Oleksandr

Battle of Muret is particularly interesting here, it has some infantry mentioned on both sides, yet this infantry wasn't part of battle proper.

On 1/17/2023 at 11:31 AM, Oleksandr said:

P.S. according to wiki, between Conquest and 1181 there indeed was no commoner levies in England...

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.

"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?

On 10/20/2023 at 8:20 PM, vegas said:

The towns and cities will not only have slaves owned by the burghers, but also host runaway slaves and serfs who seek a better life by begging, laboring and hoping to apprentice. Taken as a whole, the market town and city populations are going to be just a diverse in social classes as the rural areas, with the burghers representing only the very top of the urban social pyramid. This breaks the key assumption of the methodology, that we can back into the total population by dividing the estimated urban population by 5% burghers. Not only would I expect burghers are not "most [of the] inhabitants of towns", if we recognize they are the upper stratus of urban populations, we would expect they are in the minority.

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...

On 9/17/2023 at 8:06 AM, vegas said:

Second, increasing the population to 1.25 million in Logres implies a very small militarized force. With one knight there are another 3 foot giving a total force under arms of 2610 * 4 = 10,440 or just 0.8% of the population in times of internal wars and foreign invasion.

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".

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?🤔

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?

10 hours ago, vegas said:

but 2600 cavalry is less than what Harold and William each had at the battle of Hastings in the 11th Century, and that was not Harold's full army! If Uther is 12C Britain, then armies must be even larger.

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.

10 hours ago, vegas said:

Some of them can be enumerated: 10% higher rents in market town Hundreds, 20% higher in ports,

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,😉

On 9/14/2023 at 11:40 AM, Morien said:

IIRC, Greg said he had done more research and found out that being a landed knight was the exception, not the rule. Since he was using real English medieval society as his touchstone for Book of -series, he changed the amount of vassal knights.

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...🤔

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.🤔

On 8/25/2023 at 12:07 PM, Darius West said:

I thought female Knights in Pendragon were called Dames?

Not only in Pendragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame

On 8/23/2023 at 1:21 PM, mandrill_one said:

Was this "Guinevere", the 1994 TV movie? This one?

Seems to be.

On 7/15/2023 at 5:44 AM, AlHazred said:

1) Queen Guinevere is a knight. In this incarnation, war has come to Camelot. Initially healing the injured, Guinevere takes a more active role and takes up arms as the casualties rise and the war is not going in Camelot's favor.

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.

"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."

On 6/22/2023 at 10:38 PM, soltakss said:

Well, Dover, Sandwich and Romney were Roman ports, so they could well be ports. Hastings is later and and Hythe is even later, but you could have them founded in/by Arthur's time.

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...

On 5/3/2021 at 9:11 PM, glassneedles said:

Codex Sanctus (discord) - rules for playing a saint

If playing clergy is planned, it make sense to include options for abbesses/(princess-abbesses?)/deaconesses...

On 6/19/2023 at 12:25 PM, Morien said:

Why not? I don't see any reason why they couldn't.

Well, certain somebody above very intensely tried to convince me that "realistically" it "supposed" to be oppressive hellhole 😅

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports

Can something like that exist in Arthurian Logres?😀

Returning to the topic of abbesses, HRE had title of "Princess-Abbess", level abow. While real medieval England had no equivalent, Arthurian Logres might 😉

Literary sources seem to confirm that hunting and horse riding was perfectly acceptable hobbies for medieval ladies. It's important to remember that archery and riding are physically quite demanding activity...

Another important fact, muscular mass are mostly dependent on height of the individual, men having some advantage - with everything else equal women have on average equivalent of muscular mass of men 5 centimeters shorter (unless woman in question was born with twin brother). Of course, men are taller on average. On the other hand, height heavily influenced by diet (protein intake in particular) during early life. Therefore it logical to assume that on average noblewomen was taller than peasant men...

On 3/29/2023 at 5:22 PM, Morien said:

with that Oxbow in the river and then the castle blocking the 'stem'.

In fact, i'm surprised there aren't many more fortification like that. There a lot of similar Oxbows which wasn't used at all...🤔

BTW, i understand correctly that in KAP such location would give +7 DV, like peninsula? (in case of Kamieniec also +5 for elevation. And i assume same goes for both city and castle...🧐)

On 3/29/2023 at 7:40 PM, Tizun Thane said:

It's always a bit weird when the map of the polish castle is written in french, and the map of the french city of Besançon is written in latin

Which is surprising considering that all PLC scholars knew Latin 🤨. Also interesting, in medieval Moldova and Wallachia Old Church Slavonic was used, for some reason😄

On 3/29/2023 at 7:40 PM, Tizun Thane said:

I wonder how the Turks take the polish fortress in 1672 ? By Surprise? With gunpowder?

If i remember correctly, with gunpowder. A lot of it. I even heard that, supposedly, they managed to hit fortress gunpowder storage, causing a lot of damage. It should also be noted that there was a lot of unsuccessful sieges.

Another interesting fortification (curiously, located just 30 km from aforementioned one😞

(modern look)

On 1/31/2023 at 12:48 PM, Morien said:

Lack of helmet and neck protection. No armor on hands nor forearms (often hit)

As i said, most people removed helmets and coifs outside of combat (excepi in the movies 😁). Same with arm protection (it's notable that she wearing plate-mail kneepads, and probably greaves too🧐), and some knights was depicted fighting with unarmored hands (probably trade off for better control)

On 1/31/2023 at 12:48 PM, Morien said:

Those boob-plates will deflect hits to the unarmored cleavage.

That is common saying, but testing proved this to not be the case. Besides, such thing was actually used, although by steppe nomads, not europeans. And they preferred 3 smaller ones, or 1 big, instead of two medium sized. (on the other hand, there quite a lot of medieval european depiction of dudes fighting in chainmail leotards, with little leg protection...😳 )
 

On 1/31/2023 at 5:54 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

The Blue Men are the Tuareg, who take their name from an inland Libyan trading oasis known in Arabic as Sijilmasa. Half of their current territory is now in Mali and Niger, but that is not their range a thousand years earlier when ibn Hawqal was the first writer to mention them.

As i understand,  "Moor" was generic term for north african people, aren't it?🧐  Tuareg are just one of many groups.

On 1/31/2023 at 11:49 PM, SDLeary said:

Remember that Pendragon is designed to be a reflection of Arthurian Literature, and that one of the biggest pieces of this, Le Morte d'Arthur was published in the 15thC.

Yeah, but in other aspects it at least try to integrate pieces of real history.

P.s. another thing is description of wends from LoG, when they described as local barbarians. Actual scandinavian sagas say (and archeology confirm this)that wends was culturally identical to scandinavians. And while occasionally there was mutual raiding, there was also trading, alianses, dynastic marriages... (although, KAP in this regard infinitely better than "paladins" in which almost everything wrong 😁)

Strange thing i noticed in "Knight adventurous", in chapter about woman there is picture of female knight, and accompanying description claim that her armor is impractical and even dangerous. While in reality, except for unbuttoned top of chainmail and lack of helmet (which is actually normal outside of battlefield) she wearing perfectly normal early medieval chain shirt, and even leg protection.