When Historical Books Show Inaccuracies

[myrdden]

Two years or so ago? People have been using Apatosaurus in place of Brontosaurus for 30 years now;

What? No more Brontosaurus? Where have I been?

Myrdden

 

[MerakSpielman]

There are still thousands out there who tell me a katana is the best sword quality out there. I can show them measurements and comparisons of steel quality. Do they believe the facts? Not very often.

Katanas have a reputation, man. Sure, modern metallurgy can produce extraordinary metal, but it doesn't have the same word of mouth.

Back in the olden days of yore, nobody could purify metal really well. Places became known for the quality of their weapons, often because of the quality of ore that could be mined there, and sometimes because of "secret" methods that got out as many impurities as possible.

Nowadays, we can make metal as pure as we have money to spend, and can analyze what "impurities" actually increase strength, rigidness, flexibility, electrical conductivity, or whatever properties you want your chunk of metal to have. We know how to isolate these substances and add them in measured amounts, and can automate processes that took the smiths of the past months to do by hand.

My T'ai Chi teacher is very proud of his swords, purchased in China, and made of genuine Dragon Spring Steel. This is from a place from where could be mined naturally occuring spring steel, which snaps back to form after being bent. Swords made from this metal were considered almost magical when they were first made because nobody understood why the metal there behaved differently then metal elsewhere.

I haven't asked my teacher if he realizes that modern, synthetic spring steel is measureably superior. I hope he already knows this, and that his pride in his swords is historical/spiritual/whatever.

Of course, an inferior metal in the hands of a superior craftsman can still produce a better sword, but the same craftsman with even BETTER, modern, metal will produce an even better sword.

Edit: as for the nimbleness in armor is concerned... Take two identical men, one of whom has no armor, and one who has well-crafted full plate and knows how to wear it. The unarmored man will be faster and able to dodge quicker than the one in armor. You have to remember that most of us would have the equivent of a Dex 8-12 - average for humans. Think about the speed, balance, flexibility and precision of professional martial artists, acrobats and dancers, who probably average a Dex of 14-16. True masters of such things might be creeping into Dex 17-18, and these are the people you see on TV doing things with their body that make your eyes bug out. Now imagine these people trying to do their stuff in full plate armor... You get my point?
Sure, you could do a somersault in armor, but how about a triple somersault backwards, bouncing off a wall, twisting in midair, landing, rolling, and jumping agian?

Edit: what the hell is wrong with my sig? It was working correctly a few days ago... Time to descend into META.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

First a list of authors and books. Note some are dated.

Oakeshott, Ewart books and articles....

Joseph & Frances Gies, Life in a Medieval Castle, Life in Medieval City, Life in Medieval Village, A Medieval Family, Cathedral Forge and Water Wheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, Daily Life in the Medieval Times, Women in the Middle Ages, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, By the Sweat of Thy Brow: Work in the Western World,

David Edge, John Miles Paddock Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight

Boutell, Charles Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

David Nicolle
Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era 1050-1350 Western Europe *, The Crusades Essential Histories, Medieval Warfare Source Book*, History of Medieval Life, The Hamlyn History of Medieval Life,

Tim Newark Celtic Warriors*, Medieval Warlords *,

Charles Ffoulkes The Armourer and His Craft from XIth to XVIth Century*

Rob Valentine The Art of Making Armour,
Brian Price Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction

Dr Jeffery L Forgeng The Medieval art of Swordsmanship

Hans Talfhoffer Fechtbuch

Snip bar sinister discussion.

Second the Tallhoffer. Second the Tallhoffer. Wait, second the whole list! For a book about "historical accuracy", I would also recommend Josephine Teys Daughter of Time. A review can be found here.

The fun part about bar sinister? Anyone remember Simon Bar Sinister from Underdog? You weren't allowed to have a character called Simon the Bastard on TV in the 60s.

Well, it definitely sounds like you should get your money back.

 

[Theron]

An excellent resource for folks looking at the realities of medieval combat can be found at www.aemma.org. Particularly tasty are the extensive PDFs of actual medieval/renaissance fighting manuals and the videos (I'm especially partial to the cutting demonstration, just for the reaction of the person doing the cutting).

~ sword and armour junkie TB

 

[Fast Learner]

A list of Ms. Holland's other books for sale on Amazon:

Secrets of the Cat : Its Lore, Legend, and Lives

Hail to the Chiefs: Presidential Mischief, Morals, and Malarkey from George W. to George W

Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences

She's most definitely not a medieval historian.

 

[Theron]

On the subject of books to avoid:

Sherrilyn Kenyon's Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the Middle Ages (possibly the most worthless book Writer's Digest has ever published).

William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire (I think the most recently published source he used was Durant's "The Story of Civilization". Seriously.)

 

[ascendance]

Gentlemen's Blood
A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk
by Barbara Holland

[Referring to Toledo swords makers] "A perfectionist might turn out only two or three masterpieces a year."

I think the operative word is masterpieces. That same Toledo sword maker might have churned out a few other lesser pieces over the course of the same year. Also, such a person would be working with journeymen and apprentices, who would be cranking out the bread and butter munition grade stuff.

As for the other facts you cite, they do seem quite problematic. However, they stem from the author's rather questionable thesis (which I'm getting just from your excerpts, which you can correct me if I'm wrong) that duelling evolved from the game-like structure of medieval warfare, where the objective was not to kill your enemy, but rather, capture and ransom him back.

Should you return it? Well, if you don't see anything of merit in the book, give it back and get a better one.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Though technically a smith would only turn out one masterpiece in his lifetime - the piece that qualified him for being a master rather than a journeyman.

I hate poorly researched histories, I was watching a show on the History Channel about 'The Mysterie of Vitrified Stone Forts'. Therein the 'historian' pile wood up against a stone wall and burned it, and then stood amazed that the stone had not vitrified, implying some lost art.

In other words he left out the bags of pig fat, which raise the temperature quite considerably, and he set the fire in the lee of the stones 'to ensure it's continual burning throughout'.

Bah! Bah! I say!

The Auld Grump, on the other hand the archaeologist who solved the 'mystery of the pyramids' by hiring a professional mason...

 

[S'mon]

I never heard this before. Could tell me how you came to know this?
Or was the mud just like some sticky clay mud here in the South. Where you go out in your boots and come back with 4 extra pds of mud stuck to your soles.

There was a (BBC?) TV show on Agincourt recently where among other things (eg analysing the French attack using software analysis designed for crowd disasters) they did scientific testing on the mud from the locality - indeed it is a heavy clay that absorbs and holds water like a sponge, becoming easily waterlogged and able to create the 'sucking' effect on rigid armour (or boots). This wouldn't happen in loamy soil but it does perhaps provide one explanation for the myth. The lightly armoured English archers had a big advantage in the muddy melee against the plate-armoured knights. The show wasn't necessarily 100% accurate in all respects*, but I thought this seemed plausible.

They claimed that the English archers' arrows could never have been able to penetrate the French plate armour, and demonstrated this with a test where an arrow was struck ineffectively against a sheet of plate - a 2mm thick sheet of plate, about _twice as thick_ as historical full plate of the era. It also ignored the extreme draw weights of some longbows found on eg the Mary Rose, up to 140lbs or so, and the skeletal evidence of archers trained their whole lives to do one thing - punch a bodkin arrow through plate. I found this a bit annoying - while it's perfectly true that _most_ longbow arrows fired would not penetrate a target's plate armour, I've seen other demonstrations of it being done easily enough, and there are plenty of contemporary pictures of punctured knights on medieval battlefields. I think they were more concerned to emphasise the other factors that led to French defeat by downplaying the longbow's effectiveness.

 

[Aaron L]

I'm afraid if I had bought that book that I would have sent it to her personally with a nasty letter.