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Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

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Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#311

Post by ashtonkem »

questionfor wrote: post #307
ashtonkem wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval knights were typically very trim and fit; we have existing texts extolling knights to not over eat and go outside and exercise with stones. While kings performing the role of general tended to be fat, the actual men at arms up front doing the dirty work were probably in fantastic shape. There are historical accounts of knights in armor being capable of climbing siege ladders like a pair of monkey bars while…

> climbing siege ladders like a pair of monkey bars while wearing their armor. So without legs? Just pure hands?

Yup, just with their hands.

This story is attributed to Jean de Maingre.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#312

Post by agency »

magicsmoke wrote: post #279
dragonelite wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shitty thing is the west is gradually moving into neo feudalism, like the World Economic Forum said "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy".

My pet theory about why modern democracy appeared when it did instead of earlier during the Medieval period is that it coincided with the rise of cheap muskets, which overturned the power dynamic between masses of untrained and unequipped peasants and knights with lifelong combat training and the best armor technology available. When victories started to depend less on whoever had the best elite fighting force and mo…

George Orwell has an essay, You and the Atomic Bomb[1], where he makes a very similar case:

> It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.

[1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#313

Post by smogcutter »

austincheney wrote: post #129
smogcutter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh yes, but this gets complicated and interesting in the details. Have you read Keegan on Agincourt? Short story, the popular version of French knights getting bogged down in the mud and shot to pieces with arrows is mostly false, but the English peasants did play a critical role. Far from being mowed down by longbowmen (although they absolutely would have taken a toll, especially on horses), the French cavalry was…

Something like 6000 soldiers were taken captive and the captives began to outnumber the entirety of English forces, so the English chose to execute them all as a necessary means of security, but really many of the archers were slaughtering them anyways as a means to loot the bodies.

Yeah I left this episode out bc the post was turning into a novel. Henry was spooked by a raid on the English baggage train, and the prospect of being caught between the prisoners in the rear and a renewed French attack in front.

As horrifying as the incident is, Keegan at least finds it unlikely that the prisoners were actually massacred wholesale. When you look at the actual mechanics of how such a thing would work, especially with the rest of the French army still on the field and watching, a slaughter of 6000 prisoners becomes really implausible.

For space I won’t quote Keegan’s reasoning, but here’s an excerpt from his conclusion:

> “What seems altogether more likely, therefore, is that Henry’s order, rather than bring about the prisoners’ massacre, was intended by its threat to terrorize them into abject inactivity ... Some would have been killed in the process, and quite deliberately, but we need not reckon their number in thousands, perhaps not even in hundreds.”

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#314

Post by vagrantJin »

blockmarker wrote: post #240
WJW wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European I've always thought that this bit of US law has not aged all that well. Imagine a tyrant takes hold of the US armed forces and uses that to overthrow the rest of government so they can rule alone. The US armed forces have equipment going up to tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones and nuclear weapons. A militia is going to struggle to field even heavy machine guns, let alone an air force. I doubt they'd…

I have saved a post about this from 4chan, they passed it around on some pro-gun rights forums. Will paraphrase it and spare you the expletives. "You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms. A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly"…

> If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them.

Guerilla warfare is a sharp reminder that the biggest weapon a soldier has is the one between his ears. Standing armies, like the story of david and goliath, "deploy" troops with the expectation that the other side will play by their rules. The result? David ain't about that life and uses his head, sling and a rock. You can have all the weapons in the world, nothing can garuantee your victory.

So how do the politicians and top brass justify the dead sons and no real, tangible success? They order the army to kill civilians ofcourse. Can you imagine training soldiers for a million bucks a pop, then he gets killed by a homemade bomb in some wadhi?

In short, war is a mess. It's not more guns needed, it's diplomacy.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#315

Post by lifeisstillgood »

medium_burrito wrote: post #301
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe fondue and hard cheese is the true magic potion. So even my bad French can get the translation - it what does it mean? :-) It smells like something out of Asterix - but what is the quote from?

Not a quote, just an Asterix reference- the savage tribes fighting off the (Holy) Roman Empire. Would be unseemly to make it in English.

Thank you:-)

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#316

Post by renox »

jimmyhachahacha wrote: post #118
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

In the Annals of St Bertin there's mention of an attack by the Danes (Vikings) on a region of Francia in 859 AD, where the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings, and drove them off without the assistance of the Carolingian rulers. This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service wa…

I don't think these two events, the Danes raid and the rebellion crush are linked outside of one making the author remind itself about the second. The French translation from Latin http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/anonyme/annales.htm [859] says: > Les Danois dévastent les pays au-delà de l'Escaut. Le commun peuple des pays entre Seine et Loire, conjuré entre soi, résiste courageusement aux Danois établis sur l…

I'm not so sure that both events are not linked, given that the peasants were 'seceding' they probably prepared themselves against an army which would explain why they were able to fight against the Vikings..

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#317

Post by fencepost »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #199
brazzy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, the comparison to an APC (armored personnel carrier) is apt- knights were armored enough to be nearly invulnerable to the weaponry a peasant would have access to. No. A knight prone on the ground was very easy to kill very quickly - just stick a dagger through the visor. There is nothing comparable a civilian today can do to an APC. Additionally, a single knight on a horse was not that hard to take down using r…

Lob a molatoff cocktail from above and hit the engine intakes and you can get a Mobility kill. Armour in built up areas is very risky with out infantry support and the APC's would not be just driving around with out having dismounts supporting them.

And a knight would frequently be either backed by other knights or have men at arms as well - effectively dismounts.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#318

Post by kebman »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #291
Chris2048 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the US trying to tyrannically attack those places? The government had to constantly answer to it's populace for those wars; if it had to answer to no one, things may have been different.

How about Russia in Afghanistan? Surely they had much less accountability and a similar technology gap (yes, I know the US supplied the fighters with some advanced weaponry). Yet, the had the same outcome as the US.

Here's a short documentary that captures some the post-Soviet dissolution mood of the Russian troops in Afghanistan, following the glasnost.[1]

[1]: Afgan - The Soviet Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqAHOpGd0g

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#319

Post by bobbybabylon »

scottlocklin wrote: post #214
questionfor wrote: post #159

People who suggest that knights could be defeated by peasants in one-on-one or even one-on-many combat often overlook that many (or most?) knights spent their time practicing how to kill people in combat. Peasants on the other hand were busy tending to their land or cattle or doing whatever they had to survive. The modern analogy for adult peasant fighting an adult knight would be a bar fight between a random bystand…

It's not clear that knightly training was as useful as UFC training. Ineffective martial arts were a big deal for literal decades before the Gracie family came along, I guess because people didn't want to put in a mouth guard and see what happens. How often did the knights actually see combat, as opposed to train for combat, and do non-lethal sparring? The one form of training which is of undoubted utility is group t…

If you don't mind could you tell me what exercises exercises you use to build hand strength, or even just post a link?

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#320

Post by questionfor »

ashtonkem wrote: post #311
questionfor wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> climbing siege ladders like a pair of monkey bars while wearing their armor. So without legs? Just pure hands?

Yup, just with their hands. This story is attributed to Jean de Maingre.

hmmm so monkey bars with 40-60lbs load. That's really impressive and something you have to actually train for.

I guess they did train that movement specifically (in armor etc.), because it's not something you could just randomly do on a whim even if you are very strong. Definitely not something you would WANT to do on a whim if you can fall down to your death and also have to be in good enough shape after to fight (which makes this particularly crazy).

Damn, considering that they were also trained grapplers, those must have been one hell of sparring partners.

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