Random history chat thread

[RollingWave]

since others suggest that I start this...

I'll start with a brief introduction on one of my most studied subject, the Imjin War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imjin_war (I wrote a good portion of this article)

The war is a series of two seperate invasion between 1592 to 1598, Launched by the Samurai forces united under the banner of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (one of the three great unifier of the Japanese Warring States era). the participants were largely Daiymos (Feudal Lords) of the western half Japan (Kyushu and Chugoku mostly) and some of Hideyoshi's own direct retainers.


Their intially stated target was grand indeed, hoping to conquer China AND India, though the practical goal was far more modest, which is essentially to take Korea.

Korea was ruled by the Joseon dynasty at that point, it would go on to be the longest ruling dynasty in Korean history, spanning a wooping 505 years. at that point it had already ruled for 200 years, and like most long ruling dynasties it was already falling into lax and dysfunctionality. Particularly militarily speaking, it has not seen major war in well over a century, and it's everyday threat involved most notablly the raids of Jurchen tribesmen from the North, who is seperated from them by the Yalu River. (and their border zone is sparsely populated anyway).


Meanwhile, Japan had just went through one of it's bloodiest stages of conflict, which saw massive advancement in both military technology and organizations.

Suffice to say it was obviously not a very even fight, made only worse by the Joseon dynasty's lack of awareness of the immenient invasion despite numerous warnings and signs. When the war started most of their able forces were far up north around the Yalu river, where as the the Japanese landed at the very sourthern tip. (the same place the US forces would land to start in their participation of the Korean war 350 years later )


So the result should't be too surprsing, the Joseon dynasty was crushed in epic fashion, the Japanese forces virtually marchd strait up and captured Seoul without any serious delay (the landed in Pushan on May 23 and took Seoul on June 10th!!!! by FOOT!!!) The only serious fight the Joseon manage to put together during this exposed virtually all their weakness, poor organization (about 2/3 of their army hadn't even arrived at the fight and collapsed without one afterwards), only a small core of able warriors , while the rest of the reserve had not seen action in so long that they were essentially useless.

It was of course, not merely just a failure on Korea's part, but also a testimony of Japan's strength during that period, for both war they managed to transport over 150k men to Korea across a fairly wide body of water, a feat that no one would come close to until modern times with steamboats .Their army were well organized and disciplined, and carried Arquebus in huge portion (probably close to 50% of their army or more were armed with guns, espeically the frontline units. that's probably a higher portion than many comtempory European armies)

The Joseon court fled North almost non-stop, stopping at PyongYang for mere weeks before they were forced to fled even further north. before July was out (2 months after the Japanse landed) the King already was at Uiji... which is a town right beside the Yalu river (!!)


Of course, not everything was going the Japanese's way, several problem began to become clear after their initial (massive) success, these combined with the response of Korea's big daddy, the Ming dynasty of China, would soon begin to shift the course of war.


to be continued............

[Peter1469]

Great stuff, will have to reread this again!

[Mister D]

Interesting!

The Portuguese had brought firearms (as well as Christianity) to Japan only a few decades earlier.

[RollingWave]

The Joseon dynasty of Korea was technically a tributory to the Ming dynasty of China, in that the Korean King pays homage to the Chinese Emperor, and they exchange gifts and envoys on a fairly normal bases, Korea had long been the most consistent partner with China in it's tributory system, which at this point also included the kingdom of Okinawa and quite a few other places.

The Ming dynasty of China, at this point, was around the end stages of it's final revival period, the Emperor Sheng Zhong's reign would prove to be the longest and most deciding reign of the Ming dynasty, as his period saw reforms that brough the Ming back to prosperity, many conflicts including the one against Japan, a gigantic standoff in the court that threw the government into dysfunctionality , and finally towards the end of the war he witnessed the rise of the Machus as the Ming ary lost a hugely decisvely battle at Sarhu.

At 1592 though, the Ming was still doing alright, reforms a decade earlier saw the Ming graudally wiggle out of it's financial blackhole and began regaining some strength, they also made break throughs against their greatest threat, the Mongolian Khans of the north, as they finally mananaged to break the unity within the Mongols and so now a good portion of the Tribes are allied with the Ming. skrimish continued but the Mongols had cease to become the same mortal danger it was for much of the Ming. They also managed to put down the long standing Piracy problem (often based out of Japan.) a few years before that.

Still, not all is well in the dynasty, Shen Zhong was already begining his struggle against the court officials over his heir choice (he had wanted to go against the tradition of going with the eldest son). and one of the first major conflict of his reign, the rebellion of NingXia happened just months before the Japanese decided to invade Korea.

China had heard only feint rumors of the potential Japanese invasion, so it came as a huge surprise to them to hear that not only did one occur, but by the time news reached them Korea had already been nearly overran, (when the first Ming envoy arrived in Korea the King was already in PyongYang, the next time they visited he was already on the border with China.) The surprise was so total that many officials had wondered if this was an elaborate joke or conspriacy on the part of the Koreans.

The confusing situation in Korea and the fact that the NingXia rebellion was the more imminent threat (it was a major military garrison that rebelled and was lead by an Mongolian defector turned Ming General, so the Ming had real fears that this might lead to a renewed Mongol invasion. So the Ming decided to clarify the situation in Korea and quickly finish the problem at Ningxia .

They ended up sending a small army of roughly 3 thousand into Korea around August, by then Korea was already overran, the troop though managed to reach PyongYang almost unhindered, and actually had caught the Japanese force there by surprise since they had thought they annihilated all Korean resistence already and thus wasn't all that prepared, however in the ensuing street fight the Japanese' superiority in numbers and fire arm gave them the advantage, and the Chinese forces were routed with pretty significant casualties.

However, not all is going well with the Japanese situation in Korea, they had realize already that they made some grave miscalculation.

For one thing, in wars amongst the Japanese lords, it was fairly typical for the Peasants to simply submit to the new lord when land changes hand and let life go on without too much trouble, occasionally rebellions will happen mostly do the disagreement over tax rates, but still, the common situation was that the peasants had little qualm with changing lords. The Japanese probably expected this in Korea as well, which was why they timed the invasion in late May (of the Lunar calender, so it's more like mid Junes in western terms), anticipating that once they secure some land in Korea they'll be right on time to collect the harvest.

However what happened next surprised them greatly, most of the peasants ended up abandoning their farms and running north or into the mountains , only a small group were even willing to stay , let alone work with the Japanese, this left most of the Korean farmland untended during that harvest season, the result was disastorous for both the Koreans and the Japanese, as both side were faced with starvation and a massive shortage of supply, only the Korean Province of Jelloa managed to mostly avoid this fate, since they were basically the only province that wasn't overran in the onslaught.

The Japanese's contingency plan for this, resupplying by sea, also ran into problems, first is that their massive initial success meant that they were strentched very very far, at one point a small band had even crossed the Yalu river into Manchuria, and PyongYang remained a large concentration of their force for most of the later half of 1592. long supply line obviously meant vunerable supply lines, and although the Koreans can't fight the Japanese in the open, harrasing supplies are not nearly as difficult, and the Japanese military's strengh lied in their cordinated pike and shot formations, so smaller logistic parties are obviously far more vunerable.

If getting supply from Pusan to Seoul and PyongYang was already a problem, then actually getting them from Japan to Pusan was also a problem, as the Japanese also didn't forsee that, while the Joseon army was basically a joke, it's Navy was a completely different story, they were repeated crushed on the waters, suffering huge loses in supplies and men during the process, in August 15 of 1592 they decided to try and force a showdown against the Korean Navy lead by Yi Sun Sin, the Japanese under Wakizaka Yashuaru (a pretty famous retainer of Hideyoshi) massed a large fleet of some 133 vessal, and confronted Yi's fleet of some 50 vessal near Yi's base in Hansan Island, the result however was a total crushing victory for the Joseon navy, the Japanese navy lost half it's ship, while the Joseon navy lost.... no ship at all, they barely even lost any men (some 20 men were killed, the Japanese lost some 8 to 9 thousand!). Yi Sun Sin was basically able to attack Pusan 's port at will after this, and he took advantage of that repeated.

So in short, the Japanese forces were quickly falling into a quagmire mode, where they held the major cities unopposed, but had extremely limited control of anything else outside of it, and back then they didn't have airdrops, and unlike the Americans in Vietnam they didn't even have air / sea superiority. if anything it was the other way around.

It was during this backdrop that in late September of 92, the Ming dynasty had finally settled the rebellion in Ningxia and also confirmed the situation in Korea in earnest, thus they decided to start mobilizing an army with the aim of stopping the Japanese invasion. Song Ying Chang was the civilain offical given charge of the operation while Li Ru Song would be his main general. (the Chinese dynasty after around the 10th century had a fairly modern seperation of military and civil administration approach ). Song made his perpartions and decided that they will launch the offensive at the turn of the new year, arguing that

A. the Japanese probably won't expect an attack at what's usually a period of celebration

and

B. the Japanese forces are mostly from the warm southern parts of Japan and thus unuse to fighting in the cold, especially the freezing Korean North, while the Chinese forces assembled were on the other hand either from the North or had long been stationed in the north for the most part.

and

C. the frozen rivers would make logistics and crossing a much simplier matter.

So the stage was set for the second phase of the war... though the Japanese celebrating new year in PyongYang probably weren't aware of that.

[Mister D]

It's not looking good for the Japanese...

[Conley]

Questions:

"If getting supply from Pusan to Seoul and PyongYang was already a problem, then actually getting them from Japan to Pusan was also a problem, as the Japanese also didn't forsee that, while the Joseon army was basically a joke, it's Navy was a completely different story, they were repeated crushed on the waters, suffering huge loses in supplies and men during the process, in August 15 of 1592 they decided to try and force a showdown against the Korean Navy lead by Yi Sun Sin, the Japanese under Wakizaka Yashuaru (a pretty famous retainer of Hideyoshi) massed a large fleet of some 133 vessal, and confronted Yi's fleet of some 50 vessal near Yi's base in Hansan Island, the result however was a total crushing victory for the Joseon navy, the Japanese navy lost half it's ship, while the Joseon navy lost.... no ship at all, they barely even lost any men (some 20 men were killed, the Japanese lost some 8 to 9 thousand!)."

If the Japanese navy was so weak compared to the Joseon, how did they manage to move 150k men across such a large body of water without a problem at the start of the invasion? And how did the Joseon navy survive during the time when the Japanese forces occupied all the land and the farmers had abandoned their fields? Did the Joseon fleet resupply in China?

[Mister D]

Great thread, Rollingwave. I'll provide the next topic but I don't want to detract from yours until it's run its course. I too have an interest in military history and Asian military history is one of my weal spots. Very interesting topic. Thanks.

[RollingWave]

Questions:

"
If the Japanese navy was so weak compared to the Joseon, how did they manage to move 150k men across such a large body of water without a problem at the start of the invasion? And how did the Joseon navy survive during the time when the Japanese forces occupied all the land and the farmers had abandoned their fields? Did the Joseon fleet resupply in China?

Mainly because ...

A. A large part of the Joseon Navy's strengh really lied in their commander, in the second war when Yi wasn't in command of the navy the Korean were in turn crushed on the seas. This is one of the reason why Yi is often compared to and many regard him even potentially superior to Horatio Nelson as one of the greatest naval commander of all time.

B. Pusan is in Gyeongsang province, the South Eastern Province of Korea , meanwhile Yi was the head of the naval force of Jeolla province, which was the South Western Province. The Koreans as I've said, despite obvious warning signs and rumors, didn't actually thought an invasion was comming, espeically not at that scale.

C. This was the 16th century, you don't exactly have radars and see enemy ships comming :P , the Japanese actually launched a naval strike the day before they actually landed and destroyed / disabled most of the ships around Pusan as he caught them almost all harbored and unready for battle, the admiral incharge of that province fled to he Jeolla fleet wih just some 4 ships left in his command.

D. part of the problem fo the Joseon military was the fact that their generals can't act without direct order from Seoul, this is sort of what modern military do as well (you can't conduct major operations on your own) but the difference of course is that back then by the time the messenger got back it's probably a week . the Joseon court's own squabbling made things even worse. so Yi wasn't able to do anything until a large portion of the Japanese had already landed.

Afterwards, with the court basically running for their life , Yi end up essentially having a free reign as the court was barely able to maintain any contact with him.

E. The Province of Jeolla, the South Western Province of the 8 Province of Joseon, was actually not really touched much during the initial assualt, as the Japanese's strategy was to shoot for Seoul right off the bat, and afterwards for some reason they didn't make very serious attempts at Jeolla until around they even captured PyongYang. So Jeolla had more time to prepare than anywhere else, and by the time they did make attempts at it the Korean insurgents and militias already had more experience and readiness (and even managed to steal / loot / acquire some Arquebus), which gave them a tough time. their attempt at Jinju, the main castle guarding Jeolla from the east, occured in the later half of 92 and failed.

All the while, Yi Sun Sin operated out of Hansan Island just off the coast of Jeolla, pretty much unmolested.

F. the Japanese army was not actually that cordinated with each other, they were grouped into 7 divisions on Korea. each division varied in strength between 10 to 30 k. they were largely carved out between the different clans , who were... you know... just fighting each other to death a few years back, so them working well with each other was not often to be relied on. their motivation also varied, those from Kyshu usually had stronger motivation since Korea's much closer to them, and thus they deem it as a plausible fief that they can control in the future, meanwhile those from further away were often far less motivated, deeming that land they capture here are unmanagable so far from their home base. Jeolla was largely assigned to be attacked by just such clan leaders. relatively unmotivated Daiymos.

Jinju actually fell towards the end of the first war, by the time the Japanese army were forced out of Seoul, at that point since they were all crammed back into the Pusan area they were finally forced to work toegether and promptly rushed Jinju's garrison with extreme overwhelming numbers. but by then the first war was essentially over, they already agreed to enter into talks with the Ming, it was just that they took opportunity of the time lag in between.

[MMC]

Interesting RW.....I will have to re-read. Then I will give a response when you finish it up.

[Conley]

So the stage was set for the second phase of the war... though the Japanese celebrating new year in PyongYang probably weren't aware of that.

And? Don't leave us hanging RW... :grin:

[RollingWave]

Ok..

Right around the turn of the new year (lunar calender), the Ming army crossed over the Yalu river and after a quick briefing with the Korean court they headed for PyongYang, it was not actually that large of an army by Chinese standard, according to the letters left by Song Ying Chang (which I've read through) , the army was only 30k strong, possibly with 1-2 thousand more already stationed in Korea at that point (since he actually went down to the single digits in head counts I'm pretty sure he's being totally literal and not a estimate). Though the composition included quite a bit of the Ming's best forces at that point, it's command Li Ru Song had just quelled the rebellion in Ninxia and then headed strait for Korea, and it also included the mens trained by Qi Ji Guang, the general who ended the pirate issue a decade earlier.

The Koreans had send some additional men with them on their march towards PyongYang, probably 10k at best with some insurgents joining in on the way. So the combined army of some 40k marched towards PyongYang.

PyongYang's forces was the first division of the Japanese army, which was 18k strong and had done most of the major fighting at that point (along with the second divison). they already held the city for half a year already so they had plenty of time to prepare defenses, including a citadal around eastern side of the city and some forts on it's key points on the outside paremiters. PyongYang has also historically been a well positioned city defensively . so the Odds wasn't too bad against them, though the lack of supplies had hit them pretty hard (being one of the furthest troops from Pushan), so morale was pretty low.

The two side made some initial bartering and skrimish around 1/5-1/7, but on 1/8 the Ming made a full assault and quite easily defeated the Japanese, forcing them out of the outer walls within half a day according to statements from Korean officals who witnessed the battle. The Japanese forces fled to their citadal on the edge of the city.

The Ming forces deemed it too costly to directly assault the well fortified (and now pretty desperate) japanese forces, so they had left and escape rout for them (A fairly typical Sun Tzu strategy), and then pretended they were going to try and burn the whole area down and choke the Japanese to death. the Japanese forces took the bait (and had little options anyway) and retreated out the city eastward, while crossing the river outside the city they were expectedly hit by more Ming ambush. but they showed strong discipline and still managed to retreat all the way to Seoul in relative one piece, though by all account the lost nearly half their total number, but all their main daiymos survived.

About 10 days after that, the Ming force took the city of Kaesong (the 3rd largest city in Korea at that time). with only minimal fighting, so within the span of under 20 days since crossing into Korea they had effectively already took back 2 of the 3 biggest city, and forced the Japanese almost completely out of modern day North Korea, as the remaining forces faced with the imminent threat of being completely cut off from behind hastily retreated back souh as well.

But the success got the Ming commander a bit, espeically seeing that they took Kaesong nearly without a fight, so as they marched towards Seoul, he heard some bad intel that Seoul was also in the process of being abandoned, throwing caution into he wind he dropped most of his infantry and artillery on the back and raced towards the capital with his cavalries.

But the situation was the opposite, due to the lost of PyongYang all the Japanese forces were now concentrated in the Seoul area, which was a huge concentration, something in between 80-100k of men in the area, so Li immediately got into deep trouble as he closed in on Seoul, being caught by a very large concentration of Japanese forces with only a few thousand cavalries on hand. He was able to fight his way out of it, but took heavy casaulties amongst his core retainers.

After that , the Ming realized that the Japanese concentration in Seoul was impossible for them to take head on, and thus kepted a passive siege on the area. meanwhile, the Japanese despite the large concentration, was still too short on supply to make a real push on the Ming forces, figuring that even if they win they can no longer lengthen their supply line back to it's original stretch anyway. This was only made worse when shortly after them beating back the Ming forces they attempted an attack on a group of Korean insurgents holding a nearby hill fort close to Seoul, and end up in a catastrophic defeat as they took their oppostion too lightly and tried to assault up a deep slope and was met with a huge barrage of rocket arrows.

So at that point a lot of the Japanese daiymos began to lose heart in the fight, and wanted to just negotiate with the Ming, while others still insisted on fighting, so Seoul broke down into bickering while the forces stood ideally and the situation continue to turn agains them.

After a few months of standoff, the final tipping point was that the Ming and Koreans managed to locate one of the major supply cash of the Japanese in the area and was able to burn it down. putting the already bad situation of Japanese supply into abosalutely unsustainable . At last the Japanese daiymos all agreed to talk and retreated out of Seoul. though on their retreat they took out their frustration on the City ofJinju that had previously stopped them. and overwhelmed / massacered it's defendeds and inhabitants.

So as the Japanese forces finally ended up back at the place where they started from a little more than a year ago in the Pushan area, the Ming and Japanese envoys entered into talks that would go on for the next 5 years, thus concluding the first phase of the Imjin war. (the Japanese still held a large part of the province of Gyeonsong during that span)

(a picture of the 8 province of Korea during the Joseon era to give an idea to the geographics)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Map_8provínces_Korea.png

[Conley]

Thanks RW. Fascinating stuff, really.

If there's no chance of reinforcements and the army is already suffering from a lack of supplies, I would lay siege. It worked great in Civilization 3. :grin:

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks RW. Fascinating stuff, really.

If there's no chance of reinforcements and the army is already suffering from a lack of supplies, I would lay siege. It worked great in Civilization 3. :grin:

Smoke Jaguar rules.

[Captain Obvious]

RW - what do you know about Atilla the Hun?

I've been buffing up on his campaigns. The written history is that he kicked the shit out of the post Roman Empire Romans at will and at some point decided to get married, but died on his wedding night... from a nosebleed.

[RollingWave]

Well nose bleed is just the symptom, it could (and probably was) something far worse that caused it.

Anyway, Attila is a fairly classic case of nomadic chief rising to unite the tribes temporarily under his command and join in a raid of plunder, but he was wildly successful in that, and of course the coalition fell apart as soon as the things that held it together (personal charisma and plunder) ended, the Nomadic tribes generally didn't have nearly enough sophistication in political structure to maintain a lasting empire. Another similar example is the Great Seljuqs, they basically lasted two generation (Alp Arslan and Malik Shah) and then fell apart big time. Mongol Hoard is similar too but they had a bit more sophistication thx to their use to Persian and Chinese bueracts, so while they did desintergrate they still each maintained a fairly large empire on their own and kepted it together considerablly longer than most other similar nomadic coalitions

[MMC]

Excellent narration of the first phase of the Imogen RW.

[Mister D]

Well nose bleed is just the symptom, it could (and probably was) something far worse that caused it.

Anyway, Attila is a fairly classic case of nomadic chief rising to unite the tribes temporarily under his command and join in a raid of plunder, but he was wildly successful in that, and of course the coalition fell apart as soon as the things that held it together (personal charisma and plunder) ended, the Nomadic tribes generally didn't have nearly enough sophistication in political structure to maintain a lasting empire. Another similar example is the Great Seljuqs, they basically lasted two generation (Alp Arslan and Malik Shah) and then fell apart big time. Mongol Hoard is similar too but they had a bit more sophistication thx to their use to Persian and Chinese bueracts, so while they did desintergrate they still each maintained a fairly large empire on their own and kepted it together considerablly longer than most other similar nomadic coalitions

True. The Huns of Attila were not actually a real ethnic group but disparate bands of ethnic Huns, Germans, and Slavs who were only held together by Attila's ability to extort tribute successfully.

[Mister D]

RW - what do you know about Atilla the Hun?

I've been buffing up on his campaigns. The written history is that he kicked the shit out of the post Roman Empire Romans at will and at some point decided to get married, but died on his wedding night... from a nosebleed.


He lost the Battle of Chalons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains

[Conley]

Well nose bleed is just the symptom, it could (and probably was) something far worse that caused it.

Good point, could have been a stroke.

[Captain Obvious]

Right - but isn't the 'nosebleed' theory more dramatic?

[Conley]

Right - but isn't the 'nosebleed' theory more dramatic?

Definitely makes a better story.

[RollingWave]

He lost the Battle of Chalons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains

Kinda, but if you consider that

A. the King of the Goths died in action
B. he was able to invade the Western Roman Empire almost immediately afterwards, so it was hardly a crush defeat for Attila, the Romans were unable to actually face him in Italy, Aetius was only able to shadow his force at best.

So Chalon was more or less a draw, the Huns retreated so the Romans achieved their goal, but Attila's threat was not ended.

[Captain Obvious]

This is great shit, RW.

[Mister D]

Kinda, but if you consider that

A. the King of the Goths died in action
B. he was able to invade the Western Roman Empire almost immediately afterwards, so it was hardly a crush defeat for Attila, the Romans were unable to actually face him in Italy, Aetius was only able to shadow his force at best.

So Chalon was more or less a draw, the Huns retreated so the Romans achieved their goal, but Attila's threat was not ended.

Forcing a Hun retreat can be called nothing but a defeat for the Huns, IMO. We must also remember that this defeat forever shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding Attila. Secondly, I think it is inaccurate to speak of "Romans" at this point. The imperial government controlled little at this point and relied, as the order of battle at Chalons shows, on "barbarian" troops.

[Mister D]

This is great shit, RW.

Agreed. This thread shows tremendous potential. Even on a slow day here I can easily find an interesting historical topic to talk about. So when no one is discussing I can hit this thread up. That is, provided we have some history nerds but it appears that we do.

[Conley]

No one asked me, but I think this thread might work better if you start a new one for each topic. It would be easier to keep track of IMO. That said, this is a great idea. I don't know much history but I love reading it and learning.

[Mister D]

No one asked me, but I think this thread might work better if you start a new one for each topic. It would be easier to keep track of IMO. That said, this is a great idea. I don't know much history but I love reading it and learning.

That makes sense. Perhaps we can create a history room?

[Conley]

That makes sense. Perhaps we can create a history room?

That is an outstanding idea. That would make it even easier to keep track of the different topics.

[Mister D]

That is an outstanding idea. That would make it even easier to keep track of the different topics.

Cool. I saw your heads up to Admin. Now all that's left is a thanks for my outstanding idea. :rollseyes: :grin:

[Captain Obvious]

Agreed. This thread shows tremendous potential. Even on a slow day here I can easily find an interesting historical topic to talk about. So when no one is discussing I can hit this thread up. That is, provided we have some history nerds but it appears that we do.

I have more of an active interest in historical things but I don't know if I can really contribute intelligently in a deep discussion, but I would be there to some degree.

I've made a habit of eating soup for lunch and perusing Wikipedia on random historical articles. Checked out Crazy Horse today.

[Conley]

Cool. I saw your heads up to Admin. Now all that's left is a thanks for my outstanding idea. :rollseyes: :grin:

Done. Karma whore. :grin:

[Mister D]

I have more of an active interest in historical things but I don't know if I can really contribute intelligently in a deep discussion, but I would be there to some degree.

I've made a habit of eating soup for lunch and perusing Wikipedia on random historical articles. Checked out Crazy Horse today.

Ah, nonsense. Any questions you might ask are intelligent contributions.

Wikipedia is great for that sort of thing. It's crap for controversial things. I always use this example but here it goes again: one day I needed to brush up on some Neo-Babylonian history. I went to Wikipedia and got the information I needed in less than 5 minutes. It's great reference under the right circumstances.

[Mister D]

Speaking of Crazy Horse, I'm sure I'll be in the mood to discuss the Indian Wars at some point.

[Captain Obvious]

Ah, nonsense. Any questions you might ask are intelligent contributions.

Wikipedia is great for that sort of thing. It's crap for controversial things. I always use this example but here it goes again: one day I needed to brush up on some Neo-Babylonian history. I went to Wikipedia and got the information I needed in less than 5 minutes. It's great reference under the right circumstances.

Yeah, I guess I can't disagree with that. Controversial things I'll read with a jaundiced eye but historical stuff I'm guessing is fairly accurate.

Plus it's too easy and convenient - like a drug addiction.

We were sitting in the hotel room late Saturday night watching this program on this tattooed exterminator guy - it was kinda interesting, but he snagged a "reticulated python" from some broads pool (we saw a reticulated python earlier that day at the Buffalo zoo). My wife asks me what that is and while I'm pretty up on my animal shit, I have no idea. Wiki'd it and found out "reticulated" refers to the complex color pattern on it's skin.

It's like right there, how technology should (but doesn't often enough) work.

[Mister D]

Yeah, I guess I can't disagree with that. Controversial things I'll read with a jaundiced eye but historical stuff I'm guessing is fairly accurate.

Plus it's too easy and convenient - like a drug addiction.

We were sitting in the hotel room late Saturday night watching this program on this tattooed exterminator guy - it was kinda interesting, but he snagged a "reticulated python" from some broads pool. My wife asks me what that is and while I'm pretty up on my animal shit, I have no idea. Wiki'd it and found out "reticulated" refers to the complex color pattern on it's skin.

It's like right there, how technology should (but doesn't often enough) work.

Exactly. It's at your fingertips and sites like Wiki are usually reliable for that kind of stuff.

[Captain Obvious]

Speaking of Crazy Horse, I'm sure I'll be in the mood to discuss the Indian Wars at some point.

I'm like an info troller, I'll find something and click a reference on it to something else.

Wound up on Crazy Horse after checking out Mt. Rushmore. They're building (loosely stated) a huge monument to Crazy Horse near Rushmore. Should be the biggest carved monument.

Then I hit "largest statues" and was kind of surprised when something like 8 of the 10 biggest statues were of Buddah. Statue of Liberty - not in the top 20. Russia has one of the bigger ones - nipple action also.

[Mister D]

I'm like an info troller, I'll find something and click a reference on it to something else.

Wound up on Crazy Horse after checking out Mt. Rushmore. They're building (loosely stated) a huge monument to Crazy Horse near Rushmore. Should be the biggest carved monument.

Then I hit "largest statues" and was kind of surprised when something like 8 of the 10 biggest statues were of Buddah. Statue of Liberty - not in the top 20. Russia has one of the bigger ones - nipple action also.

Yeah, I hear you. I've had moments when I was looking for something specific but got way off track because I followed a source to another source to another source...:laugh:

I'm not at all impressed by the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it's because I live right by it but it's just not that impressive to me. :undecided:

[RollingWave]

Forcing a Hun retreat can be called nothing but a defeat for the Huns, IMO. We must also remember that this defeat forever shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding Attila. Secondly, I think it is inaccurate to speak of "Romans" at this point. The imperial government controlled little at this point and relied, as the order of battle at Chalons shows, on "barbarian" troops.

Yeah, the Romans won the battle of course, but they lost the war, and of course there are differences between victories some are hugely decisive, others like this one... not so much.


I'm like an info troller, I'll find something and click a reference on it to something else.

Wound up on Crazy Horse after checking out Mt. Rushmore. They're building (loosely stated) a huge monument to Crazy Horse near Rushmore. Should be the biggest carved monument.

Then I hit "largest statues" and was kind of surprised when something like 8 of the 10 biggest statues were of Buddah. Statue of Liberty - not in the top 20. Russia has one of the bigger ones - nipple action also.

I saw that Crazy Horse statue a long time ago when I visited Rushmore, though it was relally just a barely carved rock back then, but I heard it 's still not making much progress, not exactly a lot of folks lineing up to donate to that cause it seems.

As for largest statues, a lot of the big Budda onces are carved into / from the mountains directly, so it's obviously easier to make it bigger that way than a stand alone one like the statue of Liberty. remember that the Talibans were (in)famous for blowing up one such collection of statues.

like this one, the Lei Shang Buddha statues in ShiChuan, carved right out of the rocks besides a tributory of the Yangtsi river completed in 803 AD. it's the biggest premodern statue in the world. most of the tallest onces now are fairly newly built, which obviously also gave them an advantage over the Statue of Liberty.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG/300px-Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG

[Mister D]

Yeah, the Romans won the battle of course, but they lost the war, and of course there are differences between victories some are hugely decisive, others like this one... not so much.



I saw that Crazy Horse statue a long time ago when I visited Rushmore, though it was relally just a barely carved rock back then, but I heard it 's still not making much progress, not exactly a lot of folks lineing up to donate to that cause it seems.

As for largest statues, a lot of the big Budda onces are carved into / from the mountains directly, so it's obviously easier to make it bigger that way than a stand alone one like the statue of Liberty. remember that the Talibans were (in)famous for blowing up one such collection of statues.

like this one, the Lei Shang Buddha statues in ShiChuan, carved right out of the rocks besides a tributory of the Yangtsi river completed in 803 AD. it's the biggest premodern statue in the world. most of the tallest onces now are fairly newly built, which obviously also gave them an advantage over the Statue of Liberty.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG/300px-Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG

What war was lost? Much like the Vikings, the Huns' goals were extortion, raiding and looting. Their attempt to pillage Gaul was stopped at Chalons. If the battle was indecisive it's only because 1) the Huns were simply incapable of staying in Gaul even if they had won and 2) Aetius' didn't follow up his victory on the second day but allowed Attila to escape unmolested.

[Conley]

Yeah, the Romans won the battle of course, but they lost the war, and of course there are differences between victories some are hugely decisive, others like this one... not so much.



I saw that Crazy Horse statue a long time ago when I visited Rushmore, though it was relally just a barely carved rock back then, but I heard it 's still not making much progress, not exactly a lot of folks lineing up to donate to that cause it seems.

As for largest statues, a lot of the big Budda onces are carved into / from the mountains directly, so it's obviously easier to make it bigger that way than a stand alone one like the statue of Liberty. remember that the Talibans were (in)famous for blowing up one such collection of statues.

like this one, the Lei Shang Buddha statues in ShiChuan, carved right out of the rocks besides a tributory of the Yangtsi river completed in 803 AD. it's the biggest premodern statue in the world. most of the tallest onces now are fairly newly built, which obviously also gave them an advantage over the Statue of Liberty.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG/300px-Leshan_Buddha_Statue_View.JPG

I wonder if any of the Buddhas the Taliban destroyed in Afghanistan would have been on that list. As I recall they were considered world treasures.

[Mister D]

I wonder if any of the Buddhas the Taliban destroyed in Afghanistan would have been on that list. As I recall they were considered world treasures.

Ugh...don't remind me of that. That one act sums up their barbarism.

[RollingWave]

The Bamyan Buddha of Afganistan was the tallest pre-modern standing Buddha in the world , it was just a bit shorter than the Lei Shang sitting Buddha, AND it was constructed earlier, so yeah... it was literally one of the most priceless art piece in the world.... was.....

[Conley]

Yes, I thought I remembered that. Truly awful. :sad:

[Mister D]

This is hardly worthy of its own thread so I thought I'd post it on the random thread. I was under the impression for years that poor eyesight kept one out of the military even in the early 20th century but this was not so. Certainly the manpower demands of total war had their effect but poor eyesight simply wasn't enough to eliminate your requirement for military sevice even before the First World War began. Unless you had terrible vision or near blindness in at least one eye you might very well pass the physical exam. It turns out that the various militaries even made standard issue spectacles.

[Conley]

What about being drafted for Vietnam? How bad would one's eyesight have to be?

[Mister D]

What about being drafted for Vietnam? How bad would one's eyesight have to be?

From what I can tell it would have to be pretty bad. You certainly would not qualify for demanding jobs like piloting etc. but for the infantry? I think so. On the other hand, it's not like the US was hard pressed for manpower in Vietnam.

[Mister D]

I've done some searcvhing. it seems like you have to be within certain parameters. Not sure exactly what they are. You were/are allowed a certain amount of correction with eyeglasses. Not sure what the cutoff is. Must depend on the branch of service and role.

[MMC]

I would say so.....as Air Force, Navy. and Helicopter pilots all use to have to have 20/20 vision to be a pilot. I don't know about now tho. As I was told if one had corrective surgery that they could still be a pilot.

My one buddy all his life he wanted to become a Navy Pilot. Then he went to join and he didn't have the vision. So he then opted for Marines. Which he would then be sent to Lebanon during Reagan's reign. He ended up going 2nd Mardiv 2nd Amphibious Assualt.

[Mister D]

Yeah, specialized roles like that must require 20/20 vision without glasses. I guess you could get surgery and it's widely available now. A friend at work had been in the service in the 60s (was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam) and he told me today when I asked that he knew plenty of guys with glasses in the infantry. He said you;d have to have very poor eyesight to get disqualified on those grounds.

[MMC]

http://ts4.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=1573763875879&id=a58be8b14b7715447d9062a042014d7c&url=http%3a%2f%2fi255.photobucket.com%2falbums%2fh h145%2fleighm25a%2fUniforms%2fBCGs014.jpg

These were standard issued.....to those that needed glasses.

[MMC]

Yeah, specialized roles like that must require 20/20 vision without glasses. I guess you could get surgery and it's widely available now. A friend at work had been in the service in the 60s (was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam) and he told me today when I asked that he knew plenty of guys with glasses in the infantry. He said you;d have to have very poor eyesight to get disqualified on those grounds.

Yeah, you know how it goes.....the fleet does the flying. The grunts do the dieing. :grin: :wink:

[Peter1469]

Sometime in the 2000s the DoD vetted and accepted LASIK. So corrected vision is OK now.

[Mister D]

Sometime in the 2000s the DoD vetted and accepted LASIK. So corrected vision is OK now.

Recently I've co,me across documentary and visual evidence that many soldiers wore glasses in WW1. I was somewhat surprised. I'm not sure what the vision requirements were at the time though.

[Mister D]

Yeah, you know how it goes.....the fleet does the flying. The grunts do the dieing. :grin: :wink:

Yeah, I guess the brass has a "anyone can catch a bullet" mentality. :undecided:

[RollingWave]

In Taiwan's draft you also have to be really REALLY bad eyesight to be disqualified, of course they'll never let a conscript fly a plane or anything .... and of course, given that like 70% of the young folks these days have glasses if they disqualified everyone with them they'd be screwed :P

[RollingWave]

http://tinyurl.com/7sba48m

here's an article I really like on google books, you can't see 100% of it there but most of it is avalible for reading. it address several interesting elements in western Medieval warfares based on the example of the Battle of Adrianople 1205, where the combined Bulgarian / Romanian / Cuman army (with most of the fighting done by the nomadic Cumans) crushed the army of the 4th Crusade not long after they captured Constaninople, and the first emperor of the Latin was taken prisoner.

Also, I updated the Imjin war article at the end with some pictures of equipements used .


The article is interesting in pointing out the difference between armour types and the graudal evolution of armours , and of course pointing out that "knights" in their earlier stages were not really the same thing as it was in the later stage.

[Mister D]

http://tinyurl.com/7sba48m

here's an article I really like on google books, you can't see 100% of it there but most of it is avalible for reading. it address several interesting elements in western Medieval warfares based on the example of the Battle of Adrianople 1205, where the combined Bulgarian / Romanian / Cuman army (with most of the fighting done by the nomadic Cumans) crushed the army of the 4th Crusade not long after they captured Constaninople, and the first emperor of the Latin was taken prisoner.

Also, I updated the Imjin war article at the end with some pictures of equipements used .


The article is interesting in pointing out the difference between armour types and the graudal evolution of armours , and of course pointing out that "knights" in their earlier stages were not really the same thing as it was in the later stage.

De Re Militari is a great site. That's where this is from.

http://deremilitari.org/?page_id=69

They just came back online after some tech issues. You might really like this, RW. Check it out. It focuses mostly on the west and Near East but the Mongols and Japanese are covered.

Anyway, the 4th Crusade was a sad episode.

[Mister D]

This would be great to have. It's a WW1 French mobilization poster dated 1914.

90