• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      “I’ll do it with a lance.”

      The irony is that the Normans were far more likely to be using spears instead of swords, which are more like the lances that William was using to become a noble. Nobles would have carried swords, but they were status symbols and treated with religious reverence. They would only be used in battle if the spear was thrown or broken.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Novels, mythology, folk tales, swords have always been romanticized. Nobles that carried them would have holy relics (bits of dead saints) encased in the pommels. A well-made sword was a strong weapon, and its owner probably trained in its use.

          Like imagine you’re a pikeman, probably a farmer by trade, hungry and cold, wearing padded leather and salvaged cowhorn scalemail, probably injured or sick, and you are in the fracas of a battle. You see a mounted knight wearing proper chainmail armor, healthy and strong, rested because he didn’t have to walk to the battle or dig a latrine to shit into, and he’s got this shiny, sharp, holy weapon engraved with magic words you can’t read. He’s already broken his spear off in your friend, and now he’s waving his blessed +2 Steel Longsword in your direction.

          • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            In nordic sagas (which haven’t been altered much) , heroes often wielded long weapons. They are always there when you look a bit.

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Weren’t Pikes developed only in the high middle ages? The swiss were find of them.

            Prior to that you are looking at shorter spears and various other polararms like a billhook. Halberds and Pikes were later developments.

            In ancient times, the Greek hoplite was used (similar to a pike), but it was actually made obsolete by the Roman sword, the gladius, and shield wall.

    • pyrflie@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Against the neck of the monarch. Unless you are forcing an agreement from the same your protest means nothing.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Depends on the ruler actually.

        Japan’s nobility kinda just happened to be the most successful rice farmers and rolled that into becoming their community leaders.

        England’s were mostly William the Conqueror’s friends.

        Rome’s claimed descent from deities, and might have kinda been telling the truth if you follow the theory that polytheism starts as ancestor worship.

        Germanic tribes had military leaders in tandem with religious/legal leaders.

        Pre-bronze age societies were ruled by priest kings who mostly held power by controlling the distribution of grain from temples.

        A lot of Eastern Europe’s leaders were Vikings that happened to find really good places to start settlements.

        In societies like the Haudenosaunee “nobility” was more just that you were the head of your extended family or the long house you called home.

        The Roman Empire was inaugurated by Augustus “just happening” to hold several very powerful titles of office simultaneously, and never giving any of them up and passing them all on to his chosen successor. It’s actually pretty funny just how bureaucratic his takeover was considering how many stoic statues of him in military attire there are. Guy became the king of the Mediterranean through paperworking his way into it.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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          4 months ago

          Rome’s claimed descent from deities, and might have kinda been telling the truth if you follow the theory that polytheism starts as ancestor worship.

          Claiming descent from deities was common in Rome. The justification for the inheritance of autocracy was, theoretically, the grant of power by the Senate in the name of the people of Rome (in practice, the support of the elite or the military), and the dual fact that actual hereditary inheritance was fairly rare and that ruling families changed as often as fashion means that descent was not the primary justification.

          The Roman Empire was inaugurated by Augustus “just happening” to hold several very powerful titles of office simultaneously, and never giving any of them up and passing them all on to his chosen successor. It’s actually pretty funny just how bureaucratic his takeover was considering how many stoic statues of him in military attire there are. Guy became the king of the Mediterranean through paperworking his way into it.

          Paperwork wins empires, it would seem. And propaganda. Lots of propaganda work from Augustus.

          • Rolando@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Paperwork wins empires,

            Ooh! I just thought of something:

            • Paperwork enables logistics
            • Logistics wins battles
            • Battles win empires
            • Therefore, paperwork wins empires. QED.
      • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        Peasant uprisings have happened throughout history. Some succeeded but then the whole country collapsed, others were put down violently. Then you have the french cycle of rebellion, democracy, external invasion, monarchy reinstated. They did that like four times before it stuck.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      I read Sarum (historical fiction that takes some liberties) recently and the way land and passive income and title are inextricably linked is pretty enlightening

  • fukurthumz420@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    power doesn’t automatically equal selfishness. you can take it away from them and do something that is good for all of humanity with it.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Guess who just armed the rebels. We were taught in the military that if we are armed, and run into local unarmed resistance, try to deescalate the situation. Unless we are outnumbered 5 to 1. At that point we were to withdraw to a more defendable position, because if they got violent, we were all dead and we just armed the civilians.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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        4 months ago

        We were taught in the military that if we are armed, and run into local unarmed resistance, try to deescalate the situation.

        I know because I’ve discussed and seen it innumerable times, but it always gives me a feeling of absurdity being reminded that the RoE for modern militaries in most combat zones is stricter than it is for US police.

      • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        Unless we are outnumbered 5 to 1

        So as few as five unarmed people can take a trained, armed soldier? I would’ve thought that ratio should be higher. Good to know.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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          4 months ago

          The great advantage of guns is the ability to kill at a distance. If you’re close enough to talk without screaming at the top of your lungs, guns lose a lot (though not all) of their utility. And even specialized martial artists will tell you that being outnumbered, even just by a small amount, is an incredible disadvantage in a close-up fight.

          • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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            4 months ago

            Maybe I’m overestimating how much a gunshot wound incapacitates a person. My thinking was that one hit per person anywhere would take that person out of a fight. That means that it would take at least (magazine size) + 1 people to overwhelm an armed shooter (who is good at aiming). Aiming should be easy, since they’re running toward you and probably not good at evasive maneuvers.

            But all of my theory stems from shooter games, so it’s probably not worth much :D

            • lath@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Depends on where a person is shot. If it doesn’t hit anything important, a shooting victim can go without noticing the wound even a day after or so. If it hits something important, the person shot will drop on the spot.

            • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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              4 months ago

              A gunshot wound can vary wildly in terms of incapacitation. Depends on how determined the person is. A single bullet can kill a person, but usually not instantly. There’s something call the ‘Mozambique drill’ or ‘Failure to stop drill’ in which, to ensure someone goes down, you fire two shots to center mass, and then one to the head. That’s a pistol drill though.

              More importantly, though, at a certain closeness it actually gets harder to keep your aim on a person with a full-sized rifle. And once someone is close enough to take a few long, quick, desperate lunges and grab at the barrel of your rifle (ie the kind of range you’d be in to talk to someone), you’re on very bad ground.

  • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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    4 months ago

    A lot of the medieval nobility were just Roman landowners at the time of the of the Western Empire. Sure their government collapsed, but they still owned the land amd had theeans to enforce that ownership. Which is why France had the right idea to liberate all those heads of state from their holdings 230 years ago

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    So we’re going full mask off “Not just landlords but anyone who owns their house or the land the house is on deserves to die because I don’t have one?”

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      If that’s your take on this comic I suggest you read more history. Particularly about the enclosures of the commons in late 18th and early 19th century England.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        Maybe the comic should make that connection, because it doesn’t say a single thing about that. It instead says “where’d ya get that land?” “My dad yadda yadda fought for it” “well we’re going to use physical violence to remove you from it.”

        Furthermore, it suggests that “fighting for it” is a good/acceptable thing to do, by that logic I can only assume that the pictured miscreants are OK with how the grandpa “fought” the Native Americans for it. In my view if we’re playing these types of bullshit games the ruffians have no claim to my land either unless they’re Natives, in fact I have more than the hooligans do by virtue of having inherited or paid for it while the ruffians only claim to my land is “I’m jealous.”

        The only people that could realistically claim they have more right to that land than I do would be it’s original inhabitants, not even another tribe (say it used to be Apache land the Comanche would similarly not have any higher right to claim it than I.) Of course, the tribes often warred and took the other’s land, so tbh whoever the apache took it from would have more claim than them, and Cro Magnon before them, Neanderthals before them, and Homo Erectus (lol) before them, all the way back to when ancient Asians crossed the land bridge to get here, those people have the true claim to the land, unless we wanna count Dryopithecus, or protozoans I guess.

        Furthermore, that implies that since Russia is “fighting” Ukraine for their land, whoever wins the battle is the morally correct group who should retain ownership of the land even if it’s the imperialists who are invading said land rather than the defenders. Personally I believe Russia is in the wrong even if they win, idk about you.

        The comic is poorly written, if the point it was trying to get across is “late 18th early 19th century england” specific. Instead it reads as “kill landowners now because at some point when society was less developed imperialism was cool.” It’s really just pro-imperialism, at the end of the day, with the justification of “well that’s what they did 200yr ago so it’s cool when we do it now”

        In conclusion, what’s your address? If you don’t own a house what’s your parent’s address? That land and house will become mine just as soon as I kill your dad. That’s how it works right? Do I get to keep his wife too, if we’re playing by caveman rules? And his sons become free labor to work the fields and I can marry off your sisters for a dowry of an ox and three chickens? No? Why not?

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Do you know what a noble or am estate is?

          Hint - it has nothing to do with native Americans. Since mobility never existed in the United States, it is pretty clear that the context for this single pane comic is British.

          I’m any case, British nobility is still well alive, and wealthy landowners have inherited vast deaths of the country after their ancestors had used force to take the land when it was under feudalism.

          Now, if you believe that feudal land distribution is a good foundation for modern economic and land development, that’s one thing. It does leave much of the British Isles in their pre-modern state of land usage.

          On the other hand, much of the population is forced to live in dinky squalid poorly heated, uninsulated brick and stone housing blocks that would never pass a modern building code. So from that point of view, it seems like failed policy designed to pander to the land rich, cash poor former noble families who really shouldn’t have any influence on the modern state as they have literally nothing to offer it.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            Where in the comic does it say “noble?”

            estate /ĭ-stāt′/ noun

            Estate:

            1. A landed property, usually of considerable size.

            2. One’s property, both real and personal, vested and contingent, especially as disposed of in a will.

            3. The nature and extent of an owner’s rights with respect to land or other property.

            Where do the above definitions specify “british” or “landlord” or “noble” or “feudalism?” Nowhere. It says “the house and land the house occupies, typically large.” All that other shit may be assumed by you, but being that it isn’t stated in the comic my assumptions are just as valid as yours.

            It’s a bad comic and should have been made better to clarify its point, as it stands it’s simply advocating violence for having a property, any property, not just landlords.

        • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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          4 months ago

          I’m sorry commenters will just ignore your arguments and shred you to pieces. Here’s a cookie. It belonged to my dad.🍪

              • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                4 months ago

                No no, it’s not just landlords, remember? Homeowners too!

                I just don’t think my mom should be dragged into the street and fucking shot because she “bought a house in 1996.” If you were really about the proletariat you would shoot the bank owner so her mortgage would be paid off (well, as if that would work, but it’s at least closer.) You’re just a poser, pose harder.

                • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  It has nothing to do with homeowners. Homeowners actually paid for their land and are probably indebted to a bank in the form of a mortgage.

                  Nobles who own estates did not do that, they probably have a carve out in the state constitution and obtained their land by inheriting it from their ancestors (and being exempt from an estate tax).

                • a Kendrick fan@lemmy.ml
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                  4 months ago

                  No one ever mentioned homeowners unless they owned more than one and by definition, that makes them landlords. If your mother really owns one house and has been struggling to pay it off for close to 30yrs, don’t you think you’re in the wrong for defending the class of people who bought out everything and had to make her take out a mortgage in the first place, one she may never end paying?

                  The pig-man depicted in the picture is a caricature for landlords and homeowners with more than a significant one and the homeless folks are not even claiming the place, they’re just trying to live off the lands

                  I’m assuming you stand to inherit the place from her, probably because you’ll never be able to buy your own place since the landlords you’re defending bought everything and you are scared that Red Communists would come after you for that, calm down, it’s just one house, the overlord-landlords would probably buy it from you for a pittance and throw into the streets, those red communists would never get to you for owning a house

                  a lot of assumptions above as I don’t really know you or what you think you stand to gain by defending a class of pigs

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            No I killed a guy and took his because that’s how it works right? Morrowind rules?

            I just don’t think “they have a thing” is good justification for murder. Next time I see a guy in an 80s chevy truck I should just kill him because I want it? There’s a word for that, couple actually, “Robbery” and “Murder” come to mind…

            If you want to justify killing people you’ll just have to work harder sweetie.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That’s communism for you - no one gets anything, but many die.

      • pyrflie@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        The fact that Someone should get something doesn’t prevail should kill rent seeking under the premise that the hungry kill everyone.