I meant mafia / organized crime as a group of (mostly men) who would use their strength, numbers, and organization (in the form of attacks on other people trying to live peacefully)... And furthermore that their growing power gave them confidence to increase their activities until they controlled a local area. Whether the "good" powers around them are a King, or a local government, the villagers nearby live by the rules that king or govt established, until the "mafia" gained enough power to undermine those rules and terrorize the people. Only those people who do what the mafia wants are left alone (pay protection money, or give up their harvest and women), others get attacked.

I suppose it's a stretch and I'm playing with words here but at its core, might makes right, and struggles for power are as old as time itself, and when the violent bands got big enough to undermine society, something had to be done with them.

The Normans didn't really use combined arms as tactics 101; their play was normally just relying on their heavy cavalry charge to win the day. And they didn't develop their heavy cavalry tradition from the Romans, as Roman writers were astounded and impressed by the power and efficacy of Norman heavy cavalry. As of the battle of Dyrrachium, Roman cavalry still advanced to contact with a trot and used the lance with an overhand or underhand stabbing technique, whereas the Normans charged at length with lance couched. It wasn't until the reign of Manuel I that Roman cavalry were trained in the couched lance technique which, by then, had become standard in western Europe.

To be fair, Alexios I wasn't expecting anything like a crusade. He simply asked the Pope to encourage western knights to head east to help the Byzantines in their struggles against the Turk. Pilgrims like Robert III of Flanders had previously sent knights to help the Byzantines, so Alexios was probably expecting if the Pope made appeals for the desperate plight of Orthodox Christians more western European knights would be willing to head east to fight for the empire.

To be fair the concepts of crime syndicates, crime and mafias are after feudalism.

"The mafia" doesn't really exist without 'the law" and the modern idea of 'the law' doesn't really exist without literacy or policemen.

In a time before laws were written, before police existed, an entity like mafia would essentially be the police. Who else was there? You'd have a nobles guards but those are more of a simple military force than people who investigate theft, murder or whatever.

The idea of a serial killer doesn't even exist until the 1910s because frankly no one actually cared or bothered to keep track of murders.

What is the word for when medieval peasants were forced to work for periods of time? Governments would enlist them and force them to help construct infrastructure.

Language is more than just vocabulary. It is the grammar structure that makes English a Germanic language. It has a shit ton of Latin based words though

Well done

They've done lots of that with crime scenes and victim IDs. And the results are surprisingly accurate. These ARE what these people looked like.

After the 13 original colonies, th new states were named either by the Spanish or after local indigenous populations who then quickly displaced

You could try going to the National Personnel Records Center and Military Personnel Records in St. Louis, Missouri. The National Archives also has and Access to Archival Databases resource that you can search through.

Why go home? land and onn a major trade route.

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Some individuals did, anyone who survived and got back home (getting back also involved survival) and retained or was able to replace his gear and horses probably brought back a profit in loot, at a guess. However, that is a whole series of conditions.

Of course, they actually conquered the Holy Land at one point, and managed to hold Jerusalem for nearly(?) a century, so there was an acquisition of wealth there, although the smart money would have been transferred out of the Levant and back to England and France, because the wealth that was built up and stayed there turned out to be pretty transitory from the Crusaders’ POV.

Lightning ETA: I strongly suspect the Crusades were a net economic loss for the Crusaders. There’s so little profit in dying.

Wait until you hear about the flaming pigs.

I don’t think it’s surprising as much as it makes you pause in awe of.

Like to the earth that was yesterday, to society. 500 years ago was a different world.

Is really be interested in hearing them speak though. Even if i couldn’t understand old English etc. that would be fascinating to me.

I've read that the Mafia was originally formed to fight the Muslims in Sicily, and then the Spanish.

I haven't verified it, it might just be a widespread rumor. But it is widespread.

The biggest problem was that, as a Non-Governmental Organization, they didn't have any taxing power. So they subsisted on contributions. Some more voluntary than others.

For one thing it solved the Normandy issue.

Normandy had, after a short while of splitting domains into smaller and smaller fiefdoms, turned into a primogeniture (eldest son inherits everything). With very small and very poor fiefdoms there was also no room for most of those second, third and fourth sons in the retinues of relatives and liege lords. So Normandy turned to adventurism, where landless sons had arms and military training and went all over Europe to cause a ruckus.

This led to both:

1. The formation of what we think of as medieval heavy cavalry, as normandians served with the East Roman army (and learned east roman tactics). Which means we see a more combined arms army (with an increased use of professional archers and cavalry).

2. Norman armed men all over christian Europe (except scandinavia). Establishing a kingdom in Sicily and England and going on more ill-adviced adventures elsewhere (and eventually forming a core component of the crusades).

Now while a lot of English historians would like to put the Battle of Hastings as the opening for this new European era it's more accurate to push that back a decade, to the Battle of Civitate 1053, or even earlier.

They already de facto control them through trade anyways. Any ruler would have to be on good terms with the Romans to consolidate their power.

I believe they did a few times i remember reading about it on Wikipedia. But it was considered to undeveloped and far away to be worth the time to occupy govern. Roman Influence was still strong through the presence of outposts and trade that they had considerable sway on the politics of the area though.

Was all going fine until the Nazis and the Americans showed up and collapsed the temple

EDIT: Oof not a lot of Indie fans here

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This feudal class sounds like any modern day mafia or organized crime syndicate. How strange to think that despite all our progress, not much has actually changed in many parts of the world.

The fact that most of the First Crusade were French is why the Muslim chroniclers of the period referred to all Western Catholics they met as "Franj" or "Ifranji": the Franks.