Comments by "TotalRookie_LV" (@TotalRookie_LV) on "Real Crusades History" channel.

  1. Fur, fish and land, plus amber, to which Teutonic order usurped a monopoly and anyone else would be punished by death if caught collecting amber. P.S. I don't know how it is in the rest of Europe, but being a Latvian when I hear word "crusader" I don't imagine how cool I would look like in that armor, more like how to get him out of saddle and plunge my spear or sword through him. And it's kind of satisfying to read, how a guy named Imanta "scored a headshot" against bishop Meinhard, BTW, Imants is still a popular Latvian male name, I know several people named that (the ending is different, because Imanta was from the Finno-Ugric Livonian tribe, and words ending with -a usually are feminine in Latvian). Besides the national flag of Latvia is quite old, it's been around at least since the time of crusades, however, back then this banner was on crusaders side, as Turaida was the first tribe/state to convert to christianity. Forget all the BS about it's meaning, just face it - it's the colour of stained blood.
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  2. Johnny "..they weren't that much stronger than the average tribe or the average landlord..." I migthf I add on the part that characterizes local Baltic tribes - there have been found 400+ swords of viking period in tiny Latvia alone,where there are only ~150 such swords found in all wast lands of Russia. Only Norway challenge Latvia on number of such artifacts - around 2000, but it also had some four times the population, so on per capita basis Balts and Norse men were on par.
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  3. I guess it was pretty much like one of the Roman legions was lost in Germania, the lesson is - don't fight locals on their soil when they have prepared for the battle. I don't know what actually happened, but from the little bits I learned in school, crusaders were not so good at fighting in swamp, at least that made cavalry useless and turned knights into foot soldiers, but pretty much the most of Baltic region were swamps. Even now, when an aeroplane approaches the Riga airport and flies over forests in the springtime, you can see sun reflecting from water, trees literary are standing in water when snow melts. Even in WWI in Latvia there were no trenches, since ground waters are so close to surface, instead both German and Russian troops made some kind of fortifications made of wood and earth above ground level.
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