Nice one Anders, look forward to collaborating with you on this.
JHK and
MichaelTinkler inter alia might be interested in this one.
sjc
Just so long as you tiptoe around the F-word (shhhh - feudalism), Anders, you'll be o.k.! --MichaelTinkler
I know! :-) Then we just need to sink our teeth into all these concepts and hammer out a readable text. Ugh. --Anders Törlind
Wondering what was meant by the Honor(s) system???? JHK
Ah, just all the "honor in battle", "knights honor", "family honor" and all that stuff going on. Terribly unscientific, so please change it if you have a handy term for those kind of things :-) Might just be me reading to many romantic novels as well, hehe. --Anders Törlind
- Ok -- i suggest changing to Chivalry JHK
Um...how early are we going with this? I ask because if we start adding in any old Germanic/Barbarian
? people, we're going to get a lot of folks who were allied with and trained by the Romans...which I would call late antique... Also, are we limiting this to Western Medieval? Someone is bound to want to throw in Japanese for comparison (eventually), I'm sure. Comments? Opinions?
JHK
Hmmm. I think Europe is quite enough to deal with (the middle ages are hardly an era elswhere anyway). When to start? Pick a suitably early date. 700? What is the definition of medieval? --Anders Törlind
On another note; how to organize the article? Into sections dealing with various parts of warfare (battlefield, siege, transportation, levying and so on) and cover the developments through time in those sectons, or instead divide the article into chronological parts, covering certain time intervals? --Anders Törlind
- I'm in favor of a combination. I think it's important to have a general chronologically/geographically organized section that gives an overview, and then links to the specific topics that are mentioned. Or, try to create a huge, coherent essay -- more challenging, though. J Hofmann Kemp
Re: Islam, Turks, and Moors -- which shall we use? And speaking of which, are Turkish influences Medieval or Early Modern (goes back to the where are we focusing question...)?
JHK
Each one were seperate groups , even though they all followed Mohamet (Islam)
1. The ones that came frome the south west to Spain and France and were stopped by the Franks.
Called Moors
2. The Golden Horde Ghengis Khan , Liegnitz Silesia stopped at the gates of Berlin
Don't know how many of these were Muslim
- not many. The Mongols took up Islam over the next hundred years, and only the ones that had settled down to rule former Islamic territory. --MichaelTinkler
3. Several times Turks on Vienna etc
I think each group should be mentioned seperately and not lumped together
H. Jonat
Right -- I should have said which, if any, should we use. I'm fairly sure that we all know that the Muslims in Spain were called Moors. I think many of us also know that this term was also used to refer to Muslims elsewhere. My question concerns whether or not we should give an anachronistic name a special place, or to refer to the Moors within the greater topic of Islam.
As for Genghis Khan and the Turks, my question is still whether they should be considered medieval or early modern. Since historians tend to see a separation between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and much of the contact betwen these groups and Europe happened more during the Renaissance, it's a legitimate question. One of the difficulties in answering is that most of Eastern Europe was barely affected by the events in Italy. Personally, I'm not absolutely sure that there was a Renaissance(rather than just another of many renaissances), but since the article is defined as "between Ancient and Renaissance, it needs to be addressed. JHK
I think this article should stick to describing medieval warfare in a kind of low-level summary, then direct readers to particular battles or particular period or regional histories (Crusades, Byzantium, War of the Roses, Reconquista) and leave the methodological arguments to those entries!--
MichaelTinkler
My initial thought with this article was to be a collection of facts about "the waging of war" and its methodologies and the factors defining it during the middle ages. Perhaps it is a bit too large a topic to fit in one article, but i do think we could squeeze in the general principles and overall evolution of it here. A nice transition to [Renaissance warfare]? (and subsequently the highly interesting [17th century warfare]?) would be nice as well, although there would be some overlap. --Anders Törlind
- This looks like a workable and useful outline to me, Anders - and it sticks to medieval warfare rather than trailing off in a debate about the personalities of the OUTSIDE opponents. Nice job. (momentarily later) on a second read, is 'Medieval fortification' going to be a separate article? I don't see any headers here for castles, castle-design, etc. It would make sense as a separate article (referred to frequently inside this one) --MichaelTinkler
- Medieval fortification is certainly large enough to warrant an article of its own, I think. As castle and fortification construction had a great impact on warfare, frequent linking is probably in order, yes. I'll do a piece similar to this one on the subject unless you feel inclined :-) --Anders Törlind
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