Turning Points that Failed to Turn

[jimmy olsen]

Also, France had previously shown what happens with those revolutions - they cannot hold on their own and need a strong ruler. Napoleon ultimately failed because he had no legitimacy (he tried it by marrying into the Habsburgs). To succeed, one needed royal legitimacy, which was not attained through the People at the time - even the USA, fighting only against Britain, needed help from France on the ground, and of France, Spain and the Netherlands on the seas.

Both points in this are so fucking retarded it beggars belief.

Napoleon didn't need to worry about legitimacy in the eyes of the European aristocrats, he had to worry about his legitimacy in the eyes of the French people and he had that until he overstretched himself and lost a war.

As for the US needing royal legitimacy, what the hell...it needed ships and the French had them, simple as that.

[jimmy olsen]

As far as turning points go an article in this Ecomonist this week reminded me of the opportunities the Americans had to acquire British Columbia and large chunks of Western Canada.

Your energy self sufficiency problems would be solved.

Ooh...got a link?

[garbon]

Yes they did.

Did you actually read what he wrote? Philip II example combats an all statement?

Whats with people these days always accusing me of not reading? Its bizzare and out of nowhere.

Of course I read what he said. He obviously didn't literally mean all the Habsburgs though, that would be stupid given there were entire branches of the family that had nothing to do with Spain. Those that are relevant however, those who were kings of Spain- they went native from Phil onwards.

You get accused of not reading when you make nonsensical replies.

[Razgovory]

I think it has more to do with the mobility then anything else.  Knights grew out of mounted infantry which were used after the fall of the Roman empire to fight barbarian raiders.  Because armies were fairly small, warriors needed to be quick to react to threats over a large geographic area.  Fighting on horseback and the increased status of being a knight didn't come till later.

There has always been more to it than that.

Being charged by horsemen is damned frightening. Unless you are trained and experienced, most people when faced with a line of charging horse will run - which is of course fatal (on the level, a man wearing armour generally cannot actually outrun a horse carrying an armoured rider; and it is very easy for that rider to strike down any number of fleeing enemies).

It is this effect - getting people to run - which forms a large part of "shock". Not so much actually having the horse physically slam into infantry. In point of fact, that rarely happens - the horse will typically refuse to actually run into a line of infantry carrying sharp pointy things.

The thing is, the forerunners of knights didn't fight from horseback.  They just rode them to where they were going and fought on foot.  The Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Hastings are a good demonstration of this.  The core fighters had horses, and used the mobility to ride from York down to Hastings.  Once there, they dismounted and fought as infantry.  This had been the way of fighting in continental Europe as well, but there had been a shift in fighting in the late Carolingian period, a shift from fighting on foot to fighting on horseback.  The English were late to adopt this, and thus lost the battle of Hastings.

[Josquius]

You get accused of not reading when you make nonsensical replies.

Its much more often than that. Like this time for instance.

[Malthus]

I think it has more to do with the mobility then anything else.  Knights grew out of mounted infantry which were used after the fall of the Roman empire to fight barbarian raiders.  Because armies were fairly small, warriors needed to be quick to react to threats over a large geographic area.  Fighting on horseback and the increased status of being a knight didn't come till later.

There has always been more to it than that.

Being charged by horsemen is damned frightening. Unless you are trained and experienced, most people when faced with a line of charging horse will run - which is of course fatal (on the level, a man wearing armour generally cannot actually outrun a horse carrying an armoured rider; and it is very easy for that rider to strike down any number of fleeing enemies).

It is this effect - getting people to run - which forms a large part of "shock". Not so much actually having the horse physically slam into infantry. In point of fact, that rarely happens - the horse will typically refuse to actually run into a line of infantry carrying sharp pointy things.

The thing is, the forerunners of knights didn't fight from horseback.  They just rode them to where they were going and fought on foot.  The Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Hastings are a good demonstration of this.  The core fighters had horses, and used the mobility to ride from York down to Hastings.  Once there, they dismounted and fought as infantry.  This had been the way of fighting in continental Europe as well, but there had been a shift in fighting in the late Carolingian period, a shift from fighting on foot to fighting on horseback.  The English were late to adopt this, and thus lost the battle of Hastings.

Certainly, the saxons and vikings did not use cavalry in battle. They fought in the shield wall, on foot. But then, they are not exactly the forerunners of mounted knights.

The Normans picked up that technique in France.

In any event, the battle of Hastings demonstrates some of the limits of cavalry as a tactic against an organized shield wall. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually a very close-run thing. The Norman mounted knights were making no headway at all againt the hausecarls - until that is they did a feigned retreat, which drew part of the Saxon army to pursue them; these warriors were then isolated and killed.

Had Harold not been forced to fight another battle at York immediately before, chances are he would have won, mounted knights or not.