History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

Seeing as how I said "the church never reformed," I am correct. That is if you think leaving the church made life better for those who did. Otherwise we are not reading the same dictionary meaning for the word reformed. I would state, the church is reformed, if it dropped infant baptism, and the pope stopped being the final authority on church doctrine, for starters. As a religion what the Catholics do is really not my concern. As representing God on earth, that is an entirely different matter.

"If you use this incredibly specific meaning that I haven't described and which no one could reasonably infer, then I was right all along."
 
Seeing as how I said "the church never reformed," I am correct. That is if you think leaving the church made life better for those who did. Otherwise we are not reading the same dictionary meaning for the word reformed. I would state, the church is reformed, if it dropped infant baptism, and the pope stopped being the final authority on church doctrine, for starters.
Most Protestant churches practice infant baptism.
 
If Catholic authority mindset is how slavery came to happen, why was there slavery before Christianity and why did Protestants keep engaging in it? I really dont bloody get where that manure comes from.

And yet we still have slavery today, it is just under another title: human trafficking.

Most Protestant churches practice infant baptism.

Exactly, so the church just made culture more palatable for baptized members?
 
Would you care to explain your point?
 
This is a fairly ill-defined question, but one that goes back to the Romans vs Zulus that started this thread:

Is it meaningful to say that medieval armies were better/worse than classical armies? That is, was there a progression of improving weapons/equipment/tactics/training/logistics in pre-gunpowder Europe that led to a gradual improvement in armed forces? Civ leads us to think that a battalion of medieval pikemen were better than a phalanx of Alexander's, and this is a very tempting narrative to fall into but I don't know how valid it is.
 
Would you care to explain your point?
If one group of humans views another group as no better than slaves, then they will use them as slaves.
 
This is a fairly ill-defined question, but one that goes back to the Romans vs Zulus that started this thread:

Is it meaningful to say that medieval armies were better/worse than classical armies? That is, was there a progression of improving weapons/equipment/tactics/training/logistics in pre-gunpowder Europe that led to a gradual improvement in armed forces? Civ leads us to think that a battalion of medieval pikemen were better than a phalanx of Alexander's, and this is a very tempting narrative to fall into but I don't know how valid it is.
Depends who and when, but in general:
In terms of equipment, it was a crapshoot. Peasants were still peasants but the equipment for the elite was generally better than what came before it.
In terms of tactics, solid win to classical generals. A good medieval general was one who occasionally attempted an envelopment intentionally.
In terms of training, it was a crapshoot. The elites and those who were expected to fight were generally highly trained. Frankish knights were regarded as being exceptionally skilled and fighting in close order; but their skill at fighting as part of a larger army was a bit suspect to put it mildly.
In terms of logistics, it was a crapshoot until you get to the Romans. Those guys win hands down for centuries.

However, it is important to note the old military adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy. As the Romans found at Adrianople and Charles the Bald found at Andernach stacking the deck does not ensure victory.
 
Depends who and when, but in general:
In terms of equipment, it was a crapshoot. Peasants were still peasants but the equipment for the elite was generally better than what came before it.
In terms of tactics, solid win to classical generals. A good medieval general was one who occasionally attempted an envelopment intentionally.
In terms of training, it was a crapshoot. The elites and those who were expected to fight were generally highly trained. Frankish knights were regarded as being exceptionally skilled and fighting in close order; but their skill at fighting as part of a larger army was a bit suspect to put it mildly.

Given that the example used was pikemen, this is a bit suspect, to put it mildly. Peasants didn't compose armies until the French revolution, by the way. (Exception for the Swiss here.) But you are correct in the sense that Mongol armies generally made mincemeat of the average European, knight-led army. But, and this is a big but, that was because of a Mongol military innovation.

In terms of logistics, it was a crapshoot until you get to the Romans. Those guys win hands down for centuries.

Well, unless they venture into uncharted territory, like Germania or Parthia.

However, it is important to note the old military adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy. As the Romans found at Adrianople and Charles the Bald found at Andernach stacking the deck does not ensure victory.

Cannae comes to mind. (Or basically any victory of Alexander's.) But this wasn't the question.
 
This was pretty much what I had I suspected. The natural follow up question is, how could this happen?

Military proficiency is such an elementary part of a state's survival, that it is surprising it got so much worse. Obviously a 14th century French King would have little knowledge about Roman tactics or logistics. But a 6th Century Lombard Lord should have known some of it. And in the following 1000 years it does seem strange that nobody was able to reinvent what are - fundamentally - reasonably simple ideas. I'm guessing that some of it was due to technology (the ability to mass produce chain mail for example), but from what I gather late medieval technology had surpassed classical Rome in most respects. So what happened? Where there cultural forces at work too? Knights being too proud to use sneaky tactics?
 
There's a difference between knowing about something and being able to implement it. Elaborate tactics require rigorously drilled soldiers and a professional officer corps, which don't really exist in Europe between the Classical and early modern era. Medieval training was largely individual, armies were lead by whatever nobles happened to be in attendance, and beyond basic distintions between infantry, cavalry and archers, soldiers would tend to organise themselves on the field on the basis of personal ties, rather than equipment or training.
 
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Given that the example used was pikemen, this is a bit suspect, to put it mildly. Peasants didn't compose armies until the French revolution, by the way. (Exception for the Swiss here.)
I was using peasant in the "anybody who wasn't a part of the aristocracy" who while excluded from the low level skirmishing endemic in the "Dark Ages" definitely were levied to fight in larger wars.

But you are correct in the sense that Mongol armies generally made mincemeat of the average European, knight-led army. But, and this is a big but, that was because of a Mongol military innovation.
I never said a thing about the Mongols.

Well, unless they venture into uncharted territory, like Germania or Parthia.
The Romans never had a serious German or Parthian problem, but the Germans and Parthians had a serious Roman problem.
Trajan and Septimus Severus conquered the Mesopotamia heartlands and established Roman provinces there; while in retribution for Teutoberg Forest, the legions did an admirable job of burning, raping, and pillaging German towns. Against the Parthians and Germans the Roman Army performed very well. That they lost a battle or two sort of proves my point: that no matter how much you stack the deck in your favor Lady Fortune is a fickle mistress.

Military proficiency is such an elementary part of a state's survival, that it is surprising it got so much worse.
Different != worse. Different states had different goals with different resources with different understandings about what warfare entailed and how to go about doing it. The style of warfare and societal organization employed by Aethelstan was well suited to how the Anglo-Saxon kings understood the relation between warfare and society. Warfare was largely about getting prestige and loot to curry favor and distribute benefits to your followers so it makes no sense to try and support a large "professional" army which would only introduce more possible competitors for royal favor.

But a 6th Century Lombard Lord should have known some of it.
Not fighting with a professional army did nothing to stop the Lombards from carving out a large, prosperous, and stable kingdom despite the efforts of the "professional" Roman Army and the Romano-Gothic freemen levy/warrior aristocracy Ostrogothic Kingdom.

I'm guessing that some of it was due to technology (the ability to mass produce chain mail for example), but from what I gather late medieval technology had surpassed classical Rome in most respects.
Where do you get the idea that chain mail was ever "mass produced" in the modern sense of the word or that it was somehow lost due to technological regression? Chain mail fabrication was, is, and always will be a tricky, fiddly, and time consuming effort. Dark Age kingdoms were not poor. A couple of years ago a large collection of Mercian gold inlaid sword hilts was found buried in the UK. Based off of our understanding of the size and structure of the Mercian army; either a royal officer managed to loose a quarter of the sword hilts of the Mercian kingdom in one go, or the Mercian army -and Kingdom- was wealthier than is commonly thought for a "dark age" kingdom.
 
I kinda recall reading somewhere that like during "the barbarian invasions of the roman empire" in like the 400's or whatever, a phalanx unit or whatever it's called in Sparta defeated like an invading gothic force

but I'm not confident that this memory is correct or that whatever wource I got it from is credible
 
This was pretty much what I had I suspected. The natural follow up question is, how could this happen?

Military proficiency is such an elementary part of a state's survival, that it is surprising it got so much worse. Obviously a 14th century French King would have little knowledge about Roman tactics or logistics. But a 6th Century Lombard Lord should have known some of it. And in the following 1000 years it does seem strange that nobody was able to reinvent what are - fundamentally - reasonably simple ideas. I'm guessing that some of it was due to technology (the ability to mass produce chain mail for example), but from what I gather late medieval technology had surpassed classical Rome in most respects. So what happened? Where there cultural forces at work too? Knights being too proud to use sneaky tactics?

By late medieval times knights were made effectively obsolete, both by innovation (pikemen, longbowmen) and invention (gunpowder). I'm not sure how that equates with ' it got so much worse'. Different situations require a different military approach. That's not really a matter of things getting better or worse, but of adaptation.

I was using peasant in the "anybody who wasn't a part of the aristocracy" who while excluded from the low level skirmishing endemic in the "Dark Ages" definitely were levied to fight in larger wars.

Well, I've heard of peasant wars, but not really of clerical wars. Not everybody who was not a noble was a peasant.

I never said a thing about the Mongols.

It was an example, and not about Mongols, but about innovation.

The Romans never had a serious German or Parthian problem, but the Germans and Parthians had a serious Roman problem.
Trajan and Septimus Severus conquered the Mesopotamia heartlands and established Roman provinces there; while in retribution for Teutoberg Forest, the legions did an admirable job of burning, raping, and pillaging German towns. Against the Parthians and Germans the Roman Army performed very well. That they lost a battle or two sort of proves my point: that no matter how much you stack the deck in your favor Lady Fortune is a fickle mistress.

You're basically reversing the issue. Roman invasions into Germanic or Parthian territory were, on the whole, unsuccessful. You might. of course, argue the opposite as well, but the Romans were never able to conquer either Germania or Parthia. Hence the example. and, you can perform well while not winning a conflict. (But I wouldn't call battles Carrhae 'performing well': it was a disastrous defeat. With the succeeding Sassanids things only got worse.)
 
Adjica is basically correct about the balance of threat on the Roman frontiers (Trajan, remember, took Roman armies to the end of Mesopotamia), but you need to add the word 'usually'. The 3rd century in the East and the late 4th in the West were notable exceptions, though it's right to point out that in other periods, the Roman obsession with fighting eastern and Northern 'barbarians' was totally divorced from the level of existential threat that either represented. Politics by other means is the watchword here.

This fits into a broader point about ancient warfare - that the idea we had a few posts ago of war as something that states to to avoid being wiped out wasn't really how everyone saw it. It was that, of course. But an awful lot of warfare was more or less ritualistic. In Greek hoplite battles, for instance, it was normal for about 95% of fighters to walk away from a battle. When the city of Ambrakia went to war against Athens and lost 1,000 of their 6,000 fighters, Thucydides described it as 'the greatest disaster ever to strike a city in a single day' throughout the entire Peloponnesian War. I assume he's making the obvious exception.

Going to war was often much more about proving honour and settling disputes (often entirely domestic ones) than it was about trying to create enemies and wipe them out. The same is still true in quite a lot of tribal societies in Africa and Polynesia, where a normal year traditionally involves meeting another tribe in some place, throwing a few spears and going home - a fairly cosy state of affairs now made much less so by the intrusion of AK-47s.
 
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I've just returned from a trip to London, in which most of the buildings in the main streets looked to me like they were constructed around the renaissance era.

It got me wondering - what was the initial use of such buildings in such streets?
Did people live in them? What kinds of people?
Did they have those ground floor spaces, that are now occupied by stores, back then?
I can assume that large fashion brands and department stores did not appear before the late 19th century. And I can not imagine cheap markets and or craftsmen having their workshop in those "elegant" areas.

I believe many of you can solve this wondering...
In addition, are there any known descriptions / paintings / modern filming about it?
 
London was almost entirely rebuilt following the blitz. The vast majority of those buildings aren't older than 60-70 years.
 
Yes indeed. Regent St., Oxford St., and Piccadilly were among the most heavily bombed parts of London.
So before the war, did they look different?
In the matter of "aristocratic" classical design and space for stores in ground level.
If not, my question may be still relevant. I think it can be found in other capitals as well, right?
 
In general terms, most countries used the opportunities to get rid of street layouts that really didn't account for motor cars, and also to bulldoze the worst of the old slums - generally making post-war city centres greener, more spacious and generally a bit more pleasant than they had previously been, while compensating for that (and post-war immigration) by making the edges of towns far less rural and much more high-rise than anywhere had previously been.
 
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