*XIV

This is the tragic history Louis of Borbon, the young legitimated son of King Louis XIV. He was the nephew of Monsieur (Prince Phillipe) who was the brother of the king. Along with his handsome and utterly corrupt longtime lover the Duc de Lorraine, Philippe seduced the vulnerable boy. The boy’s father, King Louis XIV, and his mother, Madame Louise de Valliere, blamed the kid for the sexual assault/affair, and had nothing more to do with him. Ever.

Louis de Borbon joined the French army, and died in battle at the age of 16. His parents only had callous things to say about his death.

I dearly hope that this poor child was welcomed to heaven after such a tragic life. This is an excellent little documentary about him.

https://youtu.be/-xFklYllrdk

Yes, that was the book that i read, and was amazing, that's why i'm searching this kind of books.

Except for when it came to the "sexy" female characters. Whoever was in charge of the casting had a very distinct type and picked these angular, broad-boned Kiera-Knightleyish actresses every time the plot called for a random floozy.

The beauty ideal back then was all about soft, rounded delicacy, so it was an odd choice. The actress they cast as Madame de Montespan was especially jarring.

[deleted]

I'm just hypothesizing here, but it could be a case of population pressure like that of the equally dramatic Migratory era during the late-Roman empire. There seemed to be a rapid uptake in warfare and fortification in places like the Italian peninsula as well in the period right before the BAC. My guess is the general European population might had reached a population level where there wasn't enough land to support people (with their current agricultural technology at least) or some widespread natural disaster (drought, flood) disturbed the balance of food production/consumption, so local tribes became much more competitive for land and resources, eventually leading to widespread intensive warfare. Those that were defeated then had to move away, either into the territories of the BA states, or forced other tribes to migrate and put pressure on them. While the militaries of the BA states might have handled the occasional intrusion by these "less sophisticated" groups, a constant torrent of desperate (and armed) people fleeing their homelands to gain refuge/loot eventually overwhelm the defenses of the BA states.

“The Sea People” really are a mystery and there seem to be distinct references in multiple cultures referring to a destructive, mobile force who seem to come from sea travel to seek and pillage (and destroy) many many developed settlements around the Med. What if there were all the described calamities described from widespread famine and natural disasters and the “strong (brutal) survive” situation takes hold and the Sea People are an amalgamation of surviving folk who band together thinking “everything has gone to shit and if I want to survive I opt in with these mobile warlords and pillage for a living”. Like a 000 failed settlements each had a couple incredibly tough survivors and that ‘A’ Team of brutality was the Sea People. No other organizing force like religion or culture- just survival by taking.

The major sources appeared to be Central Asia (Afghanistan/ Uzbekistan), with maybe large scale mining and trade of it from Britannia and Iberia.

There were a bunch of smaller mining operations scattered about the eastern Medditerrean region, but those sources were quickly exhausted.

Pretty ironic that the wealthy are some of the most miserable people on the planet.

im not gonna lie I was prepared to be like "poor rich lady boo hoo" but God damn that is genuinely awful

No doubt, it allowed a larger subset of the population to participate in formal warfare. In the course of the BAC, we went from "palace" militaries made up of a few elite warriors who could afford the more expensive bronze weapons/armor, to militaries based on a larger body of common citizenry or peasant levies. Systems like the Greek polis or Roman Republic probably won't had existed without ironworking technology to produce affordable arms.

History's first shidder and farder

There isn't a single timeline but usually "late middle ages" (14th century and on) for Western Europe to the 17th century. As for why: war and money. More centralized means more money to do war better. The 100 years war was a big catalyst for central power in France and England, even though it a process that started earlier.

[removed]

[removed]

I truly appreciate the greater exploration. I had already read that iron had democratized warfare, due to its proliferation from its advent. Again I appreciate it.

>doesn’t require the specialized knowledge to make the alloy

Actually, iron smelting is WAY more complex than bronze smelting.

First off, ancient iron smelters were never really able to fully melt the iron (on any reliable basis) due to the limited temperatures of their furnaces. Copper and tin smelting was pretty straight forward in comparison and had lower temperature requirements to reduce and melt. Melt them together, and you got a strong useable alloy that also convenient melted at a temperature lower than just copper.

With iron, the kind of smelting they had to do was solid-state reduction of the ore - instead of smelting the ore and getting refined molten iron, they broke down and burned off/melted away the non-iron content of the ore to get a somewhat refined chunk or bloom of iron embedded with slag/charcoal. This bloom then had to be painstakingly worked - hammered and folded repeatedly while being periodically heated to a bright yellow/white glow - to consolidate the iron bloom and beat out impurities before getting a usable ingot of iron for making tools/weapons. All this needed an enormous amount of fuel, labour, and skill to perform.

Second issue. Unlike copper or tin, iron had a tendency to absorb a lot of the carbon from the burning charcoal fuel (carburization). This complicates the smelting process as iron that absorbs too much carbon turns into pig iron - A brittle ferrous alloy that couldn't be forged and had a tendency to melt and mix in with the slag during smelting. While people will later develop means to refine this pig iron into useable iron, pig iron was useless and considered an unwanted waste product by early ironworkers. As the first iron smelters figured out, you could reduce the amount of pig iron produced by maintaining a balanced airflow and temperature in the furnace, and also adding fluxing material to the smelt.

Hence, ancient iron smelters had to get a bunch of actions and conditions right in order to make good iron; without any modern measurement tools or direct knowledge of how chemical reactions and the like worked. Instead, they had to figure it all out by trial-and-error. Run the furnace too hot: excessive pig iron is produced as iron absorbs more carbon at high temperatures. Run the furnace too cold: ore doesn't get reduced. Too little airflow: fuel doesn't burn completely, furnace runs cold. Too much airflow: Iron gets re-oxidized by excess oxygen. Adding crushed limestone to the smelt: Oh, more iron!

Smelters had to maintain a constant sweet spot of furnace conditions to get it to produce iron instead of waste slag/pig iron. All this took considerable practical knowledge and experience. So it's not a surprise why it took so long to figure out how to make and use iron compare to copper or tin.

>And so weaker weapons and armor against the sea people who had iron

The thing is, there's no evidence that the Sea People had ironworking technology, at least not in the beginning. Instead, ironworking was restricted to the immediate areas under the control of the Hittites - who seemed to have kept the technology a secret and maintained a monopoly on iron production/trade. It is only after the Bronze Age collapse that we see ironworking proliferate; likely aided by former-Hittite iron smelters who were fleeing their homeland as refugees, or enslaved/assimilated by invaders. The first archeological evidence of iron smelting furnaces being operated outside the Hittite heartland of Anatolia have been dated to around 900-1000 BCE, and by 800 BCE we're seeing an enormous amount of iron being produced and used compare to what was presented during the supposed Hittite iron monopoly.

It’s fun to think about how we now see iron(steel) as obviously superior to bronze, but at the time using iron was probably seen as a stopgap.

Not the same era

No your point absolutely makes sense, it would definitely affect the surrounding area, from general living conditions to things like commerce and navigation in the area I imagine

[removed]

I think I need to read this; might help me to put togetehr a plot for *The White-Roofed City* insetad of 28 years of rewriting the sex scenes.

That's when lots of my Reformed and Lutherna ancestors came to Pennsylvania, following the Plain Folk already ehre

Those trade networks for tin really weren't necessary. Somehow people didn't realize there is tin in both Anatolia and in mainland Greece. The later Phoenicians established trade ports as far as Cadiz in Spain where they traded for tin from Britain. This was an unnecessarily long way for tin to travel. But yes, the skyrocketing bronze prices might have bankrupted Egypt as it armed and armored its soldiers to prepare for the expected attack of the Sea Peoples. Egypt managed to defeat them, but it was never the same again.

Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne.