You got to travel about Europe in the best part of the year with thousands of your closest friends, and you got to level up your looting skill! What's not to like?
Now I know what it's like to be in a medieval battlefield, can you make a video about fighting in a colonial/revolutionary battlefield as a colonial soldier?
Standing in line watching your buddies get torn to pieces as u desperately reload waiting for your commanding officer to give u the order to ready arms and fire
9:50 I saw in some historically accurate reenactments these war priests had a battle cry that goes like this "Aiioooo" and "Wololo". They would chant while attempting to get enemy combatants on their side. They would usually succeed, unless killed before they completely convince the enemy.
Hay hoooooooooo wolololo and Bang the fog of War is there and you just lost a bigdaddy :x (the cheated car with rocket Launcher.. yes the Priest could do that and it suckdd hahaha )
To be a medieval soldier was typically to be given the task of defending some absolute ruler of varying qualities, and if soldiers survived battle injuries, disease, or exposure, they would oftentimes get the opportunity to supplement whatever they were paid by robbing civilians, and sometimes raping them.
@@StaalBurgher0 no not really. most wars in human history for the common soldier is soldiers(usually raised from unlanded, poor peasantry) raping and looting whatever they can before they go back home.
@@jasonarcher7268 how did gender studies, teaching women about urinals/toilet paper and building empty derelict schools go bro?? Last I heard the funds for them schools were split evenly between corrupt ANA and ISAF higher ups and some diplomats??
the samples were taken from random excavations and an average medieval war-horse had a shoulder height of a bit over 5 feet...that's more like a smaller horse....and people, even well feed nobles, were a few inches smaller too
That sounds a bit more reasonable. A knight on a pony doesn't sound very intimidating. A horse 5 feet tall makes a more formidable mount, especially with an armored knight decked out with all his regalia. Thanks for the info.
@@williamromine5715 your armor, weapons and underpadding was most likely also a factor why you don't want to have a too large horse imagine yourself to be a late-medieval knight who just dismounted, engaged in some high performance melee action and now, more or less exhausted, tries to get up into the saddle again with his ca. 100 pound surplus outfit asap.....that's much easier if you aren't dealing with a exceptionally large horse also, english horses in general hadn't the best rep back then, which makes the estimated hight of pack and farm horses from there extra unrepresentative as a knight you want to have one of those 5.3 spanish breeds for battle !
@@feldgeist2637 you seem to be speaking with some authority. What would that be? As far I know the armor was very flexible and light, otherwise they couldn’t fight either. And the warhorses were related to modern day Clydesdales which is the largest horse. This research group probably dug up a bunch of pack mules. This video is very dubious and probably bunch of horse sht. Also, it wasn’t their wives they were bringing alot. They brought prostitutes.
The ppl weren't that short. "Studies and historical records suggest that the average height for men in some parts of Europe during the Middle Ages was around 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) or shorter." Ppl weren't that short back then. That's just BS ppl repeated a bunch of times. Then other ppl repeat it.
*Historical doc of general pep speech* : "Men! Let us go fight this battle with power and dignity!" *Medieval reality general pep speech* : "Uuuuuhhhh...So like, I guess just try to not die, yeah? Cool cool....'kay let's go."
Anyone whose swing a heavy sword knows that it takes alot of practice to make that slice. Seeing how Hollywood depicts medival age battles, the farmers turned quick soldiers most likely slapped the hell out of their foes with their swords
3:50 People hear the word pony and immediately think Shetland Ponies which run around 12 hands (48 inches at the shoulder). Ponies can be up to 14 inches so closer to an American Mustang or a Moor Pony in England. It's also important to understand that the study was based on average size of surviving skeletons. There were larger horses up to 16 hands (about the size of the modern thoroughbred racehorse) and those are the horses used by the heavily armoured knights while the smaller horses would have been used by the light cavalry that did the scouting and raiding.
Actually, the use of a horse as a war horse didn't depend that much on height. Sure, the war horses were probably from the higher percentiles, but training, temper and general build was far more important. Knights didn't even necessarily want the biggest horses they could get.
@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei Sorry (this response will be a bit long) but I have to disagree with you on this one. It's true that knights weren't riding around on draft horses like you see in the movies. Their horses were about the size of a modern hunter in the 16-17 hand range. This is still pretty large compared to ponies though. The two hands (8 inches / 20.3 cm) difference between a pony and horse doesn't sound like a lot but horses are three dimensional. A 16 hand horse isn't just that much taller it's longer and broader as well. For comparison a New Forrest Pony in England (which run 12-14 hands) weighs in the 510-730 pound range (231-331 kg). An English thoroughbred, which has a surprisingly similar conformation but is about two hands taller, weighs in the 990-1100 pound (449-499 kg) range. As tough as the ponies are you can't really expect them to carry the same load as a horse nearly twice their size. If memory serves, with the exception of certain Guards units, European cavalry in the 1800s were restricted to men 5 foot 7 inches (170 cm) to keep from overloading the horses and these troops were equipped with horses in the modern thoroughbred size range. Now you can point to nomadic horsemen like the Mongols who used smaller horses but these peoples usually had several horses and would switch between them over the course of a day or even a single battle. Cowboys, vaqueros and gaucho's in the Americas used a similar system called the remuda and might only use one of their mustangs for a couple of hours a day. As for temperament, that was important but different societies valued different things. During the Crusades the knights preferred stallions as they were thought to be more aggressive while the Muslims preferred mares as they were thought to be more manageable. So yeah. History likes to be complicated while RU-vid comments don't usually give us the chance to give all the detail we might like;).
@@silverjohn6037 I didn't really disagree with the mention that horses were not literally ponies. I actually wrote a long comment myself on this video and one of my points is indeed that we don't talk about shetland ponies here. But I see that it kinda sounds like disagreeing with it when I start with "Actually" and then write about how size didn't matter that much, sorry. But I at least mentioned that I would still believe that the horses for battle were at least from the higher percentiles when it comes to height. I just meant that while they didn't use the smallest horses, knights also didn't necessarily go for the biggest horses they could get, because other qualities were seen as more important. And I recently watched a cool interview (but in German) about exact this topic with the Dutch HEMA practitioner Arne Koets who is quite knowledgable with horses and medieval warfare (especially when it comes to stuff on horses) and he basically said the same. He said the ideal since Roman times up to Napoleonic times for battle was usually to get horses around 1.50-1.55m which should be like 14.7-15 hand? Although there were exceptions and according to him England was such an execption, they had a bigger ideal size. Although there was of course a certain limit, because the really big horse races today didn't exist back then. Although while there was this "ideal battle horse" up to the Napoleonic wars, there are of course also a lot of details that make it far more complex. One of it was of course that later cavalry had much more specialized subcategories with different purposes (scouting, ranged combat, melee combat, ranged and melee combat combined ect.) and they had different types of horses for those subcategories. On the same time, most of those more specialized post-medieval calvary types were also always travel horses, while medieval knights had a distinct travel horse in addition to their warhorse(s). So "ideal battle horse" just means "This horse is perfect to get on, do battle and then dismount and let it rest" , but sometimes you didn't just want an ideal battle horse, you wanted a horse that was as good as possible for battles while also making compromises because you also wanted it to be your travel or scouting horse. But I guess at least the higher-ranking people of premodern and modern cavalry, like your commanders and whatnot still had a specialized horse they had with them only for battle situations. But that's my guess, I didn't look into it.
Just because Romans had gear and universal armor, they still had to buy it themselves. Depending on your wealth and what you can buy determines where you will be in the army (age has a role too)
It depends on the period. During the Roman Kingdom and early to mid Republic only land owning citizens could be called up for military service, being able to afford and supply their own equipment. However after the Marian reforms of 107 BC the Roman army became a more full time uniformed professional fighting force supplied for by the state. Because of this the landless poor were made eligible for military recruitment. Roman armies from 107 BC onwards for the most part remained state supplied professional fighting forces up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD.
During Tamerlane's reign, people of isfahan in Iran revolted by killing tax collectors and soldiers. Timur sieged the city and recaptured it with little effort. After restoring his control over the city he ordered the massacre of the citizens who resisted; the death toll is reckoned to be at least 70,000. An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each.
@@gujjewman96 he didnt order the massacre of the citizens who resisted, he ordered a massacre on the entire city, no exceptions. Timur was ruthless in conquering. He used fear to conquer and hold places. If you dared to speak up he would make the entire village perish. He also never lost a single battle in history and is considered to be one of the greatest conquerers in history.
We shouldn't overstate the whole "campaign season" thing. It doesn't mean that they went on campaigns every year during these season. But when they planed a campaign, they usually tried to fit it into that time. There were examples and there were many years without any campaigns. Medieval horses weren't that small. Yes, the study compares them to ponies, but there are modern horses classified as ponies that aren't that small. The average size of the horses - not just war horses by the way, generally horses from the period - was around 1.45 meter/57 in. That's like the maximum size you would call something a pony. We're not talking shetland pony size here. And that's a good size for a warhorse, bigger horses wouldn't be very useful and also eat more. Also, medieval people were a bit smaller, around 10 cm/4 inches smaller on average, although the nobles were probably a bit bigger than peasants. It may be added, that tournaments during the high medieval and even into the late medieval age weren't exactly the romantized version we think of. Jousting was more of a small part of it and was usually done as a duel, that started on horse, but the knights would then dismount and fight on foot against each other. But the more important disciplin was the group fight which was basically just an arranged battle where knights of both sides fought originally with sharp weapons and tried to capture knights of the other side to demand ransom. A lot of high medieval battles between knights were actually quite undeadly, because both sides were more interested in capturing each other and they kinda speculated on being captured rather than killed. Infantry was often just there to look scary, but didn't do much in the battle itself. Infantry became more important in the late medieval age and kinda destroyed the way the knights wanted to fight battles. There were of course exceptions, especially when knights had to specifically fight against infantry like in the crusades or when fighting some revolt. Yes, medieval fighters used their own gear. But we have to remember: a lot of those soldiers who weren't professional soldiers like men-at-arms and their retinues were volunteers who were more of middle to heigh class in the peasantry - burghers, yeomen ect. . And a lot of medieval cities and even some free peasantries had military constitutions that set rules what kind of armor and weapons people had to own, usually depending on their wealth. That equipment inspected often and there were even cases where entire units were sent home because they were poorly equiped. People often think of masses of serfs with armed with farming tools improvised as weapons, but that wasn't really a thing, at least not when everything went as it was meant to be. Serfs were serfs - unfree peasants - exactly because they had exchanged their freedom against protection from a professional fighting class. They were not supposed to fight, that was the whole deal. And yes, looting was a thing, but there are a lot of examples where army leaders do their best to prevent their people from doing so. Especially when it comes to taking equipment from the dead of the battlefield. Bows and crossbows didn't usually penetrate plate armor. There was a slight chance, but absolutely no guarantee. But they were still dangerous, the impact itself could be quite painful for the person in armor and arrows disoriented knights and could wound horses. Horses usually had armor themselves, but were not as covered as their masters. And while an arrow wouldn't directly kill a horse, there are many accounts of horses falling and crushing the horseman under them - another reason why you wouldn't necessarily want a giant horse.
Interesting tidbit about Agincourt - the nobles were intended to be held captive and ransomed off but a large chunk of the French army hadn't engaged. Worried about a counterattack doubling up their forces, they had to sacrifice that pay day and play it safe. Not unlike a captured ship's crew scuttling it so that it can't fall into enemy hands.
They actually weren't gonna do it but when a band of civilians attacked the back wagon supply Henry ordered the attack on the prisoners. He had to get the archers to do it because the knights didn't want to kill their cash cows. They also locked a bunch of them in a barn and set it on fire. Pretty gruesome stuff.
This possibly helped the English win the war, since if you ransom someone back they will want to come fight with a vengeance. Killing the nobles may have helped destroy Frances leadership leading to Henry Vs later successes
@@onefrostysoldier6658 yes the war was certainly a back and forth, but bad luck, the sheer resources of France and the inspiration of a Peasant girl turned saint gave France what it needed to ultimately win
Twice he's referred to Agincourt taking place in 1451. It place in October 1415. English and Welsh archers were feared throughout Europe precisely because they DID train, every Sunday by law, and from a young age, not just individually but in groups, ie squads. The French prisoners were slaughtered during the battle (for security fears) not after it, what would be the point of that? Most of the food supplies for the English/Welsh troops were bought in vast quantities in England, the bills still exist, and shipped over the channel by the Kings officers.
Also.... "It place in October 1415." What grammar is that? It's almost as if... *feigned shock* ...mistakes can happen to people on the internet?!?! Wow. Look at that. And yes, he did say 1415 at around the 9 minute mark.
And when the announcer is talking about Agincourt at a bit after the 3 minute mark, the way the sentence is structured, it is referring to an account of the battle that was WRITTEN in 1451 - the sentence is not saying the battle HAPPENED in 1451.
@@gokuxavi270 @gokuxavi270 lol And there's actually more wrong with their statement (e.g. the killing of French prisoners and the timing of it, for one), but... don't kick a bro when they're down... etc, etc.
I ♥️Weird History. Educational & entertaining. ♥️the narrator’s voice & tone. Always something new to learn. Thanks Weird History for all the great content! Much ♥️& all the best! Have a great day/night all.
Still marks in the groundworks around Kenilworth Castle to this day from the siege, and the siege took 6 months because they had to try and deal with the moat (8ft deep and about 10ft wide) which is now dried up
War horses were not freaking ponies!!! The smaller horse remains they have found were likely pack animals and or food stock animals, yes they ate horse 🐴. War horses were bigger than an American quarterhorse but smaller than a Clydesdale or Percheron.
medieval horses, including those used in war, were less than 14.2 hands (4 feet 10 inches) tall from the ground to their shoulder blades-the maximum height of a pony today, -The Smithsonian
According to the research by very learned people, war horses were not like riding horses. They were not tall they were short, muscular and stocky which served better their purpose in battle. This research was done by people at the museum of London. They know their stuff.
@@oneoddduck777 according to the all knowing Wikipedia (obviously sarcasm) Many well-known scholars have speculated about the nature of destriers and about the size they attained. They apparently were not enormous draft types.[7] Recent research undertaken at the Museum of London, using literary, pictorial and archeological sources, suggests war horses (including destriers) averaged from 14 to 15 hands (56 to 60 inches, 142 to 152 cm), and differed from a riding horse in their strength, musculature and training, rather than in their size.[8] An analysis of medieval horse armour located in the Royal Armouries indicates the equipment was originally worn by horses of 15 to 16 hands (60 to 64 inches, 152 to 163 cm),[9] about the size and build of a modern field hunter or ordinary riding horse.[10] I will draw your attention to the ARMOR used in the time period would have fit on a horse of 16 hands. Regardless of what "researchers" today say, the actual evidence from the time shows horse that were equal in size to modern riding horses. They would have been seen as huge in 1300, when the average man stood about 5 foot 4 inches.
They didn't bring those small horses that stood at 4'10" into battle. Those were horses used for more comfortable travel. Their trot was very steady and smooth and barely moved vertically which all the full sized horse breeds do. Traveling just a few miles on a full sized horse can give your back a pounding. War horses were a real thing in Medieval times and they were full sized Arabians for the most part.
Henry didn't just kill his POWs for the sake of killing them. The English were under attack and couldn't risk the French picking up arms again. They were just too much of a liability.
Indeed, thousands of French were still in the field by the time the English had taken prisoners. It was impossible with their numbers and without sufficient quarters for the English to guard hundreds of captured prisoners at their back while a sizable French force remained to their front. The English King not wanting to risk a possible prisoner revolt at his rear should the French army attack again decided at the behest of custom and those that cried ransom that the best course of action was to kill the prisoners. Shortly thereafter that the order to execute was given the remaining French soldiers began to withdraw from the field and the English won the day.
The English, on French territory were under attack... they were teh invading force. That being said the idea of nation was created during the French revolution... Henry was a guy who had ancestry and claim in France because his viking ancestors tried to pillage Paris and got bribed to stay in Normandy, became French, then invaded England for another claim and became kings... how exactly that worked so long and how people got so dumb after the fall of the Roman empire I still don't know
It was a dark, bloody time full of fear and the famous, albeit smelly, London Fog. In all seriousness, I believe they did a couple of JTR and the time period.
Listen to season 3(I think) of the podcast Unobscured. There’s a whole season doing a deep dive into what exactly happened, how the investigation went, and what the sociopolitical climate was at the time, including interviews with several experts on the topic. Living in Whitechapel at the time would have been like living in any other English suburb during that era: mostly fine if you’re rich or a man; definitely fine if both; but if poor and also female, chances not so good. For a variety of reasons, apart from the couple of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
It's just not true that common soldiers were "untrained". There is lots of anecdotal evidence that martial arts such as wrestling, boxing and stick fighting were a big part of men and boys culture back then. In a time when it was not uncommon for extreme violence to happen at any time....you had to know how to fight.
You didn't talk about crossbows at all. I believe they were much more effective than the longbow. After all, the church and the Nobles tried to ban crossbows because they were so damn effective and anybody could use them.
Yes, the biggest advantage of the crossbow is that anyone can use it: a lord can conscript a bunch of his peasants, hand each of them a crossbow, and train them how to use it in less than two minutes. While the longbow took much more training and skill to use, it could be fired more rapidly and had a much greater range than the crossbow. So, it was a trade-off.
The church tried to ban crossbows and archers in general during the 11th and 12th century, but it wasn't really something that was a thing for the entire medieval ages. Alo, the papal bull reads: "We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers, which is hateful to God, to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on." So it wasn't just about crossbows, they meant any ranged weapons. Some translations even mention slings.
Longbows were much cheaper and easier to produce. They were also less fiddly than the windlass crossbow. Windlasses could tangle, break, rust especially in wet climes. Stress would also make it tricky to wind quickly. There are advantages and disadvantages with both. You can't just say "crossbows we're more effective" without explaining why. Effective at what? Penetrating armour?
No formal training, then he mentions hunting which was reserved to nobility as one of the informal training... Nobility and wealthy people had access to maître d'armes for weapon training, they didn't just flail swords around like brutes. And even the poorer knights could count on the training of their fathers and uncles who had spend their lives fighting.
This is why the month of March is named after the god of war Mars, it was the start of the good weather. I deployed to Afghanistan during the winter and saw no combat until the spring time came and all hell broke loose, its still like this till this day
The writer(s) and narrator make this series. The information is interesting and useful but without the way it's written and the great voice and humor it would just be boring history. Well done!!!!
Yes, a Warhorse was a well trained beast of burden. An armored, fully equipped warhorse had to carry close to 350 to 400 lbs of equipment onto the battlefield. An armored night would weigh 250-300lbs plus lance, sword, armor for horse, horse tack and pagentry. A Warhorse did not live a simple life, and they were known to be rather ill-tempered towards anyone but their master and squire.
Hi, Weird History! I looooooove your channel! Can you make more Medieval videos?? I want to know what it was like to be a Medieval monk, Nun, Criminal, Police officer. To be unemployed and look for work. To be poor versus being rich - pros and cons? What it was like to move from one city to another, what it was like to be a landlord. What it was like to own a store let's say grocery store or what they considered grocery store. What was it like to sell items in the market? What it was like to be a criminal - dangerous profession or better than the alternative? What it was like getting married. Let's start with those please.☺ Thank you in advance! PEACE🙏❤
There were usually no "police officers" or anything like that. Most cities had armed citizens who jept order themselves and the typical night guard was just a crsftman doing a kind of community service. Some cities had paid soldiers, but they were more used to keep order in the rural areas around the city and as escort for merchant caravans and things like that. When it comes to really poor people: beggars were generally accepted inside cities because it gave burghers the opportunity to donate money to them and therefore do "good deeds" which would reduce their time in purgatory as they believed. There were even cities who complained that they didn't have enough beggars. Grocery stores weren't really a thing per se. Medieval people were quite self-sufficient, even burghers in cities often had a garden and maybe some chicken or pigs. When they needed something, they bought it directly from the producers. Being a "criminal" wasn't really a job and you shouldn't imagine something like a thieves guild or something like that. Medieval cities weren't super dense urban horror dimensions with narrow alleys and guys dressed with black hoods in every corner. Criminality was more thing of opportunity and not a life style. A lot of "bandits" were just villagers who grabbed a weapon and decided to rob someone - but they usually didn't stop to be normal villagers.
While there was no standardized training, that doesnt mean soldiees werent trained or only trained on the spot. It was generally one of the normal duties to spend a certain number of days per year training so tjat you were competent for whatever role you were subject to be levied to perform
Thank god, that we were lucky enough to be born in the right time in history where we don't have to worry all the time about dying every day from everything and everyone, if you just said the wrong thing or said how you feel "you die". Shitty time to be alive even know you wouldn't be there for long.
medieval horses were smaller than modern draft horses but still larger than a pony, most commonly coursers and rarer examples of destriers would be around 16 hands
The part about tiny horses is wrong. The recent claim from historians is based on haltless assumptions! While there were smaller horses for archers, transportation of goods, carrying smaller wagons warhorses were NOT as small as ponies! It is far more likely that there were other uses for deceased warhorse and just did't remain as often on the actual battlefield. The studies claiming warhorses were conducted on a laughable small and local used samplesize. BS!
Please do a video about clothing worn my medieval people, ranging from Serfs / Villeins to Freemen, to Merchants, Nobles, Knights, and Nobles. About their under clothing, the durability, the materials, the styles. Thank You!!!!
2:58 Reminds me of a line used at The Greatest Roast Of All Time: Tom Brady last night... “Give it up for the lord of the Super Bowl rings: my friend Tom Brady, a man who has so many rings, he could melt them down and forge a sword to go on a quest..." (part of the line) - comedian Jeff Ross
You completely left out the development of armor, from chain maille to full plate armor! This also led to an evolution in weapons, and a sort of Medieval arms race. As armor became increasingly protective, cutting attacks with the sword became almost obsolete. As a response, swords became narrower, and pointier at the tip, and fencing began to emphasize using the sword to stab through the joints and other gaps in the plate armor. For example: look at a Viking Age sword, and compare it to a 15th/Late Medieval sword.
@@jacobcassidy6673 even a musket loader back then would make you the best soldier on the field but since op said modern an assault rifle would make you a god LOL
Have you heard of GATE? It's an anime about just that. The JDF goes to another world that's medieval, and they just clean house. You can look up clips on RU-vid.
I was watching this on my smart TV with my girlfriend beside me and she said she would gladly ride a Jean Claude Van Dame. Breaking up may or may not have crossed my mind.
In reference to the Battle of Hastings and The Battle of Lincoln...when I applied for colleges during high school I was accepted to all three I applied. I ended up chosing Doane University (then Doane College), but the other two were Hastings College and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL).
It was just a payed extended vacation. You had the chance to acquire souvenirs on the road to your holiday destination. Some nitpickers call that looting. You could have a good workout. That's literally, you had to work outside. You trained your skills. You had to otherwise you were dead. You see it wasn't all gloom and doom. 😉
