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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