March 29th, 1461. Someone has a bad day

[firebug]

From The Economist, a fascinating read about insights on medieval life and death gleaned by archaeologists studying a mass burial pit from Britain's Wars of the Roses.

Towton 25 [pictured above] suffered eight wounds to his head that day. The precise order can be worked out from the direction of fractures on his skull: when bone breaks, the cracks veer towards existing areas of weakness.

This physical diversity [of the victims] is unsurprising, given the disparate types of men who took the battlefield that day. Yet as a group the Towton men are a reminder that images of the medieval male as a homunculus with rotten teeth are well wide of the mark. The average medieval man stood 1.71 metres tall—just four centimetres shorter than a modern Englishman. “It is only in the Victorian era that people started to get very stunted,” says Mr Knüsel. Their health was generally good. Dietary isotopes from their knee-bones show that they ate pretty healthily. Sugar was not widely available at that time, so their teeth were strong, too.

[CaptainCrunch]

While modern war is terrifying and awesome in its preciseness and abilty to kill enmass very quickly.

Ancient war took on a whole other level of barbarianism, cruelty and outright suffering.

This man did not die easily.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

While modern war is terrifying and awesome in its preciseness and abilty to kill enmass very quickly.

Ancient war took on a whole other level of barbarianism, cruelty and outright suffering.

This man did not die easily.

Warfare certainly seemed a more personal, looking the other guy right in the eye kind of thing. Everyone was involved and the outcome of a battle was probably a life and death thing for the King/Queen/General too.

In WWII, I think, only 25% of soldiers in the USA Army actually fired a shot.

Cowperson

[GirlySports]

War had honour back then. And music! (although I'm not sure you wanted to be a trumpeteer in an army since people shoot whatever they can hear first)

Today it's just roadside bombs.

[Ozy_Flame]

This man looks like he took a scythe to the head. Ouch.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

War had honour back then. And music! (although I'm not sure you wanted to be a trumpeteer in an army since people shoot whatever they can hear first)

Today it's just roadside bombs.

I don't know if I would even agree with that, there was pseudo beliefs in honor by nobility, but the fights in the trenches were every bit as dirty and nasty and cruel as they might be looked at today.

Remember there was no Geneva convention back then, so wounded were routinely finished off with the justification of easing their suffering. Drum head trials of enemy and friendly combatants were used. Rudementary biological warfar was used on fairly common basis back then as well.

The whole no quarter given or expected was not an honor code, and slaughtering your enemy driving into their town and burning it to the ground were common practices.

Even the oriental honor codes that people talk about are badly misunderstood and never lent themselves to the battlefield.

The only thing that gained you honor in war back then was winning, and it got worse during the crusades.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

This man looks like he took a scythe to the head. Ouch.

If I read the article right, he was hit in the side of the head with a sword, hammered on top of the head from behind with a sword pommel which dropped him face down on the ground. He was hit with something else which made him roll onto his back, and then while he was on the ground probably begging for mercy, or praying to god, somebody rammed a sword through his face.

This was not a quick death.

[firebug]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

War had honour back then. And music! (although I'm not sure you wanted to be a trumpeteer in an army since people shoot whatever they can hear first)

Today it's just roadside bombs.

I don't think I agree.

These bodies were found some distance from the actual battlefield, and the preponderance of the blows focused on their heads was unusual.

The bodies were stripped before burial and one showed evidence of the deliberate removal of an ear.

The archaeologists note the severity and 'inhumanity' of the violence directed at these individuals.

[DropIt]

Spikey ball on a chain FTW

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by DropIt

Spikey ball on a chain FTW

Really inefficient weapon, made more to be intimidating then effective.

Kinda like the heavy plate armor worn by knights became useless once the Halbeard was invented.

[Northendzone]

normally one would expect to find articles related to the economy and whatnot in a magazine entitled the economist - instead we are given a detailed breakdown of battle in the 1400 - next thing you know there be articles on how to trick out your family sedan in oprah magazine.....

[SeeBass]

I forget the battle but it was a Roman Legion vs Hanibal that was completly wiped out and left to rot on the battlefield.
The wounded were so desperate to end their suffering that there were holes dug beside their heads from them eating dirt in an effort to suffocate themselves.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by SeeBass

I forget the battle but it was a Roman Legion vs Hanibal that was completly wiped out and left to rot on the battlefield.
The wounded were so desperate to end their suffering that there were holes dug beside their heads from them eating dirt in an effort to suffocate themselves.

I think that was the battle of Lake Trasiemine where Hannibal slaughtered the Romans and killed Flavius.

The battle of Canae was also particularly brutal and after that alot of Italian imperial territory told the empire to f-itself and joined Hannibal's cause.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by DropIt

Spikey ball on a chain FTW

The Flail.

I think Cops should start carrying them around instead of nightsticks.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Really inefficient weapon, made more to be intimidating then effective.

Kinda like the heavy plate armor worn by knights became useless once the Halbeard was invented.

Plate was an innovation of the longbow era and was virtually impenetrable by any other form of weapon, including the halberd, until the widespread use of gunpowder on the battlefield.

It was, though, extremely heavy, and weapons like the halberd were useful in knocking the knight off balance or down where he could be knifed or bludgeoned by opposing foot. At Agincourt, the English, greatly outnumbered by the French armoured knights, were able to fight the battle in a muddy field where the sheer impact of arrows from the longbows, which had a pull of over 200 lbs, were able to smack the knights around pretty good in the mud where the unarmoured archers could literally dance circles around them. A knight, in full armoured plate, weight probably an additional 80 lbs. If you could knock one down, he'd be like a turtle flipped over on its shell.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by peter12

Plate was an innovation of the longbow era and was virtually impenetrable by any other form of weapon, including the halberd, until the widespread use of gunpowder on the battlefield.

It was, though, extremely heavy, and weapons like the halberd were useful in knocking the knight off balance or down where he could be knifed or bludgeoned by opposing foot. At Agincourt, the English, greatly outnumbered by the French armoured knights, were able to fight the battle in a muddy field where the sheer impact of arrows from the longbows, which had a pull of over 200 lbs, were able to smack the knights around pretty good in the mud where the unarmoured archers could literally dance circles around them. A knight, in full armoured plate, weight probably an additional 80 lbs. If you could knock one down, he'd be like a turtle flipped over on its shell.

From my understanding the alberd was designed to deal with mounted infantry and mounted knights. You either killed the horse or used the long blade to dismount the rider or the knight. Your right once a knight in battle armour was on the ground, killing him was no more difficult then shucking a lobster.

The longbows was always considered to be one of the great innovations of the middle ages war set, there wasn't a lot that could stop those bad boys.

The old saying, in the battle between armour and weapons, weapons usually wins.

The T34 tank was almost invulnerable to German tank fire in WW2, and that hearalded in the use of shaped charge anti tank weapons.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

From my understanding the alberd was designed to deal with mounted infantry and mounted knights. You either killed the horse or used the long blade to dismount the rider or the knight. Your right once a knight in battle armour was on the ground, killing him was no more difficult then shucking a lobster.

The longbows was always considered to be one of the great innovations of the middle ages war set, there wasn't a lot that could stop those bad boys.

The old saying, in the battle between armour and weapons, weapons usually wins.

The T34 tank was almost invulnerable to German tank fire in WW2, and that hearalded in the use of shaped charge anti tank weapons.

The Longbow was extremely bad-ass. English archers would have been the equivalent of today's body-builders, minus the steroids. I think Benjamin Franklin said that if the Patriots had had a battalion of longbows, they would have won the Revolutionary War in a week. Depending on the archer, the bow could fire 6-10 arrows a minute over 200 yards, and strike a target the size of your hand.

It's more than just a technical battle too, though. Typically, the French, when facing the English, were notoriously undisciplined, breaking formation early, advancing into fortified positions etc... The English, at Agincourt, at Crecy, and Poiters, maintained strong unified formations of armoured foot with mixed arms of longbows on the flanks.

The French were awful at using mixed arms. They routinely wasted their crossbows, which even though it was a much slower-firing weapon than the longbow, had a longer range and was always present in larger numbers on the battlefield than the English Longbow.

[flylock shox]

Interesting that the article didn't touch on one feature of that skull that is evident from the picture: the deterioration in British dentistry over the past 550 years.