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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DerKommissar
Do you remember where you got that information? This sounds very interesting for a friend of mine, so if you have a lead, he might be able to dig smth up...
While that one was probably a contributing factor, the collapse of Ming was the result of quite a lot of factors that reinforced each others and eventually snowballed.
From the back of my head:
1) Rise of Jurchen (Manchu)
2) Little Ice Age
3) Political instability
4) Inability to collect tax effectively
5) Massive rebellion
6) Inflation & Deflation
among others that I can't remember. Collapse of Ming was a massive economic mismanagement/blunder. In the end, China at the time was still an agrarian society, so silver (or lack thereof) was much less important than FOOD.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wolflance
Thank's a lots guys. I learned quite a lot from your answers, and that clears up most of my confusions. In fact, I learned a lot more than what I asked for. Most of the stuffs I don't even know I don't know!
So, in continuation of my last question: In a military context/On a battlefield in Europe, am I right to expect all of these to present?
1) Non-noble, non-knight troops that nevertheless armed themselves with the best equipment of the time, and fought in a typical "knightly" manner - as armored heavy lancer/dismounted heavy infantry (the "men-at-arms")
Yes, plenty
Quote:
2) Nobility class troops that fought in a "knightly" manner as armored cavalry/dismounted infantry, but were not knighted and thus wouldn't be considered knight from a social sense (the "gendarmes").
Rarer, but some. Most nobles who fight would be knighted, at least after a little while. By the time they have a 'moderate' amount of experience, depending on rank. For princely level youngsters just riding around on the battlefield or getting in one fight is usually enough. Lower ranking nobles would have to do something a little more noteworthy like capture an enemy or kill somebody in battle. Think of it about like getting a 'bronze star' in a modern army.
More common for the gendarmes etc. is that they are knighted but not nobles.
Quote:
3) Proper knights that nevertheless did not fight with a knight's capacity (i.e. a knighted person that fought as a musketeer).
yes
Quote:
EDIT
One extra question: Did something like "full plate musketeer" existed at any point in the history?
yes I think so, sort of - the caveat being that infantry, or anyone mostly walking as opposed to riding, usually wore half-armor, or armor protection on head, arms and torso down to upper thighs. Leg armor was hard to walk in.
So in the 15th & 16th Century you would have a few gunners etc. in full armor like this
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5c/0b/c5/5...th-century.jpg
a lot of gunners (etc) armored like this
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/83/89/a6/8...cht-armour.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/aa/e0/f1/a...ht-armures.jpg
and even in the 17th Century some of the elite gunners, pikemen etc. would be armored like this:
Spoiler: 17th century armor for hand gunners
Show
And most in just a buff coat or no armor at all.
G
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DerKommissar
Do you remember where you got that information? This sounds very interesting for a friend of mine, so if you have a lead, he might be able to dig smth up...
Should be able to later today. I have a historian in the family who I heard it from, and they just need to get home and dig around (allegedly it also affected Japan's fortunes at the time).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wolflance
While that one was probably a contributing factor, the collapse of Ming was the result of quite a lot of factors that reinforced each others and eventually snowballed.
From the back of my head:
1) Rise of Jurchen (Manchu)
2) Little Ice Age
3) Political instability
4) Inability to collect tax effectively
5) Massive rebellion
6) Inflation & Deflation
among others that I can't remember. Collapse of Ming was a massive economic mismanagement/blunder. In the end, China at the time was still an agrarian society, so silver (or lack thereof) was much less important than FOOD.
My recollection is that the Ming had silver currency, and with the collapse of availability, the economy went in to recession. Certainly a sudden deficit of purchasing power wouldn't have made a famine better.
In general, my understanding is that most dynasties collapsed for roughly proximate reasons: mismanagement on the part of the state meant a lack of preparation for economic downturn and natural disasters, allowing opportunists to arouse popular support with the claim that the emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Is that incorrect (or so general as to be vacuous)?
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Roman garrisons:
By practical examples, Castrum Divitium near Cologne had around 900 men, while one of the forts at Hadrian's Wall hosted around 1000 cavalry.
http://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/his...ntier-garrison
Pre-Marius, colonies would be set up and the people living there would have served as non professional soldiers.
Medieval garrisons probably varied a lot. I would need to check some examples.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vinyadan
Roman garrisons:
By practical examples, Castrum Divitium near Cologne had around 900 men, while one of the forts at Hadrian's Wall hosted around 1000 cavalry.
http://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/his...ntier-garrison
Pre-Marius, colonies would be set up and the people living there would have served as non professional soldiers.
Medieval garrisons probably varied a lot. I would need to check some examples.
Thanks. That's a lot bigger than what I was thinking.
How far would those forts be spaced apart then? (that is, how much territory would one garrison be responsible for)?
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PhoenixPhyre
Thanks. That's a lot bigger than what I was thinking.
How far would those forts be spaced apart then? (that is, how much territory would one garrison be responsible for)?
In late medieval times it could be much smaller. The Teutonic Order sometimes sent a force of ~ 50 guys pretty deep into the frontier zone to go actually build a 'castle' (probably a blockhouse) and man it for the summer.
Towns would defend small forts / gates on their outer (rural) perimeter with fortified buildings or towers of about 10 -20 guys. Specifically as one example during a time of strife in the 1440's, the city of Bremen had a ditch around the town to protect from robber knights, with two towers protecting the roads in. Usually 4 gunners and 6 crossbowmen from the militia with another 5-10 mercenaries protected each tower. There were also a couple of people stationed in the village Church to light a beacon if necessary to warn the city to close the town gates in the event of a major attack.
The towers had ammunition and supplies sufficient for maybe ~ 100 guys though and would be quickly reinforced in the event of a conflict.
G
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wolflance
EDIT
One extra question: Did something like "full plate musketeer" existed at any point in the history?
Armor on musketeers generally tended to decrease over time outside of specific circumstances. For example during sieges in the late 16th century Sir Roger Williams mentioned that sometimes the Spanish would send musketeers wearing heavy armor to spearhead an assault on a breach. Garrard likewise mentioned that during a siege was the exception where mail shirts and burgonets would be useful for arquebusiers.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Something worth considering about Roman garrisons and fortifications. They weren't there to hold a strong point, but to act as a staging post for an aggressive action, usually a punitive expedition. The Roman military mindset prioritised swift action, not hiding away behind walls.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Galloglaich
Looking at this armor for gunners, I am forced to ask how the shoulder armor interfered with their use of the musket.
I've done a lot of shooting, and I can't see how you'd get a good firing position, a nice cup in the shoulder for the butt of the gun or a good stock weld with that kind of breastplate on. Did they hold and aim the weapons differently, or modify the armor to accept the gun butt in the right shoulder or what?
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Galloglaich
In late medieval times it could be much smaller. The Teutonic Order sometimes sent a force of ~ 50 guys pretty deep into the frontier zone to go actually build a 'castle' (probably a blockhouse) and man it for the summer.
Towns would defend small forts / gates on their outer (rural) perimeter with fortified buildings or towers of about 10 -20 guys. Specifically as one example during a time of strife in the 1440's, the city of Bremen had a ditch around the town to protect from robber knights, with two towers protecting the roads in. Usually 4 gunners and 6 crossbowmen from the militia with another 5-10 mercenaries protected each tower. There were also a couple of people stationed in the village Church to light a beacon if necessary to warn the city to close the town gates in the event of a major attack.
The towers had ammunition and supplies sufficient for maybe ~ 100 guys though and would be quickly reinforced in the event of a conflict.
G
So with this in mind, how would the later medieval times fortify a smaller village (maybe ~200 civilians) that occupies a strategic location (in this case, at the edge of the frontier at a natural choke-point for the local tribes) but without any significant known threat? It's a militaristic civilization, so they have more of a standing army than most, but the tribes in the frontier aren't particularly known for raiding civilization since they're more hunter-gatherer/amazon tribe level as opposed to the Germanic tribes that the Romans fought against. Would they even really bother? I'm thinking this is a punishment post for those that can't just be dismissed for whatever reason. If it matters, it's most of a day's trip to the nearest significant city has a large military presence.
My current thoughts are a palisade wall with a gate and a standing garrison of about 25 soldiers who conduct squad-size patrols (8-10 soldiers) out to the local farms periodically. There'd be a signal beacon chain (or someone with a consumable stone of sending, as there is magic) to signal for backup in case of anything major.
Thanks for those that responded by the way :smallbiggrin:
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gkathellar
Should be able to later today. I have a historian in the family who I heard it from, and they just need to get home and dig around (allegedly it also affected Japan's fortunes at the time).
My recollection is that the Ming had silver currency, and with the collapse of availability, the economy went in to recession. Certainly a sudden deficit of purchasing power wouldn't have made a famine better.
In general, my understanding is that most dynasties collapsed for roughly proximate reasons: mismanagement on the part of the state meant a lack of preparation for economic downturn and natural disasters, allowing opportunists to arouse popular support with the claim that the emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Is that incorrect (or so general as to be vacuous)?
Sure that didn't help, but the situation in China had gotten so bad by that point that they would still implode even with continuous silver inflow. Even if they had the silver (and they did still have a lot, all those years of accumulating silver got to amount to something), they had nowhere to buy food with that silver, so more silver wouldn't help much.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mike_G
Looking at this armor for gunners, I am forced to ask how the shoulder armor interfered with their use of the musket.
I've done a lot of shooting, and I can't see how you'd get a good firing position, a nice cup in the shoulder for the butt of the gun or a good stock weld with that kind of breastplate on. Did they hold and aim the weapons differently, or modify the armor to accept the gun butt in the right shoulder or what?
All of the above.
You see in the art, plenty of unorthdox firing positions, only gradually converging on the 'from the shoulder' way that we (mostly) do it now. A lot of shooting with the early to mid 15th Century guns (many of which had poles for stocks or were short like sawed off shotguns) was done under or overarm, or submachine gun style or whatever. Early match-locks and touch-hole firearms were a little sketchy to put your face next to apparently as well - primer blows up pretty dramatically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkbSTyT1COE
You do see little widgets or whatever you want to call them added to the armor, kind of like lance rests. I don't know that much about the specifics though.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PhoenixPhyre
So with this in mind, how would the later medieval times fortify a smaller village (maybe ~200 civilians) that occupies a strategic location (in this case, at the edge of the frontier at a natural choke-point for the local tribes) but without any significant known threat? It's a militaristic civilization, so they have more of a standing army than most, but the tribes in the frontier aren't particularly known for raiding civilization since they're more hunter-gatherer/amazon tribe level as opposed to the Germanic tribes that the Romans fought against. Would they even really bother? I'm thinking this is a punishment post for those that can't just be dismissed for whatever reason. If it matters, it's most of a day's trip to the nearest significant city has a large military presence.
My current thoughts are a palisade wall with a gate and a standing garrison of about 25 soldiers who conduct squad-size patrols (8-10 soldiers) out to the local farms periodically. There'd be a signal beacon chain (or someone with a consumable stone of sending, as there is magic) to signal for backup in case of anything major.
Thanks for those that responded by the way :smallbiggrin:
I am not sure how to really translate that into a historical period.
I do know of a case though in the early 16th Century where Nicolas Copernicus (the same guy who was the astronomer) with a small garrison helped successfully defend a small fortified village from the Teutonic Knights. i know of an article about that incident if you want I can post that.
G
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
That might well work pretty well. My main question is whether the pain would be comparable to gunshot wounds.
What I really like is that, by maintaining a slow rate of fire for wands, it reinforces that, powerful as they are, wizards HAVE to go into battle with infantry support if they want to stay alive to screw up the enemy.
On the whole wants versus guns thing, I think I have something, and it's from watching Harry Potter. To put it simply, you can fence with them, and that extends to gunfire to a degree. See, the setting already states that swords see limited use. Only in the hands of mages, though, because many mages can use a sword to block gunfire jedi-style. Because magic. Add in that swords are really good at bypassing damage reduction, can deliver magics a bullet couldn't (the spell would dissipate too rapidly in a magazine, while a sword is basically connected to a human battery), that a lot of monsters are really good about forcing melee combat, that no mage has a non-magical sword, and that the rules of magic aren't typically tolerant of magical ranged weapons besides wands (the projectile won't carry the magic), and it makes some degree of sense.
Well, if you can do it with a sword, you can do it with a wand, and a wand is easier to carry. And if the other guy has a wand, you can try to block their blasts, like they do in Harry Potter. Of course, it's lower rate of fire means you have to prioritize what you can block if the enemy has a gun, because if you're facing an entire infantry squad, you can't just block every bullet, but on the other hand maybe one blast can deflect or shatter every bullet in a cone in front of you, essentially creating shrapnel and richochets and making the enemy scramble for cover (or killing them). Which balances the wand to the sword, because mages with swords are scary fast and can intercept multiple rounds in a way you can't with a wand. Then again, more mages know how to use wands than swords, because swords are a very specialized skill, and the mage who spends time learning fancy sword tricks has skipped learning some other things.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gkathellar
In general, my understanding is that most dynasties collapsed for roughly proximate reasons: mismanagement on the part of the state meant a lack of preparation for economic downturn and natural disasters, allowing opportunists to arouse popular support with the claim that the emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Is that incorrect (or so general as to be vacuous)?
One thing IIRC is basically always present when a dynasty falls is a period of weak monsoons leading to poor harvests. And when it hits, it gets bad over an enormous area effectively impacting the whole realm. Usually at these crisis points the population has grown enough that even marginal lands are in heavy use and there's almost no safety margin in foodavailability (farming some of the more marignal areas demands quite a heavy labour investment). The various dynasties tended to expand to fill all the available space their technological level could support. So any shortfall rather quickly turns desperate. There's really no place to get more food even if such an idea would occur and the wast amounts needed makes for difficulties too.
The loss of the Mandate of Heaven is normally the claim made, and it is usually invoked at such times it "makes sense". All the peasants of the realm can sort of see it, you don't have to go around convincing people too much. It's not quite like when our current media and politicians cries catastrophy over everything yet if you check the fundamentals things are much sounder. What I'm trying to say it's going to be a fairly general agreement over the fact that it's not looking good. The circumstances need to be fairly right to make the claim stick.
With the economic foundation rocking all the smaller and wider cracks in the state show up. Outside invasions (they also suffer from the same weather related issues and so are more active), which may expose the unreadiness of an army that has grown bloated (it usually did) yet ineffective and e.g. soldiers are more farmers scraping by than anything else. Or other shocks to the system that would otherwise be endurable will topple the whole thing. Even the mismanagement can go on for quite some time as long as nothing is poking at the system. It won't be enough by itself.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Galloglaich
Fascinating, very useful, thanks for posting.
I think something is off with the price of a sword there though. You have a sword costing as much as a warhorse and two and a half times as much as a Milanese curiass. Looking at the link I notice it says 'meč' for 'from 2 kop up' which sounds a bit closer to the numbers I've got from Poland and German speaking areas (still about 4 times as much because I usually show a sword at about half a mark, though clearly it varies pretty widely by quality and embellishments.)
Another entry said meč a nůž (Sword and knife?) for 21 'soldi' which I think is roughly 1 mark based on my (admittedly confusing) currency notes. 1 Soldo = 12 dinari or 1/20 of a mark
Thoughts?
G
Yeah, I noticed that too.
First thought, the price on solids is from da Vinci diaries, and I don't know enough about Italian and Czech currencies stability at the time. I'd be very careful in converting them, because you tended to have rather rapid changes of silver content in certain periods.
As for the high price of swords, I think that's because these prices are usually taken from guild records in a city. Those 120 gr per sword are for a sword from a swordmaker who is rather well known in the area, and sets his prices accordingly. Cheaper stuff could be bought from his apprentices or from less famous craftsmen. Or you just bought a messer, since swords were often not allowed within city walls, meaning there was less demand for them when compared to, say, dussacks or messers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre
So with this in mind, how would the later medieval times fortify a smaller village (maybe ~200 civilians) that occupies a strategic location (in this case, at the edge of the frontier at a natural choke-point for the local tribes) but without any significant known threat? It's a militaristic civilization, so they have more of a standing army than most, but the tribes in the frontier aren't particularly known for raiding civilization since they're more hunter-gatherer/amazon tribe level as opposed to the Germanic tribes that the Romans fought against. Would they even really bother? I'm thinking this is a punishment post for those that can't just be dismissed for whatever reason. If it matters, it's most of a day's trip to the nearest significant city has a large military presence.
My current thoughts are a palisade wall with a gate and a standing garrison of about 25 soldiers who conduct squad-size patrols (8-10 soldiers) out to the local farms periodically. There'd be a signal beacon chain (or someone with a consumable stone of sending, as there is magic) to signal for backup in case of anything major.
Thanks for those that responded by the way
If you want a really in depth look on how this would work when two large, modern (for the time period) kingdoms clash, look at Hungarian-Ottoman frontier, it falls right into your period.
And the quick answer is, you don't.
There are far too many villages to defend all of them with stable garrison, so only thing they can have is the local militia, that will be under-equipped and under-trained. Only thing they have money for are palisades, maybe a stone wall (a wall as in 2 meters high and maybe half a meter thick) and a moat if they're really dedicated. These are not there to really repel raiding parties, they are there to make raiding parties 'tax' your village instead of burning it to the ground (expect three to six taxes... yes, there are only 2 sides in this war, why do you ask?). If defenses like that get attacked by as little as 50 soldiers, they will crumble, unless the defenders are really desperate, and will likely fail even then.
The actual strong points are fortresses and cities - these both have enough money and therefore manpower and gear to field small contingents (about a hundred, though it can be bigger if it's an important city or fortress). If a raiding party is spotted, village sends messengers to them, and they set out in a counterattack.
Spoiler: Belgrade city-fortress
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...s_Belgrade.jpg
As close as it gets to Minas Tirith IRL, picture from 16th c., it stopped Ottoman advance cold when it repelled a major siege three years after the fall of Constantinople. When it fell to the Ottomans in 1521, major bricks were shat by pretty much all of Europe.
If something bigger than a raiding party is spotted, fortresses and cities have one purpose and one purpose only - hold out long enough for the royal army to mobilize and counterattack. If this works, the attackers are in for a world of hurt, but if the royal army decides to sit this one out, the defenders are boned.
Spoiler: Trenčín castle above the city
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http://sacr3-files.s3-website-eu-wes...c9f941254b.jpg
Ottomans got to it once and decided to go home rather than siege the damn thing. Váh river marshes under it are not visible, mostly because they don't exist any more, not after the river was regulated by series of hydroelectric powerplants starting in 1950s.
For the villages themselves, it's far better to run and hide - mountains are great for this, as are marshes or any other hard terrain. Raiding party can't stick around and loot for too long on the account of the aforementioned cities with garrisons on the way, so if they can wait them out, they're set. Hiding your posessions (bury them in the ground or take them with you) is standard practice, and a major source for archeaological finds today.
With that, there's one thing that is characteristic of Hungary, or rather to modern-day Slovakia which used to be what was left of Hungary after Mohacs. Villages practically always built observation towers made of wood, sometimes with stone foundation, on tops of nearby hills to spot incoming raiding parities. These towers, called hláska (pl. hlásky) or vartovka (pl. vartovky), had a bell that was tolled when the raiders were coming, and since almost every village had them, they were capable of sending a signal and therefore request for reinforcements really damn quick.
Spoiler: Vartovka above Krupina, near Zvolen
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Edit: I apparently make a lot of typos in Slovak names when writing in English...
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Galloglaich
Rarer, but some. Most nobles who fight would be knighted, at least after a little while. By the time they have a 'moderate' amount of experience, depending on rank. For princely level youngsters just riding around on the battlefield or getting in one fight is usually enough. Lower ranking nobles would have to do something a little more noteworthy like capture an enemy or kill somebody in battle. Think of it about like getting a 'bronze star' in a modern army.
More common for the gendarmes etc. is that they are knighted but not nobles.
G
I was thinking about early Renaissance French Gendarmes when I ask that question. I may be wrong, but aren't most of them nobles, but worked under professional state employment instead on feudal obligation, and they were generally not knighted?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mike_G
Looking at this armor for gunners, I am forced to ask how the shoulder armor interfered with their use of the musket.
I've done a lot of shooting, and I can't see how you'd get a good firing position, a nice cup in the shoulder for the butt of the gun or a good stock weld with that kind of breastplate on. Did they hold and aim the weapons differently, or modify the armor to accept the gun butt in the right shoulder or what?
Plate armor definitely interferes with musket shooting, since the curved surface of breastplate is designed so things will glance off away from its surface. Unfortunately, that also makes musket butt slides off.
Musketeers at Jamestown modified their breastplates to include a "musket butt rest".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1WwQkeDuXs
Quote:
Originally Posted by
snowblizz
One thing IIRC is basically always present when a dynasty falls is a period of weak monsoons leading to poor harvests. And when it hits, it gets bad over an enormous area effectively impacting the whole realm. Usually at these crisis points the population has grown enough that even marginal lands are in heavy use and there's almost no safety margin in foodavailability (farming some of the more marignal areas demands quite a heavy labour investment). The various dynasties tended to expand to fill all the available space their technological level could support. So any shortfall rather quickly turns desperate. There's really no place to get more food even if such an idea would occur and the wast amounts needed makes for difficulties too.
The loss of the Mandate of Heaven is normally the claim made, and it is usually invoked at such times it "makes sense". All the peasants of the realm can sort of see it, you don't have to go around convincing people too much. It's not quite like when our current media and politicians cries catastrophy over everything yet if you check the fundamentals things are much sounder. What I'm trying to say it's going to be a fairly general agreement over the fact that it's not looking good. The circumstances need to be fairly right to make the claim stick.
With the economic foundation rocking all the smaller and wider cracks in the state show up. Outside invasions (they also suffer from the same weather related issues and so are more active), which may expose the unreadiness of an army that has grown bloated (it usually did) yet ineffective and e.g. soldiers are more farmers scraping by than anything else. Or other shocks to the system that would otherwise be endurable will topple the whole thing. Even the mismanagement can go on for quite some time as long as nothing is poking at the system. It won't be enough by itself.
Due to the sheer size of China, they were generally able to endure through/rebound from very nasty famine. The famine that caused the collapse of Ming was in part made worse by silver, although (I think) not in a way that most people would expect.
To make a very complicated and long story (oversimplify and overly) short, Ming recognition of silver as the circulating currency caused a lot of complications. People used to be able to pay their taxes with agriculture product, but now they had to pay in silver. So the farmers had to sell their agriculture products in the market, THEN pay the taxes. Since everyone harvest at the same season, the selling price was as bad as you'd expect due to overproduction. So, most of them went bankrupt/sold or lost their lands/forced into slavery/starved (basically, a deflation spiral in economic terms)...OR they started growing commercial plants (like cotton) that sell for a better price. For farmers from places that were unsuitable for growing cotton (i.e. Northwest China, guess where the rebellions originate?), well, tough luck for them.
(The situation was so bad, farmers often had to sell their wives just to gather enough silver to pay tax, even on a year of good harvest. In fact, good harvest means more overproduction/overstock, thus crops sell for even lower price, so farmers were doomed either way)
Since most of the agriculture products and silver had to pass through the marketplace before they went to the government (and vice versa), the merchants obviously grew richer by the day through price-scissoring. Instead of reinvest the silver to stimulate economy, the riches used the money to grab the lands of the poor (and use them to grow commercial plants for MOAR silver). So despite the massive inflow of New World silver, most silver did not circulate in the Ming economy. Thus, the people were piss poor, the government was piss poor, but the riches were filthy rich.
(At this point you don't need a degree in economics to see that this ain't gonna end pretty)
Obviously, more farmlands converted to grow commercial plants equal less farmlands to grow food, so China was already threading a dangerously thin line even on a good (harvest) day. Then the famine hit, and it hit ESPECIALLY HARD this time. Oh, and the Manchu cometh. So:
1) The poor were starving and unable to pay tax, so they rebelled.
2) The government was poor, didn't had the means to relieve the famine (no money to buy food + no food to buy with money, since the rebellion ORIGINATED from food-producing regions) and needed the money to fund the military to quell rebellion and resist Manchu invaders, but since they couldn't create silver out of thin air (or print money), they increased tax instead.
3) The troops were starving too, so they sold off their equipment for food, or simply defected/mutinied/surrendered to the Manchu/joined the rebellion, causing a sharp drop in combat capabilities.
4) The riches, wary of the unstable situation, began hoarding their silver (causing another/worsening deflation spiral), thus there were even less silver circulating for the poor to pay tax, and for the government to buy stuffs. (The dry out of Mexican mines, Japan went hikikomori, and capture of Malacca by the Dutch also added to the deflation problem, but even if the silver inflow continued, they all end up gather dust in the vault of some merchant anyway)
5) Deflation caused the shrinkage of productive force, so even LESS people were working the lands now. Thus the famine...famined harder.
6) The riches also used their wealth to gain political influence, to the point that they became untouchable even by the emperor. Attempts to tax them failed extremely hard.
The increased tax burden caused even more hardship to the people, so even more joined the rebellion (or started a new one when/if the previous one was crushed), so the government needed even more money to fund the military, so they increased tax again, and so on and so forth, the vicious cycle continued until Ming finally imploded.
TL;DR The Ming were chopping off their agricultural foundation for commercial-based economy (and silver), and then realized that people cannot stay alive by eating silver.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
LughSpear
Everyone knows that mounted archery was really awesome, the speed of the horse would add to the force of the arrow.
Would the same happen with an archer in a motorcycle?
To a point. Drag (the force acting against the velocity of the object) is squared to the object velocity. So the faster the object is going, the faster it slows down. part of why bows, crossbows, and firearms do not continue to get better range and "stopping power" every year.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
@DerKomissar: Okay, the work you're going to be looking at was done by William Atwell. He published a series of articles on the idea in 1977, 1882, 1986, and twice in 1988, but the theory was eventually challenged and largely discarded. He wrote a more recent defense of his thesis in 2005, (this I actually have). I've not read any of it yet and cannot speak to its relative merits.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wolflance
Plate armor definitely interferes with musket shooting, since the curved surface of breastplate is designed so things will glance off away from its surface. Unfortunately, that also makes musket butt slides off.
Musketeers at Jamestown modified their breastplates to include a "musket butt rest".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1WwQkeDuXs
That's interesting.
I have wondered how armor affected shooting. It seems that the breastplate and shoulders like in the photo G sharedwould make the butt slide around and be hard to get a consistent sight picture, or control the stupid thing in recoil.
I had a similar issue when I shot a crossbow the first time, just because I wanted to seat the butt in my shoulder like a rifle, but they don't work that way. Just finding a consistent position for it took me forever.
Holding it under your arm would make it hard to aim and definitely hard to be accurate at long range. If we say that early muskets were just for short range volley fire I could but the underarm position, but if we want to say they were accurate at any distance, then I think you need a solid seat for the weapon, especially one that recoils.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Martin Greywolf
Yeah, I noticed that too.
First thought, the price on solids is from da Vinci diaries, and I don't know enough about Italian and Czech currencies stability at the time. I'd be very careful in converting them, because you tended to have rather rapid changes of silver content in certain periods.
As for the high price of swords, I think that's because these prices are usually taken from guild records in a city. Those 120 gr per sword are for a sword from a swordmaker who is rather well known in the area, and sets his prices accordingly. Cheaper stuff could be bought from his apprentices or from less famous craftsmen. Or you just bought a messer, since swords were often not allowed within city walls, meaning there was less demand for them when compared to, say, dussacks or messers.
Yeah but where was the price of 120 gr per sword? i saw '2 gr and up' .... where was the `120?
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
On the whole wants versus guns thing, I think I have something, and it's from watching Harry Potter. To put it simply, you can fence with them, and that extends to gunfire to a degree. See, the setting already states that swords see limited use. Only in the hands of mages, though, because many mages can use a sword to block gunfire jedi-style. Because magic. Add in that swords are really good at bypassing damage reduction, can deliver magics a bullet couldn't (the spell would dissipate too rapidly in a magazine, while a sword is basically connected to a human battery), that a lot of monsters are really good about forcing melee combat, that no mage has a non-magical sword, and that the rules of magic aren't typically tolerant of magical ranged weapons besides wands (the projectile won't carry the magic), and it makes some degree of sense.
Well, if you can do it with a sword, you can do it with a wand, and a wand is easier to carry. And if the other guy has a wand, you can try to block their blasts, like they do in Harry Potter. Of course, it's lower rate of fire means you have to prioritize what you can block if the enemy has a gun, because if you're facing an entire infantry squad, you can't just block every bullet, but on the other hand maybe one blast can deflect or shatter every bullet in a cone in front of you, essentially creating shrapnel and richochets and making the enemy scramble for cover (or killing them). Which balances the wand to the sword, because mages with swords are scary fast and can intercept multiple rounds in a way you can't with a wand. Then again, more mages know how to use wands than swords, because swords are a very specialized skill, and the mage who spends time learning fancy sword tricks has skipped learning some other things.
I'm going to be blunt here. This makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever the way you are describing it. Being able to throw up a short-lived (several seconds) shield before somebody shoots you is plausible, although the timing would be difficult enough to balance anything else. Intercepting individual bullets? The human body just can't move that fast. Jedi can do it because they have a very limited ability to see the future, and can block shots before they are fired. Even then, the ranged weapons of the SW universe fire so slowly that the Jedi has the chance to reorient against the next shot. That doesn't work with normal firearms, as they put shots out too quickly - in the time it takes you to read this paragraph, a dozen or more rounds could have been fired from a single autopistol.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gnoman
I'm going to be blunt here. This makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever the way you are describing it. Being able to throw up a short-lived (several seconds) shield before somebody shoots you is plausible, although the timing would be difficult enough to balance anything else. Intercepting individual bullets? The human body just can't move that fast. Jedi can do it because they have a very limited ability to see the future, and can block shots before they are fired. Even then, the ranged weapons of the SW universe fire so slowly that the Jedi has the chance to reorient against the next shot. That doesn't work with normal firearms, as they put shots out too quickly - in the time it takes you to read this paragraph, a dozen or more rounds could have been fired from a single autopistol.
Best I can think of is that the sword itself is capable of sensing and intercepting something before the mage actually thinks about it, and the sword itself can move the mage's arm. However, the sword is only as smart as the mage is. It can process an react faster, but it can only process things the mage has taught it to process, and react in the manners the mage has taught it.
So, the sword only knows what bullets look like because it's been told, and it can only react in ways the mage was practiced before. That's where skill and experience comes in. If the mage isn't trained, the sword has no idea what to do, and if the sword was taught by a different mage, it's anticipating a different body and isn't going to move as well.
This would also justify long, drawn out sword fights. IRL fights are usually pretty short. As Matt Easton says, parry, parry, someone's hit. Well, this sort of magic would be great for parrying, but not offense. The sword knows how to react to an attack, but not how to initiate one. That sort of conscious decision making is on the wielder. This favors defense, so fights last longer before someone's sword slips up. It might also make more sense to spam attacks, because you need volume to increase the chances of slipping past the automated defense, and if you leave yourself open, the sword can rapidly move to cover you. And this actually fits D&D mechanics perfectly. The sword knowing to block stuff is just a flat armor class bonus.
On the other hand, this magic may have other uses I don't like, so I really need to think on this.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Aaand we're really getting into magic, and way divorced from IRL, so this might not be the best thrread.
On to the value of soldiers' lives. This is from a modern American context, and I'm specifically comparing American soldiers to American civilians. Basically, commanders send troops to die. In the context of my setting, soldiers may be deployed on American soil to defend civilians from large forces of demons or undead. From what zombie movies I've watched, the military usually seems to abandon civilians to their fate or bomb thousands upon thousands of them. This just doesn't feel right, and I feel like military commanders would have a lot more willingness to lose soldiers to protect American lives, because that's part of being a soldier in a defensive war. At the same time, there needs to be a limit. If you end up with 250 dead out of a division and evacuate 25000 civilians in the process, it'd be hard to argue that wasn't a sensible sacrifice to make. If you lose 4000 dead and another 4000 seriously wounded, and only had 10000 troops to begin with, but you still rescued those 25000 civilians? That kind of casualty rate, you're combat ineffective, and what if the overall defense fails once the horde pushes again, because your division overextended to reach more civilians and got mauled, and can't keep holding its objectives? And you certainly wouldn't accept a severe risk of losing an entire division to rescue 250 encircled civilians. That's not even getting into bombing civilian filled cities to get at zombie hordes.
I'm wondering if there's typically any sort of doctrine or philosphical system that discusses these issues. Does the US Army have a general idea of how willing commanders should generally be to sacrifice soldiers for American civilians? Or do we likely operate how we do overseas, where protecting soldiers is more important than preventing civilian casualties, even if we do take reasonable efforts to avoid civilian casualties where it wouldn't risk soldiers' lives (Would we likely be more willing to risk soldiers dying to avoid collateral damage if those dead civilians were our own people?)?
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
I think that maintaining a fighting force would be the priority. This may or may not mean that it's OK to sacrifice 50.000 soldiers to save 10.000 civilians. Those soldiers aren't in a vacuum: they are part of a wider tactical and strategic vision. If they have nothing else to be used for, you can spend them on saving civilians. But, if they are needed to protect a flank from an incoming assault, they need to stay combat capable. There is of course the matter of not wasting resources, so you would still have some reflection before sacrificing a unit that might be useful in the near future, but that would not cancel the need of rescue of the civilians, unless the situation was really dire and you could expect that every man will be necessary.
If they instead are all that can be foreseen to come in during the next days, then it's best if they create a cordon and defend it without expending too much, and, when necessary, retreat to a position that can protect both them and civilian escapees.
If they are all that is left, well, I have no ideas.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
About the destruction of cities: in movies I think it's done because there is the expectation that keeping the city alive will destroy the country. You know, start a naton wide plague, that sort of thing.
It's a bit hard to think of a real life equivalent. There currently are international law norms concerning the bombing of areas inhabited by civilians. Essentially, they say that it's only allowed if the target is actually military in nature, and that civilian victims should be in a number not exceeding proportions, and collateral damage, not the intended target. Besides the difficulty of interpreting and applying such norms, there's the fact that the situation you describe would be fully internal.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vinyadan
About the destruction of cities: in movies I think it's done because there is the expectation that keeping the city alive will destroy the country. You know, start a naton wide plague, that sort of thing.
It's a bit hard to think of a real life equivalent. There currently are international law norms concerning the bombing of areas inhabited by civilians. Essentially, they say that it's only allowed if the target is actually military in nature, and that civilian victims should be in a number not exceeding proportions, and collateral damage, not the intended target. Besides the difficulty of interpreting and applying such norms, there's the fact that the situation you describe would be fully internal.
It also bears noting that civilian populations, and control thereof, are typically sort of the point. This is the case both in a strictly logistical sense (civilians have productive capacity and can be recruited from), and in the sense that one of the main reason people wage wars is to control land and, most of the time, the people that live on it. It's also just generally far easier to conquer the place, as opposed to systematically hunting down thousands or tens of thousands of people, some of whom will fight back. Unless an aggressor is committed to actual genocide or Mongolian-style terror tactics, the city's civilian population will probably remain, damaged but intact. Even a regime that plans to exterminate a conquered population typically needs time and coordination to do so, if only because they need to set up shop and get the gas chambers/firing squads/horrific implements of mass murder in order.
As such, part of the reason you might fall back and leave civilians behind is because you expect to retake the territory in the future. It can even be an effort to spare the civilians from the burden of a drawn-out siege during which many of them will be killed. A defender might also take into account the brutality of the ensuing occupation, the odds that the aggressor will be able to recruit from the locals, and the likely costs of retaking the city at a later date. There are also PR questions - by demonstrating inability or unwillingness to defend a civilian population, a regime can sabotage itself with seemingly rational decisions. These sorts of decisions are made intrinsically complex by the circumstances in which they take place, such that it is never as simple as "who do I value more?"
tl;dr - I agree, the danger to civilian populations is often limited barring genocide or lolmongols.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Plague and economy
This subject was discussed a while back. I wanted to comment, but I was very busy and wanted to do a more proper/filling answer. Incidentally I was (among other thing) busy with an excavation which is sort of relevant to this discussion (more about that below). I now feel I have the time to write a response/opinion, and I hope you will allow me to bring up the subject again (though the military aspect is not that clear in the topic).
Mainly I am going to discuss the folloowing (from KarlMarx):
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1. After the Black Death, in many European nations, peasants began gaining much greater control over their labor. The sudden rarity of common people made their labor a commodity in high demand, enabling many to begin working for their own benefit rather than those of feudal overlords. This freed many to move to cities, which rapidly became the focus of economic power rather than feudal estates.
and Gs post, specifically his conclusion:
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And the Black Death did shake things up as well, of course, but probably caused as many problems as it alleviated.
I generally agree with G on this one. But to go bit deeper I think some things need to be pointed out:
• First I think KarlMarx point is one strongly supported by good research, HOWEVER this research is mainly English language research and have focussed on England (and slightly expanded the hypothesis to France I think). It is true we see some improvement in rights of the English peasants post-plague which is tied to the plague, but this does not mean it can be generalised to a European thing.
• The notion of "Peasants" as a single coherent class is in this respect problematic.
• Also I think we need to consider what "control" of labour means in this respect. Is it legal control (that is changes in the laws) or changes due to changes in the economy (surply and demand issues).
I want to follow up with a short discussion on how I see the peasant class and its basic units and what rights they can have.
1. First we have free peasants (they can have different names in different countries, in England it is the Yeomen-class).
2. They own their own land and the land is inherited by their children. These are the top class and usually have several privileges (which laws they abide to, what political powe rthey have etc). Some might of course be poor (for instance in maginal poor areas we have some poor freemen), but usually they are pretty well of. They have to pay certain taxes, but usually have few responsibilities to any lord: except the military one. In most countries they had to bring arms when summoned. This is the class we often think of as well armed etc. However way before the 14th century plagues and famines, they military duty was in many regions replaced by a tax (usually starting as a fine for not showing up that over time got so small that it was worth paying the fine every year).
3. Then we have farmers sitting on a farm on contract. We could call them "tennants".
4. They do not own the land they work on, but "rents" it from the king, a noble or (quite often) the church. Usually this is on lifelong contracts, but with the children free to do other things. The rent was often as a mix of resource and labour. In many countries they were NOT expected to do military service (usually they transfer of their obligation was transferred to the nobleman).
5. We also see a group (in some regions large in others small) of people sitting on a house (usually as tennants) with no real farming land attached. So they have to work as labourers for free peasants or noblemen.
6. The we have some people not owning a house, but working as servants for free farmers or a nobleman and living in their masters home (this was often temporary until you could get a house or farm by signing a contract with a noble).
There also existed various day labourers and travellers etc, who did odd jobs around farms/mansions, but their status is usually not well defined.
So when discussing the terms of peasants during the medieval period we need to be clear on which of these groups we are referring, but ALSO how the relative distribution among these groups developed. For instance we might consider an improvement (in the laws) for the tennant-group was a sign of more control of their labour (as KarlMarx suggest in his post), but if we at the same time see a reduction in yeomen-famers and increase in people not having direct access to land the average might actually be a reduction in control of labour.
We also need to consider if we are talking political, legal or economic power of the "peasants". For instance are they "asked" in matters of law and have political influence, are there other regulation that limits them, is there a social mobility etc.
So with that out of the way lets go look at the development during the medieval period, and especially the plague. This is where excavation I was on might serve as an example: we where excavating medieval houses from the 13th and early 14th century, but the hamlet didn't seem to continue. The area was in general "poor soil", and it is very common that the villages on the poorest soils was abandoned in relation to the plague. This was not so much because the plague
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This freed many to move to cities, which rapidly became the focus of economic power rather than feudal estates. Cities produced much more portable wealth, enabling them to either higher mercenaries for their own armies (as in Italy and the German Free Cities) or pay for mercenaries in the royal armies (as in England).
As G points out the cities where already growing in importance, and was often more severely hit than the rural district. It did cause positions to open up in the cities (almost all crafts needed new, non plague-dead people to enter into the craft), but even more importantly, as the most of the peasants was in the "tenant" group only tied to the land by a contract, it meant that their children we instead sign a more favourable contract with another noble/church. This was usually on better soils and the resulting lack of people meant the nobles and the church couldn't get tenants for the farms on poor soils. It also meant that the nobles ended up worse of because the tenant could "shop around" for the best offer.
This is where Gs point about shaking things up becomes important: it clearly caused everything to be re-evaluated and a breakdown of how things usually was. BUT it did not lead universally to better rights for the tenant group of peasants.
On the Danish isle of Zealand for instance, the nobles where strong enough to impose a rule that meant that a minimum one child had to take over their parents obligations, thus tying the families down for generation and removing a good deal freedom to go to towns, change noble etc. So a political response to the economic better position of the peasants was to reduce their legal status.
Similar laws was passed in other regions of Europe, though in some they didn't (England, but also parts of Denmark) where the tenant class of peasants did indeed gain more control over their labour due to a shift in the supply/demand-situation. The plague certainly was a catalysator for political changes, but as always who comes out on top is down to a contextual situational thing, and a not as a result of a general law.
Another thing is the general power between cities and peasants. Many modern people tend to think of the past as a struggle between "commoners" on one side and nobles on the other side, but in fact many political struggles where already between city and countryside (rights to sell goods outside cities, could peasants trade directly to others etc).
At one point I think I disagree with G in all of this. He often describes the medieval period one where the peasants got more rights and was gaining political influence, but in most of northern Europe (Scandinavia but also most of northern Germany, Poland, England etc), this is only true on the surface.
For instance in Denmark around 1100-1200 the peasant assemblies (the thing) still have quite a lot of power (similar in other countries) and have to pass laws, elect kings etc. Also the "nobles" was judged by the same laws. When we reach 1400-1550 the nobles can only be judged by peers (other nobles), and can themselves judge their tenants to pay fines, get beatings etc, something unheard of in the earlier parts. At the same time the majority of the peasant class was of the "yeomen class" across Northern Europe in the 12th century, but when reaching the 15th it was a minority (maybe 15%), with tenants and landless growing in numbers. It is true that after the plague the tenants got some more rights, but one reason was that the rights of the free peasants had been undermined by a shift within the peasant classes.
So when the peasants in the late medieval period in many countries (including Denmark) got access to assemblies/palianments (sometimes with real influence, sometimes it only mean a place for discussion), it was a weaker form of power than they had had in the 1100. At the same time the cities had secured many rights which limited the peasant class (primarily trade and craftsmanship).
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tobtor
Plague and economy
First off, excellent post Tobtor, you did a good job of outlining the nuances of this issue. I particularly appreciate this point:
Quote:
• First I think KarlMarx point is one strongly supported by good research, HOWEVER this research is mainly English language research and have focussed on England (and slightly expanded the hypothesis to France I think). It is true we see some improvement in rights of the English peasants post-plague which is tied to the plague, but this does not mean it can be generalised to a European thing.
This is BY FAR the biggest problem for getting people in the English-speaking world to understand just about everything and anything about the Middle Ages. Almost everything we learn in school (up to the postgraduate level) comes from English Language sources, with a few French and scattered others filtered through English, and is mostly about and to do with England.
But here is the problem with that. The rise and heydey of England was after the Middle Ages. England had a tough time in the medieval period. They were invaded and conquered by the Vikings - their first true King being Canute the Great who you seldom hear about, then they were conquered again by the Normans. Though they did found two of Europe's most important Universities (Oxford and Cambridge), had a couple of strong Kings (notably Richard Lionheart) and managed to cause a lot of problems for France, they really didn't have much to do with the rise of civilization in this period or with the Renaissance.
The heydey of England was in the Early Modern period. The time of Queen Elizabeth, Francis Drake and Shakespeare. The time of the opening up of the sea lanes to the New World and the Pacific Rim, and the establishment of the East India Company. This is when the Kingdom of England came into it's own and began it's seemingly inexorable rise to become a world power. This is when they started to generate culture and technology.
But in the Middle Ages the epicenter of civilization was elsewhere - it was centered in the Mediterranean, in the Adriatic. Down the Rhine and into the Low Countries, and in the Baltic and the foothills of the Alps and the Apennines. In Italy and Flanders, Catalonia, Bohemia, Swabia and Alsace, and in the Rhennish towns and the Hanseatic towns of the Baltic and North Sea.
Sadly, these places tend to be dismissed as "not English" by English academics, and as 'ferners' in American pop culture and such is the power and influence of Anglo-American media that this then has enormous influence even in the countries where all this interesting stuff did happen.
So particularly in the popular culture, including genre films and shows, computer games and all-too-influential RPG's, we tend to generalize about all things medieval, really all things pre-industrial, by seeing everything through an English filter and by extrapolating specific conditions in England to those all over Europe.
Quote:
At one point I think I disagree with G in all of this. He often describes the medieval period one where the peasants got more rights and was gaining political influence, but in most of northern Europe (Scandinavia but also most of northern Germany, Poland, England etc), this is only true on the surface.
...
So when the peasants in the late medieval period in many countries (including Denmark) got access to assemblies/parlianments (sometimes with real influence, sometimes it only mean a place for discussion), it was a weaker form of power than they had had in the 1100. At the same time the cities had secured many rights which limited the peasant class (primarily trade and craftsmanship).
And this brings me to another problem. Within Continental Europe, more educated people in each of the various interesting countries around Europe tend to, understandably, to know a lot more about their own country than they do about others around them. They tend to extrapolate data from their part of the world to all others. To generalize the local to the universal.
We have to remember the past is a foreign country and we must endeavor not to offend the locals.
This is a sin i commit myself. So when I say very generally speaking (though I don't always use that caveat) that conditions for commoners, and including peasants, did improve generally speaking in the High to Late middle ages, I am committing a Sin. I do think that is a true statement, so long as you use the caveat, but it's also a dangerous thing to do. It's very hard to generalize about anything in the middle ages because it's such a variegated time. A lot of very different things going on simultaneously.
But I can speak a little bit to this specific issue and since we are here already here goes.
Ostsiedlung
So German historians have a word, which being German is a bit of a mouthful (to be honest I don't even know how to pronounce it) but being German, it's also pretty efficient and useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostsiedlung
It describes what has been called a 'folk movement' Eastward which took place in the High to Late Middle Ages. Like many medieval events it tends to be overgeneralized but the gist is this. Thinly populated areas East of the Elbe, and / or poorly developed areas (without much efficient farming and few urban centers) either actively recruited or were targeted by settlers, Crusaders, and skilled laborers who came in from German and Flemish speaking areas (as well as some French, Italian, even English and Scots-speaking) and settled in unpopulated areas.
This happened several times on different scales. For example after the big Mongol invasions in 1241. Some large areas had been depopulated, with many or most of the people either killed, run out due to starvation from burned crops etc., enslaved or just fled in panic.
Without getting too far down into the weeds, the Ostsiedlung, which went on from the 11th through the 15th Century, was associated with the granting of rights to lure more settlers. So for example, in land they controlled the Teutonic Knights put thousands of villages under Kulm Law, a variant of local German town law. This granted peasants the same rights as citizens, at least in theory, and for many of them it meant an improvement in conditions. In most places, certainly not everywhere but generally speaking in Poland for example, these rights were also granted to the local Slavs and Baltic people who were already there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulm_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_town_law
This was part of a general economic trend toward less active management of estates, the switch from corvee to cash rent (which had mixed affects on peasants to be sure) and looser control which generally led to a rising prosperity. Immigrants from Latinized zones in particular were more trusted to produce and pay their taxes. The gist is basically that 20% of $1000 is still more than twice of 100% of $100. if that makes sense.
The Free Cities
I don't know that much about the Danish history, but from what I gather, Denmark was not one of the places where they had a lot of Free Cities. I'm not even if they had the Royal City designation or not. But elsewhere in the Northern fringe of Europe this was quite common. Lübeck and Hamburg being probably the closest such neighbors to Denmark, were immensely powerful Free Cities which made their own foreign policy and got into various conflicts with robber knights, with regional princes and prince prelates, as well as neighboring Kingdoms including Denmark and sometimes with unruly peasants too.
Very generally speaking, towns in the period roughly 1100 - 1470 tended to extend at least some of their town rights to peasants living near the town, especially those in the Feldmark or the zone of territory that the town controlled. This was not always the case. In the Baltic for example some of the towns treated Estonians as subjects and didn't grant them rights. In medieval Switzerland Zurich usually considered neighboring peasants as sort of nominal citizens while more aristocratic leaning Berne treated her local peasants as subjects. But usually they granted some town rights because peasants were often military allies and provided the labor pool from which apprentices were recruited and cottage industries linked to the towns were closely integrated.
Labor pool was an issue because towns usually had a much lower birth rate than the countryside (something like 3.5 kids with at least one child typically dying) so they needed people to repopulate them, doubly so after famines, outbreaks of plague, or costly wars. This could also be the cause of wars, I know for a fact Bremen and Hamburg both went to war over the issue of nobles trying to take peasants back to their estates who had moved to town (in one case resulting in a terrible defeat for Bremen).
Warlike Peasants
Heavily armed peasants living in zones with somewhat difficult territory were often able to remain essentially Free Tribes much as they had been before Christianity.
In Sweden, when the Danish monarchy under the Kalmar Union (a treaty orchestrated by a mighty Danish queen in 1397 which put the Danish King in charge of Sweden and Norway, technically) attempted to assert the kind of strict and demeaning Feudalism which (as Tobtor described) they had imposed on Zealand, in many cases the Swedish peasants fought back. So when they felt like their rights were being trampled in the 1430's they went to war and ultimately won their seat in Parliament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbrekt_rebellion
This did grant them substantial breathing room, if only because the local nobles weren't strong enough to muscle them into serfdom, though of course that did change for the worse in later centuries during the Early Modern period. But many things changed in the Early Modern period as I've often pointed out.
Another neighbor to Denmark is the Dithmarschen. They were not unique but were a good example of peasants that lived in the marshland between what is today. They were so tough that neither the local princes, the King of Denmark, nor the Free Cities like Hamburg could handle them. Ultimately the Hanseatic League made them a member (the only non City member other than the Teutonic Order) and Hamburg hired them to be their 'coast guard'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dithmarschen
You also had many other local zones where Saxon, Frisian and other German, Nordic and Slavic tribes (Mecklenburg, now part of Germany, was a Slavic region in the middle ages) peasants had their own little mini-republics.
In Poland a big part of the wealthier peasantry (what the Germans called Bauer or what the English called Yeomanry) was already merging into what the Poles called the Szlachta. These were heavily armed gentry, and peasants to be blunt about it, who comprised much of the military in Poland and used that fact to squeeze remarkable concessions from the Polish King, amounting to near total freedom. As Tobtor noted, the rise of one part of the peasantry sometimes coincided with the decline of the rest, and this did happen in Poland too, but it's quite complicated (has to do with Poland merging with Lithuania and taking on many Ukranians of the Greek Orthodox religion) and it was basically a post-medieval phenomenon.
Finally in Lithuania itself you had the Samogitians, a ferocious Baltic people who lived in a dense forest in what is now Lithuania. They were able to resist 200+ years of Crusades by the Teutonic Knights, and sometimes by the Grand Duke of Lithuania himself, and were ultimately so difficult to 'tame' that they were granted their own self-government which lasted well into the 18th Century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samogitia#History
So I think you can say, within the vicinity of Denmark, you can indeed find many areas where the peasants conditions were improving through most of the middle ages. You did start to see some changes in some areas already by the 1470's but this is a complex story.
And Tobtor is 100% correct to point out that simultaneous to this, you had other areas in the same region where conditions were getting worse. I've mentioned the Estonians who were horribly treated all through the Middle Ages. Norway was also I would say very generally, going through a bad time in most of the Middle Ages, and increasingly falling under foreign rule, and many German speaking regions notably Brandenburg began to fall under stricter control of their prince, including the imposition of some humiliating Feudal practices.
After the Middle Ages the general trend toward greater freedom that I was describing began to reverse itself - led by the increasingly powerful Duchy of Muscovy, and by the 17th Century you had what has been called the 'Second Serfdom' starting to take place.
Hope this helps! have a nice weekend everyone!
G
P.S. Tobtor I also owe you a reply on the notion of urban poor, but this is a long post already.
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV
An example of how towns used to extend their zone of influence beyond the Feldmark was by granting citizenship to other entities or estates in the neighborhood.
One version of this common in Swabia, parts of Bavaria and in the Swiss zone was called 'Burgrecht'. Basically the town would grant citizenship to some other person or place - a village, a friendly knight, an abbey or convent, or sometimes even a mercenary captain. This meant that the person or entity in question was treated as if they were a citizen of the town - and put them under the towns retaliation policy if someone hurt, captured or killed them. Or besieged them, say. The town would respond with the standard 'eye for an eye' policy that they used if one of their citizens was molested.
Knights and other armed people would provide military service in return. Peasants and villagers would provide troops in emergencies, and also more routinely assistance in building and maintaining city walls and small castles owned by the town. Monasteries would provide some food and money. In return in addition to military support the Burgerecht gave them the right to retreat within the town walls during times of war.
For powerful cities like Zurich, or Augsburg or Ulm, this could be a big deal. I wrote an essay about an incident in Strasbourg in the 1440's where they were fighting with the King of France and they let 4,000 peasants come into the town walls for the better part of 6 months before the French army retreated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgrecht
G