History Thread!

[Yukle]

6 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Damn, a bitch be making me need to crack open a book!

Most of the books for this period are fantastically tedious and boring as they forget that history is an interesting story that can be told in an interesting way.

The recently released The Storm before the Storm is outstanding at telling the fall of the republic's institutions in an engaging way. It's a great-man history, which is a pity, but the aim is to tell a chronological story of interesting things and in that manner it definitely succeeds.

[Spring Bass]

On 1/28/2018 at 8:20 PM, Yukle said:

The recently released The Storm before the Storm is outstanding at telling the fall of the republic's institutions in an engaging way. It's a great-man history, which is a pity, but the aim is to tell a chronological story of interesting things and in that manner it definitely succeeds.

I'd recommend Mary Beard's SPQR. It's engaging as well, and Beard is better at putting it all into context and not simply writing Great-Man-narrative-history. She's also really good at pointing out where we have gaps in our knowledge, or where the typical narrative is dominated by stuff we would call propaganda (especially when it comes to Augustus Caesar).

EDIT: I've changed my mind on Sulla. I don't think he was the Point of No Return, because he was just representative of processes that were all converging to undermine the Roman Republic at the same time - the rise of de facto professional soldiers dependent on their commanders for pay, the extreme inequality from war and profiteering in the provinces, the intense oligarchical competition spilling over into street violence, etc. If it hadn't been Sulla, it would have been someone else.

Augustus was the Point of No Return. It's entirely possible that a different strongman would have failed to make such a thorough change stick on Rome (including the taming of the Senate and the end of any meaningful power in republican institutions), or that the empire of the Roman Republic could have splintered and fallen apart. But Augustus thoroughly stamped upon the Roman Empire the transition to the Principate in his long life, and it stuck through succeeding emperors until the Principate shredded itself in the Crisis of the Third Century.

[Yukle]

45 minutes ago, Fall Bass said:

I'd recommend Mary Beard's SPQR.

Yes, agreed. Also Invisible Romans by Robert Knapp.

[GAROVORKIN]

On 1/25/2018 at 1:15 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I think Lee concentrated on defending Virginia because he was a Virginian.  He didn't resign from the US Military until Virginia seceded from the Union.  Had Virginia not left the Union I suspect he would have participated in US military operations to bring the States that attempted to leave the Union back into the Union.

 

Robert  E Lee didn't really want command of the Union Army . But  In that scenario in which Virginia Doesn't join the Confederacy,   I think it's possible that  Abraham  Lincoln might  have persuaded him to take charge of the Union Army.  With men like   McClellan ,Grant and  Sherman under his command and the material resources Union Army , General Lee would have very quickly ended the Civil war.

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

Robert  E Lee didn't really want command of the Union Army . But  In that scenario in which Virginia Doesn't join the Confederacy,   I think it's possible that  Abraham  Lincoln might  have persuaded him to take charge of the Union Army.  With men like   McClellan ,Grant and  Sherman under his command and the material resources Union Army , General Lee would have very quickly ended the Civil war.

Hey! Look at you, picking a side! Seriously, cool bro.

Yeah, if Lee had been a man and stood up against corruption. Instead of doing your deal with the devil!

Gordon: I was trying to fight the mob!

 

fuck1 ! No, that's batman. My bad.

[GAROVORKIN]

19 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Hey! Look at you, picking a side! Seriously, cool bro.

Yeah, if Lee had been a man and stood up against corruption. Instead of doing your deal with the devil!

Gordon: I was trying to fight the mob!

 

fuck1 ! No, that's batman. My bad.

On thing that you can't take away from Robert E. Lee is the fact that he was one of Histories greatest generals  .  When he was serving the Confederacy , he didn't have anywhere near the manpower or  supplies  that union Amy had and yet he still managed to inflict serious damage and defeat on the Union Army.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

On thing that you can't take away from Robert E. Lee is the fact that he was one of Histories greatest generals  .  When he serving the Confederacy , he didn't anywhere near the manpower or  supplies  that union Amy had and yet he still managed to inflict serious damage and defeat on the Union Army.

I'll give you that he's one of America's best generals. But American Generals are all cowboys.

[GAROVORKIN]

2 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I'll give you that he's one of America's best generals. But American Generals are all cowboys.

It was  true in that era of history. 

[Corvinus85]

Seems to me that someone is itching for a "your top generals in history" list. Go!

[Yukle]

41 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Seems to me that someone is itching for a "your top generals in history" list. Go!

Blergh, I hate when people put Hannibal on such lists. Without fail.

Scipio well and truly flattened him and he had no answer to Fabius while fighting in Italy.

Caesar, on the other hand, is almost always on the list too and with good reason. He more or less conquered each section of the Roman Republic from scratch since it all rebelled against him. Almost always outnumbered and almost always without steady supplies.

In modern times, you'd have to say Zhukov. The fact that neither Moscow, Leningrad nor Stalingrad fell is astounding. Yet also examples of the worst of what humanity can do; something like 2 million people starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad. Costly, and tragic, but still a monumental effort of almost sheer willpower and patience that Zhukov managed to hold the Soviet Union's final defensive lines. It's often (falsely) characterised as a fight of sheer numbers, but that's far from the truth. They weren't a professional army, but conscripts, and even the well-trained forces of France and the UK hadn't stopped the blitzkrieg.

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, Yukle said:

Blergh, I hate when people put Hannibal on such lists. Without fail.

Scipio well and truly flattened him and he had no answer to Fabius while fighting in Italy.

Caesar, on the other hand, is almost always on the list too and with good reason. He more or less conquered each section of the Roman Republic from scratch since it all rebelled against him. Almost always outnumbered and almost always without steady supplies.

In modern times, you'd have to say Zhukov. The fact that neither Moscow, Leningrad nor Stalingrad fell is astounding. Yet also examples of the worst of what humanity can do; something like 2 million people starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad. Costly, and tragic, but still a monumental effort of almost sheer willpower and patience that Zhukov managed to hold the Soviet Union's final defensive lines. It's often (falsely) characterised as a fight of sheer numbers, but that's far from the truth. They weren't a professional army, but conscripts, and even the well-trained forces of France and the UK hadn't stopped the blitzkrieg.

Zhukov is fine. He's fine, it's whatever.

[Spring Bass]

Alexander Suvorov was pretty impressive. Never lost a major battle over a storied career, and his last major military command involved a really difficult extraction of his army through the Alps in winter after being surrounded by a numerically superior French army in the French Revolutionary Wars. 

 

[Corvinus85]

14 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

Alexander Suvorov was pretty impressive. Never lost a major battle over a storied career, and his last major military command involved a really difficult extraction of his army through the Alps in winter after being surrounded by a numerically superior French army in the French Revolutionary Wars. 

 

Quite impressive. It would have been interesting to know what would have happened if he and Napoleon had met on the battlefield. It's one of those "ifs" that historians like to ponder.

[mankytoes]

14 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Seems to me that someone is itching for a "your top generals in history" list. Go!

If naval commanders count, Admiral Yi for sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin

Basically beat off the Japanese invasion despite having no naval experience and a shitty state system behind him.

[GAROVORKIN]

18 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Zhukov is fine. He's fine, it's whatever.

So was General Ivan Konev.

[Spring Bass]

7 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Quite impressive. It would have been interesting to know what would have happened if he and Napoleon had met on the battlefield. It's one of those "ifs" that historians like to ponder.

It really is! The missed timing was so narrow there. Paul I really was a fool for treating him badly (although Catherine the Great admittedly did a shitty job of preparing her heir for the throne, and wanted to try and skip him for his own son at the end). 

 

6 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Basically beat off the Japanese invasion despite having no naval experience and a shitty state system behind him.

Speaking of "What Ifs" of history . . . 

 

[GAROVORKIN]

20 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Seems to me that someone is itching for a "your top generals in history" list. Go!

It would be a very big list.

[mankytoes]

Gotta get a shout to Subutai, Genghis Khan's main general, seeing as he conquered more territory than anyone else in history.

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

The West has traditionally ignored the strategic and tactical brilliance of the Mongols, but of course they didn't conquer most of Asia by charging like mindless savages, a lot of their military was extremely advanced in terms of tactics and communications. He got well into Europe, conclusively defeating Russians, Poland and Hungary. One of the luckiest moments in the history of the west came when Ogedai Khan had a heart attack, meaning they all returned home- if that hadn't happened, we might all have heard of this man. Relatively, he wasn't far from Vienna, Rome and Paris.

[Spring Bass]

8 hours ago, mankytoes said:

One of the luckiest moments in the history of the west came when Ogedai Khan had a heart attack, meaning they all returned home- if that hadn't happened, we might all have heard of this man. Relatively, he wasn't far from Vienna, Rome and Paris.

It's not clear that the Mongol force in Hungary actually knew that Ogedai was dead when they withdrew. There were plenty of other reasons for withdrawal - increasingly difficult terrain (the Eurasian steppe ends in Hungary), bad weather, a bunch of increasingly difficult sieges, etc. 

I doubt they ever would have made it to Paris or Rome, except maybe as a short raid. The terrain was relatively unfavorable, High Middle Ages Europe was covered in hundreds of stone castles* that required sieges to take down, and even the political disunity of Europe was an advantage (there was no capital or bureaucratic machinery that the Mongols could seize to take over Europe in the way they could China). Case in point, the Mongols actually came back again in 1285 and failed utterly, because the Hungarians were ready for this with a ton of stone castles and fortified towns that the Mongols would have had to siege and take individually. 

* We tend not to think about this, but High Middle Ages Europe was pretty advanced and capable in terms of building stone fortifications (see the Crusader castles like Krak de Chevaliers). 

 

[Knight Of Winter]

2 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

It's not clear that the Mongol force in Hungary actually knew that Ogedai was dead when they withdrew. There were plenty of other reasons for withdrawal - increasingly difficult terrain (the Eurasian steppe ends in Hungary), bad weather, a bunch of increasingly difficult sieges, etc. 

I doubt they ever would have made it to Paris or Rome, except maybe as a short raid. The terrain was relatively unfavorable, High Middle Ages Europe was covered in hundreds of stone castles* that required sieges to take down, and even the political disunity of Europe was an advantage (there was no capital or bureaucratic machinery that the Mongols could seize to take over Europe in the way they could China). Case in point, the Mongols actually came back again in 1285 and failed utterly, because the Hungarians were ready for this with a ton of stone castles and fortified towns that the Mongols would have had to siege and take individually. 

* We tend not to think about this, but High Middle Ages Europe was pretty advanced and capable in terms of building stone fortifications (see the Crusader castles like Krak de Chevaliers).

Hm... this bears an interesting discussion.

I think we should consider the other side of the equation as well, namely the fact that Mongolian power waned considerably by 1285 compared to "golden days" under Genghis and Ogodei. Before, they were unified under a single leadership and single purpose, while later they already split into 4 different states, each of them getting weaker with each generation. Hungary may have gotten stronger in 40 years, indeed, but there's little doubt that Mongols become much weaker, as well.

The thesis above is not exclusive to Mongols' wars vs European countries in any way. One can, for example, compare Mongols' first invasion of Middle East (when they were basically unstoppable) against their attempts few decades later, when they were defeated in the first major battle (IIRC, called Battle of Ain Jalut) - and see the clear difference.

I'd like to discuss this idea - that Mongols would have been impeded or stopped while encountering countries of central and western Europe, because almost everything I know about them suggests quite a different scenario, Mongols established an empire of unthinkable power, overshadowed by size only by British colonial empire of 20the century, and even so only by a small margin. They conquered China (medieval China was in no way, shape or form weaker than any of the European then-countries) in quite a quick period. They had no problems winning against powerful enemies such as Khawarezmian Empire, who could muster hundreds of thousands of soldiers. They defeated and subjugated first major European enemy - Russian states and princedoms - pretty easily. Next European countries which tried to stop them - Hungary and Poland - failed pretty spectacularly: battle of River Sajo ended up very badly for Hungarian side. They fought over large number of terrains and climates, against enemies great and small - and always ended up on the winning side. What makes you think e.g. HRE or France would fare any differently?