Post by goragrad on Apr 30, 2024 9:04:13 GMT
Among the other reading during my time away I finally picked up a copy Verbruggen's 'Art of Warfare in Western Europe - During the Middle Ages.' Which had been recommended to me by timurilank some time ago.
Very interesting and provides some really good analysis of strategy and tactics that contradicts so much of the 'accepted wisdom' concerning combat during the period. He goes into detail on a number of battles and campaigns to give examples of not only tactical and strategic planning, but also attention to logistics to show that the commanders during the period did indeed take these into consideration.
Recently I also picked up a 'used' copy (frankly it appeared unread in mint condition) of 'Roman Imperial Armour - The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour' by D. Sim and J. Kaminsky.
Very interesting. The authors go into the mining, smelting, and fabrication of the metals used and the provenance of the leather, etc. They bring their actual experience in the recreation of the tools and armour into the text to fill in the gaps in writing from the period by the contemporary authors.
There are charts of the actual thicknesses of helmets, scales, and lorica segmentata plates. Dimensions of scales and the diameters and wire thickness of mail rings. Heat treatment of the various materials with resulting hardness values from recovered pieces of armor.
I learned that Roman armourers differentially hardened scales (hard face with softer backing) and other armour components long before I had previously understood it to have been done. Frankly i now see Roman metallurgy to be much more competitive with that of later centuries.
Sadly the book has some editing errors, but that appears to be all too common in anything printed these days - an example of my own from former employment (not a commercially published item, but produced by an engineering firm) from a Stormwater Management Plan produced for a land development project -
There were several sentences in the plan where 'after any major precipitation event the drainage swales and structures will be <i>regarded</i> by the construction supervisor.' Totally threw me for a loop until I realized that the author of the plan used a spellcheck that didn't have 'regrade' in its dictionary and substituted 'regard...' The author of the plan didn't step through the spellcheck to ensure it only fixed actually spelling errors.
Very interesting and provides some really good analysis of strategy and tactics that contradicts so much of the 'accepted wisdom' concerning combat during the period. He goes into detail on a number of battles and campaigns to give examples of not only tactical and strategic planning, but also attention to logistics to show that the commanders during the period did indeed take these into consideration.
Recently I also picked up a 'used' copy (frankly it appeared unread in mint condition) of 'Roman Imperial Armour - The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour' by D. Sim and J. Kaminsky.
Very interesting. The authors go into the mining, smelting, and fabrication of the metals used and the provenance of the leather, etc. They bring their actual experience in the recreation of the tools and armour into the text to fill in the gaps in writing from the period by the contemporary authors.
There are charts of the actual thicknesses of helmets, scales, and lorica segmentata plates. Dimensions of scales and the diameters and wire thickness of mail rings. Heat treatment of the various materials with resulting hardness values from recovered pieces of armor.
I learned that Roman armourers differentially hardened scales (hard face with softer backing) and other armour components long before I had previously understood it to have been done. Frankly i now see Roman metallurgy to be much more competitive with that of later centuries.
Sadly the book has some editing errors, but that appears to be all too common in anything printed these days - an example of my own from former employment (not a commercially published item, but produced by an engineering firm) from a Stormwater Management Plan produced for a land development project -
There were several sentences in the plan where 'after any major precipitation event the drainage swales and structures will be <i>regarded</i> by the construction supervisor.' Totally threw me for a loop until I realized that the author of the plan used a spellcheck that didn't have 'regrade' in its dictionary and substituted 'regard...' The author of the plan didn't step through the spellcheck to ensure it only fixed actually spelling errors.