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Dark Age Obscured (History)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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No, no, Wiley, this is your feast. But tell the boys and girls that they can't find any trace of the Battle of Hastings despite Mr Conqueror kindly building Battle Abbey on the site, and tell them that the historical sources for the battle were all written under Norman auspices. And should they ask, you might mention that the most famous and most ambitious piece of embroidery in the whole of human history, the Bayeux Tapestry, has no provenance whatsoever.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
Don't tell Ishmael about Guiscard's troops sacking Rome since it precisely mirrors Charles V's troops sacking Rome in 1527 in remarkably similar circumstances. They too were officially allied to the Pope, they too were saving the Pope from his enemies (the French) and they too ran amok without (allegedly) the consent of their own commanders. The Pope withdrew to the Castel del Angelo on both occasions too.


And the whole thing mirrors the third crusade and Constantinople. It's obviously the same story. People just got mixed up on where "Rome" was geographically.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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What they don't tell you at school (to be fair I would have been looking out the window, if I hadn't been excluded) was that at the same time as the Normans were duffing up Harold, that is before they got to sack Rome, the Normans were engaged in numerous battles within the Mediterranean region.......

One of their better efforts was the Battle of Cerami just three years before Hastings........

Happily the Normans with 136 Knights and 150 infantry defeated a Saracen force of 3000 horse and (some sources) 50,000 infantry.

The Muslim force, tired of its fruitless efforts to capture Cerami, abandoned the siege of the town and drew up facing them. It is unclear who attacked first, but a hesitant Roger is recorded as having led an early cavalry charge which failed to break the Muslim lines. The Muslim forces then counterattacked in force however the Norman infantry held fast. It was at this point that St. George is said to have appeared amongst the Norman ranks, clad in shining white armour atop a white stallion and bearing the flag of St. George upon his lance (it has sometimes been portrayed as Roger who bore the flag of St. George). His speech inspired the Norman knights to charge the Muslim ranks again and, as they did, Serlo led a charge down from Cerami into the left flank of the Muslim force, cutting a bloody path towards his Norman compatriots.[14]

In the space of a few hours, the courage and determination of the Norman warriors in the face of such an overwhelming force had checked the Muslim onslaught. The surprise of the double charge proved too much for the undisciplined Zirid troops, who turned tail and fled, precipitating the rout of the remaining Kalbid troops. Before long the entire Muslim army had descended into a chaotic flight which the Norman cavalry, now regrouped, was able to exploit without mercy.


It was the heavy cavalry that won it.

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

All things considered Harold put up a much better show than Ibn al-Hawas ...

One author points out cryptically that despite this resounding success at Cerami the Normans made very little progress over the the next four years perhaps as they had very few knights at their disposal.....

Historians seem a tad shy of making comparisons of the two Norman conquests

http://www.boglewood.com/sicily/normanconquest.html
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:


Happily the Normans with 136 Knights and 150 infantry defeated a Saracen force


The whole army is basically heavy cavalry.........must have been quite a sight charging round the countryside.
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aurelius



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Hatty has given me permission to continue my dragon postings in a new thread on History, which I've called The Serpent's Tale. Hope to enccounter you there!
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wiley wrote:

So the battle of Hastings according to wiki is a sort of AS v Viking Frankish bash, with Harold adopting the traditional Scandi tactic of the shieldwall.....and William descendent of Rollo using err non scandi heavy cavalry. Clearly Rollo and the guys assimilated local warfare tactics as well as language, whilst Harold was stuck using the older viking A/S methods. Did Harold learn nothing as prisoner of the Bastard? Anglo /Saxon expletive ......."they have heavy cavalry?"


The Golden Psalter of St. Gall (Psalterium Aureum, Cod. Sang. 22) is a Carolingian Gallican psalter produced in the late 9th century. The provenance is a tad mysterious, according to wiki it was probably begun in West Francia, the area later that fell under Rollo and, ahem, later continued in St. Gall Abbey.......(before or after the fire that burnt down the abbey, but not the contents of the library ?)

wiki wrote:
On 26 April 937 a scholar kindled a fire and the abbey and the adjoining settlement were almost completely destroyed; the library was undamaged, however.[9] About 954 they started to protect the monastery and buildings by a surrounding wall.[10] Around 971/974 abbot Notker finalized the walling and the adjoining settlements started to become the town of St Gall.[9] In 1006, the abbey was the northernmost place where a sighting of the 1006 supernova was recorded.


You can't keep Notker out of the story.

It appears to show.........

Well you can make your own minds up..........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Psalter_of_St._Gallen#/media/File:Karolingische-reiterei-st-gallen-stiftsbibliothek_1-330x400.jpg


http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4957/15045/
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Boreades wrote:
The invention of chain mail in Europe is commonly credited to the Celts in the Iron Age, 3rd C BC. It's mentioned in Roman accounts of their battles in Gaul. The Romans adopted it, and were using it through to the 2nd C AD.

Then it virtually disappears from orthodozy history. There's a gap of 400 hundred years until it's associated with Khosrow II, Sahr of Persia, in rock carvings at Taq-i-Bostan (620 AD)

Then not found again in Western Europe until apparently reinvented by the likes of the Normans.

Too many gaps?


Does the psalter evidence a missing link? (Get that)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wiley wrote:


No problem, I am concentrating on the Notker the Stammerer/The Monk of St Gall. According to Notker, Charlemagne's entire army was made up of heavy cavalry, even the horses wore mail..........Must have been quite a sight charging round the 8th century countryside.


So Notker wasnt making it up?
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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The Battle Of Tours(10 October 732)

One of the most important battles of the Dark Ages, laying the foundation of the Carolingian Empire
wiki wrote:
Ninth-century chroniclers, who interpreted the outcome of the battle as divine judgment in his favour, gave Charles the nickname Martellus ("The Hammer"). Later Christian chroniclers and pre-20th century historians praised Charles Martel as the champion of Christianity, characterizing the battle as the decisive turning point in the struggle against Islam, a struggle which preserved Christianity as the religion of Europe; according to modern military historian Victor Davis Hanson, "most of the 18th and 19th century historians, like Gibbon, saw Poitiers (Tours), as a landmark battle that marked the high tide of the Muslim advance into Europe."[24] Leopold von Ranke felt that "Poitiers was the turning point of one of the most important epochs in the history of the world."[25]

There is little dispute that the battle helped lay the foundations of the Carolingian Empire and Frankish domination of Europe for the next century. Most historians agree that "the establishment of Frankish power in western Europe shaped that continent's destiny and the Battle of Tours confirmed that power."[26


Cripes you cant get more important than that. No doubt those heavy cavalry came in handy........ I mean the Romans had em Charlemagne or Charles the Great (2 April 742 – 28 January 814), well according to Notker had his whole army charging round the countryside. They are there on the psalter........

Clearly heavy cavalry was the way to go.......It's a virtual guarantee of victory.

wiki wrote:
The Franks were victorious. 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi was killed, and Charles subsequently extended his authority in the south. Details of the battle, including its exact location and the number of combatants, cannot be determined from accounts that have survived. Notably, the Frankish troops won the battle without cavalry


Dag Nabbit
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Have you located the earliest written mention of the Battle of Poitiers, Wiley? I'll bet the source is a chronicle/annal written in the 12th century.

The writer(s) would describe such a battle more or less in contemporary terms (except probably a bit more brutal, or technologically inferior). Has anyone found the remains of the great battle or is it a Hastings scenario where the only 'battle' is the Norman church of Battle Abbey?

The archaeology of Merovingian, i.e. Dark Age, Gaul could be instructive. When I was trying to find evidence for St Martin of Tours, he of the famous monastic houses, it turns out there isn't anything on or under the ground though plenty of Roman and even prehistoric material. I'm not even sure if excavations have been carried out, the reports are so evasively expressed. For instance

“There is as yet little archaeological evidence about the physical development of monastic sites in Merovingian Gaul, and one must glean what one can from frustratingly few and often vague literary references.”

What 'literary references'? Perhaps they don't know, in any case they aren't saying. But the earliest monastery founded by St Martin is Ligugé so they might have better luck there

One of the best archaeological examples of a rural 6th century monastery is Ligugé, founded not far from Poitiers by Saint Martin around 360. But as in the case of contemporary urban and suburban monasteries, the monastic structures (cells, cloister etc.) escape us, unlike the actual buildings of worship.


The only extant remains are eleventh-century, as at Tours. It's like saying the Peterborough ASC is 'proof' that Bede existed even though no traces of a Monkwearmouth-Jarrow site have been found despite exhaustive digging and a wealth of 'literary references'.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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When and why was built the Great Wall of China.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It was built by 19th century historians.
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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Ishmael wrote:
When and why was built the Great Wall of China


I would guess that the wall was not built to keep the Mongols out, but built to keep the Chinese in.

It doesn't look especially old. It was mentioned in the 1700s by the antiquarian William Stukeley, who was also one of the first people to apply archaeological investigation to places like Stonehenge. He claimed the Great Wall would be visible from the Moon - another persistent myth simply repeated into existence.
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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Slightly more interesting though is whether the Great Wall can be seen from Low Earth Orbit.

All the following quotes come from the Wikipedia page on the Great Wall.

A more controversial question is whether the Wall is visible from low Earth orbit. NASA claims that it is barely visible, and only under nearly perfect conditions; it is no more conspicuous than many other man-made objects.


However;

Other authors have argued that due to limitations of the optics of the eye and the spacing of photoreceptors on the retina, it is impossible to see the wall with the naked eye, even from low orbit, and would require visual acuity of 20/3 (7.7 times better than normal).


The following astronauts disagreed.

Astronaut William Pogue thought he had seen it from Skylab but discovered he was actually looking at the Grand Canal of China near Beijing.


U.S. Senator Jake Garn claimed to be able to see the Great Wall with the naked eye from a space shuttle orbit in the early 1980s, but his claim has been disputed by several U.S. astronauts.


Veteran U.S. astronaut Gene Cernan has stated: "At Earth orbit of 100 to 200 miles high, the Great Wall of China is, indeed, visible to the naked eye."


Ed Lu, Expedition 7 Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, adds that, "it's less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look."


..but according to Neil Armstrong;

"I do not believe that, at least with my eyes, there would be any man-made object that I could see. I have not yet found somebody who has told me they've seen the Wall of China from Earth orbit. ... I've asked various people, particularly Shuttle guys, that have been many orbits around China in the daytime, and the ones I've talked to didn't see it."


But then;

In October 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei stated that he had not been able to see the Great Wall of China.


In response, the European Space Agency issued a press release reporting that from an orbit between 160 and 320 km, the Great Wall is visible to the naked eye



In an attempt to further clarify things, the ESA published a picture of a part of the "Great Wall" photographed from low orbit.


...However, in a press release a week later, they acknowledged that the "Great Wall" in the picture was actually a river


Not the brightest are they.

It's this sort of thing that makes me highly sceptical when it comes to any information or footage we're given by our space agencies.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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N R Scott wrote:
I would guess that the wall was not built to keep the Mongols out, but built to keep the Chinese in.


Did you watch the video? I was astonished. It appears to be quite definitive on when it was built and the motivation.

What is curious is that the Tartar empire here makes yet another appearance on the world stage only to be yet again disappeared from history. What is going on? How could an entire empire be so effectively wiped from the history of every world civilization?
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