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

[Martin Greywolf]

Yeah but where was the price of 120 gr per sword? i saw '2 gr and up' .... where was the `120?

It has a price of 2 kopy gr, and 1 kopa == 60 gr, therefore 2 kopy == 120 gr. Kopa translates as pile or heap, and was supposed to be the amount of coins you needed to get 1 mark of pure silver. In practice, the actual amount of silver varied, so you could need as many as 200 gr to get 1 marka, but kopa always meant 60 at this point. It was sometimes used for non-monetary counting, even.

And yes, this makes it super easy to trip up in any sort of calculation when you have a pricelist that uses both gr and kop gr.

[rrgg]

Getting back to the subject of whether knights would deliberately choose to be a musketeer or arquebusier. The three musketeers aside, one curious attitude I've come across is that even writers who stress the importance of firearms and credit them with causing the most death on modern battlefields still consider the pike to be the most "honorable" weapon and the most fit for gentlemen. William Garrard ideally wanted all of the largest and strongest men to be made pikemen and smaller, more nimble men be given firearms, though some writers mention that at least musketeers need to be strong as well if not arquebusiers. Humphrey Barwick, who began his career as an arquebusier himself, wrote that seeing a man of noble birth become a musketeer or arquebusier was about as likely as seeing one become a trench master or fortifier. Instead he felt nobelmen were more fit to fight with a pike, halberd, lance, mace, or pistol. La Noue similarly though that the arquebus should be given to young recruits while older, more experienced troops should be given pikes.

[Galloglaich]

It has a price of 2 kopy gr, and 1 kopa == 60 gr, therefore 2 kopy == 120 gr. Kopa translates as pile or heap, and was supposed to be the amount of coins you needed to get 1 mark of pure silver. In practice, the actual amount of silver varied, so you could need as many as 200 gr to get 1 marka, but kopa always meant 60 at this point. It was sometimes used for non-monetary counting, even.

And yes, this makes it super easy to trip up in any sort of calculation when you have a pricelist that uses both gr and kop gr.

Sorry, I made a typo there which further confused the issue. You wrote originally:

"sword = 20 kop gr and higher" and then went on about how much that was. It was indeed, a huge amount. The source though doesn't say 20 Kop gr it says 2.

My sources on a grivina or a hrivina are that it is roughly equal to a mark most of the time, at least in the 15th Century. It was a bullion value which translated to an 8 or 12 ounce bar of silver, or the equivalent in fur pelts, so the value on a given day could fluctuate quite a bit.



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

But the price of a sword was nowhere near the price of a house or a suit of armor, which was the original issue at a hand.

My point = Swords were easily affordable to ordinary peasants, artisans and other commoners by the High let alone the late middle ages. Armor, though much more expensive than swords, was also clearly affordable to the wealthier peasants and most artisans.

G

[Storm Bringer]

Getting back to the subject of whether knights would deliberately choose to be a musketeer or arquebusier. The three musketeers aside, one curious attitude I've come across is that even writers who stress the importance of firearms and credit them with causing the most death on modern battlefields still consider the pike to be the most "honorable" weapon and the most fit for gentlemen. William Garrard ideally wanted all of the largest and strongest men to be made pikemen and smaller, more nimble men be given firearms, though some writers mention that at least musketeers need to be strong as well if not arquebusiers. Humphrey Barwick, who began his career as an arquebusier himself, wrote that seeing a man of noble birth become a musketeer or arquebusier was about as likely as seeing one become a trench master or fortifier. Instead he felt nobelmen were more fit to fight with a pike, halberd, lance, mace, or pistol. La Noue similarly though that the arquebus should be given to young recruits while older, more experienced troops should be given pikes.

Its worth noting that while the Musketeers of the Guard were elite troops, they were still the junior division of the maison militaire du roi (Royal Military Household, the Kings personal troops and guards), below the Swiss foot guards, the French foot guards, the Hundred Swiss, the assorted Guard cavalry companies, and the Body Guard (not all of these existed at the same time, there were quite a few companies of Guards that were formed for some historical reason and then disbanded again in for budgetary reasons a few decades later).


I think the emphasis on "Gentlemen" for the pike might have roots in a entirely practical matter, that of upbringing. specifically, in a time when the food supply was often interrupted, it might be the case that that the gentle man (ie someone rich enough not he doesn't have to work), having have a more stable diet throughout their childhood, might be significantly better developed that some peasant eking out a living at subsistence level.

on top of that, if we buy into the assumption that gentlemen were braver (or at least more willing to risk themselves for the cause, compared to a conscripted farmer), then It makes sense to put them in the more fearful and stressful position of closing to arms reach of an enemy and trying to stab him before he stabs you.

[LordEntrails]

Getting back to the subject of whether knights would deliberately choose to be a musketeer or arquebusier. .... La Noue similarly though that the arquebus should be given to young recruits while older, more experienced troops should be given pikes.

I think the emphasis on "Gentlemen" for the pike might have roots in a entirely practical matter, that of upbringing. specifically,... It makes sense to put them in the more fearful and stressful position of closing to arms reach of an enemy and trying to stab him before he stabs you.

Interesting and valid ideas. But I think pride and preconceptions may have just been as powerful motivators for these justifications. Now, I don't have anything but impressions and poor comparisons but consider;

There is an opinion that European nobility often has felt that certain tasks and positions are more honorable, more prestigious, and more worthy of their efforts than others. We also know that many times various groups put forth justifications for beliefs of superiority or inferiority of groups of people they don't associate. Think of any prejudice in history or current and the attempts to justify those views with "commonsense", "facts" or "science" that history has now shown us to be simple bias.

Now, I'm not totally pessimistic, and I suspect that the reasons given by others do play a part. But, I think prejudice and all its related aspects also play a part as well.

[Blackhawk748]

Simple question i dont really expect an answer to: Can anyone tell me how much a chariot would weigh on average?

To assist in the answer heres the three chariots im looking at:

Celtic
Egyptian
Hittite

If theres no official weight thats fine, solid estimates will be appreciated.

[Berenger]

German Wikipedia gives 24 kg for an egyption chariot in a florentine museum but gives neither a citation nor a picture or description of the exact type and age of the chariot.

[Blackhawk748]

German Wikipedia gives 24 kg for an egyption chariot in a florentine museum but gives neither a citation nor a picture or description of the exact type and age of the chariot.

That seems really light. Like, too light.

[Berenger]

I googled I bit and I think it's "Chariot - New Kingdom - 18th Dynasty - 15th century BC."

http://www.museumsinflorence.com/mus...chaeology.html

[Max_Killjoy]

I googled I bit and I think it's "Chariot - New Kingdom - 18th Dynasty - 15th century BC."

http://www.museumsinflorence.com/mus...chaeology.html

IIRC, the Egyptians made their combat chariots impressively light-weight.

[Blackhawk748]

IIRC, the Egyptians made their combat chariots impressively light-weight.

Apparently. SO a Hittite chariot, which is larger and can fit an extra person could reasonably be said to weigh 100 lbs?

[Vinyadan]

It's an original Egyptian fast charriot, a "merkebet" in ancient Egyptian, used for hunting and battle. 24 kg sounds like a really low weight, but it is possible. https://books.google.de/books?id=zHJ...CiCicQ6AEIOzAF A modern replica weighed around 90 kg and was made in 2008.

Tutankamen's chariot weighs 34.1 kg.

[Brother Oni]

That seems really light. Like, too light.

You have to bear in mind that a war chariot isn't intended to carry more than 2-3 fully armed and armoured men with an extra load of javelins/assorted ammunition. A civilian wagon intended to carry cargo would be much more sturdily built and hence much heavier.

There's another reproduction of an Egyptian 2 man, 2 horse chariot that weighs less than 30kg in the Roemer und Pelizaeus Museum and I found a source from Decker 1986:42 which confirms that value of 24kg for that chariot in Florence (although it notes that some parts were omitted, so that chariot may be a bit lighter than it actually was).

I've found Chasing Chariots: Proceedings of the first international chariot conference, which is both full of practical information and frustratingly absent on broader technical details (they list the weights of the metal wheel rims, but not the weight of the chariot).
There's reference to a quadriga, a larger Roman era 4 horse chariot, in the August Kestner Museum in Hannover but my German isn't good enough to navigate their website.

Apparently. SO a Hittite chariot, which is larger and can fit an extra person could reasonably be said to weigh 100 lbs?

That sounds about right. A biga or Roman racing chariot weighs 25-30kg and is intended to carry 100kg of weight, so a 150lb man with 40lb worth of gear = 190lb, three of them makes 580lb. Assuming a linear increase in chariot weight to weight load (which is an under-estimation of the ratio), that would put a 3 man chariot at 145lbs.

[Blackhawk748]

It's an original Egyptian fast charriot, a "merkebet" in ancient Egyptian, used for hunting and battle. 24 kg sounds like a really low weight, but it is possible. https://books.google.de/books?id=zHJ...CiCicQ6AEIOzAF A modern replica weighed around 90 kg and was made in 2008.

Tutankamen's chariot weighs 34.1 kg.

Ok, that sounds far better. 90 kg sounds like a decent average to base stuff off of, thanks.

*more helpful stuff*

Thank you, this is very helpful.

[VoxRationis]

IIRC, the Egyptians made their combat chariots impressively light-weight.

An Egyptian chariot is basically a basket with wheels, right? Just a couple wooden parts and the rest of wicker?

[Storm Bringer]

An Egyptian chariot is basically a basket with wheels, right? Just a couple wooden parts and the rest of wicker?

IIRC, they used some funky process involving soaking wood in water to soften it, then bending it to the shape they wanted. the net effect is that the main frame of the chariot was a single, continuous piece of wood with no joints or other weak points that would need reinforcing, so the whole thing was really lightweight. I'm sure I have read somewhere of chariot teams picking up and carrying their chariots over bad terrain in one account,

our ancestors may have been low tech, but they were not stupid, or lacking in ideas,

[Martin Greywolf]

Sorry, I made a typo there which further confused the issue. You wrote originally:

"sword = 20 kop gr and higher" and then went on about how much that was. It was indeed, a huge amount. The source though doesn't say 20 Kop gr it says 2.

...

But the price of a sword was nowhere near the price of a house or a suit of armor, which was the original issue at a hand.

My point = Swords were easily affordable to ordinary peasants, artisans and other commoners by the High let alone the late middle ages. Armor, though much more expensive than swords, was also clearly affordable to the wealthier peasants and most artisans.

G

Oh, that's what was going on. Yeah, it's 2 kop, or 120 gros, 7 swords per house at a minimum. That's still a pretty price-y for a sword, but a lot more reasonable than 10 times the price. As for armor, I wouldn't really say it was much more expensive, the same pricelist has its cheapest armor, simple cuirass (prostý pancíř), listed at 4 kop gr, so twice that of a sword, with a Milanese one at double that amount.

This nicely fits with the common depiction of a simple soldier - gambeson, helmet and sometimes a cuirass.

My sources on a grivina or a hrivina are that it is roughly equal to a mark most of the time, at least in the 15th Century. It was a bullion value which translated to an 8 or 12 ounce bar of silver, or the equivalent in fur pelts, so the value on a given day could fluctuate quite a bit.

Hm, you hit on an interesting point there, although it's specific to eastern Europe. From what I've seen, marka and hrivna aren't almost the same thing, they are two different names for the same thing, hrivna being slavic and marka being germanic in origin. You do see them refer to different amounts of silver across time and places, but the difference is always relatively small, and I think it's more of a function of typical lack of international (or national, for that matter) standardization.

Period sources often use the two terms interchangeably, at least, especially after the post-mongol invasion, when German settlers were invited into the country and german became a frequently heard and written language in some cities (mining cities especially).

I would also not use the term buillon value, since there was no reliable way to tell how pure exactly the silver in it was, the official line was that 1 marka equals a certain weight of "pure" (as in, we did our best to process the ore, here it is) silver. One of the reasons why money changers were so tightly regulated was that there was not a lot that stopped them from melting the things, adding a bit of some other metal and remaking the bars themselves, but with lower purity.

If you did this, or any other form of currency falsification, Hungarian law executed you and your family to the third degree with a loss of all privileges and holdings at the minimum - a punishment almost equal to the one suffered by Felician Zah who attempted to assassinate a king and hacked off four fingers off of a queen in the attempt (and also killed sons of some other nobles). Since this required the royal authority to have teeth, the falsifiers started to crop up massively when that was not the case - to name but one case, a recent discovery of an entire workshop at Pusty Hrad near Zvolen almost certainly comes from Arpad interregnum.

To get to the point, the currency of Hungary was therefore referred to as good/bad or strong/weak based mostly on this, and foreign merchants and cities had little problem when it came to dealing in Hungary's own hrivna/marka. I'd say that is another clue that tells us that those two are in fact the same thing.

Edit: I cannot even handle multiplication right now.

[Galloglaich]

Oh, that's what was going on. Yeah, it's 2 kop, or 120 gros, 7 swords per house at a minimum. That's still a pretty price-y for a sword, but a lot more reasonable than 10 times the price. As for armor, I wouldn't really say it was much more expensive, the same pricelist has its cheapest armor, simple cuirass (prostý pancíř), listed at 4 kop gr, so twice that of a sword, with a Milanese one at double that amount.

This nicely fits with the common depiction of a simple soldier - gambeson, helmet and sometimes a cuirass.

You couldn't get a job as a solider, typically, with just a gambeson. Cuirass and helmet would be bare minimum. You could get a job as the assistant or servant (valeti) of a servant with just a gambeson of course.

I think the average price for a new sword in the Late Medieval period was somewhere between 1/4 mark to 2 marks.

Hm, you hit on an interesting point there, although it's specific to eastern Europe. (snip)

I would also not use the term buillon value, since there was no reliable way to tell how pure exactly the silver in it was, the official line was that 1 marka equals a certain weight of "pure" (as in, we did our best to process the ore, here it is) silver. One of the reasons why money changers were so tightly regulated was that there was not a lot that stopped them from melting the things, adding a bit of some other metal and remaking the bars themselves, but with lower purity.

Great post overall there. Couple of points.

I agree with you that currency manipulation was one of the most serious crimes. Another really simple way was just shaving coins, literally taking a sharp knife and shaving thin strips of metal off of the edges of the coins. It's one of the reasons why coins in the 19th and 20th Centuries sometimes had ridges or patterns on the rim.

However currency manipulation was done by both criminals and by political entities such as princes, bishops and free cities (and anyone with the right to mint coins).

There is a bigger picture story here though that bears touching on briefly. Like so many things in the medieval world it's a deep rabbit hole but I'll try to sketch out a basic overview.

• There was a limited number of productive mines for precious metals in Europe by the end of the Carolingian era. Many of the old Roman era mines were played out.
• Mining and metalworking technologies advanced very rapidly from the High to Late medieval periods.
• There were severe international currency crises in Latinized Europe at least 3 times.
• Each time this happened, there was a surge of technological improvements in mining and chemistry which revolutionized precious metals production.

The gist of the problem was that the single strongest economic / trade engine for Europe, the Silk Road, was an enormous hard currency drain. Within Europe cash money was used a lot less than people think in the middle ages. On the lower level, barter remained common through the High Middle Ages. In the middle class world, written records like letters of credit and IOU's were very common in lieux of currency. At the highest levels cash was used but so were bills of exchange and something like checks.

Banking and Credit
Cashless economy, almost like a slow-motion version of our modern system of credit and debit cards, was pioneered by the Knights Templar, and banks like the banks of St. George of Genoa and the The Bank of Venice in the 13th and 14th Century (and streamlined by the Monti di Pasci di Sienna, the Fuggers and Welsers of Augsburg, and the Medici in the 15th), to avoid having their money shipments robbed when going over the Alps. Instead they used letters of credit and managed their foreign branches much the way many Corporations do today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...talian_bankers

Cash was used when people didn't trust each other - which was admittedly a lot, but it was some smaller portion of overall economic transactions.

The polities on the Silk Road however, in China, Persia, India and so on, were fairly ruthless in demanding hard cash for their most valuable products: silk and spices / pepper etc.. They did buy many goods from the West but those were traded for other goods of equivalent value, but the only they they would take for Silk or pepper was silver, copper or gold.

The Italians in particular made most of their money from trade down the Silk Road. And mysteriously, one way or another, (based on estimates by modern historians) something like half of the hard currency in Europe ended up in Italy every year, and from Italy disappeared into the coffers of the Chinese, Persians, Indians, Indonesians, Mamelukes, Ottomans and others far down the Silk Road.

Mining tech
In the early part of the High Medieval Europe, most mining wasn't done like today with deep underground tunnels and processing ore. It was done relatively shallow pits or tunnels near the surface (rarely more than 50' - 100' down) and done usually in hills, so that horizontal tunnels called adits could be dug to ventilate and drain the mines. The metals mined out of these mines were initially at least, for the most part relatively pure veins, as in the metal itself, not the ore.

Many of these veins were played out and the mines dug as deep as they could go before the air went bad or the mines filled with water.

When each of these currency crises hit, demand for precious metals suddenly surged past their already high value, and interest in mining resumed intensively. At the same time, new technology of things like water wheels gears, cam shafts, cam sliders, the archemedes screw and so on, were rapidly disseminating around Latinized Europe. These were applied to mining, without getting too deep into the details, which effectively by improving the abilities to pump water out, pump air in, and crush rock and so on, enabled mines to be dug much deeper. 150', 200', even 250' deep mines became much more common.

Spoiler: Water wheel used in silver mine

Show

Alchemy
Simultaneously, revolutions in chemistry, called then alchemy, introduced many new chemical processes especially the distillation of strong acids, which allowed the rock and lesser metals like lead found in ore to be separated from the actual silver, copper and gold, and even allowed silver, copper and gold to be separated from each other as they sometimes occurred together.

This was, incidentally, the same method by which the purity of currency like coins or silver bars could be tested, with special acids such as Aqua Regia, Aqua Fortis etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_p...medieval_world

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

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

So for example big mines like the one at Kutna Hora in Bohemia which had declined sharply in output suddenly became wildly productive, leading to a kind of "gold rush" (silver rush) situation. You can see a fascinating depiction of this in Kutna Hora in this marvelous painting here:

Spoiler: Medieval Silver Rush

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In all 3 major currency crises, incidentally, this happened within 2-3 years.

This happened at a fortunate time for Bohemia, as it strengthened them economically since people loved the Prague groschen due to it's high quantity of silver, at the same time much of the rest of Europe was ganging up against them.

Currency manipulation
Meanwhile, kings routinely started cutting their hard currency as a way to "print money" kind of like the way the Federal Reserve Does today (and they did also make fiat currency in this way)

But as just once example, in the Baltic after the Teutonic Knights were defeated by the Poles in 1410, they forced the (basically German) Prussian cities under their control at that time to pay the enormous ransoms they owed the Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke to get their prisoners back. The towns resisted and the Danzig town-council had to be executed by the Knights in order to gain compliance.

Immediately after this however, the towns debased their currency substantially (with lead), for the purposes of paying the various feudal tithe or tax obligations they owed mostly to the Teutonic Knights and to hundreds of Church properties like Abbeys and Convents around Prussia and Livonia. Effectively they started paying about 10% of what they had previously paid, causing hardship for the church entities. Meanwhile they still used good (high purity) silver in their normal business transactions as part of the Hanseatic League.

This happened several times over the next few generations and became a standard way for the towns to shrug off financial pressure from princes or kings.

Copernicus, the astronomer, who was living in just such an entity, wrote a detailed treatise on currency devaluation which is a good way to get up to speed on all this if you want to.

Circling back to alchemy again, it was also a way to make fake currency. I'll do another post on that later there are some fascinating anecdotes from the period.

G

[Clistenes]

Getting back to the subject of whether knights would deliberately choose to be a musketeer or arquebusier. The three musketeers aside, one curious attitude I've come across is that even writers who stress the importance of firearms and credit them with causing the most death on modern battlefields still consider the pike to be the most "honorable" weapon and the most fit for gentlemen. William Garrard ideally wanted all of the largest and strongest men to be made pikemen and smaller, more nimble men be given firearms, though some writers mention that at least musketeers need to be strong as well if not arquebusiers. Humphrey Barwick, who began his career as an arquebusier himself, wrote that seeing a man of noble birth become a musketeer or arquebusier was about as likely as seeing one become a trench master or fortifier. Instead he felt nobelmen were more fit to fight with a pike, halberd, lance, mace, or pistol. La Noue similarly though that the arquebus should be given to young recruits while older, more experienced troops should be given pikes.

I have read about the transition from medieval armies to pike and shot blocks during the Renaissance. For a short period very important nobles would still lead their own private cavalry troops ("las Guardias Viejas", the Old Guard) as support to the royal tercios, but they felt sidelined and of little use, so they shifted to joining regular troops...

Low rank, low income nobles would just join a company like any other soldier. Rich nobles would start joining the retinue of a general as "aventureros", irregular soldiers outside the normal chain of command, and once they gained some experience their families might pull strings to get them a rank as captain, and they would recruit, arm and pay a company of their own. Ambrosio di Spinola, an italian banker, got promoter straight to the rank of general in exchange for recruiting, arming, training and paying an army on his own (but one of the reasons that promotion was approved was that his brother, an experienced officer, was expected to oversee him...).

Common soldiers prefered to become arquebussiers. It was perceived as a more adventurous, active, cooler role. Arquebussiers would run on the field, approach the enemy and do most damage, while pikemen would moved more slowly, had a less offensive role and had to withstand gun salvos and cavalry charges without moving...

However, it is true that swords and polearms were considered nobler weapons. Commanding officers usually wielded polearms, even while leading units of gunmen (both to defend themselves and to keep control of soldiers), bannermen would wear heavy armor and wield a sword in one hand, and the flag of the company in the other hand, and generals, maestres de campo and colonels would wield swords or polearms and fight with their retinues first in line in the pike block. The richest soldiers with the best armor would be put first in line in the pike block, and they had more options to get promoted...

It's not that guns were despised, quite the opposite, but the main role of an officer was to lead the soldiers and to give example by showing bravery, not to fight, and while a captain could give orders without trouble while holding a polearm in his hand, he couldn't do the same if he was busy aiming, shooting and reloading. And when they had to resort to close combat, the officers would give example engaging the enemy in front of their troops...

At the same time, knighthood lost its military meaning and became just an honorary rank.

EDIT: Also, arquebussiers required more agility, since they were expected to run towards the enemy, shoot and retreat back to the protection of the pikes when pressed back, while pikemen need more strength to use the pikes effectively.

[Misery Esquire]

Actually, while this discussion of the Pike & Shot age is going:

Did the early musketeers (fusiliers, etc) ever willingly engage in hand-to-hand fighting, pressing home the charge as their Napoleonic successors would, or was it left to the blocks of pike (& assorted polearms) and decreasingly extant swordsmen? (And those wacky Landsknechts.)

Trying to search mostly results in "Yes, of course musketeers fought in melee", which is fairly obvious because people without a gun will close and try to kill you, and you have to do something about that (run, fight or desperately reload...), but my curiousity is whether they ever chose to start the fight. The early options for a melee weapon seems to have been to bring along your own sword, or plug bayonets. With the change from matchlock to flintlock (a studier mechanism) and the socket bayonet I can see why the later soldiers would've been happier to temporarily treat their gun as a spear, but how much of a change was it really?

[Vinyadan]

There are some fun adventures of Thomas More and Erasmus with letters of credit. I think that the banker servicing Erasmus was called Maruffo or Meruffus, a Genoese family, although I never had heard of them before.

[No brains]

In terms of performance, how does a brigandine differ from a solid breastplate? My guesses are that a solid plate might be proportionally stronger in terms of weight, yet may be more expensive and harder to repair. I assume that in their own ways, they are equally labor-intensive to make, yet a solid plate requires more specialized knowledge.

[rrgg]

@clistenes

Thanks.

One other interesting possibility i've come across is that military treatises repeatedly stress the "honor" of being a pikeman Because carrying a gun was more popular and they wanted to shift that opinion. In the military thinking of the time the pike square was still the 'moral strength' of a battalion, ie if the pikemen broke then the shot nearby also broke and ran but if the pikemen held fast then the naked shot can seek safety with them and potentially rally if they start to waver. Thus battles were still won by quality pikemen even if shot were "the fury of the field". Normally officers like seargents and those guarding the ensigns would be carrying "short weapons" such as halberds, but writers specify that captains themselves should carry a pike, apparently as an example.

[Galloglaich]

So here is a little bit more about currency and mining.

First, a magnificent 16th Century book, De re metallica, by that fascinating Renaissance character Georgius Agricola, aka Georg Pawer or Georg Bauer.

His book is a fascinating, magisterial examination of mining in his day, and this wiki offers a very good breakdown of all the nuances and realities of Late medieval mining, and specifically gold and silver mining, as well as the role of things like water- (and human and animal) powered machines and alchemy, which i got into upthread, as well as the unique role of the independent and free-roaming mining guilds, which I didn't really get into. If you have any interest in this at all I recommend at least skimming the wiki.

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

If you are really interested, you can find translations of this book into English on Amazon and elsewhere, including a very good translation by none other than US president Herbert Hoover.

This article on the Bergregal, or medieval Germanic mining laws, is also very interesting and worth a look

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minera...y_Roman_Empire

On Alchemy, a brief but tantalizing excerpt about another really interesting character from a bit earlier (15th Century) a female aristocrat named Barbara of Cillii


This is a depiction of Barbara from the contemporaneous war and alchemy (and black magic) manual, the Bellifortis of Conrad Keyser.

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

A powerful noblewoman, Barbara was initially perceived with some sympathy in Latin Europe as the young, pretty wife of the old Emperor appearing at the Council of Constance in 1409, where she made a good impression on the gathered nobles, burghers and Churchmen, in spite of the widespread dislike of her husband, Emperor Sigismund. Sigismund, perhaps warped by some rather harrowing experiences as a young man (including surviving the catastrophic Battle of Nicopolis in 1396) was in his dotage an almost comically wicked figure by that time, kind of like a would-be version of "Emperor Palpatine" from Star Wars, perpetually hatching evil schemes though they didn't always pan out. He was notoriously cynical and devious, and made little attempt to hide it.

Barbara, who was educated and apparently quite intelligent, managed to live a somewhat separate life and built up some power for herself in Central Europe.

Later in life (after the Emperor's death) Barbara was persecuted by her enemies in the HRE, before being essentially saved by the King of Poland who put her under his protection and granted her a substantial estate. She continued to have many enemies however, led by the Hapsburgs, and an individual allied with them (John von Laaz) has left us a fascinating description of her allegedly criminal alchemical tricks:

She knew how to measure her replies with a woman’s subtilty. Before my eyes she took quicksilver, arsenic, and other things which she did not name. Out of these she made a powder, with which copper was dyed white. It stood the test of notching, but not the hammer. With this she has deceived many people.

Similarly I saw her strew heated copper with a powder, which penetrated it. The copper became as refined silver. But when it was melted it was copper once more as before. And she showed me many such deceitful tricks.

Another time she took Iron Saffron and Copper Calx and other Powders, mixed them, and cemented with them equal parts of Gold and Silver. Then the Metal had within and without the appearance of fine Gold. But when it was melted it lost the colour again. Therewith were many merchants duped by her.



This may very well have been made up, taken out of context or exaggerated to get her in trouble, precisely because the penalties for conterfeiting were so serious, but regardless it gives us some insight into alchemical practices of the time which were related to forgery and currency manipulation.

Barbara was not the only noblewoman to be accused of forgery and similar crimes. The 15th Century Danish noblewoman Brigitta Tott, who moved to Sweden where she was constantly being accused of mischief, was repeatedly accused of forging seals and using them to make fake documents, causing all kinds of trouble. Though she was put on trial, her powerful family protected her from any real consequences.

A little later I'll tell the story of the Giant Mountains and the great gnome which roamed it.

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

[I]
Similarly I saw her strew heated copper with a powder, which penetrated it. The copper became as refined silver. But when it was melted it was copper once more as before. And she showed me many such deceitful tricks.

This is probably the same trick we play in a introductory chemistry lab--take a penny (US pennies are a thin copper coating over zinc) and boil it in a zinc-containing solution. It forms a silver brass alloy. When you then heat that "silver" penny more, it becomes the familiar brassy brass color (looks like gold). I am amazed that they were able to purify so many different metals that well back then. Those alchemists knew a lot more than we give them credit for.

[Galloglaich]

This is probably the same trick we play in a introductory chemistry lab--take a penny (US pennies are a thin copper coating over zinc) and boil it in a zinc-containing solution. It forms a silver brass alloy. When you then heat that "silver" penny more, it becomes the familiar brassy brass color (looks like gold). I am amazed that they were able to purify so many different metals that well back then. Those alchemists knew a lot more than we give them credit for.

Thanks for posting, that's very interesting.

yes the big revolution in chemistry in medieval Europe was in the 13th Century mostly, with many anonymous publications like that of 'pseudo Geber' clearly outlining how to produce a surprisingly wide variety of chemicals, drugs and acids with basically every step in the lab process included like a modern recipe and also how to make all the equipment we find in a basic chemistry lab in the 20th Century - the alembic, the retort, and so on.

They still debate who this guy was and how he figured everything out though it's clear a lot of it comes from Muslim sources (like Al Jabir who he was claiming to be)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Geber

[Knaight]

...and also how to make all the equipment we find in a basic chemistry lab in the 20th Century - the alembic, the retort, and so on.

Some of the equipment - even at the beginning of the 20th century a basic lab had more than that, some of which was newer. Sidearm flasks, various rubber seals, pipettes and burettes, etc. are all newer. That's without getting into the likes of IR and NMR, which cropped up heavily later in the 20th century.

[Galloglaich]

Some of the equipment - even at the beginning of the 20th century a basic lab had more than that, some of which was newer. Sidearm flasks, various rubber seals, pipettes and burettes, etc. are all newer. That's without getting into the likes of IR and NMR, which cropped up heavily later in the 20th century.

You are absolutely right - my bad, certainly no rubber, and most of the instruments would be far cruder and more simple. I just meant a 15th century alchemical lab would probably look surprisingly familiar in terms of the basic glassware and so on.










We also know that some of their stranger experiments like Dianna's tree actually worked.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana%27s_Tree

not to mention all the pyrotechnic and gunpowder stuff etc., and all these mining chemicals i was mentioning. Alchemy could be used for fraudulent purposes but was also in many cases, totally legit.

[Galloglaich]

makes you wonder about some of the black magic grimoire's particularly the more far-out 15th Century ones which are mostly unpublished ;)

In war-manuals like the Bellifortis you have demon-summoning methods right alongside gunpowder formulas and cannon forging techniques.

At the very least it makes for some interesting game hooks

[Brother Oni]

The early options for a melee weapon seems to have been to bring along your own sword, or plug bayonets. With the change from matchlock to flintlock (a studier mechanism) and the socket bayonet I can see why the later soldiers would've been happier to temporarily treat their gun as a spear, but how much of a change was it really?

An alternative was to invert the musket and smack an attacker with the stock. While it sounds like an unwieldy weapon (and it was in the hands of the average musketeer) it could still inflict some serious damage (a typical ECW musket was around 57" long and weighed ~9lbs). There's been a bit of debate whether the Native American gunstock warclubs were a result of European influences or just a happenchance of convergent evolution of weapon design, but again it suggests that using a musket like a club isn't complete desperation.

A final word of warning from an ECW re-enactor that I talked to however - make sure the barrel still isn't blistering hot from shooting before you start using it as improvised club!