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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1530453" data-attributes="member: 6533">Hmm, that last statement is more than a little ungentlemanly.  And inaccurate, the main reason we see so many French defeats is that they fight so often and drive their opponents to such mad desperation.  They did more than all right in the Italian wars, the thirty years, several English dynastic struggles, the first crusade, the Battle of Tours went their way, and there were more than a few imperial projects or crazy splinter groups which did well.In fact, the War of the Roses we were discussing was ended by a French heir, treacherous English nobles, and a French force. I meant no disrespect by praising the English for their luck.  And I certainly didn't mean to imply the English got lucky four times.  No they won four battles over a series of decades by their own virtue.I meant to imply that the English got lucky once.  It's certainly not by your own virtue that you get implicated in a civil war cum dynastic struggle against a foe suffering from massive structural and leadership difficulties.If your foe also happens to be many times more powerful than you and capable than you, at least in terms of the sinews and bones of war if not the muscle and nerves, than I think you can be called lucky.And my other point about the French knights is that they had a lot more in common with the Spartan hoplites, who were the people the very phrase aristocracy was coined for, than the Spartans did with the English yeomen.Democracies are a great idea and tyranny has its difficulties, but the idea that democracies have an inherent advantage militarily strikes me as wee bit dangerous and certainly more than a little skewed when they have traditionally been a weak and unstable form of government particularly in times of war.And in terms of my prior rant on historical chauvinism.  I don't know that you could claim the Carthaginians were any less democratic and free than the Romans.In fact, if anything, they lost because their empire was set up less like a tyranny and more like an alliance.All right, I have to admit.  I do love this style of historical debate.  I do hope its useful and pleasant to anyone else.</blockquote>

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