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Oleksandr

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  1. Battle of Muret is particularly interesting here, it has some infantry mentioned on both sides, yet this infantry wasn't part of battle proper.
  2. After some research, i found out that in this century long period Fyrd was called. Twice😁 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyrd Returning to old topic, i also found that mentioned earlier schiltron wasn't example of infantry, for it's core was dismounted knights. This two examples show it best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Homildon_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verneuil (note composition of scottish army). There important to clarify main point. There is popular stereotype, that started back in 18/19 centuries, that medieval armies consisted almost entirely from conscripted commoners, poorly trained and poorly equipped, with just a handful of knights. I had discussions with multiple people who believed that feudal armies was almost entirely made from serfs, and that knights only ever charged said serfs 😩... Such stereotypes constantly perpetuated by many movies, games and books . I searched through descriptions of dozens of high/late* medieval battles, and found very few examples of explicit infantry (not dismounted cavalry like at Agincourt) that wasn't militia, mercenaries or armed servants in the backline. Some interesting examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lechfeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brémule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agridi (interestingly, here chronicler describe use of foot (dismounted?) sergeants in battle as some sort of groundbreaking innovation😀 ) *early medieval battles was dominated by heavy infantry, until Charlemagne era.
  3. "Their custom was to hold a general meeting once a year in the center of Saxony near the river Weser at a place called Marklo. There all the satraps (chiefs) used to gather together and they were joined by twelve noblemen from each clan with as many freemen and serfs. There they confirmed the laws, gave judgment on outstanding cases and by common consent drew up plans for the coming year on which they could act either in peace or war." — Vita Lebuini Antiqua Found in Paladins rullbook. Pretty interesting. Could such traditions existed among their british kin?
  4. I'm not quite familiar with british definitions, but in Central Europe term "burghers" also include all craftsmen. Additionally, it should be pointed out that cities evolved greatly over time. For most of middle ages burghers was absolute majority of urban population. Mass influx of rural population into cities only happens when middle ages ended, due to exponentially increasing taxation - dissolution of classic feudalism and shift of aristocracy from warrior caste to court dandyes increased demand to luxury, and expenses. P.s. 5% is quite low for medieval burghers... Another important note, most research suggest that medieval armies was incredibly tiny (not including sporadic militia). Our problem with perception is that after middle ages armies was bloated to giant sizes, for many it's hard to believe that it wasn't always so. Additionally, assumption of field armies being composed from "1 knight (and squire) + 2 foot troops" lances are based on much later examples. It seems that earlier it was "1 knight (and squire) + mounted sergeant".
  5. The last point reminded me of something. We have interesting examples from viking sagas, like "Saga of the Greenlanders", when Freydís Eiríksdóttir order her husband and his men to attack rival settlement. They kill only men but refuse to kill women, so she had to do it herself. Another example from "Njáls saga", in which during family feud farmhous of one of the clans was burned by their rivals, who allowed women to leave, and offer to spare elderly couple and their young grandson, but they refused. Was it early christian influence, or some sort of germanic honor code? Could something like this be applied to their kin, saxons?🤔
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_of_Rheinfelden - " According to one account, Bertha ‘fought manfully’ (virilter pugnavit) at the Battle of Jedesheim" 🤔 literal or allegory?
  7. It should be noted that medieval chronicles usually greatly exaggerated number of troops, on both sides. It's usually assumed that real armies was much smaller. Don't forget +10% in counties with cities, + forest income represented as another +10% to agricultural income of manor. Additionally, there are factor of land fertility, which can affect income substantially. In "Saxons!" numbers are +/- 25%, while here👇 we can see a noticeable difference between settlements of same sizes (and in the same hundreds, so bonuses should be equal): http://web.archive.org/web/20170226164946/http://gspendragon.com/swans_hundred.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20170226165038/http://gspendragon.com/ambrius_hundred.pdf With all this bonuses it should be easy to feed all required knights even with smaller population,😉
  8. That make sense, however i should point out that larger %-ge of landed knights feels more "arthurian")) Another consideration, according to my research, landed knights was way more common in borderlands, and Britain in KAP consist of multitude of relatively small kingdoms...🤔
  9. I noticed, IIRC in BoE, statement that there are not really that much vassal knights, majority being household ones. But it seams it wasn't the case in older editions. I'm curious why such change was made.🤔
  10. Not only in Pendragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame Seems to be.
  11. BTW, this reminded me about one movie i watched as kid, which had Guinevere as protagonist. In this version she are from pagan kingdom, even student of Morgan le Fay at first. There was interesting moment during her wedding, when she annoyed that upon conversion to christianity she no longer allowed to wield weapon, since church forbid it (it didn't actually, but this is common stereotype), and she now have to rely on her knights for protection.
  12. "1335: The Scots defeat a company led by the Count of Namur. Amongst the Count's casualties was a female lancer who had killed her opponent, Richard Shaw, at the same moment that he had killed her. Her gender was only discovered when the bodies were being stripped of their armor at the end of the engagement. "The chronicler Bower seems to have been at least as impressed by the rarity of two mounted soldiers simultaneously transfixing one another with their lances as with the fact that one of them was a woman."
  13. I would say that Logres version not necessary must be identical to real thing, and not even necessary based around ports - there was also alliances of landlocked cities elsewhere in Europe. In fact, it better to Arthurian version to NOT be based around ports...
  14. If playing clergy is planned, it make sense to include options for abbesses/(princess-abbesses?)/deaconesses...
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