I discovered new land! I mean, it is my backyard but no one told me it was discovered before.

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The Romans describe Germans as people who price keeping cattle over doing agriculture and have the annoying habit of burning down their own villages, granaries and fields and retreating into marshes or forests with their cattle if attacked. Feeding your army and ambushes will a big problem, and there is little loot to be expected.

Thank you guys for turning me onto this podcast- I listened to the first 5 episodes the last two days. So very interesting

I think its due to the umayyads invading the iberian peninsula, since then they have been naming the western armies as franks

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> Iirc, the originator of the myth was Bede

Makes perfect sense.

Can anyone recommend me any good books/articles about how wide streets/avenues were used to stop the public from rebelling? For instance in the french revolution there was a wide street constructed that went right through a rebellious neighborhood in order to break them up, and today Egypt is building a new administrative capital to insulate it from the growing population of poor and unhappy people in Cairo. Are there other instances in history like this you know of and any good books that might compare them? thanks

>European ship cannons were perceived to outrange Japanese and Indian cannons because the Europeans were always a step ahead on daring to reduce windage, because of trust in their production processes.

Their guns probably did have better windage thanks to superior manufacturing (to achieve such boring precision, they literally used a lathe big enough to turn a cast cannon against a boring bar), and better gunpowder too, but being able to create a 1:50 windage to bore ratio cannon tube doesn't automatically spell out to the ability to mass produce interchangeable parts, especially when said parts called for reproducing machined dimensions to a hundredth or thousandth of an inch accuracy, which again something that wasn't worked out until the mid-1800s.

Interesting you bring up Roman coins, because I recently read that the debased "silver" coinage of the late empire (when silver supplies had depleted) were basically just copper coins washed in silver salt to give them a silver coating that was so thin that it rubbed off after moderate use. As the coins had to be stamped after the silver washed, for good reason any stamped impression made on them couldn't be too sharp or deep, lest the silver wash would be damaged and the copper base be exposed, exposing the farce.

Best memoir of naval aviation in WWII? Or just book about naval aviation?

But there’s only a 10% chance of that

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Interesting detail. For centuries, European ship cannons were perceived to outrange Japanese and Indian cannons because the Europeans were always a step ahead on daring to reduce windage, because of trust in their production processes.

There was a topic half a year ago or something about 'ugly' late Roman coin faces vs. 'pretty' early Roman coin faces. The explanation people settled on was: mass production. Heavy pure gold and silver coins made in one production line for a relatively small upperclass is something else than making thin coins from alloys that don't flow well in many production lines for millions of users. So to keep the coin faces consistent and recognizable you made them simpler. The problem of scaling up production while keeping consistent quality is as old as civilization. And it still is, obviously, in for instance nanolithography.

That may be Byzantine influence, they had been refering to westerners as Franks since Charlemagne.

I was speaking more to names of municipalities which a lot of seem to simply get repeated in state after state.

That’s exactly it. Thank you. Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true.

Yep this is it. Dang i even remembered it was french. Thank you!

This really sounds like the sort of origin myth that a group would create to legitimatise themselves and give everyone a good pat on the back.

There were a variety of documented organisations that fought for Christians in Spain, Malta, southern Italy etc - and it would be a bit of a stretch for another, undocumented group of lowly crime lords fighting the same fight that nobody noticed!

Corvée labour

>The word "corvée" itself has its origins in Rome, and reached the English language via France. In the Late Roman Empire the citizens performed opera publica in lieu of paying taxes; often it consisted of road and bridge work. Roman landlords could also demand a number of days' labour from their tenants, and also from the freedmen; in the latter case the work was called opera officialis. In Medieval Europe, the tasks that serfs or villeins were required to perform on a yearly basis for their lords were called opera riga. Plowing and harvesting were principal activities to which this work was applied. In times of need, the lord could demand additional work called opera corrogata (Latin corrogare, "to requisition"). This term evolved into coroatae, then corveiae, and finally corvée, and the meaning broadened to encompass both the regular and exceptional tasks.

Because the outright majority never stayed. This is well documented by historians, in particularly Riley-Smith did extensive research into how crusades were organized by the nobility, it basically meant investing/pawning all their property to be able to fund it.

Important to point out that the Peace & Truce of God were purely Western Francian ideas. These were mimicked by Imperial ordinances in the HRE meant to have the same effect.

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Yeah. The idea of a crime syndicate can only realistically exist in an area of laws.

If it's just kind of a no man's land like France was back then, it really is just kings and kingdoms.

Your traditional godfather style mafia family is a feudal power structure in of itself, with the Don at the top, sons as heirs and the Commission being like embassies of different kingdoms.

What makes them a mafia or criminals is that they exist inside of an existing nation with laws that outlaw them.

This is a time when 'crime' in the way we think of it honestly wasn't even a thing.

a. Normans 100% did use combined arms as their tactics of choice. Look at Hastings. They have a whole army built up on combined arms tactics with archers, infantry and cavalry operating in support. The one exception is Civitate, because the Normans were hungry, starved and desperate and really didn't have a lot of troops left for a combined arms battle.

b. North european normans did not use couched lances as a standard tactic by the battle of Hastings. Take a look at the Bayeaux tapestry and look at how they're holding their lances (or read any account of the battle). This means that the practice was not widely used by the normans under William I, but was known and popular among the normans following the battle of Manzikert (because we have accounts of Michael VII training byzantine cavalry in the "european style". "Latinkon" however, units equipped and trained specificly to emulate european cavalry, did not appear until Manuel I).

c. The massed charge using couched lances was probably invented by the persians, and it was known by the East romans and probably used by Nikephoros Phokas (the elder) as the technique appears among East roman ally states like the Georgians (who most likely learned the technique during the Cilician campaign of 964. There are a number of military accounts, for example accounts of the Georgian-Seljuk wars, as well as georgian art that depicts riders using couched lances). Note that it's likely that the georgians did not use heavy shock cavalry, as georgian shock cavalry developed out of a tradition of horse archers (so, smaller horses bred for endurance rather than size, weight and shock).

The main reason for East romans not using shock cavalry techniques as standard lies in attitude, equipment and the enemies they faced. 1. The enemies East Rome faced were disciplined and more well trained than most italian infantry, blunting the efficiency of a massed charge. 2. East roman cavalry (kataphraktoi) used much heavier armor and we see no sign of destriers. 3. East Roman battle tactics in the 11th century favored a much more defensive style than the italo-normans.

In short. The normans took a technique that was known, but not favored, by the east romans. Decided they liked it and gradually became more and more specialized in gear and attitude towards favoring that tactic. It's the same kind of "combined arms devolution" that we see after Alexander (where we see a combined arms army devolving into the successor state army that heavily favors big blocks of pikes).

P.S: Note that all of the east roman ally states that took up shock cavalry tactics in the 10th and 11th century were what the East romans would have considered cavalry of lesser status. Light&medium supporting cavalry. Which means no barding or costly (and heavy) laminar armor.

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