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Charles V, by using his head, and Du Guesclin by his unorthodox tactics, had combined to forge a strategy based on the possible, the direct antithesis of combat for honour, chivalry's central principle...[On the other hand by now] , the Great Companies proved too much a part of the military system to be either uprooted or domesticated.

The English had no way of holding territory without the financial means to maintain an army abroad, nor, once war had broken out, could they hold ceded regions whose populations had turned hostile. Nor could military superiority conquer an opponent who refused decisive battle. In August 1374 King Edward declared his readiness to conclude a truce.

"It is difficult not to see here a fundamental misjudgement which squandered resources while the hourglass sand ran out. The German Army for all its virtuosity was let down by a failure of generalship."

Bertrand Du Guesclin in Spanje met de companieën & Engelse gevangenschap.

5 pagina's en Thea Beckman maakt er een roman van.
Waarom is er geen romancyclus van Discworld lengte die de hele Honderdjarige Oorlog beslaat aan dit tempo :-)

PLEASE LET THIS BE A 19th CENTURY MISINTERPRETATION :-o
"In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws."

"Studies of tax rolls indicate that while the population may been halved [by the Plague] its social proportions remained about the same"

"the clergy on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men their failings attracted more attention ... for practical purposes, usury was left to the Jews as the necessary dirty work of society; had they not been avaliable they would have had to be invented"

The controversy is softened by the observation of former police officer Adrian Greaves: eyewitnesses had "Honest Lying Trauma" , simply misremembered. Writing analysis between the two Chard reports, letters to Major Clery & the 1936 transcript by C-Sgt. Bourne conclude the book.

"On the day following Bernstoff's visit to Lansing (1 February 1917) colonel House came to the White House to find Wilson pacing the floor of his library, nervously rearranging his books..."

The Mythology of Rorke's Drift came from all directions. Otto Witt's bizarre speaking tour, whitewashing by a (left-behind) staff officer of Chelmsford, a certain major Clery ...Apparently, it's even open to question if the grand Boer advisor on the spot Addendorf was really there?

BELGIAN FACTOID, part 2: "Negotiations dragged on for 5 years, until it became apparent that FN could not fullfill its obligations, which delayed the start of Polish domestic machine-gun manufacture until 1930. A licence was eventually obtained and the Polish-made version entered service in 1930 as the Rhm wz. 28 but production of the Browning heavy machine gun was begun in 1931 without a licence."

BELGIAN FACTOID, part 1: "Poland was interested in acquiring the rights to produce both the Browning Automatic Rifle & Browning 1917 heavy machine gun, converted to use the 7.92 mm round. Under false pretenses, the Belgian company Fabrique Nationale (FN) which was making both weapons itself, offered to sell the licence for the BAR to Poland. In fact, FN did not have the right to sell the licence to other countries."

The Second Polish Republic had to plan its policies on the principle that war was a distinct possibility & could occur with relatively little notice. Given the military disarmament imposed upon Germany, Pilsudski & others regarded the USSR as the most likely opponent in the near term. Furthermore, the threat was not just military in nature but included espionage & subversive activities in the Kresny borderlands.

"in fact the Polish airforce lost only 7 percent of its operational aircraft on the first day of the war and remained actively in the fight for a total of 17 days until the Soviet invasion"

Martin Gilbert, John Keegan, Gerhard Weinberg and Anthony Beevor kept copying a myth...
Hm. What does Norman Davies have to say?

I put in a call to the Embassy & I was [told] not to return to Warsaw, but must proceed at once to France. This was the last thing I expected; I had set my heart on completing my mission & returning to carry on the fight in Poland & it also meant I would be separated longer from my family. I didn't know then that I would never see my homeland again.

"Whatever the truth of the matter, the key point is that [Lt. Gen Frederick] Browning was fully aware that failure to seize any one crossing rendered the whole of MARKET GARDEN redundant & pointless. Consequently if he really did believe the operation was going a bridge too far, he should have been arguing strenuously against launching it at all, rather than making platitudinous excuses for future mitigation."

The upshot was a largely unwanted&arguably unnecessary [unified Airborne] command level headed by 2 disgruntled&antipathetic senior officers w/ little if any operational experience. This was arguably the worst of all possible worlds, but nonetheless the arrangement under which the Allied Airborne force was to fight the remainder of the war in Europe.

#3 Gunpowder weapons were used primarily at the beginning of a battle, to provoke an enemy charge against the main burgundy infantry force in a way that archery had been used in battles a century before"

#2 "It can be suggested on fairly conclusive grounds that burgundy siege warfare in the reign of Philip the Good had come to b fought almost entirely w gunpowder weapons both against the fortification being besieged &in its defence. These weapons played some role in the success of the siege if it was successful... The same cannot be said in the case of the battles"

He eloborates #1:

"John the Fearless and Philip the Good both were keen on bombards & the miscellaneous Canon to force besieged to surrender, but it had limited impact on resolve: "having a large and powerful gunpowder artillery train at sieges did not ensure victory even against traditional medieval fortifications"

"This very paucity [in the source material] must lead us to the conclusion that gunpowder weapons were not common or extensively used throughout the first 3/4 of the 14th century."
DeVries raises eyebrows right out of the gate: there was no military revolution resulting in modern states cfr Geoffrey Parker's generally accepted thesis.

Gallipoli embodied that particularly British approach to war on the naval periphery, but Fisher would've preferred the Baltic as even post-Mahan ships couldn't sink forts with their flat trajectory at miles distant. But local reality defied the traditional power projection. At one point Hamilton noted that he was unable to take the offensive because half his men were carrying water and the other half were digging.

Nor later would the u boats been defeated [Without Room 40] In 1915, Further German support for moderation came from then Chief-of-Staff Falkenhayn who feared the effect a diplomatic break with the U.S. would have on neutrals, especially (then) Bulgaria, BUT as the condition of Germany continued to worsen in 1916 it seemed criminal to abstain from the one weapon that might mean rescue.

Locating Spree's armoured cruisers therefore was given 3rd priority, behind convoying troops to Europe and plucking ripe, poorky defended colonial plums.

At the same time, It remained Jellicoe's permanent conviction that to preserve British naval supremacy the Grand Fleet must always be concentrated.

Without the breaking of the German codes the battle of Dogger Bank and Jutland would not have been fought.

Having spent seven hourd standing in pouring rain, all troops not on outpost duty were allowed to return to quarters. Due to the downpour, they were not allowed to March back to their camp via the main roads, as these were "required to be kept in reasonable condition as possible" They wereforced to wallow along muddy tracks, increasing their exhaustion.

The war had scarcely begun when Germany admirals robbed of their intended wartime strategy finding the exits to the north sea barred & the lower north sea turned into a watery nomansland discovered that they did not know what to do. (Against a distant blockade.) The BEF shipping 4 days early (12/8) was an equally paralyzing surprise.

During WWI each of the 3 partitioned parts got promises of autonomy or independence from its Great Power, symbolised by a provisional government. But which promise sounded best for the creation of a unified independent Polish state?

the conventional wisdom at this period was that the British flag was a handicap to British trade. It could only follow after several generations, when life was complicated enough to demand formal sovereignty & business was big enough to carry the costs. In the meantime, traders kept life simple & business blossomed in the political void. This was the secret invisible empire...

After a January preparation lull, USSR achieved full deep penetration to 2nd line of Mannerheim defences & gave harsher renegotiation terms; Göring advised to accept them, but hinted at a "soon-to-come-rematch".( !) The human cost for Finland was 70.000 casualties & 400.000 border refugees. Plus child evacuation to Sweden.

Good use of multiple sources for same event ex. "White Finns" plus foreign correspondents.

No soldier of Welsch extraction won a VC at the Drift, because there were none! The only link - apart from the movie- exists between the 24th & the later South Wales Borderers. Wales' sparse , largely pre-industrial population, made for a thin recruiting ground.

Trooper William Baker of the Natal Carabiniers escaped Isandwana on horse via a rugged 6 mile long fugitive trail to the swollen river, where on both banks Zulus killed survivors. It nearly won him a Victoria Cross.