Thanks - this will be my Da's Christmas present sorted

Norway’s answer to the Vasa museum?

“Marine archaeologists believe the ship dates to sometime between 1300 – 1850.” That’s quite the range lol

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Ship found in lake? You don't say!

>but guns were expensive and most armies wouldnt have been equipped with them

Actually, firearm use in China was pretty prolific by the time of the Ming Dynasty. Your argument about higher cost can be applied to crossbows as well, but obviously they were still issued and deployed on a large scale despite this.

Armour (even fabric or leather based armour) is expensive as well, so it was mostly worn by elite or noble troops who could afford it. Also keep in mind that the Chinese and Koreans made heavier use of peasant levies/conscripts in their militaries relative to their European/Japanese counterparts (who mostly depended on smaller armies of professional/semi-professional soldiers), so obviously had a harder time outfitting their entire forces with armour.

>Seems more like the institutions in both China and Korea were so eroded by corruption and incompetence that soldiers were regarded as expendable and thus werent provided with armor.

I don't know about Korea, but in the case of Qing China that is sort of true. In the late-1700s, the Qing emperor enacted a freeze on troop salaries, so soldier pay didn't keep up with inflation. The Banner armies in particular suffered from lack of armed conflict in the relative peaceful period between the Qing invasion of Vietnam (1789) and the 1st Opium War (1839).

The lack of fighting led to idleness and neglect in maintaining combat effectiveness (instead of training, Banner soldiers spent their time drinking and gambling). Also with the way the Qing military worked, Banner troops got paid much more when on campaign. Since they were also prohibited from doing other jobs or running businesses, in peacetime they had no means of income other than the small stipend (2-4 taels of silver per month) provided by the imperial court that was more for maintaining equipment and horses (Banner troops had to buy their own). With the pay freeze and inflation, lack of combat and the usual loot gained from pillaging the enemy, most Banner troops found themselves in an economic tough spot. Despite their reputation as the Qing's elite troops many were impoverished by standards of the time, and their situation was passed on to their children as their position/duties in the Banner forces were hereditary. I won't be surprised if these Bannermen were regularly pawning off their father or grandfather's armour and weapons for booze money as a result of their poverty.

The Green Standard forces weren't any better, facing serious issues in desertion, corruption (officers frequently stole the pay of their soldiers, or straight made up the number of recruits they had to embezzle money from the imperial court), and lack of funding.

Depends on the size of the army. But it will only remain a fraction of the army size. And if we’re talking knights, that means a feudal system like what we saw in the medieval period.

Now, armies in that period were rather small. This was due to the limited capacity of a decentralized state with little authority to raise, pay, feed, and maintain large armies. You need a large and complex bureaucracy for that, and the medieval period is characterized by a lack of such a bureaucracy. That’s why kings have land to lords, who gave land to their lords, who gave land to their lords, who gave land to minor lords and knights, who maintained a class of peasantry…

So armies are kinda small. The battle of nicopolis? A massive throw down between the well oiled military machine of the Ottoman Empire and a Holy Alliance of christian powers? 40 thousand soldiers tops.

The battle of Agincourt? The most powerful kingdom of medieval Europe against a rising warrior king?

35 thousand tops, with the French having maybe 25 thousand at best, with 10 thousand of them being men at arms. The loss of six thousand of such men crippled the kingdom’s fighting capacity.

So maybe 1/5 to 1/3 of your army is mounted, and maybe 1/2 to all of them may afford heavy armor.

This stuff was expensive

Hello! I'm going to be teaching Black Civil Rights to my students and would like to brush up on the history/understand the historiography a bit more. If you have any recommendations, that would be incredibly helpful!

Thank you!

To go off of the other comment, I recently read 'The Anarchy' and it was fantastic. In my opinion, it was particularly good at balancing the political situation within the company and outside of it. It's also great to read after reading about the Mughal Empire if chronology is important. Hopefully you enjoy :)

Also, the land itself was often a point of interest for the nukes. Evidently, if nukes were to be practically used, they would certainly be used against land areas. They tested nukes on different types of terrain (desert, hard rock, etc.) to see terrain interactions, or built fake buildings/towns to test bomb effects on residential areas.

> of the 8000ish english in the battle of Agincourt some 1 to 2 thousand wore heavy armour,

Part of the issue here is that the English fielded significant amounts of longbowmen as light infantry, as English doctrine of the time focused on heavy use of archers for ranged supremacy, contrast this with the French who were reverse in proportion and fielded primarily heavy cavalry/infantry (men-at-arms and knights dismounting to fight on foot for tactical reasons) with small numbers of lightly armoured specialists such as crossbowmen, cannoneers or pavisers.

It is also worth noting, that this is the point in western Europe where large scale manufacturing starts bringing down costs and that even common infantry were becoming better armoured than just a helmet and aketon.

Very cool how many traces they were able to find. Modern molecular analysis is crazy.

I think I read somewhere that much of the heavy equipment used to take Poland and France was in Czech hands at the beginning of 1938. The Skoda works was a huge munitions plant that also changed hands without a shot being fired.

As I recall, the book argument went like so: capturing that equipment through war would have cost both German and Czech losses, whereas just turning materiel over to Germany strengthened then with no attritional loss of equipment, Czech or Nazi. Hitler increased his armament something like 25%, and picked up the factories producing heavy artillery, some 2 years before he invades France. The gain in knowledge, existing equipment, and factory capacity was an advantage that builds over the years, with the diplomatic resolution to Munich. If he had taken, say 15% material losses, in destroying half the Czech forces and only captures sabotaged factories, his army is not 125% or 150% in 1940, but 85% of it's 1938 strength. Do Poland and France fare better against that ? Does Poland soften it's diplomatic stance, after seeing Czechoslovakia get run over? Does it push the larger war back 12 to 18 months to where Stalin wakes up and starts prepping?

You're right about Hitler accumulating victories, in 1940. But 1938 was a different world. Hitler's only foreign victory before 1938 was the Rhineland annexation of 1936. Anschluss preceded Munich in 1938 spring.. Both areas were German speaking, and arguably more German than any Czech or Polish province. Czechoslovakia and Munich were the first conquests of a not-so completely German speaking area, and that Hitler getting away with it, basically scot-free, began that pile of foreign policy victories that accumulated until 1941. But prior to Munich no one knew all that was coming. France had alliances with the Little Entente countries (Balkans, Romania, Czechoslovakia) so technically it was more obligated to fight for the Czechs in 38 than the Poles in39. I mean that's why French pressured the Czechs into Munich. It wasn't worth a war, but their treaties had already committed them to one, if the Czechs fought. Better to talk the Czechs down.

I know why historians hate counterfactuals,lol.

I do like the inter war period. It is so full of the little " if only .." situations that make you think about t the carry on effects.

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A account from the 1400's I read long ago of two noble families of five brothers were in a feud and decided to settle it by each side bringing 100 men and fighting until it was settled. Three days fighting later only the five brothers on each were standing and they called the matter settled. It was noted they were the only ones in full armour.

A long time ago I remember reading somewhere that very few knights wore full armour. It asked 'how many people do you know own a Lear jet? That's the equivilent of having a full suit of armour like you see everyone wearing in the movies.

After battles were over the survivors would scavenge the battlefield for whatever armour could be stripped from the corpses (as well as boots, clothing, coins in their purses, anything really). So they would henceforth wear whatever they scavenged chestpiece, greaves, etc..

The few that had full impressive armour would be marked as rich. These men would never be killed but captured and their families would be forced to pay a ransom for their safe return.

Promotion amongst footmen was based on what armor and weapons you were able to pilfer off the corpses at the end of the battle. So if you lived, you grabbed what pieces you could. However, the highest ranking nobles were often captured alive (when possible) and ransomed back to their families or Lords.

There were about 66,000 combatants total in that battle. There is NO WAY that nearly all of them wore full plate armour. I agree with the previous poster - 10-15k is more likely.

I’ve changed no such argument, i stated the archers defeated the “tank-like” knights, and that is fact.

yes, ive read the wiki, ive also watched numerous other videos on youtube that go indepth into things such as weather, tactics, armorment, commanders and more.

your the one thats changing the goalposts after being called out for making fallacious claims and now resorting to name calling. i think you need a rag to whipe all that paint off your face you clown. grow up

Never mind that that single battle resulted in either the death or capture of half the French nobility… you can argue semantics i suppose, and say that the longbow didn’t kill the knights, but the archers tired em out then poked em with knives instead, but that’s just foolish

You realize you can go to the Wikipedia page and read the whole account of the battle right? Like…. It says that the English archer was very effective at wounding the unarmored horses and causing a rout of the Calvary which then tore threw their own infantry ranks, the armored foot soldiers had to keep their visors closed to protect from the lucky arrow finding the weakest part(eye and breathing holes) thus making it hard to see and breathe…by the time the French men-at-arms reached the archers they were mostly wounded or heavily fatigued, and the archers use knives, hatches, clubs, or short swords to decimate the French…. So….. my argument that the longbow would won that battle would hold water you pompous buffoon

yes. i do. you are the one thats displaying a complete lack of understanding here. not me

yes. this is what im saying and its the truth. they were that inept. atleast in this battle. the mud absolutely hampered there ability to both advance and retreat