Most Epic Screwups in History?

[Ondskan]

Stop hailing Sparta, please.
Their whole culture built on power, war and obedience/discipline.
It was a military culture in its core, it was racist and it was hereditary.

Sparta was also responsible for starting the war.





And Rome was a totalitarian empire which was lucky to have caring emperors that at times listened to the senate and the people but at other times were brutal, totalitarian and viscious, especially towards non-roman citizens.

 

[Dachs]

Stop hailing Sparta, please.

I am not "hailing" Sparta. Stop making strawmen out of my statements, please.

Their whole culture built on power, war and obedience/discipline.
It was a military culture in its core, it was racist and it was hereditary.

Yes, and? Never said it wasn't. That is different from a military junta. Well, except for the "hereditary" part. The gerousia and the ephoroi were definitely elected officials.

Sparta was also responsible for starting the war.

The commencement of hostilities was a consensual act. Had Perikles withdrawn the Megarian Decree there would have been no war.

And Rome was a totalitarian empire

You don't know what the word totalitarian means, nor how it is impossible to apply it to any premodern society.

which was lucky to have caring emperors that at times listened to the senate and the people but at other times were brutal, totalitarian and viscious, especially towards non-roman citizens.

I don't know where you're getting the "non-Roman citizens" bit, and I wholly agree that Rome was lucky in getting some good emperors and unlucky when it got bad ones. But the "bad" ones are often misrepresented, and were generally not totally autocratic. Attempts at autocracy were generally met with revolt and removal.

 

[innonimatu]

The Roman Empire was first a Monarchy, then a republic then a totalitarian monarchy in which the "dictator" was selected for life and ruled with an iron fist. Stop spreading disinformation.

The princeps did end the republic when they took the power to appoint magistrates, but he was just continuing Sullas' work anyway, taking from the senate what had been taken from the comitia. The passage from Republic to Empire was not a break but a gradual evolution. While constitutionally the emperor might well seem an absolute monarch his rule was tenuous all across the empire - most cities had a large degree of independence, the bureaucracy depended on local oligarchs.

Sparta was not a democracy, it was a military junta. A good/just one, but still a military junta.

No, it was somewhat "democratic", but the citizens who had a voice on politics were few (a few thousands, at some points perhaps only hundreds), and property mattered - I'd call it also an oligarchy. As for justice, I guess that opinions would vary, between citizens and servants/slaves... not that democratic Athens didn't had those too!

The Roman Empire was probably more of a "military junta" than Sparta ever was. Most emperors either were generals or depended on the support of important generals. Control over the professional army of the empire was the main support for the emperor's power. An emperor who lost the support of the army was finished - the first one to commit suicide, Nero, did it when he believed he had lost that support (a pity he didn't wait some time...).

 

[Ondskan]

@D~
The Roman People were at the mercy of their dictators and had to revolt to even have a chance to get them out of office. And you claim that this system of dictatorship and rebellion was to prefer over a republic?

At least in the republic they could get rid of the bad dictator or through changing the senate get different things done. Also back then the dictator or president in modern terms would just sit for a maximum of 6 months, the emperor sat for lifetime and had more influence.

(a pity he didn't wait some time...).

Are you kidding me? Wasn't Nero the madman?

 

[Dachs]

The Roman People were at the mercy of their dictators and had to revolt to even have a chance to get them out of office. And you claim that this system of dictatorship and rebellion was to prefer over a republic?

You're throwing these strawmen all over the place. I said that there were pluses and minuses to having an empire as opposed to a republic, and that one of the pluses was the end of factional strife. If you were the average Italian during the last hundred years of the republic, you would have wanted to be in a peaceful Empire too.

Are you kidding me? Wasn't Nero the madman?

Nero was not insane.

 

[Ondskan]

Oh common...Nero was like ultra-authoritarian and is suspected of burning down his own city.

 

[Dachs]

Oh common...

I think that both Nero and I, while dissimilar in most ways, are not common by any stretch of the imagination.

Nero was like ultra-authoritarian

He was not authoritarian. Kindly provide evidence for these policies.

and is suspected of burning down his own city.

And most sane, well-respected historians don't believe that that particular rumor has so much as a grain of truth. Read Tacitus pls.

 

[Ondskan]

HE WAS NOT AUTHORITARIAN?!


I'm not even going to debate this with you.
I'd rather have Mussolini than him.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Great_Fire_of_Rome


CTRL+F

= Tyrant
= Power
= Murder


Try that

 

[Dachs]

HE WAS NOT AUTHORITARIAN?!


I'm not even going to debate this with you.

Because you'd lose?

I'd rather have Mussolini than him.

Meh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Great_Fire_of_Rome


CTRL+F

= Tyrant
= Power
= Murder


Try that

It's funny that you're being condescending to me. Did you even read the article? Have you any clue as to how serious historians generally disregard the sensational aspects of Suetonius' (and Dio's, but to a lesser extent) history, and why in this case Tacitus' version is generally accepted? Did you note the part about how Nero actually rushed over from his Antium villa and organized a relief effort for the poor (the poor of Rome actually being very well off under him, due to his battles with the Senate and privileged aristocrats over urban poor welfare measures)?

 

[Ondskan]

Meh.
You're obviously far more knowledgable than me in these matters but that does not stop me from disagreeing with you.

I commented on how a democratic ancient world would've been better than the authoritarians winning. You claim there are problems with the democratic system and cite isolated cases without providing background information to why they happend. (The early social revolts in the Republic and the War that i still firmly hold to be Spartas fault + the deep rift between the militaristic, roaylist Spartian society and the freer, philosophical democracy of Athens).

You claim Nero not to be authoritarian despite the fact that he was.
I should indeed read more, perhaps he was a good emperor. I am not familiar with all the things he's done for the poor and underprivileged.
But the many rumours surrounding him and the horrible facts that haunt his history such as the murder of relatives are definetly to be taken as a sign of at least a limited insanity of some form or at the very least as a reflection of his extravaganza.

 

[Dachs]

Meh.
You're obviously far more knowledgable than me in these matters but that does not stop me from disagreeing with you.

That's a good thing. Question historical authority, it's fun.

I commented on how a democratic ancient world would've been better than the authoritarians winning. You claim there are problems with the democratic system and cite isolated cases without providing background information to why they happend. (The early social revolts in the Republic and the War that i still firmly hold to be Spartas fault + the deep rift between the militaristic, roaylist Spartian society and the freer, philosophical democracy of Athens).

Freer being a rather important word, there. Athens had an empire; a loose empire, admittedly, but an empire all the same, in which political, economic, foreign policy, and military decisions of the members were subordinated to those of Attika. They permitted slavery. They were engaging in economic imperialism at the time of the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (the aforementioned Megarian Decree) and actively attempting to subvert the treaty-defined power blocs of Greece (the Korkyraian crisis). Athens was not blameless in the war by any stretch of the imagination, anyway. That does not mean that I personally hold Sparta to be totally blameless or that I think that their society was particularly good, much less "superior" to that of the Athenians. But attempting to whitewash the events of the war, to claim that the Athenians did no wrong, is intellectually lazy. There are two sides to every coin, after all.

Too, I would avoid referring to the oligarchies that dominated Greece after the fall of the Athenian empire as totalitarian or authoritarian universally. Some were; the regime of the Thirty Tyrants, for example, at Athens was a despicable system, arbitrary and invasive, and I personally applaud Thrasyboulos' revolution against it (I also like Thrasyboulos for being a totally wicked badass general). But many weren't, and there is a clear reason why so many enjoyed popular support in their particular cities. It can be somewhat similar to many of the tyrannoi of early classical Greece; many were bad, but some were pretty good, and Athens would certainly be the worse for not having had Peisistratos.

You claim Nero not to be authoritarian despite the fact that he was.

But he wasn't. Most of his reign involved a quasipopulistic fight against aristocratic privilege, which is why he got such a bad rap in Suetonius.

But the many rumours surrounding him and the horrible facts that haunt his history such as the murder of relatives are definetly to be taken as a sign of at least a limited insanity of some form or at the very least as a reflection of his extravaganza.

Yeah, even I won't claim that he didn't do some stuff badly. Certainly his personal life was pretty screwed up. But if two pseudo-Nero pretenders arose in the East with popular support after his death, there has to be at least something good about the man. At any rate, I think that he was a much more complex figure than the one-sided "pyromaniac lunatic murdering deluded charioteering fatso" that one might think of when reading Suetonius.

 

[Ondskan]

Oh common. The Thirty Tyrants were imposed by Sparta after the defeat of Athens in the war we are discussing and later overthrown!

Common.....stop filling your otherwise extremely informative and well written posts with bull please?

Moderator Action: Infraction for flaming. - KD
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Oh about the Athenian democracy. It was young. I said in my first post it was imperfect. I would have liked it to develope.


About Nero.
You can be populist and authoritarian to.
This because the senate in fact was not democratic but racist and oligarchic in its nature. O_o

complicated stuff here.

 

[Dachs]

Oh common. The Thirty Tyrants were imposed by Sparta after the defeat of Athens in the war we are discussing and later overthrown!

...yes, which is why I used them as an example of bad dudes. There were pretty good dudes around too.

Common.....stop filling your otherwise extremely informative and well written posts with . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ....please?

But that part is the most fun.

 

[Ondskan]

...yes, which is why I used them as an example of bad dudes. There were pretty good dudes around too.

But that part is the most fun.

Obviously those dudes don't count as they were not elected freely and thus were not part of the Athenian democracy at all.

 

[holy king]

this discussion has been comfortably surreal so far.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Dachs-driven pwnership threads tend to be like that.

 

[jeps]

Most epic screwup in history? I'd have to say this discussion here might qualify.

 

[Masada]

Regardless of whether he trained his crews in gunnery on the Atlantic jaunt though it still wouldn't have made up for their inefficiencies in operating the other parts of the ship, and that's just as imortant.

Some things to add to this point.

Of Officers and Men:

The French Revolution had gutted the French navy and swept away most of its competent admirals, many of its officers had been driven out and it had been left to rot in port for years. To boot the French naval gunnery corp which was associated with the crown was particularly hard hit. The navy was a shadow of what it had been pre-revolution.

Villeneuve also had the absolute dregs of France to crew his vessels, he ended up with criminals, invalids and generally terrible sailors. Why? Because the Grand Armee had already swept up all the decent men and most of the decent sailors had sought more fertile ground after not being paid for long periods during the revolution. The Spanish were in an even worse situation with regards to their crews, which was nothing new because they had always traditionally had poor crews.

Of the skill of French and Spanish Gunnery:

As a general point about French gunnery it must be remembered that the French heavily emphasized chain shot, range and accuracy vs. the British preponderance towards solid shot, close range and rapid fire. This showed in Trafalgar, the French could not make use of their advantage in range fire. The Spanish were also completely inept with their cannon even if they did have good ships the Santasima Trinidad comes to mind.

In any case you don't achieve much more with gunnery practice with gunpowder to be honest when your dealing with such a weak core to start with. Assuming you had the experienced gunnery officers and enough trained gunnery crews to start with your still going to have problems training them up sufficiently in the given time not to match the English. Besides the majority of training for a gun crew was mock loading without actual gunpowder, you went through the motions endlessly, simply because gunpowder was so darn dangerous.

Conclusion:

In any case it still wouldn't have mattered it would have been a drubbing whatever happened. You can't expect anyone to extricate themselves from having their line cut, with their van ditching them - good job Dumanoir - with the bit which only overshot later in the day forced to turn around and spend most of the rest of the day tacking aroundand only just managing themselves to get away - don't forget that the van itself was a significant slug of the combined fleets.

The French and Spanish preformed quite admirably with a great deal of individual bravery and the fate of the Santasima Trinidad and the Redoutable for their respective more than illustrates that. It's also important I think to remember that the first ship and second ships of the British line the Royal Sovereign and Belleisle were minimum forty five minutes ahead of the rest of the line and only a kilometer ahead of their fellows.

 

[privatehudson]

Agreed and good additional points.

 

[Sharwood]

Obviously those dudes don't count as they were not elected freely and thus were not part of the Athenian democracy at all.

He was referring to all the 'good' tyrants out there. And there were many. Tyrant simply means one who gains power through unconventional means, there's nothing perjorative about it, though it has come to be seen that way. Probably due to the fact that those "unconventional means" usually involved betrayal and murder. But this was not always the case. The legendary Oedipus was a tyrant, for example, and he became king by slaying a monster - the Sphinx - that was terrorising Thebes.

As for the rest of your comments, well, Dachs has quite thoroughly schooled you, and it was great to watch. And please stop saying "common." It's "come on," or "c'mon." Or, if you're Joe Pesci, "C'maaaaaaaaarn." One must also beckon a person with their fingertips, preferably while brandishing a switchblade, for that last one.