there was so much everyday opportunity for experience both in battle and tournaments, as well as many veteran teachers around, that spending time in scholarly learning for such a self-evident subject would have surely been an aberration.

Much of what warriors learned was passed down from person to person between households or clans or from father to son. Being mostly illiterate, medieval people were much more interested in illustrations rather than text. This is reflected in the range of scenes that can be found showing battles, tournaments, and single in combat in all forms of medieval art. ... Additionally, medieval artwork is thematic and not very representative, with elements often presented according to social or theological importance. When it came to depicting combat, those who paid the artisans to produce such works were hardly interested in accurately illustrating fighting "technique" for posterity.

Clement goes on to indicate about the best source we have around the early use of sword and shield remains the Bayeaux Tapestry.

The other point Clement makes is that there simply aren't many texts left. He goes through some -- Anonymous Tower Manuscript I-33, a German work in Latin from the late 1200s on the use of sword and buckler is the oldest surviving historical text devoted to actual weapon use, and there's another from 1295 -- after that the surviving works are from the 1400s onward, although some Renaissance manuals still retained instruction on use of two-handed, single-blade fighting. There are about two dozen remaining texts from the medieval period -- but these texts are really more discussions of certain fundamentals and insights rather than all-inclusive works.

Post: #19

In short, the warriors that did the conquering became the aristocracy and farmers were captive Roman population brought into serfdom.

Post: #20

(09-26-2015 08:58 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  Peter Frost and others have written about this process and talked about the extent to which it is genetic.

There is a great deal of genetic predisposition towards violence. If you live in a small tribal society and are violent, you can be the top guy around. That same predisposition in a lawful society will send you to the gallows though.

So the Romans, originally themselves fierce and brave warriors, after centuries of strong and effective government, weeded out their most violent men. The same men who made them fierce warriors would probably also be the most likely to flip their shit and murder someone during peacetime. So they would be executed by the state.

Reading later Roman writers you can see how the entirety of Roman society became less belicose and more refined, people wanted to fight less and wanted to enjoy carnal pleasures more. To the point that Romans had to conscript recently conquered barbarians into their armies.

Well, eventually Rome fell to these same barbarians, but they too set up governments and over time, you see the bellicose German tribes turned into todays Germany which welcomes invaders with open arms and cash payments.

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/07/...ation.html

Frost has written a lot about how this process played out in other European states that have enjoyed effective government for centuries on end, how homicide rates have steadily dropped over the past 1,000 or 800 years, as the records permit us to see. Here we see the homicide rate in England over time. Frost cites estimates that from the year 1,200 AD onwards, England executed about 0.5% of its male population a year, undoubtedly most of them being themselves among the most violent of their own era. That process over generations was able to genetically pacify Britain.



http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/12/...urope.html

Further reading on the same subject:

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/11/2...-violence/

Quote:In 1300 the homicide rate was about 50 per 100,000 people, or 0.5 per thousand. Homicide must have caused on the order of 1 to 2 percent of all deaths and a much higher proportion of deaths of young adult males. Our assumption of a Normal distribution of the underlying trait immediately implies that the threshold was 3.3 standard deviations greater than the mean (from any table of the Normal distribution). Natural selection, social selection we would say in this case, disfavors homicide and the distribution is shifted so that the homicide threshold is surpassed by only 1 in 100,000 people rather than 1 in 2,000. By the year 2000 the homicide threshold is at 4.3 standard deviation from the population mean. In other words selection has moved the distribution 1 standard deviation in 700 years or 28 generations.

My mother has long postulated that The Great War and WW2 sewed the decline of Europe.

Millions, and maybe most, of its bravest and greatest killed on a scale never seen before, over such a short time period, diluted the gene pool irreversibly.

It's an interesting theory.

Post: #21

(09-11-2015 09:58 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  They did this simply because the manorial system worked better to make their lives better.

Not all Nordic countries had a manorial system. Norway, Sweden and Iceland never had it. There were free farmers and nobility, but no farmers under a manor and such.

The Icelandics even had the worlds only functinoning free market anarchy for quite a while until some Scandi king decided he wanted some tax from them.

Post: #22

(thread has veered off topic but it's going in the direction I had hoped for )

@Paracelsus, I understand well the argument that swords were expensive to make. But a lot of primary sources also depict swords as being very common among Frankish footsoldiers. How do we explain this?

Writing of 539, Procopius says:

At this time the Franks, hearing that both the Goths and Romans had suffered severely by the war ... forgetting for the moment their oaths and treaties ... (for this nation in matters of trust is the most treacherous in the world), they straightway gathered to the number of one hundred thousand under the leadership of Theudebert I and marched into Italy: they had a small body of cavalry about their leader, and these were the only ones armed with spears, while all the rest were foot soldiers having neither bows nor spears, but each man carried a sword and shield and one axe. Now the iron head of this weapon was thick and exceedingly sharp on both sides, while the wooden handle was very short. And they are accustomed always to throw these axes at a signal in the first charge and thus to shatter the shields of the enemy and kill the men.[25]




His contemporary, Agathias, who based his own writings upon the tropes laid down by Procopius, says:

The military equipment of this people [the Franks] is very simple ... They do not know the use of the coat of mail or greaves and the majority leave the head uncovered, only a few wear the helmet. They have their chests bare and backs naked to the loins, they cover their thighs with either leather or linen. They do not serve on horseback except in very rare cases. Fighting on foot is both habitual and a national custom and they are proficient in this. At the hip they wear a sword and on the left side their shield is attached. They have neither bows nor slings, no missile weapons except the double edged axe and the angon which they use most often. The angons are spears which are neither very short nor very long. They can be used, if necessary, for throwing like a javelin, and also in hand to hand combat.[26]

Post: #23

Again, the time period is significant in answering that question: see how the authors are writing in the year 539.

Properly quenched, hardened, and tempered steel wouldn't show up for about four hundred years after that date, in the tenth century. Around this same time, quillons were first added and the sword hit its essentially stable form throughout the Middle Ages. These were much more advanced, much more expensive, and much more sought-after weapons.

The Franks, by contrast, used spatha -- slightly longer versions of the old Roman gladius; indeed the Franks had more or less inherited the Roman way of making weapons. And it's noted that Frankish swords were of pretty high quality for the period. Even so: spatha-style blades were much weaker. Consequently they were much easier to make en masse, but they weren't terribly strong -- and probably wouldn't have been much of a match for later medieval swords or much stronger chain and plate armour. During the Frankish period armour was pretty rare (note its distinct absence in the two sources you've quoted) which made spatha-type weapons -- typically for stabbing and thrusting less than slicing -- viable. After armour became common, much less so.

(And one might note even then that swords were not that common. Among the Vikings, a wealthy Viking would likely have a complete ensemble of a spear, one or two javelins, a wooden shield, and either a battle axe or a sword. The very richest might have a helmet, other armour is thought to have been limited to the nobility and their professional warriors. The average farmer was likely limited to a spear, shield, and perhaps a common axe or a large knife.

As sword technology got better, it also got more expensive. By the medieval period you had to have a lot of good swords in order to win a battle, which meant that only the rich could afford them or supply their men with them.