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

Anyway, superb and fascinating write-up, with lots to consider. I’m thinking it would be good for a ‘best of’ post (unless you object), but I first wanted to ask… uh, let’s see.

By all means, go ahead!

I couldn’t help notice that you placed the sword last, there. Now, I have some ideas about why that might be, but they’re just ideas.

What say you, good sir– was the sword really that lesser-practical in such situations?

Basically, swords, especially knightly arming swords of the period, weren’t great at getting through armor, even quilted armor. First priority is getting through, then other considerations.

If that’s not just a cheeky line, that’s metal af, literally seeing your home (or at least the plot of land it was built on) in medieval history 🤘

The weapon is a Goedendag! Meaning “Good Day” in Dutch!

The charge was always the peak of value of a warhorse - in the earlier Crusades, the Germans are noted as dismounting to continue to fight on foot when charging was no longer possible, even in a field battle. While this is a failure to use a warhorse to its fullest potential, as a good rider will beat a good infantryman even in close combat of that sort, it also shows how core the charge was, and how okay riders might not trust their horsemanship to carry them through to victory, even 1-on-1.

When a charge comes, the worst thing an infantryman can do is the one thing that his body will be screaming at him to do when faced with a horrific mass of rapidly approaching spears and stampeding animals twice his size - move. And certainly, if it’s you vs. one mounted man, one of the stupidest things you could do would be to stand there and take it! But as a mass, the only hope of survival is to keep together, and keep steady. Anything less, and you get trampled.

One of the reasons why it was common for military thought of this period to consider one armored horseman to be worth ten (not metaphorically - literally ten) trained infantrymen with similar equipment is because infantry of this period often lacked significant group cohesion. Units were generally ad-hoc - even professional, full-time mercenary infantry companies were new at 1302 AD. If you were a full-time professional, you were mounted - end of story. And if you weren’t a professional, you didn’t spend much time with your fellow ‘soldiers’ training to move as a group.

The Flemish here, though, were only part-time militia… but as part of extremely tight-knit urban guilds who, furthermore, had a proto-nationalist grudge against the French. That the French crown had gone back on previous agreements and arrested their leaders only solidified the notion that being under the French meant slavery or death. Why not roll the dice for VICTORY or death instead? So these men - who came in large groups (being from densely populated cities) and who were determined to hold their ground - violated that basic thinking of low-friction infantry. They were ready to stand and fight.

On top of that, as they were largely middle-class and from a prosperous region, they were generally well-equipped - and as a defensive urban militia in the Low Countries, were armed and armored primarily with the thinking that they might have to contend with the exact kind of knightly forces that the French ended up sending after them.

Killing a horse is generally difficult work - they’re big creatures, and while they don’t always heal well (thus making their long-term prospects not fantastic), they can usually power through for the duration of the battle. Bad for the horse, potentially much-worse for the fellow stabbing it.

That being said, having one’s horse killed was immensely debilitating, and numerous knights during this very battle - the Battle of Courtrai - are noted as being killed after their horses were taken out from under them. Especially in bad terrain, getting tossed from your mount - even if you’re lucky enough to not have anything mobility-related crushed in the process - is not something you just roll and hop to your feet after. It’s a hefty opening for even a slower footsoldier to trundle his way over, put a foot on your chest, and then a spear through your visor. Or, more intimately (and reliably), the same visor-treatment up-close-and-dirty with a dagger.

The horse rearing up is one of many ‘tricks’ a well-trained warhorse has at its disposal. Sitting in a comfortable chair, browsing an image of a rearing warhorse in a book or in a video, it can be easy to forget that it’s not just for show - those flailing hooves? You do not want to get even clipped by one. That’s a broken bone - and probably a good trampling after - waiting to happen. Even if it doesn’t make contact, men actually close enough to make a strike are often spooked by the prospect of a combat-ending (and potentially life-ending) injury, and will prefer caution to aggression, drawing back instead of trying to get a solid strike in at the risk of having their skull cracked open.

The Goedendag, and like weapons, are generally pretty bad for horses. The length also makes it easier for a soldier to keep a greater distance from the aforementioned flailing hooves and the sort. But also as mentioned, horses aren’t entirely fragile - one good hit is far from a guaranteed kill. What are the odds you’re willing to roll, your life vs. one of probably several needed hits (assuming you get somewhere unarmored) to take the beast down? Most people will play it defensively, in light of that thinking.

The spear’s in a bad position, but that’s why lances were usually cast off after a charge - the knight should be drawing an axe, a long-handled mace, a warhammer, or, if nothing else is available, a sword for close combat! A knight on horseback not only has the advantage of being able to continue to use the horse as a weapon (as even without the momentum of a charge, a horse deciding to move over you is pretty generally going to go over you - moving out of the way, in individual combat is the wise move!), but also that his armor is likely heavier - since he doesn’t need to march or even charge in it, being carried on horseback - and for like reasons, he’ll tire slower than the infantryman. He also can pretty easily deny most of his body as a target by using the horse itself, at least against a single infantryman, while the infantryman has to protect everything above his own knees. That sense of danger will weigh much heavier on the infantryman’s stressed psyche than the knight’s!

A cavalryman against an infantryman, also, will have a greater momentum advantage - again, even without a charge. The cavalryman doesn’t need to exhaust himself in moving forward or to the side, and so can act much more aggressively. His horse might tire, but the knight, the one who needs precision and strength, not just to keep on moving in a vaguely lifelike manner, will remain fairly fresh. I mean, obviously, it’s better if the horse isn’t exhausted too, but the survival prospects are worse for the mounted soldier if he himself is exhausted. So basically, the infantryman has to defend himself against an opponent who can endlessly lunge at him, from a defensive posture, with a height, momentum, and mass advantage. Not great!

At Courtrai, specifically, the terrain was terrible for cavalry - uneven and soft. The militia, expected a pitched battle, worked to make it even worse, digging ditches to trip up cavalry, setting up barricades, caltrops, etc. Not only did they manage to make the French approach from a relatively narrow front (protecting their own flanks with natural and artificial barriers), but they made that front ugly for any approaching enemies.

The French were also immensely arrogant (insert mandatory joke here). The French commander sent in the French infantry first, and the battle looked close. Rather than letting the infantry carry on the attack, however, he recalled the French infantry… so that the French knighthood could claim the glory of winning over the filthy merchants and artisans who thought they could upset the natural and divine order! The French knights, expecting an easy mopping-up of the Flemish militia, were not prepared for the Flemish to stand their ground against a knightly charge - even one broken up by terrain and obstacles, and ended up getting themselves routed and killed en masse for their hubris, failing to maintain their own cohesion in the face of an unwavering wall of men with pointy sticks, and not managing to keep enough knights ‘on-target’ to penetrate the Flemish formation. After that, the Flemish surged forward and butchered the disorganized cavalry, and the terror of that led the rest of the (exhausted by previous fighting) French army to retreat.

The Flemish, who were not exactly pleased by the whole state of affairs that led the French to try to crush them, refused many unhorsed (and out-of-combat) knights the ‘right’ of ransom, instead killing them on the spot. Robert of Artois, in particular, was noted to have pled for mercy, but the Flemish militia who found him claimed to not understand him - unlikely, considering the importance of French in the region!

Hey! My day’s always brightened when I see your posts!

As long as people enjoy my reposts, I count my time well-spent!

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

Yeah they suck but not as much as double tap drone striking a school full of girls.

Considering that the death toll for the murderous US war on Iran, including both soldiers and civilians, remains under the count for civilian deaths alone in the Islamic Republic’s 2026 suppression of protests?

Gonna go out on a limb and say two things can be bad at once, and “Whataboutism” regarding the murderous and imperialist US war and associated massacres does not give any sort of moral high ground to the Iranian government, neither in general nor on the specific topic of domestic abuse of women.

The most documented form is the rape of virgin girls the night before their execution, rooted in a belief among prison officials that executing a virgin sent her to paradise, an outcome they wanted to deny her by having her raped first. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231206-rape-torture-used-to-silence-iran-s-mahsa-amini-protesters-amnesty-says

To give the rape religious cover, officials would have the girl enter a “temporary marriage” (sigheh) with a guard or official the night before her execution, with a dowry, sometimes literally a box of sweets, sent to her family afterward. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231206-rape-torture-used-to-silence-iran-s-mahsa-amini-protesters-amnesty-says

Words fail me.

tbf, it could very easily be read as a gesture of goodwill from a strong position to someone in an impossibly weak one. “Strange foreigners must be frightened and threatened so far from home, in enemy territory, surrounded by many times their force. Let us show them we mean to negotiate, not butcher them.”

The problem is really that the Spaniards were a totally new beast the Inca simply were not prepared for. Steel armor and cavalry are game-changers.

“Surely these strange foreigners wouldn’t try anything while outnumbered 10-1 with a massive army right outside the negotiation area, right?”

Narrator: “The strange foreigners did, in fact, try something”

You can see some early whitewashing in the portraits of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, wherein they were given somewhat ‘idealized’ and smooth features, even if still in the tradition of Roman portraiture. Emperor Claudius, who was something of a traditionalist who idealized the republic, revived the more realistic portraiture in full. Vespasian, also something of a throwback (though arguably more concerned with PR than ideology) also leaned heavily into these republican traditions.

This was called verism in portraiture - the portrayal, or even emphasis, of physical flaws. As an expression of ROMAN MANLINESS (you aren’t VAIN like some WOMAN, are you!?), as an emphasis of age (marking you as a PROPER Roman head of household, full of experience and wisdom, and not some young stripling!), and of traditional republican values - emphasizing that the man depicted is only a man, not some perfected godlike creature. A fellow citizen, the kind of person you could meet walking down the street - and may want to recognize if you do!

Check out this coin of Constantine I, straight-up proto-anime XD

Compare and contrast this deeply realistic depiction of Emperor Vespasian some ~250 years earlier:

And come to think of it, maybe the original graphics creator chose Big C specifically as a critical object of Marcellinus’ quote and attitude. I haven’t quite seen that approach before in quote-graphics, but it has some legs, I suppose.

That might be! I just felt the need to make the clarification upon seeing it, since that depiction of Constantine, in particular, is extremely famous.

Yep!

Funny enough, those cartoonishly massive eyes were a major feature of Late Roman imperial iconography. The Emperor is more than a mere mortal man, and he is always watching…

The picture, strangely, is of a bust of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, who Marcellinus was deeply critical of.

And the quote doesn’t have a strong association with this painting, to my knowledge, just a common thread in Christian persecutions throughout history.

It’s very dear to my heart - Ammianus Marcellinus, one of the last great pagan writers of the Roman Empire. “No wild beasts are so deadly to man, as Christians are to one another.”

What Russian victory looks like in the four-year SMO

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

The artist and source says it’s a depiction of a Mayan city.