Military History Photo Friday: Elaborate Renaissance Arms and Armor

Here are a couple of fine pieces from The Wallace Collection, one of the best private collections of art in London. They have an especially good arms and armor gallery. It's well worth checking out if you're in London.

On the top we have, according to the signage, "a mace of the morning star type, damascened in gold with arabesques and emblematical figures within cartouches of silver piqué." Well that clears that up. It's from Milan c.1560.

Below are some fine parade helmets from the same century, also made in Italy and of the type known as "antique armor", which imitated the styles of parade armor from ancient Rome.

Teutonic Treasures and Archaeology

When I'm not blogging here, I often do guest blogs at other sites. Recently I did a post for the Black Gate blog on The Church and Treasury of the Teutonic Order, Vienna. Black Gate is a leading fantasy magazine that runs a great blog on all things genre. Last year they published my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence, which you can download as a free ebook.

I'm also now the "Archaeology Expert" on the The Scout Project, a fun blog run by former Gadling coworker Libby Zay. It covers all sorts of subjects and encourages readers to go out and explore for themselves. She just interviewed me about my archaeology career.

Expect to see more from me on both these blogs in coming weeks!

A Pagan Grove and Norman Church in Iffley, England

As regular readers of this blog know, we spend our Easters and summers in Oxford. one of our favorite local places to visit is just a couple of miles south of town. Heading downstream on the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and past a nice riverside pub of the same name, is the little village of Iffley.

Its main claim to fame is a fine Norman church built in the late 11th century that's is almost perfectly preserved. Early on, it changed hands from the local lord to an estate further away, and while the absentee owners paid for its upkeep, they didn't do much to change it, making it one of the most pristine Norman churches in the country.

The front is very Romanesque, and the door is decorated with the zodiac. There's also an atmospheric old cemetery and a 1,500 year-old yew tree. The local priest thinks it was part of a sacred pagan grove and that under the church there's probably an old Saxon church from the 5th or 6th century. Since early church builders liked to build in sacred groves, I'm thinking the Saxons cut down the center tree of the grove, which was probably as old then as this one is now, and built the church on top of it. You see this sort of behavior with mosques, churches, and synagogues in the Middle East depending on who won the latest war.

The surviving tree was probably little more than a sapling then, young when its religion was old, and escaped the notice of the Christians. Perhaps cutting down the central, most sacred tree in the grove was all that needed to be done to destroy it as a place of religious significance. I remember reading in some early Christian accounts where they destroyed sacred groves, and they usually only destroyed the main tree. The sole surviving sacred yew can be seen on the righthand side of both the photos of the church here.

Military History Photo Friday: Medieval Handgonnes in Slovenia

When I started researching my book Medieval Handgonnes: The First Black Powder Infantry Weapons, I discovered the Balkans were early adopters of the earliest handheld firearm technology. Many of the photos for the book, for example, come from Croatia.

Just north of Croatia is Slovenia, the subject of my current travel series for Gadling. While in the National History Museum in the capital Ljubljana I came across two examples of early firearms.

This top one of from the early 15th century. It's of the earliest of the three main types I outlined in my book. It's only a little more than a foot long with a touch hole at one end. The hook at the bottom was for hooking over a wall or shield in order to steady it. The handgonne may have been fixed to a wooden shaft but I couldn't see any evidence for that.

This is from the late 15th century and as you can see it's a much more advanced model. Well, hopefully you can see. It's really hard to take good photos through glass! Anyway, it's about three feet long and has the familiar hook. It also has a pair of gunsights and a pan for the gunpowder that was originally fitted with a swiveling top in order to secure the loose powder.

Here's a closeup of the back end, showing the pan, maker's mark, and rear sight.

As you can see, there's no trigger on either of these pieces. Triggers of the matchlock type only came into use slowly near the end of the 15th century.

You might also want to check out a guest post I did about the accuracy of medieval handgonnes.

Castles in Spain and Slovenia

I was traveling in Italy and Slovenia for the past ten days and didn't get a chance to announce that another guest post of mine is up at the Black Gate blog. It's the second in my series on Spanish castles. This time I'm talking about the castle at Chinchón near Madrid.

While I was in Slovenia I got to see plenty of castles too. The country, which is slightly smaller than New Jersey, has about 700 of them! You can read my article on Gadling about the castles in Slovenia. It's part of a new series called "Slovenia: Hikes, History, and Horseburgers."

Book Review: Legendary Beasts of Britain

Legendary Beasts of Britain by Julia Cresswell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Shire Books are short, heavily illustrated introductions to a variety of British subjects. Considering how many they've published, including one on spoons, I'm surprised they haven't done one on legendary creatures. Well, good things come to those who wait. This is a fascinating look at the origins and development of unicorns, dragons, wyverns, griffins, and more.

Despite its small size, the author manages to pack in a lot of information. By the time you finish this you'll know the difference between your mermaids and your selkies, your unicorns and your yales. You'll also learn several old legends and tall tales from times past.

Creswell digs up some interesting images beyond the usual ones we often see. For example, there are several photos of misericords, those little benches they put in churches to lean against while you're standing. They were often carved with mythical beasties and make for an interesting study in unusual church art.

Since this is an examination of traditional beasts, newer appearances such as aliens and globsters don't make the cut, but you'll still find Alien Big Cats (which go back further than I thought) and everyone's beloved lake monster, Nessie.

I recommend this for anyone looking for a primer on the folklore of Great Britain. It makes for good fodder for writers too!

View all my reviews

Guest blogging about Spanish castles over at Black Gate

I've done another guest post for the blog of Black Gate fantasy magazine. It's the first in a series about Spanish castles; this one is about the Alcázar in Segovia.

Not only is it a fascinating castle, but it has an excellent collection of medieval artillery that helped me when I was writing my book Medieval Handgonnes: the first Black Powder Infantry Weapons.

For more on that subject, you might also want to look at a guest post I did over at Genre Author on the accuracy of Medieval handgonnes.

Military history of Tangier, Morocco

So much has been going on this past week I forgot to mention that I did a guest post over at the Black Gate blog about Exploring the Defenses of Tangier. You'll see lots of pictures and info that didn't make it into my Tangier travel series I did for Gadling. Head on over and check it out!

Tangier was an inspiring place with a lot going on. I'm thinking of taking a solo trip there later this year to work on a writing project. See you back here tomorrow with Wild West Photo Friday!

My travel writing on Gadling for August

Being busy with a book deadline, I didn't contribute to the travel blog Gadling as much as I would have liked this past month. Still, I did some interesting posts you might like to check out.

I wrote only one post related to the Civil War, a news brief on the upcoming commemoration of the Battle of Antietam. More history/archaeology posts include a virtual tour of Maeshowe, an old-time film short on a Western ghost town, a cache of severed hands discovered in Egypt, archaeologists searching for the lost grave of Richard III, a lovely road trip through historic Oxfordshire, a 3D laser scan of Lalibela, the discovery of the Terra Nova, and tours of the Steamboat Arabia Museum and London's Soane Museum.

I also finished up my series on visiting the Orkney Islands.

On a weirder note, don't miss the story about British police hunting for a lion in Essex, a Norwegian Nessie, and my own photo of a mysterious "sea monster".

Oh, and I discovered I appear in a Youtube video!

To see all my posts, follow my Gadling feed.

Guest blogging about Byzantine magic over at Black Gate

I've written a guest post for the Black Gate blog on Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Magic. It features some of the photos I took at the Byzantine Museum in Athens during my trip to Greece earlier this year along with some background information.

Black Gate will be publishing my historical fantasy novella, The Quintessence of Absence, in their next issue. I also plan on doing more blog posts for them. Stay tuned!

Author Interview: fantasy novelist A.J. Walker

I've decided to take a note from uber-blogger Alex Cavanaugh and announce new releases from my followers. If you've been reading my blogs for a while, you'll recognize the name of writer and medievalist A.J. Walker. I've done guest posts for him on such subjects as medieval weapons in the Civil War. He's returned the favor by writing a very popular guest post on leather armor. Now he has a fantasy novel out called Hard Winter and he's joined us to talk about it.


Hi A.J.! First, give us the skinny on Hard Winter.

Hi Sean! Thanks for having me. Hard Winter is the first book in the Timeless Empire series of military fantasy novels. The best summary I can give you is the blurb.

His past has been erased, his future is uncertain, but he knows one thing—in the coming revolution he must choose which friend to support and which to betray.

The Dragonkin have ruled the human race for centuries, but now the eastern territories have broken away and a blight has left thousands of humans destitute. Assassinations and riots plague the cities.

While the empire’s future is in peril, one man struggles to reclaim his past. Recorro lost his wife to the Gatherers, shadowy beings that prowl the streets on moonless nights. Those who witness their passing are forever changed. Recorro can remember nothing about his wife beyond the fact that she existed.

Aimless and struggling with despair, Recorro joins the army gathering to crush the rebels. What he discovers there may answer all his questions, and topple the empire he swore to uphold.


Military fantasy? Tell us more about that subgenre.

Military fantasy isn't a term that's used much, although many books fit into the category. One of my main influences is Glen Cook's Black Company series, especially the grittier early novels where it's a bunch of soldiers just trying to survive. The later books get a bit more elaborate and political. I prefer the common man's view. The same with the Thieves World series. It started out with thieves doing what thieves do, and turned into world-shaking politics. I'm not knocking the later numbers of either series, I just prefer the earlier ones.

Military fantasy is the experience of soldiers in a fantasy setting. Dealing with how magic affects strategy and tactics is a lot of fun and requires some serious thought.

Civil War Photo Friday: Civil War blockhouses used a medieval design

In a previous Civil War Photo Friday I wrote about Union blockhouses, simple fortifications that proved effective against bushwhackers and cavalry raiders. My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness includes a fictionalized account of Bloody Bill Anderson's attack on a blockhouse at Fayette, Missouri. Above is a photo of a typical Civil War blockhouse. Note that the top floor is bigger than the ground floor.

In his Medieval Mondays series, fantasy/mystery author A.J. Walker wrote about Motte-and-Bailey castles, those cheap and quick wooden forts made famous by William the Conqueror. A photo of a reconstruction of one of these castles at Saint Sylvain d'Anjou dans le Maine et Loire, France, stuck me immediately.

 

Same construction! A little research found that this to have been common with these 10th-12th century castles. Not all of them had this feature, and not all Civil War blockhouses did either, but it's interesting to see the similarity in design.

For the castles, this feature was called a bretasche, and apparently added structural stability, one flat wall being weaker than a staggered wall with cross supports between the floors. It would also increase the number of defenders who could use their bows (or Springfield rifled muskets) from the firing platform.


Blockhouse photo courtesy Library of Congress. Castle photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Siamese twins in the Middle Ages

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been traveling in Greece writing a new series for Gadling called Our past in peril: Greek tourism faces the economic crisis. The first in the series is here.

I've always been more interested in Byzantium than Classical Greece and so I spent a lot of time exploring Byzantine sights, including Mistra, a Byzantine ghost town overlooking Sparta. On one of the signs there I came across this strange story. The image above is from a Byzantine manuscript owned by the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and the caption reads:

"In the time of Romanos Lekapenos (10th cent.) a pair of Siamese twin boys were brought to Constantinople from Armenia and they 'stayed in the city for a long time and everybody went to see them as if they were some kind of curious monster; and then they were expelled from the city because they were thought to be an evil omen."

There's a story in the making. . .

Traveling in Greece

Hi everyone. I've been a bit silent this week and that's because I'm traveling in Greece! Gadling has sent me here to write a series about how the economic crisis is affecting tourism and heritage management. The first article will appear January 30.

I'm writing this to you from Sparta. The Classical ruins here aren't as impressive as those of Corinth or Delphi, and the real reason I came here was to see Mistra. This is a late Byzantine ghost town that is, hands down, the most impressive thing I've seen in this county. Acropolis included. I've always wanted to see this place since researching my book Byzantium: An Illustrated History. It's great to finally get here! I'll be doing a heavily illustrated article on Mistra as part of the series. Here are a couple of photos to give you a taste.

Guest blogging about Ethiopia on the Osprey Publishing blog

I have a guest post over at the Osprey Publishing blog about the city wall in Harar, Ethiopia. As regular readers of this blog know, I spent two months living in Harar earlier this year and wrote a series of posts about it.

Osprey being a military history publisher, this post focuses on how the medieval city wall helped preserve Harar's unique culture from outsiders. Head on over there and check it out! I'll be doing some more guest posts over there soon.