The History Thread!

Nothing was going on among them, considering they're being ruled by the same person. lol Most of Italy, at least. lol

But there is something going on IN them, or just outside them (mostly Flanders, Italy, and Burgundy), wars. Lots of wars.

edited 19th Aug '16 6:57:51 PM by entropy13

War never changes. ;P

25 years ago today, Estonia regained its independence.

Heavy armor is awesome (or at least awesome looking) but, how much visibility did men at arms have inside [1]◊ their [2]◊ helms?[3]◊ Did they just half-blindly charge at the enemy ranks and then open (if possible) their visors? Or is it possible to fight on foot and see the enemy with one of those?

There were a wide variety of helms in use by men at arms in general so it would depend on the helm in question. However there are more then a few variants that reduce the field of view. They were used to seeing through their visors via training and familiarization in much the same way the knights trained and wore their armor on a regular basis.

edited 20th Aug '16 12:34:13 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I was thinking on helms more on the restrictive side, I know more open helms [1]◊ were used often, but since I never had a chance to wear a hounskull bascinet I wanted to know if it was possible to see anything at all (the eye slits in the first photo look so tiny!). I imagine hearing would also be impaired and the poor sad who had to wear the thing would feel as if he were inside an oven, but it is a good deal if it means that he could live to see the end of the day.

Also, how much movility knights had while wearing full plate armor? I mean something like this [2]◊, from the 15-16th century or so, and expensive, not a cheap mail or anything like that. I think this sort of armor would not be as heavy as it looks at first sight, but then again, I never had a chance to wear one of those (outside of videogames, that is.)

edited 20th Aug '16 12:47:39 PM by pepimanoli

All reports were that mobility was excellent, with modern reenactors doing cartwheels and handstands. Hot, though, as to be expected.

So here's something rather silly: a historian advanced a very questionable rationale behind the economic collapse that accompanies the Fall of the Roman Empire; an economist pushes back. The argument was that the Roman Empire was an almost entirely statist command economy, with the government being the only customer for the countryside's goods; thus the economy collapsed when the government went away. This, as the economist points out, is complete nonsense.

I see, thanks to you and to Tuefel Hunden IV for your answers and your time.

On the topic of roman economics, I always thought the empire fell because the middle class dissapeared. I don't really know what caused that but Dioclecianus' reforms changed how land was cultivated and made common people closer to serfdom than to citizenship.

I would not go by what modern re-enactors wear. The vast majority of them are not wearing period accurate armor rather they are wearing glorified sheet metal instead of armor of the same thickness of most medieval plate. Between Leeds and other studies Knights and men at arms would not be doing any cartwheels the weight of the armor was tolerable but not exactly in the sense you would be doing acrobatics.

Agile enough to fight, march, and ride but don't expect the nonsense you see a lot of re-enactors doing. Knights may have been conditioned in general but on average they were not actually wearing their plate all the time but rather lighter armor light coat of plates or mail unless they were expecting action. Many knights did conditioning in partial armor or maile shirts instead which was apparently common for French knights for a good long while.

Field armor depending on style and period could weigh between 60lbs at the lighter examples up to 90+ lbs for the heaviest field plate. Several suits were dual role and made to be worn for both the joust and field. On average they were closer to 70 some odd pounds.

When knights purchased armor they were not usually just purchasing a single suit but a suit and several pieces including maile shirts or lighter armor to wear under the plate or to wear around outside of being ready for the field.

I see. It's hard to tell if the suits of armor reenactors wear are historically accurate, but it would make sense if they were lighter, since reenactors are just regular people that love history and so they are not necessarily fit.

edited 20th Aug '16 2:17:14 PM by pepimanoli

They are accurate for style but several of the most favored suppliers are not exactly selling the full thickness. There is even a maker demo from a popular supplier where he is using the thinner sheet steel to make the armor. The early historical stuff was around 1.5mm give or take a couple .1mm in either direction. By the late medieval era there were breast and back plates up to 3mm thick. The late stuff is heavier then the earlier stuff because they started going for increasing thickness to combat fire arms and the improved weapons of infantry against armor. They even started using a layering technique to create forge welded layers of armor to improve resistance against gun fire. Which turned out to work pretty well. However it was expensive to make.

There is a caveate in favour of modern metallurgy the thinner modern steel would provide better protection for its given thickness then thicker medieval steel because unlike the medieval steel it is homogenous material and would have even tempering and hardness throughout. The medieval steel to quote Okashott was very streaky steel. It was full of slag and unconverted iron with uneven distribution throughout the armor and it was pretty common to have uneven tempering and hardness across a piece because of the great difficulty involved in manual hardening and tempering. The reason being they had no way to monitor the processes and control the process like we do now. Asian crucible steels are notably better steels because of the process used to create them.

Consider this as well. using the same dimensions of the SAPI front and black plates plus the side plates at 3mm thickness steel armor would weigh about 17lbs. The modern ceramics of the SAPI are only 3lbs lighter. The ESAPI with side plates is actually heavier by about a lb. Keep in mind though the steel breast and back plate gave more coverage of the torso vs the ceramic hard inserts.

edited 20th Aug '16 3:17:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Breastplates of the late Medieval through Renaissance periods were often "bulletproof" — at least thick enough to deflect a pistol bullet fired at an oblique angle. Granted, guns back then were not as powerful as they are today, or even as powerful as they were in the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution allowed gunpowder ingredients to be refined to a higher degree of purity, even before the invention of high-pressure smokeless powder.

(I recall reading an account of sea battles from the War of 1812, and it said that American-made gunpowder wasn't as good as British-made stuff. So the British frigates used long-range 18-pounders, while the American frigates used heavier 24-pounders to compensate for their range deficiency. The Yankees also conducted target practice for accuracy a lot more often, not just load-and-fire speed drills.)

edited 20th Aug '16 3:58:19 PM by pwiegle

re: Tuefel: hey, can you tell us if it would have been possible to do acrobatics in full plate carrier and SAPI? :P

The duplex and triplex armor could take musket fire directly and survive. But like I said it was expensive to make.

From what I have read of the period the British were regarded to have the best powder. It was partly due to their access to the ingredients and their processing methodology. French powder was apparently really damn dirty and the Americans for a time emulated a lot of the French military habits partly because they helped the US stand up their first army to begin with and supply it.

Is it me, or is the life story of Henry the Eighth something out of Shakespeare's work?

It's not much of a surprise, really. Shakespeare was active at about the same period — under Henry VIII's daughter Elizabeth I and her relative James I.

edited 21st Aug '16 1:03:04 AM by Greenmantle

Bellingcat with a brief history of open source intelligence. In other words, their bread and butter.

Today is National Heroes' Day here in the Philippines and is also considered the start of the Philippine Revolution.

Jalopnik on that one time James Hunt launched into an anti-Apartheid rant while commentating on the South African Grand Prix. Well, the guy's a legend for a reason...

TIL that Canada managed to screw up the Japanese surrender ceremony. GJ, guys, you may technically still be at war with Japan. >:(

Globe and Mail with the full story behind it.

And that the seats used for the surrender ceremony came from HMS King George V...

Parchment and medals dedicated to Mussolini and Fascism discovered beneath his obelisk on Rome.

Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.

This thought occurred to me when they mentioned "Bread and Circuses" on today's episode of Jeopardy!. I understand the circus part, but I don't quite get the bread part. ^_^;; Isn't bread the most commonly available food in the world?

Well yeah, the point is that the people demand nothing more than to be well-fed and entertained. In fact, the absence of bread has led to quite a few revolts throughout history. Remember that the original quote was from a time when access to "the most commonly available food in the world" was far less certain to the lower classes than it is in the western world today.

edited 31st Aug '16 3:06:55 PM by Druplesnubb

Wouldn't rice actually be the most common food in the world given that the primarily rice-eating cultures of China and India are also the two most populous?