That's basically the 600 year old Ottoman equivalent of spending $78,000 per Javelin missle.
They probably didn't need to but also you know what fuck you.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the very ornate weapons and armor we see today in places like museums were not necessarily intended for combat use.
They could be badges of office, things to be worn on parade, items used in religious ceremony and so on. Some times they were just made by an expert artisan to say “Yes, I am that good, I can easily make you good regular arrowheads too.” And then of course the classic commissioned by rich people to flex on other rich people in court, because look how fancy my arrows are.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
I mean to be fair there was a significant period prior to being "the sick man of europe" where the ottoman empire constantly and consistantly cranked out the dopest shit on the continent in pretty much every field
Oh
they were the 1980s japan of their day
if you want to read more about it then I highly recommend this book
For a good two centuries or so (1480-1680 give or take a couple decades) the Ottoman Empire was unquestionably a superpower and only the fact that they were busy doing other stuff* kept them from steamrolling even further into Europe.
*Like trying to keep the entire Arab world under their thumb, and trying to conquer Persia. Both things that no empire since has managed for long.
I mean they tried. But conquering sixteenth century europe was haaaaaaard.
Gundi on
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
popes were the ones who called up Crusades, right?
has a pope ever declared a crusade against like, a european country? or were they exclusively about super deadly long-term capture the flag games in the holy land?
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
popes were the ones who called up Crusades, right?
has a pope ever declared a crusade against like, a european country? or were they exclusively about super deadly long-term capture the flag games in the holy land?
Sort of? Constantinople was almost certainly considered part of Christendom, which is what turned into Europe. But the pope didn't call a crusade on it directly, it sort of just got sacked by crusaders as a result of a bunch of comical Benny Hill fuck-ups. The Fourth Crusade was originally supposed to be another Jerusalem run.
Edit: oh, and the Crusaders themselves got excommunicated midway through the series of fuck-ups, so I guess the pope has a clean record there.
Edit2: Ah, I forgot about the poor Cathars. Yeah, I guess when you look into it there were quite a few crusades against Christian heretics and European pagans.
I dunno they were about convinced every little bit of wood they found was the Holy Cross or any particularly smooth stone was the first stone Jesus, being without sin, fast-balled into that dudes head that one time.
popes were the ones who called up Crusades, right?
has a pope ever declared a crusade against like, a european country? or were they exclusively about super deadly long-term capture the flag games in the holy land?
So, funny thing is there's no universally agreed on list of crusades, but debatably the Cathars of southern France were kinda sorta christian maybe and everyone agrees there was definitely a crusade called against them.
The crusade against the Cathars, or the Albigensian crusade, is the origin of the phrase, "Kill them all and let God sort them out." As the Cathar heretics were never more than a large minority in the area some of the crusade commanders we're worried about "friendly fire." The Papal legate was more concerned about heretics pretending to be catholic to live so he told them, "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." or, roughly, "Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own."
Also, if you've played Carcassonne, the background the board game gives is that the players are settling a fertile area of France in the medieval era. Wonder how there's a fertile area of France empty enough to need settling? Oh, the city of Carcassonne was depopulated during the crusade.
There were also a bunch of crusades called against the pagan tribes of Lithuania and I think there was some spillover against the orthodox christians in the area but I don't think that was deliberate.
There were several crusades called in Iberia, the crusades against the Cathars (who were definitely Christian but very little is known about them since they all got murdered and almost all the sources about them are super biased.) and numerous crusades against the Prussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, etc.
I think minimum count usually puts the number of crusades at like fourteen or fifteen with some putting it in like the thirties.
The Northern Crusades weren't like the Middle Eastern ones from what I remember. No great armies meeting up and marching on a single objective. It was a very long campaign of conquest and colonization.
There were also crusades called against the Ottomans after they had captured a large part of the Balkans. Given that the Ottomans went on to threaten Vienna twice, I think you can guess how they went.
Edit: apparently the Hussite Wars in Bohemia (Modern Czech Republic) were crusades?
popes were the ones who called up Crusades, right?
has a pope ever declared a crusade against like, a european country? or were they exclusively about super deadly long-term capture the flag games in the holy land?
Sort of? Constantinople was almost certainly considered part of Christendom, which is what turned into Europe. But the pope didn't call a crusade on it directly, it sort of just got sacked by crusaders as a result of a bunch of comical Benny Hill fuck-ups. The Fourth Crusade was originally supposed to be another Jerusalem run.
Edit: oh, and the Crusaders themselves got excommunicated midway through the series of fuck-ups, so I guess the pope has a clean record there.
Edit2: Ah, I forgot about the poor Cathars. Yeah, I guess when you look into it there were quite a few crusades against Christian heretics and European pagans.
Fun fact: If you want to see the splendour of Constantinople, you can to go Venice. They got all the good stuff during the Fourth Crusade. Kind of like how if you want to see the wonders of Egypt you can go to the British Museum.
Warning: This story may be apocryphal. And anti-semitic.
Pope Innocent VIII was 60 in 1492, and in very poor health. Thankfully, his physician had a miracle cure: blood. And lots of it. (Also mother's milk.)
A wet nurse was easily procured, but where to get young, healthy blood?
Two 10-year old boys were promised 1 ducat each for "some" blood. The pope got his delicious, delicious blood transfusion – orally. But as we know, being pope is thirsty work, so sadly the boys died of blood loss.
Innocent naturally accepted the boy's 2 ducats as a (posthumous) charitable donation for his planned crusade against the Ottomans.
Then the pope died. And his successors had more than enough problems (multiple invasions of Italy by the French, Spanish, and Germans, for one) and so no crusade.
Warning: Some of the details here are apocryphal. But at least not anti-semitic.
In 1492, after Innocent's failed vampiric session and subsequent death, it was time for an election.
23 cardinals made it in time.
After 3 rounds of unsuccessful voting (the winner must have 2/3 majority, here 15 votes) where everyone had been bribing everyone else to vote for them, they were at least down to only a few candidates. Also, they were now only allowed small portions of bread and water to try to hurry the proceedings.
13 had (by increadibly generous bribes) been convinced to vote for the Dean of the College of Cardinals. 1 was the Dean himself. 7 were intractably opposed to the Dean.
And 1 was eighty-six-year-old Gherardo, the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. He was sick of the whole nonsense, tired of bread and water, and just wanted to go home to Venice to die in peace.
So when the Dean approached him, the Dean offered a bribe of effectively pocket change. And a kilo of marzipan smuggled into the conclave.
Gherardo voted for the Dean in the fourth round, giving him the necessary 15 votes.
And the Dean, Rodrigo Borgia, became Pope Alexander VI, frequently cited as the most corrupt pope in history.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
Warning: This story may be apocryphal. And anti-semitic.
Pope Innocent VIII was 60 in 1492, and in very poor health. Thankfully, his physician had a miracle cure: blood. And lots of it. (Also mother's milk.)
A wet nurse was easily procured, but where to get young, healthy blood?
Two 10-year old boys were promised 1 ducat each for "some" blood. The pope got his delicious, delicious blood transfusion – orally. But as we know, being pope is thirsty work, so sadly the boys died of blood loss.
Innocent naturally accepted the boy's 2 ducats as a (posthumous) charitable donation for his planned crusade against the Ottomans.
Then the pope died. And his successors had more than enough problems (multiple invasions of Italy by the French, Spanish, and Germans, for one) and so no crusade.
I am feeling incredibly ignorant reading this story. Could you please explain in what way is it anti-semitic?
It may be connected to blood libel, the idea that jews used christian blood for dark magic.
Like I'm not familiar with the story but it's possible that in its original telling the physician was jewish. Like that kind of story does seem like it follows the standard formula for medieval blood libel. (Yes it was common enough that there was basically a formula for it.) Again don't know the details but it could be possible that Innocent VIII passed some decree telling christians to be less shitty to jewish people and that was motivation for creating the story in the first place.. The vatican, while itself heavily anti-Semitic, was still often the source of legal protection for jews from property theft, eviction, or violence. This is less because the Vatican was particularly tolerant and more that in Christian Europe jews increasingly had no legal rights in common and formal law as time progressed. So while the vatican still heavily denigrated Jews they were one of the few institutions who would at least occasionally go "hey don't murder them all."
Gangs of Christians would kidnap Jewish children and baptise them, which the Church hated as it meant that the children were now at risk of super-damnation. Because if a baptised person turned apostate then there was no forgiveness for them. So these mobs were, in the eyes of the Church, far from saving Jewish children but were actually priming them for a damnation with no escape. So the general advice was "stop forcibly baptising Jews assholes" and when it did happen one of two things happened. If the child had not yet being baptised when they were rescued then they were returned to their parents, but if they had been baptised then they were not allowed to be returned as it would mean the now-"Christan" child would turn away and be damned.
Lots of weapons and armor were made not to actually be used, but to flaunt your wealth.
Also artistic / ceremonial weapons and armor are usually going to be well cared for and not spend much time in the mud / rain / filthy armories, so instead of just rusting away or getting turned into nails they actually get preserved for posterity.
Which is also a reason why swords tend to get so over-represented in our imagining of medieval warriors. Spears don't have much metal, they just rot and corrode away.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
edited April 2021
The carlolignian then the arming then long sword then rapier were the standard weapon of choice for people with money and training
Edit: while on foot that is. The axe then lance were the horseback weapons of choice
my historical hot take is that the best way to understand the early crusades is as part of an ongoing tradition of European mass migrations. When the Romans dealt with it we called them barbarian invasions, but really those barbarian invasions look an awful lot like the early crusades, just aiming at a new piece of geography.
Like the crusades add a new Christian flavor to it all, but reading descriptions of early groups of crusaders there's a very striking similarity to earlier mass migrations. Popular imagination usually describes the crusaders as something closer to like a modern military campaign, with the crusaders signing up into the army to be part of a centrally directed military campaign, but that's mostly not how it went. The vibe is more like "Well I'm in this army until we take over enough for my family to settle a new farm, and we'd better succeed because they're all here too."
Unrelated to that but there's a great primary source out there that describes the earlier wave of European settlers in the holy land, and how they've generally adapted to being in a big cosmopolitan culture, and so when new Europeans arrive it's super embarrassing because they're just so damn provincial and are freaked out about Satan all the time and afraid to try new foods or share meals with infidels, etc etc. And then all of the muslims and jews and etc make fun of their european friends for coming from such a backwards place.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
The first crusade was a wild clusterfuck that saw something like 75% of participants dead or abandoned by the time it actually reached judea
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Like. It’s important to understand how unbelievably disorganized and amateurish the first few crusades truly were. The Muslim side of it were confused as to what the fuck was actually going on and the Christians in the holy land were shocked that Europeans suddenly gave a shit
The carlolignian then the arming then long sword then rapier were the standard weapon of choice for people with money and training
Edit: while on foot that is. The axe then lance were the horseback weapons of choice
Swords were definitely the EDC for people that could afford them and were of a certain class. But if you were going off to war you were bringing something else along too. Could be a poleaxe, bill, pike, longbow, crossbow, shield, etc. Similar if you were like, actively stationed as a guard or similar.
It was rare (though it did occur) for someone to carry just a sword off into combat. Was a thing for some Napoleonic cavalry units I think (at least, I think they were not also carrying pistols like the earlier cavalry of the pike and shot era). Even the Romans, pretty sword heavy in the grand scheme of history, also carried multiple javelins, or darts with them. I also heard recently that every roman soldier was also a slinger which would certainly be interesting, but I haven’t corroborated that claim yet.
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It’s also worth noting that a lot of the very ornate weapons and armor we see today in places like museums were not necessarily intended for combat use.
They could be badges of office, things to be worn on parade, items used in religious ceremony and so on. Some times they were just made by an expert artisan to say “Yes, I am that good, I can easily make you good regular arrowheads too.” And then of course the classic commissioned by rich people to flex on other rich people in court, because look how fancy my arrows are.
For a good two centuries or so (1480-1680 give or take a couple decades) the Ottoman Empire was unquestionably a superpower and only the fact that they were busy doing other stuff* kept them from steamrolling even further into Europe.
*Like trying to keep the entire Arab world under their thumb, and trying to conquer Persia. Both things that no empire since has managed for long.
has a pope ever declared a crusade against like, a european country? or were they exclusively about super deadly long-term capture the flag games in the holy land?
Sort of? Constantinople was almost certainly considered part of Christendom, which is what turned into Europe. But the pope didn't call a crusade on it directly, it sort of just got sacked by crusaders as a result of a bunch of comical Benny Hill fuck-ups. The Fourth Crusade was originally supposed to be another Jerusalem run.
Edit: oh, and the Crusaders themselves got excommunicated midway through the series of fuck-ups, so I guess the pope has a clean record there.
Edit2: Ah, I forgot about the poor Cathars. Yeah, I guess when you look into it there were quite a few crusades against Christian heretics and European pagans.
So, funny thing is there's no universally agreed on list of crusades, but debatably the Cathars of southern France were kinda sorta christian maybe and everyone agrees there was definitely a crusade called against them.
The crusade against the Cathars, or the Albigensian crusade, is the origin of the phrase, "Kill them all and let God sort them out." As the Cathar heretics were never more than a large minority in the area some of the crusade commanders we're worried about "friendly fire." The Papal legate was more concerned about heretics pretending to be catholic to live so he told them, "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." or, roughly, "Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own."
Also, if you've played Carcassonne, the background the board game gives is that the players are settling a fertile area of France in the medieval era. Wonder how there's a fertile area of France empty enough to need settling? Oh, the city of Carcassonne was depopulated during the crusade.
There were also a bunch of crusades called against the pagan tribes of Lithuania and I think there was some spillover against the orthodox christians in the area but I don't think that was deliberate.
I think minimum count usually puts the number of crusades at like fourteen or fifteen with some putting it in like the thirties.
There were also crusades called against the Ottomans after they had captured a large part of the Balkans. Given that the Ottomans went on to threaten Vienna twice, I think you can guess how they went.
Edit: apparently the Hussite Wars in Bohemia (Modern Czech Republic) were crusades?
Fun fact: If you want to see the splendour of Constantinople, you can to go Venice. They got all the good stuff during the Fourth Crusade. Kind of like how if you want to see the wonders of Egypt you can go to the British Museum.
Medieval Europe sure loved them crusades I guess.
Well, they didn't have the internet.
Pope Innocent VIII was 60 in 1492, and in very poor health. Thankfully, his physician had a miracle cure: blood. And lots of it. (Also mother's milk.)
A wet nurse was easily procured, but where to get young, healthy blood?
Two 10-year old boys were promised 1 ducat each for "some" blood. The pope got his delicious, delicious blood transfusion – orally. But as we know, being pope is thirsty work, so sadly the boys died of blood loss.
Innocent naturally accepted the boy's 2 ducats as a (posthumous) charitable donation for his planned crusade against the Ottomans.
Then the pope died. And his successors had more than enough problems (multiple invasions of Italy by the French, Spanish, and Germans, for one) and so no crusade.
In 1492, after Innocent's failed vampiric session and subsequent death, it was time for an election.
23 cardinals made it in time.
After 3 rounds of unsuccessful voting (the winner must have 2/3 majority, here 15 votes) where everyone had been bribing everyone else to vote for them, they were at least down to only a few candidates. Also, they were now only allowed small portions of bread and water to try to hurry the proceedings.
13 had (by increadibly generous bribes) been convinced to vote for the Dean of the College of Cardinals. 1 was the Dean himself. 7 were intractably opposed to the Dean.
And 1 was eighty-six-year-old Gherardo, the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. He was sick of the whole nonsense, tired of bread and water, and just wanted to go home to Venice to die in peace.
So when the Dean approached him, the Dean offered a bribe of effectively pocket change. And a kilo of marzipan smuggled into the conclave.
Gherardo voted for the Dean in the fourth round, giving him the necessary 15 votes.
And the Dean, Rodrigo Borgia, became Pope Alexander VI, frequently cited as the most corrupt pope in history.
I am feeling incredibly ignorant reading this story. Could you please explain in what way is it anti-semitic?
Like I'm not familiar with the story but it's possible that in its original telling the physician was jewish. Like that kind of story does seem like it follows the standard formula for medieval blood libel. (Yes it was common enough that there was basically a formula for it.) Again don't know the details but it could be possible that Innocent VIII passed some decree telling christians to be less shitty to jewish people and that was motivation for creating the story in the first place.. The vatican, while itself heavily anti-Semitic, was still often the source of legal protection for jews from property theft, eviction, or violence. This is less because the Vatican was particularly tolerant and more that in Christian Europe jews increasingly had no legal rights in common and formal law as time progressed. So while the vatican still heavily denigrated Jews they were one of the few institutions who would at least occasionally go "hey don't murder them all."
Unfortubately for them, it didn't stay that way.
Also artistic / ceremonial weapons and armor are usually going to be well cared for and not spend much time in the mud / rain / filthy armories, so instead of just rusting away or getting turned into nails they actually get preserved for posterity.
Which is also a reason why swords tend to get so over-represented in our imagining of medieval warriors. Spears don't have much metal, they just rot and corrode away.
Edit: while on foot that is. The axe then lance were the horseback weapons of choice
Like the crusades add a new Christian flavor to it all, but reading descriptions of early groups of crusaders there's a very striking similarity to earlier mass migrations. Popular imagination usually describes the crusaders as something closer to like a modern military campaign, with the crusaders signing up into the army to be part of a centrally directed military campaign, but that's mostly not how it went. The vibe is more like "Well I'm in this army until we take over enough for my family to settle a new farm, and we'd better succeed because they're all here too."
Unrelated to that but there's a great primary source out there that describes the earlier wave of European settlers in the holy land, and how they've generally adapted to being in a big cosmopolitan culture, and so when new Europeans arrive it's super embarrassing because they're just so damn provincial and are freaked out about Satan all the time and afraid to try new foods or share meals with infidels, etc etc. And then all of the muslims and jews and etc make fun of their european friends for coming from such a backwards place.
Trying to get one of those annoying cheevos for like low ilvl or otherwise debilitating your party for the run
Swords were definitely the EDC for people that could afford them and were of a certain class. But if you were going off to war you were bringing something else along too. Could be a poleaxe, bill, pike, longbow, crossbow, shield, etc. Similar if you were like, actively stationed as a guard or similar.
It was rare (though it did occur) for someone to carry just a sword off into combat. Was a thing for some Napoleonic cavalry units I think (at least, I think they were not also carrying pistols like the earlier cavalry of the pike and shot era). Even the Romans, pretty sword heavy in the grand scheme of history, also carried multiple javelins, or darts with them. I also heard recently that every roman soldier was also a slinger which would certainly be interesting, but I haven’t corroborated that claim yet.
Nah, just Transatlantic Colonialism and African Circumnavigation