History questions not worth their own thread

[Lord Baal]

"Augustus" was Latin for emperor (though not literally, but obviously the French would've been aware of this connotation). Strange that it became a posthumous epithet, if that's the case; though I suppose it's not much different than U.S. presidents continually promoting George Washington so that other generals don't outrank him, and so Washington can immediately take charge the moment the zombie apocalypse begins.

On which side?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I asked this question at the NaNoWriMo boards, but might get a better answer here (MC=Main Character):

Okay, so my MC is going to find himself in the Union Army that attacks at the battle of Fredericksburg in the American Civil War. I know about (or can find) the basics of the battle itself, but I would like to know what sort of equipment the average bluecoat would be carrying as he charged into battle, especially in one of the charges that was bloodily repulsed. (My MC is probably going to get himself killed here - don't worry, he gets better). I am pretty sure they had blankets and boots and the like, and I have seen "several days' cooked rations" mentioned, but what about trenching tools (axes, shovels, etc.)? What sort of rifle would he have, how were they loaded and maintained, and what sort of firepower did they have? Could they take down a large target like a game animal? Thanks in advance.

 

[say1988]

A lot of that (with regards to what equipment and how well maintained it would be) would likely depend on the man, experience, rank, and unit. Some poor city boy thrown into a new unit of raw recruits in his first battle will likely have older, more poorly maintained equipment then someone who grew up on the frontier and spent a period of time in the army and participated in other battles in what is percieved as an elite unit.

As for blankets and extra rations and such. I suspect a lot of that would have been left behind in an assault (or any battle) as it would be little more than a hindrance.

I don't know any details of the battle in question, but I am thinking just in general for any military.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Well, he had joined several years earlier from rural Pennsylvania, but didn't have a military or farming background. I know that the Union soldiers charged with their boots, and in many cases other supplies like their blankets, since the Confederates took them from the dead.

 

[Dachs]

I don't know whether the Federals went into the Battle of Fredericksburg with full kit, since they had to cross the river that morning and crap.

But the rifle a lot of them would've been carrying, if not all, was the Springfield Model 1861. Rifled musket, flip-up sights, triangular socket bayonet. One of the big problems was that the sight didn't line up with the trajectory all that well so you were supposed to aim low, but a rookie might not have that knowledge. If he's been in the Army as a Regular for "several years" he'd certainly have known by 1862. Shooting game - I'd probably worry about there being enough game to shoot what with large masses of tens of thousands of men in the area. I expect a Minie ball might even do too much damage to a deer, but I don't know anything about hunting so I probably wouldn't be reliable for that. And I think standard issue as far as ammunition goes is sixty rounds, but I'm not certain about that either.

Uh, other equipment. I'm almost certain that your average Federal would have a digging implement of some kind, possibly an axe too. Both sides entrenched far too often not to, really. Outside of that, I expect you'd have the same sort of stuff backpackers have had for centuries - tent and blanket, cooking implements, and the like.

 

[say1988]

Simply put the more experience he has with firearms the better the weapon is likely to be maintained, several years in the military would likely set a decent standard. But of course this would vary with the individual

I know that the Union soldiers charged with their boots, and in many cases other supplies like their blankets, since the Confederates took them from the dead.

Their boots is an obvious one, but when assaulting a fortified position I am surprised they would keep kit other than what was needed for the upcoming battle, the rest left behind at camp to secure later. A blanket may make sense as if you have to hold a position you may be there over night.

As Dachs says, 60 rounds is likely the official standard load (I have read that was British standard), but I expect you would find lots of men wanting to take extra. The Minie ball would kill pretty much everything he's likely to encounter, with possible exceptions of Grizzly or Moose if he wanders into their range.
And yes the Springfield was most common, but it wouldn't be unusual for him to have an 1853 Enfield (for example at least one Maine regiment was fully equipped with them, and being quite common among Confederates from whom one could have been picked up at any time) or others as they initially imported many different weapons to equip the fast growing army. Even smoothbores wouldn't be too unusual early in the Civil War.

I am assuming this is an enlisted man (most likely a private)?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

He is an enlisted man, yes. Signed up right at the start of the war. Also, he wouldn't be shooting game anywhere near Fredericksburg, but he would later find himself in the wilderness with everything he had been carrying when he was shot.

 

[say1988]

The only game in North America (excluding the arctic and subarctic) I would be worried about with a weapon liek that (and the ability to use it properly) would be moose and grizzly, and possibly bison, but I am not sure how thye would tend to react to being attacked.

 

[LightSpectra]

This has been driving me crazy. Every source I've encountered says that the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 was issued so that Maria Theresia could become empress. But she wasn't born until 1717.

So either it's the case that the sanction was intended for the emperor's other daughter, and no source bothers to mention it, or the "Sanction of 1713" does not refer to the year it was issued. Which is it?

 

[say1988]

It seems that Charles was just covering his rear in case he ended up with daughters (he had no children at the time). Perhaps it was an attempt to prevent a dispute over the throne, as there were no close males left in their family, or to keep the throne from simply going to a different branch of the family. I don't know the specifics, but it really just seems that Charles was preparing for the worst.

 

[Dachs]

This has been driving me crazy. Every source I've encountered says that the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 was issued so that Maria Theresia could become empress. But she wasn't born until 1717.

So either it's the case that the sanction was intended for the emperor's other daughter, and no source bothers to mention it, or the "Sanction of 1713" does not refer to the year it was issued. Which is it?

It's because the Sanction was supposed to nullify previous dynastic pacts made by Karl's brother Josef and his father Leopold. Originally, the plan had been for the female descendants of Josef to inherit the Habsburg lands after the extinction of all male-line descendants. When Karl ascended to the throne, he reneged on the earlier agreement and changed the framework so that any possible daughters he might have would be considered first.

 

[Dreadnought]

This is a question for our astute historians.

I've been studying in depth the Anglican revolt from the Papacy / Reformation in depth (just wrote a 14 page paper on it) and I seem to notice that often times Catholics come close to regaining England, but just don't go the full ten yards to regain full control from the Anglicans. I've decided that the best chance that Catholics had was with Mary I having a legitimate male heir. Instead of going really out of it and saying that she lives longer, I thought it was genuinely possible that she has a male heir, considering that most historians say that she did not have a biological disorder that prevented such birth (instead, they say she was under serious pressure to have a male heir, and that messed things up).

So, that's my question: Had Mary I had a legitimate male heir, what would be the result? Would Phillip II still keep a great influence in England? Or would a general Anglican revolt topple a Catholic dynasty?

 

[Plotinus]

I would guess that it would depend enormously on what that male heir did and what he was like, and on whether he had male heirs of his own who were also Catholic. One of the things that happened during Elizabeth's reign that made it effectively impossible for England ever to go Catholic again was the demonising of Mary's reign and the adulation of the Protestant martyrs (combined with the convenient forgetting of all the Catholic ones). Foxe's book of martyrs became as important to popular piety as the Bible itself. If Mary had been succeeded by a Catholic king who had not executed masses of Protestants himself, and (more crucially) had not allowed the mythology of Protestant/Catholic relations to became rooted as it actually did, then perhaps the English Reformation would have the same place in history as Justinian's promotion of Aphthartodocetism (i.e., brief mad religious experiment by dotty monarch). But it would have been a difficult feat to pull off, I should think.

 

[LightSpectra]

I would push the inevitability even further back to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, which is what gave an economic incentive to the common man to support the Anglican split in the first place.

Mary and Philip were absolutely despised in England. Her short reign probably prevented her from being assassinated.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I would push the inevitability even further back to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, which is what gave an economic incentive to the common man to support the Anglican split in the first place.

Mary and Philip were absolutely despised in England. Her short reign probably prevented her from being assassinated.

Really from a religious perspective that really didn't do anything. The Gaelic Irish and the Old English were just as happy to grab everything they could from the Monasteries, it didn't do much to convert them.

 

[Dachs]

And I thought most of the proceeds from that went to Henry anyway, to finance his play-acting wars on the Continent.

 

[ParkCungHee]

And I thought most of the proceeds from that went to Henry anyway, to finance his play-acting wars on the Continent.

True, just saying the willingness to loot monasteries doesn't show your religious affiliation. Heck, it wasn't long before Henry that Monasteries were looting Monasteries.

 

[Dachs]

True, just saying the willingness to loot monasteries doesn't show your religious affiliation. Heck, it wasn't long before Henry that Monasteries were looting Monasteries.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, just adding to it. Admittedly, I dunno about the Reformation and associated events anywhere except France and Germany, so I might be wrong about where that money went.

 

[duckduckswan]

Why are Greek cultures referred to as "Hellenistic" and Chinease as "Sino"? Are these Latin?

 

[Dachs]

Why are Greek cultures referred to as "Hellenistic" and Chinease as "Sino"? Are these Latin?

The Greek word for 'Greece' is Hellas, and its people are Hellenes. The original area called Hellas was small, just north of Delphoi, and associated with the Amphiktonic Council that later developed into one of the major religious institutions of Greece. It was only this area that Hellas referred to during the Homeric age, but during the dark ages and archaic period the word Hellene gradually began to encompass all Greeks. By the classical period this was more or less common usage. There's also speculation that it may have originated from the roots for our own people in one of the old Hellenic dialects, but I wouldn't know much about that.

Anyway, so Hellas/Hellenes, it's a quick step from there to Hellenistic. The Romans called the Greeks Graeci (sometimes) and the region in which they dwelt usually some variant on Achaea, which only refers to a part of the Peloponnesos (Achaea being both the site of one of the major groups Homer uses to refer to all of the 'Greeks' in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the center of a third- and second-century BC united southern Greek federal league that was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC). So it wouldn't have been them.

Hellenistic, fwiw, refers to the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the end of the last Hellenistic kingdoms of Ptolemaic Egypt and Baktria/the Indohellenic kingdoms, both falling around the end of the last century BC. (Though there is convincing numismatic evidence that one or more may have survived past the attested birth of Christ, namely Straton II. Though since the names of the Stratoi are in such flux, it's really impossible to say which number he may have had. )

Sino- does refer to a Latin word, but I think it may have had a Greek origin as well. Not nearly as clear on that.