Comments by "Samson Soturian" (@samsonsoturian6013) on "SandRhoman History" channel.

  1. The most important thing to remember about the Crusades is no one was in charge. The only time an entire Crusader army had a single commander, he was excommunicated. In the first and largest Crusade there were three major commanders controlling only a marginal preponderance of forces. Many of them were gangs of amateurs under the command of their local barrons and princes.
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  2. A big trend in history was before rockets/torpedoes were invented the biggest ships could carry the biggest guns and take the most hits. Ergo warships were as big as engineering would allow. These days the biggest warships are never meant to see the enemy and smaller, faster, and sneakier ships carry heavy weapons.
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  3. The thing about Cossacks and Tartars is that governments could only really pretend they ruled them.
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  4. Vital note: As the Ottoman's expanded their paper size of their domain, their actual control of the land diminished. The Ottomans were generally oblivious to what was happening in most Senjaks and entire wars came and went without anyone bothering to inform the Sultan. Sometimes Ottoman commanders went rogue and had de facto independent states, sometimes the local Ottoman government was defunct for decades at a time, and sometimes Ottoman rule was simply an empty oath of allegiance by the actual ruler who simply wanted to avoid trouble. All this was made possible by the Ottoman's habit of throwing away whole armies just to secure symbolic victories against nobles who bad mouthed the Sultan.
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  5. Some of these geopolitical maps conflict each other
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  6. Machiavelli is also a source for this video and he was partisan so I wonder how much of the thuggery was real.....
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  7. The Romans got the sword/armor design from the Celts but their tactics weren't a direct copy of anyone. They originally copied the Greeks because it is unclear to what extent they were Greeks. The Ming evolution of armaments is really the same process you see in most turdworld countries today where they use both what they have and what they can import and/or copy resulting in some interesting tactics
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  8. Because the Chinese mostly fought other Chinese and didn't effect affairs in the developed world
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  9. The "Great Companies" reminds me of the second Norse Siege of Paris. Unlike the previous attack many decades before, these men had no leader and the mob formed around a small company of Norse intending on a quick punitive raid on Paris. The mayor of Paris came out to negotiate and asked "Who is your King." The reply was "We are all Kings." Same behavior, different era.
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  10. 0:00 Yes, but medieval writers liked to pretend that was how it was, just like in modern times we like to pretend all major fighting is done by handfuls of hand picked and highly skilled operatives that don't actually exist.
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  11. Wanted land? Not really, the first crusade started with a secular war between the Byzantines and the Seljuks that the Byzantines lost. They called for help and the Pope saw an opportunity to bring the Orthodox under Catholic dominion. The Crusader army, however, quickly lost their original objective and decided to resolve an unrelated issue where Seljuks weren't allowing Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem
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  12. As Machiavelli said, the more divided a region is the easier it is to enter there but the harder it will be to establish total control. No state could establish total control over the Germany states regardless of the amount of fighting.
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  13. Hardly. The fleet was worth a couple of years' revenue for the whole empire. And they literally just told their own soldiers they valued material possessions over their lives.
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  14. @etuanno  the crown was already defunct by the time WWI started. A gang of army officers ran things. The collapse was very slow before that as European powers each intervened to prevent the others from taking too much Ottoman turf
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  15. This problem still exists with arms procurement because of the extreme risks suppliers demand fat profit margins. In one case, Raytheon randomly received an order for rockets so on they no longer had anyone on staff that had made them before and they were obligated to provide them
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  16. That's classified as a ruse or strategem.
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  17. Correction: Babylon did not exist in the Bronze Age. The biggest city in that region at the time was Akkad, and even then only in the late bronze age. The reason for the changing center of population is because the Tigris and Euphrates have shifted course many times.
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  18. The difference is Chinese people viewed soldiers/workers as expendable and lacked the skilled operators for many things common in Europe
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  19. You overstate the scale of sieges during this period as by all accounts populations appear tiny, especially in the early and middle bronze age when national governments did not exist either. Most states had kings that were also sherrif, judge, and army captains and most states praised how tall and mighty the king was rather than praise how efficient he ran a government. It is likely sieges were the norm of warfare because battles mostly consisted of fights between individuals and the urban siege was the only conventional fight in existence.
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  20. The Turks would have invaded regardless of the island's ethnic composition.
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  21. The real mystery is why so many states chose to hire security contractors when reservist armies and nationalist armies were already in use in some places.
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  22.  @Nomadicenjoyer31  Not if you know anything about either. For instance, the Ottoman "elite" units had a martial reputation that was total BS. They were staffed totally with abducted children brainwashed into serving the Sultan, but infighting was so bad that these units killed as many Ottoman officials as they did protect them. Each new Sultan would have to give them massive bribes just to assume office. There was only rudimentary martial training.
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  23. The Janissaries fought Turks more than anyone else and received massive bribes from every new ruler. They were kidnapped because the Sultans trusted purebred mercs more than their own clansmen. There were similar predatory behavior across the empire, but there was very little record keeping and history writing. Like how Ottoman commanders would "conscript" Arabs and use them for slave labor, or how "requisition squads" seized assets which went into the commander's pocket.
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  24.  @napolien1310  Some people said he should be that but no one cared to follow his orders personally. You must recall the Pope was also an Italian prince at the time.
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  25. Martin Luther had no intention of leaving the Catholic church, much less start a war.
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  26. Don't let reputations obscure facts
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  27. [Laughs in AC-130]
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  28. Complains about poor history in pop culture. Is sponsored by a stupid war game.
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  29.  @xxx-lx6bu  depends on group and time analyzed. Some of these groups were mobs of pirates fighting for amnesty from crimes committed back home, but most of those guys didn't get past Turkey.
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  30. There's more to it than that, as men will only actually fight if they believe the army they sign up for defends their friends.
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  31. Holy War is never religious either
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  32. No amount of money will make men die for you. As for the Jannisaries, they fought their masters more than they did any conventional enemy.
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  33.  @TheMrcassina  most of them.
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  34. Given Britain ultimately conquered much of the world you'd think key British victories would be considered important by many cultures.
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  35. Shut up, child
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  36.  @nomanor7987  1) The Punics were badass and the Ottomans were not. 2) Armies were larger and their weapons heavier in the 16th century. 3) Fortresses were MUCH bigger and more common in the 16th century. 4) Hannibal didn't need a steady supply of gunpowder. Gunpowder cannot be easily stolen while on the move like food and animals. 5) Hannibal was counting on mass desertion among the Latin states that never came. 6) The road to Venice was not filled with neutrals. In the Balkans, most of the land was controlled by the Ottomans only on paper.
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  37. Screw those games and everything they stand for
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  38. AKA Demoknight.
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  39. 3/4 of Russians are in Europe, 3/4 of Russia is in Asia
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  40.  @QuantumHistorian  You might not. The average high schooler who doesn't live in Britain would
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  41. No, they were first recorded in China centuries before but its inventor is unknown. The powder was crude, expensive, and unreliable and mostly used for royal fireworks and incendiaries. Various European blacksmiths invented every gunpowder weapon you have ever heard of
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  42.  @hedgehog3180  How can you talk so much but say so little? No, most fighting is not over the horizon as you need to get close to guarantee a kill. And you never heard of missile boats?
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  43. Liars burn in hell
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  44. Forgotten Weapons has several videos about the guns made in the Qing and Republic periods and yes guns made in China were as cheap and unreliable as you'd think, but many of them were good copies of European guns.
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  45. He was also a loyal Frenchmen. Life gets complicated.
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  46. Vhut? No one does religious wars anymore. SandRoman doesn't care.
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  47.  @curranlakhani  more or less. Much of the army was indirectly loyal to the king, and there were volunteers from across Europe
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  48. Shut up
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  49. We don't crusade anymore.
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  50. @ahmetozkan438  whatever case you trying to make, you ain't doing a good job at it
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  51.  @etuanno  Yes, but it happened over centuries. A big reason was colonial powers were more interested in their enemies not taking Ottoman holdings than they were taking turf for themselves. Like the Crimean War where Britain invaded Russia so that Russia wouldn't take too much Ottoman land. There was a big collapse when the French and Brits seized all of the Turk's Arab holdings during WWI.
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  52. Some yes, some no. This was back when wartime looting was both legal and acceptable and it only really ended when strict discipline was enforced giving all captured loot to the state who only stole from official enemies. This is how we pretend that we do not loot in wars.
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  53. That's one way to say you don't know a fucking thing on history
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  54.  @Nomadicenjoyer31  I don't know about the statistics, but Turks only get the name and a lot of loan words from the central asian nomads that became the ruling elite. The coastal regions have almost exclusively Hellenic origins, the east is mostly Kurds and Armenians, and the central plane is a mix of all that plus Hittites.
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  55. @ahmetozkan438  you don't know the first thing about history, do you? Never heard of "sick man of Europe?"
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  56. Shut up before we draft you
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  57. Shut up
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  58. There were Japanese professionals and Africans among them. This was not the nation of China, but men in the employ of a warlord, and the warlord didn't discriminate
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  59. Screw that game and everything it stands for.
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  60. Excuse me, but to what extent are the sources war propaganda? Because while mercenary companies did attract literal thugs in their work, it sounds like some of this info is coming from Italians that fought said mercs
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  61. No amount of money will make men die for you
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  62.  @lolasdm6959  It's "stronger" in the way that it's cheap and so the wall can be crazy thick and built by temp workers
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  63. Not always. The winds might not cooperate and the first ship never comes in range.
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  64. Screw that game
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  65. If it sounds awesome, then reality is certainly much more boring than you think.
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  66. It's always telling what men do when they finally have their enemies under their power. In this case, open hypocrisy, theft, and literal backstabbing awaited everyone regardless if the Sultan signed a scrap of paper saying otherwise.
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  67. Shut up, child
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  68. Why were you bullshitting right now?
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  69. 11:00 No one called that area Palestine at the time.
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  70.  @johnnyboy3410  the Mohammedans changed all the names while the Crusaders either used Biblical names or city names. I.E. The Kingdom of Jerusalem.
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  71.  @johnnyboy3410  That’s what the Jihadis called themselves at the time. The Followers of Mohammed.
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  72.  @forcea1454  Except none of that has ever happened in practice for about 500 different reasons, Mr. Armchair Strategist.
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  73. Like... you?
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  74.  @nomanor7987  This was a period when there was no distinction between corporations and governments, and fortresses took months or years to bring down individually. It was actually faster and cheaper to obtain land through dynastic connections or purchase, leading to the Hapsburg comment that men do not conquer land, women do. This allowed for many bizarrely shaped states that wouldn't have survived otherwise.
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  75.  @nomanor7987  They would have held them in contempt regardless since the Jannissaries were both paid better and since they were directly loyal to the Sultan they prevented Turkish troops from going rogue.
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  76. It's something that only exists in small states. When you're a county sized country with no actual cities, the king is also the sheriff.
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  77. That's usually what you get in fiat wars. No one really cares as much as they pretend to.
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  78. Mesopotamia has only had one largestcity at a time @theprancingrat 
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  79. @fus132  some empires were legal fictions
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  80. It was amongst the loot left in the Achaean camp, allegedly
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  81.  @cachorrovinagre2979  there's not as much difference between amateurs and professionals as you think
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  82.  @AK-hi7mg  the difference between an amatuer and professional soldier is pay, not skill.
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  83. The only difference between a merc and a soldier is a middleman.
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  84. Of course. Because Muslims marry infidels a helluva lot more than they care to talk about.
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  85. There's nothing uniquely Chinese about that and there were Japanese and Africans among them
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  86.  @dragonace119  Russia did not have significant iron production at that time and simply used what was available
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  87. In the 18th and 19th century, yeah. But more soldiers and people these days are loyal to the Feds. There's also few specific requirements in our treaty organizations for how many men each nation must provide, and a high degree of disobedience is tolerated.
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  88. Europe isn't a country
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  89. Yes
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  90.  @robert48044  No, I was speaking of religious unity, not secular unity. No one had specific plans to screw over the Byzantines. That didn't stop drama from ensuing, though You seem irrationally belligerent to men who are long dead.
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  91. Some were, others were not.
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  92. To be fair, most Chinese armies in this period were untrained militias on account China wasn't a country at that time
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  93. Oddly enough, there seems to have been low will to fight among many Russian units despite fighting on their own soil. The preponderance on the army were auxiliaries and contractors so that's probably why.
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  94. Only if you're full of it
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  95. The militias were ineffective largely because they were perceived as ineffective. When they were called up it was at the literal last minute and all they could do was grab any weapon on hand and fight generally with no organization or training. This is why Machiavelli always wanted to form a reservist system as he didn't like mercs.
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  96.  @latte2475  Don't you have a math test to cheat on or something?
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  97. It's actually very common for one place to have two names. The Arabs call Jerusalem "al-Quds," the Egyptians call themselves the Masri, the Fins and Lapps call themselves Suomi, the Greeks call themselves the Hellenes.
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  98.  @kuvikina  Cyprus has more DNA in common with Greece than any other country and almost was annexed by modern Greece within living memory.
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  99. @ahmetozkan438  Something you must understand in this part of this part of the world is discrimination is mandatory. This means a lot of people will learn the language of the elites and identify with their race regardless of their actual ethnic background. That's why Egyptians call themselves Arabs despite having a greater ethnic connection to black Sudanese than Riyadh. So while Turkey speaks a language related to central Asian Turkish, they have a largely indigenous ethnic background.
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  100.  @ahmetozkan438  Even if that were so, it's irrelavent because the idea that every self identified Turk has an uninterrupted line of Turkish fathers is absurd. Heck, no one can confirm or deny any two Sultans were biologically related to each other due to all the sexual irregularities. Peoples, governments, and borders come and go with the decades, no need to get sentimental about them.
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  101. @ahmetozkan438  There were also rules requiring yearly jihad. How many people do you think followed those? Also, since when were the Turks always at the profiting side of the slave trade? The region has been raided, conquered, and broken up so many times over the years. Since when have people stuck to only sleeping with their wives/husbands? Heck, in the days of aristocracy, a lot of marriages were shams meant to seal dynastic alliances. Since when was it not uncommon for women to move out far away from their family to set up a new life somewhere else? Since when was it impossible for a man from a minority to rise to great heights in Turkey and marry who he pleased (especially if he's a mercenary captain)? In fact, the rules you bring up never even applied to the whole empire but varied between sanjaks and varied with the decades, with often enforcement of the rule being near zero. This is all besides cultural norms, which people adopt from the people around them as they grow up. Needless to say, Turkey has almost nothing in common with Turkmenistan in that regard.
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  102. Over 200 years afterwards
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  103. Why does everything have to have incompatible consonants...
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  104. Most of the country changed hands at some point
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  105. Don't think for a minute they were all Christians. Ottoman commanders would pressgang whomever was conveniently available
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  106. This war had nothing to do with religion
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  107. @nofux8586  the Ottoman's religious composition varied with the decades
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  108. The difference between a merc and a soldier is a middleman. Italian states were more like corporations than nations and the security contractors they hired sometimes really were loyal to the company
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  109. The climate is akin to the southern coast of Alaska, that's our definition of sub-arctic
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  110. Shut up
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  111. Pop culture is more interested in spectacle? Since when is that new?
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  112. You don't know the guy
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  113. You'd be surprised how many problems can be solved with a big gun....
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  114. BTW, this recruitment system was why for the longest of time it was possible to buy rank in many European armies.
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  115. Vhut?
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  116. 4:00 Henri II didn't happen to lead a calvary arm, did he?
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  117. Lose the sycophancy
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  118. No, the king was automatically the commander and chief of the armed forces. Some dynasties allowed men to marry into that role, others did not and thus they had to select a male from the family.
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  119. Anything could have happened if you change anything in the past.
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  120. That guy took Egypt. The Balkans are a different matter
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  121.  @GrandMoffTarkinsTeaDispenser  he did, in fact, attack the Ottomans at one point
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  122. Stupified with bravery
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  123. @Force A1  Gulf War is a bad example for anything at all because the Iraqis were incompetent to the point that US Bradley vehicles had a perfect record taking out tanks.
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  124.  @piscessoedroen  bug off
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  125.  @piscessoedroen  bug off
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  126. New York was originally New Amsterdam
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  127. One subtle factor is Italy was both wealthy and broken to the point where private corporations often overshadow geographically defined states
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  128. How?
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  129.  @Nomadicenjoyer31  Literally. These areas fought against the Sultan more often than they followed orders.
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  130. Vhut?
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  131. The city of Troy definitely existed, but invincible soldiers and 60,000 man campaigns in the bronze age did not
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  132.  @OK-yy6qz  you talk so much but say so little... Look, not even Alexander the Great had an army that large because pre-industrial logistics didn't allow it. Even so, there were no real cities in Archaic Greece.
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  133. We've had internationally recognized countries that haven't lasted that long
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  134. @VinnieG-  that's the Ottomans. They don't kill people conquer thheir lands, they killed people so they could say they owned the land
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  135. @VinnieG-  Let's put it this way: Only 20% of taxes owed were collected, and only 20% of that physically arrived at the Ottoman palace
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  136. @VinnieG-  No, the real fraud was the assertion the Ottomans were owed taxes (also, corruption losses). At any given time, much of the Ottoman government was defunct, a situation that only got worse as it expanded.
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  137. @VinnieG- Ottoman tax collection was more violent than American COIN.
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  138. Earthly reasons
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  139. Who gives a shit? This was centuries ago
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  140. No
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  141. As the Hapsburgs said, Men do not conquer lands, women do. They said this because more land changed hands due to simple dynastic marriages than by long sieges and seizures.
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  142. That is not remotely Roman
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  143. @kuvikina  they were often depicted as invincible elite groups which was a lie but caused them to be overrepresented in the sources
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  144.  @patnor7354  Most of the boys weren't raped. That's what they kidnapped women for. Also, these boys were taken by extortion as part of a treaty
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  145. Shut up before we pressgang you into the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
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  146.  @stephengayton5246  Not exactly. With other Crusades there was a leader of a faction that was by far the largest. For instance, much of King Richard's army was indirectly loyal via barons who served on contract, with lots of French and other volunteers picked up along the way.
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  147.  @michaeldanmosley4169  not if you know anything
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  148. I think it literally means Panther Rider.
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  149. He doesn't even go over the grievances. You'd need a whole series for that much detail
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  150.  @greghall4836  Lying about what's in the video will get you doxxed
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  151.  @latte2475  Liars get scalped
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  152.  @rodrigorafael.9645  If I said anything else, I would conflict what is in the video
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  153.  @lolasdm6959  Weird exaggerations. The scientific revolution simply never happened in China
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  154.  @lolasdm6959  Doesn't matter when the iron is +1,000 miles away overland. It was cheaper to import finished steel products from England than it was to make them locally. When a railroad connected the Donbas coal mines to the Urals iron mines, Russia became one of the largest steel producers as fast as they could build factories, savvy?
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  155.  @yoshihammerbro435  Besides the video? Chinese armies often have more men than they do weapons and that was the case in the War of the Heavenly Horses and in the Korean War and everything in between, and throughout these armies had a mismatch of armor types based simply one what was available and what they could afford. Mao was on record saying they didn't fear nuclear war as they were willing to lose ten million people. During the warlord period most soldiers had pistols because they couldn't afford rifles and many of the pistols were counterfeit but others were good copies of European guns. Colonial era Europeans complained of the Chinese economy, saying many men were making a living doing things that Europeans left to pack animals, and there was a shortage of skilled trades that could build/repair ships/engines/tools.
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  156. The Greeks only sent grown men to their deaths. Get over it.
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  157. People back then would support politicians all the same as they do today
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  158. It means Panther Rider, but panther is synonymous with armored tank in German
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  159. @ahmetozkan438  dude, it took months to get a message across the empire. You find it incredulous that cliques could quietly enforce their own rules? That's actually what happened in Saddam's Iraq too, as conspiracies between officials to do this or that was the norm. In the Ottoman's case, the Sultan once issued an order to clear up the east of pirates who were eating into tax revenues. The army commanders were receiving bribes from some of the extortionists, so they lied and said the Sultan said to hunt Armenian pirates. The junior officers wanted loot so they lied and said the Sultan ordered the Armenians who are all pirates to be hunted. Individual soldiers wanted to hide their crimes so they lied and said the Sultan ordered the Armenians to be killed. Welcome to the Ottoman Empire.
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  160.  @ggoddkkiller1342  you wouldn't even know what Vilayet Jerusalem was in at the time.
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  161. It's war. Shit happened. Also, these were hastily assembled forces. They weren't necessarily friends.
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  162.  @FiveLiver  Or at least pretended to.
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  163. Trench warfare is seen at any point in history where fortifications are king.
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  164. Not relevant to our lives
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  165. No, that's speculation as a result of war propaganda. Many whole cities were vacated but most inhabitants didn't die but fled with several cities overcrowded with refugees at any given time. Virtually the whole country was displaced at some point. Casualties were extreme but not apocalyptic.
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  166.  @robert48044  Most Popes weren't into Crusader things. And the Pope never gave Jerusalem as an objective that I recall. The call up was to "defend the church."
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  167.  @robert48044  that's a Jewish thing
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  168. He'd have hundreds of thousands of descendants
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  169. There's more to an army than a commander. Hannibal's army spent several years in small campaigns preparing for total war, and they took everything Carthage could throw at Rome when they left
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  170. 3:16 That marriage also broke church law on cousin marriages.
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  171.  @brendon1689  The Commies equate themselves with all Chinese dynasties until you speak of their totalitarian tendencies
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  172. Not necessarily a racket. Many of these companies were loyal to specific states
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  173. ​@cjthebeesknees what are you talking about?
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  174. ​@cjthebeesknees please tell me that's a sick joke
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  175. I think you're drawing hyperbole from partisan sources
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  176. Shut up. Those guys are dead
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  177.  @SterbiusMcGurbius  quit being silly
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  178.  @SterbiusMcGurbius  you wouldn't even frickin know who that is.
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  179.  @SterbiusMcGurbius  Does my name look Turkish to you, pendejo?
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  180. The imprint can be seen today. Ottoman rule basically consisted of centuries of highly localized Greek rule and Turkish piracy. Some of it legal, as licensed tax collectors were literally allowed to do anything at all as long as they paid the Sultan, and some of it illegal piracy since the Greeks weren't allowed armies that the Sultan didn't control. You can see it in the architecture today, where all Greek buildings are made to look small and modest from the front. In one island, extreme examples are found where residents carve their homes out of the rock and surround them with dense trees and bushes. Businesses that couldn't hide had two sets of books, one for the tax men and one for friends, a custom that continues to this day (the only Greeks that file taxes even today are men who can afford to pay an accountant to cook the books).
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  181.  @vangelisskia214  Turkish culture is where people are expected to behave in a domineering manner towards the competition, whomever that may be at the time.
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  182.  @Nomadicenjoyer31  Speaking Turkish and having Turkish DNA are two totally different things. Are the British mostly of Norman French origin? No, Norman French was simply the language of the courts and the elites for a time.
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  183.  @ahmetozkan438  A curious blanket assertion, given that's exactly what the Bedouin of Jordan and Palestine/Israel did. Also, the Indians assimilated into the US, most of the settlers of Brazil's major cities were native jungle peoples looking for work (NOT EUROPEANS)... Actually, your blanket assessment doesn't make any sense. Maybe you just notice the nomads on the outskirts of society more.
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  184.  @ahmetozkan438  Dude, even where inter-religious and inter-racial marriages were illegal (like al-Andulus) DNA studies show that mixed race children were the norm. At least part of this was that women were common war booty at least until WWI, and possibly even to this day. For instance, when the Ottomans expelled the Greeks and Armenians from their territory, a large portion of the young women were kept as sex slaves. And the ease with how people could fraudulently identify as Turkish meant many love marriages across peoples were simply hiding in plain sight. Comprende?
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  185.  @kuvikina  no one I mentioned ever had a major British population
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  186.  @ahmetozkan438  You're thinking of the late Ottoman period.
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  187.  @kuvikina  lying isn't necessary in this instance
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  188.  @kuvikina  liars burn in hell.
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  189. Clerical states were stereotyped as pacifists, but that was part of the reason behind the spread of mercenary companies since they often just outsourced that stuff to security contractors
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  190. The fact you feel the need to say that implies there is reason to believe otherwise
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  191.  @GrandMoffTarkinsTeaDispenser  given the level of bullshit surrounding everything Ottoman, don't be surprised when people get skeptical
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  192. Because the Ottomans only ruled Africa on paper. Key lords had to pay protection money, which they did because the Ottomans would throw away whole armies just so they could pretend they won. The Ottomans only had actual power over what is now western and central Turkey with small colonies all over.
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  193.  @kuvikina  Are you counting Istanbul as the Balkans?
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  194. That has nothing to do with what I just said di3727 
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  195. Relevance?
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  196. This isn't any different from all the other dozens of times migrant warrior companies inserted themselves as elites in various lands
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  197. The chain shot cutting ropes wss tested by Mythbusters. They found the two half shots did not spread near to work as intended.
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  198.  @l00k69  but the shot would simply spread slowly like a charge of grape
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