Medieval Mondays: A Poisoner's Ring from Bulgaria

Archaeologists working in Bulgaria have found a 14th century ring that may have been used to slip poison into someone's drink, the Sofia Globe reports.

The ring, which was found at the fortress of Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea, is small and would have probably been worn on the little finger. It has a box-like decoration that's hollow and has a small hole on the side that would be covered up by the ring finger. All the wearer would have to do is spread his fingers and the contents of the box would spill out, supposedly into someone's drink.

Similar rings have been found elsewhere in Europe, especially Italy and Spain.

It's of a style generally worn by men. The archaeologists theorize that it played a part in the political intrigues of the day, when aristocrats vied for control of Bulgaria and even played a role in Byzantine and Venetian politics.

Last year a vampire skeleton was found in Bulgaria. Sounds like it was quite the place in the good old days!

Medieval Mondays: The Curious Weapons of Henry VIII

Henry VIII ruled England from 1509 to 1547 and was famous for overfondness for eating and bumping off wives. It's often forgotten that he was a capable military leader who turned the British navy into something that would be respected the world over for the next 500 years.

As a man of military interests, he collected a large variety of weapons and armor. Many of them are now in the Royal Armouries, including these two strange weapons.

The first is a what's called a Holy Water Sprinkler, basically a heavy spiked club. This one has an extra feature, though. Included in the head are three short pistols. You can see the touch hole for one of them in this photo.

Another example is this metal buckler with a pistol. Firearms were just coming into their own at this time, developing from the medieval handgonne to superior matchlock and wheellock weapons. The shield is richly engraved and like the Holy Water Sprinkler doesn't appear to ever have been used. In fact, there's no record of these combination weapons ever being issued to troops. They do look cool, though, and are tempting to add to a story sometime!

Medieval Mondays: Mons Meg, supergun of the Middle Ages

When we think of the Middle Ages we don't usually think of artillery, yet black powder cannons were around for most of that period. The first European cannon was depicted in a manuscript in 1327. Within a hundred years they were becoming commonplace.

They were a cumbersome and slow to load, so mostly were used for sieges. Soon, though, they began to be used on the battlefield and even on ships. In the 15th century there was an arms race to see who could build the biggest cannon. One of these giant cannons, called bombards, was Mons Meg, which you can see at Edinburgh Castle.

It was made in Burgundy in 1449, one of the centers for artillery production at the time, and was given as a gift to King James II of Scotland in 1457. It weighs more than 15,000 pounds, is 15 feet long, and fired stone balls 20 inches in diameter and weighing 400 pounds. It was supposedly made for James II to knock down castle walls. Records show that it had a range of more than two miles!

Like the typical big guns of the era, it was made from long iron bars fused together and strengthened with iron hoops. This was so much like making a barrel that the term "barrel" began to be used for the long tube of a gun.

Sadly, it no longer works. It was fired for the last time in 1680 by an English gunner. The Scots say it was blown up on purpose because the English were jealous of the Scots having such a huge gun. Ah yes, bombard envy!

This was also the era that saw the development of medieval firearms.

Photo by Phil McIntosh.

Medieval Mondays: The Ahlspiess, a curious weapon of the Middle Ages

In this engraving we see two footmen accompanying a knight and carrying one of the lesser-known weapons of the Middle Ages. It's called tan ahlspiess, and was developed in Germany in the 15th century. It consisted of a long steel spike with a quadrangular profile, a bit like a giant leather punch or awl, from which it gets its name.

By the 15th century, armor had reached the peak of its design, and German armorers were some of the best. Thus it's not surprising that a weapon specifically designed to punch through thick metal plate was developed there. Like its namesake, the ahlspiess was a heavy spike with a sharp point, able to deliver the maximum force to a minimum of space. Surviving examples weighed up to 2.5 kilos (6.6 pounds) and wielded by a strong soldier could be formidable indeed.

As you can see, they were equipped with a small roundel between the metal spike and wooden handle in order to protect the hand. It seems to me that the roundel was a bit too small to be very effective, but I suppose a larger one would have made the weapon unwieldy. They were generally about 2.5 meters (7.5 feet) long.

The ahlspiess came almost too late. Medieval handgonnes were already becoming common on the battlefield, marking the beginning of the end of heavy armor. Leather armor had always been common as a cheaper substitute and soon grew in popularity as firearms became more effective. Soon there was no need for the ahlspeiss and it was discarded by the 17th century. 

All in all, an interesting weapon, although the flail remains my favorite medieval weapon!

Leather armor in the Middle Ages

In the first chapter of my fantasy novel Roots Run Deep, a team of goblinkin are preparing for a raid on a human city.
 
Like anyone who lived on the Reservation, Kip went armed at all times. Not that she had much. Her tattered leather jerkin gave scant protection, and for weapons she carried a flint knife and a tfaa, a traditional goblin fighting stick. A balanced, two foot-long rod carved from ironwood, the tfaa didn’t look like much, but in skilled hands it could disarm and cripple a swordsman. Prenta had gotten rid of her showy clothes and dressed in a more practical leather jerkin similar to Kip’s.

These impoverished goblinkin are wearing leather armor because they can't afford anything better and their human rulers forbid them from bearing metal weapons and armor. (This ban doesn't last, but that comes later in the story. . .) Leather armor is a staple of fantasy fiction and roleplaying games, yet many people don't realize just how common it was in medieval warfare. Even knights wore it.

Leather armor goes back to ancient times and continued in use through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. This picture shows the shoulder and upper arm portions of an elegant suit of leather dating to the Italian Renaissance, courtesy of the Schola Forum. As you can see, it looks much like regular metal armor, and many historians believe that it was worn as much as or even more than metal armor. A suit of plate was hot and heavy, so on the march or during a friendly tournament the knight may choose to weather cooler leather. The rank and file would also be fitted with leather and perhaps some portions of metal armor for vulnerable places such as the head and chest.

While leather was much cheaper, it provided pretty good protection. Regular soft leather wasn't much help, but combined with quilted padding provided some protection, especially against blunt weapons such as maces.

More effective was cuir bouilli--boiled leather. If you soak leather in water and then place it in boiling water, it becomes elastic and pliable. It soon begins to shrink, thicken, and harden. As it's hardening, the leather is hammered onto shaped blocks to create breastplates, greaves, vambraces, and anything else. A full suit of armor could be made in this way.

The 14th century French chronicler Jean Froissart claimed that it was "leather that no iron can pierce" and while that may be overstating the case, leather armor certainly gave good protection. Games such as D&D probably undervalue its effectiveness. Modern experiments show that the average sword blow wouldn't get through, although a good English longbow would make short work of a leather breastplate! This basic article (PDF) explains the technique. Also check out this thread from Schola Forum for some more insights and pictures.

The picture below from The Historians' History of the World shows some improvements on leather armor, with overlapping metal scales, discs, and rings. These were all cheaper yet pretty effective alternatives to full plate and variants of these were used from ancient times into the Renaissance.

Medieval Mondays: The Iron Arm of Götz von Berlich

"I will crush you."

The German knight Götz von Berlich (c.1480-1562) had a nasty reputation. The veteran of numerous battles, he estimated that he had fought 15 feuds in his own name and many others for friends. In 1525 joined the German Peasant's revolt and led the peasants against the Holy Roman Empire.

"The peasants are revolting, and I'm revolting too!"

Perhaps he got his bad attitude when he lost his right hand and forearm during the siege of Landshuf in 1504. A cannonball hit his sword, making it swipe down to cut off his own limb! That's enough to put anyone in a permanently bad mood.

Luckily, craftsmen in this period were skilled at making prosthetics for just such occasions. They made him an iron limb that could open and close it fingers, so it could still be used in battle. He became known at Götz of the Iron Hand. His hand was so well made it could even hold a pen. Perhaps he used it when he wrote his memoirs.

Just goes to show that the late Medieval/early Renaissance period was more sophisticated than we generally believe.

Images courtesy Wikipedia.

Medieval Mondays: Hussite War Wagons

Warriors in the Middle Ages thought up all sorts of strange weapons. One of the strangest was the war wagon, developed during the Hussite Wars in Bohemia from 1419-1436.

The war started when Jan Hus led a protest movement against the sale of indulgences and other corrupt practices by the Catholic Church. He was assassinated in 1415 while attending negotiations with the Church, and his supporters rose up in revolt against the ruling Holy Roman Empire and the Church itself. They called themselves Hussites after their slain leader and rallied around Jan Zizka, a one-eyed knight. The religious revolt soon took up the banner of Czech independence.

Zizka knew the peasants wouldn’t stand a chance against knights, so he converted farm wagons into mobile forts by covering them with wooden planks and chaining them together. These wagons could be drawn into a square or circle called a wagenburg.

Each wagon was protected by wooden siding equipped with loopholes. They were crewed by handgonners, crossbowmen, and peasants armed with flails and halberds. The crossbowmen and handgonners fired from the loopholes while those with melee weapons protected the gaps between the wagons while themselves being protected by men holding large shields called pavises.

As you can see, most of the wagenburg equipment could be found or easily made in any peasant village. Flails were everyday items, and any blacksmith could make a halberd or simply adapt a farm implement and put it on the end of a pole. He could also make the simple handgonnes of the time.

The peasants could maintain devastating volleys or a continuous fire. The wagons even carried a supply of rocks so those not armed with a ranged weapon could toss the rocks while their comrades reloaded. Other wagons had cannons mounted on them. The enemy would attack and the heavy fire from the wagons would disorganize their ranks. Then part of the wagenburg would open up and the Hussites would counter-attack.

Enemy knights fell for this tactic again and again, convinced they could easily beat the “peasant rabble”. Eventually they began to learn and defeated some Hussite armies by luring them out of their protection with fake retreats or destroying wagons with artillery. Other armies began to adopt the wagenburg but newer, more mobile artillery eventually made the tactic obsolete.

For more on the Hussite Wars and early black powder weapons, see my friend and fellow blogger Sean McLachlan's book; Medieval Handgonnes: The First Black Powder Infantry Weapons.

Photos from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Medieval Mondays: Chinese repeating crossbow

While we tend to think of automatic weapons as a product of the nineteenth century, the Chinese had developed a multi-shot crossbow as early as the fourth century BC. This crossbow had a magazine that could hold up to ten bolts.

The mechanism was brilliant in its simplicity. A single lever pulled back the string while a bolt from the magazine dropped into place. Once fired, the lever simply had to be pulled back again to drop another bolt into place. A more detailed description of its construction can be read here.

The repeating crossbow was held at the hip or on a stand and was generally used to defend fortified areas. A second person could stand to the side feeding bolts into the magazine, allowing the crossbowman to fire continuously at a rate of about a shot every second to a range of perhaps 80 yards. Accuracy would have been poor since it wasn't fired from the shoulder like other crossbows, and it was somewhat weaker than regular crossbows. Still, a few dozen of these on a rampart firing at a mass of charging enemy soldiers must have had an incredible effect.

Such a useful weapon had a long life. They saw service as late as the 1894-1895 war with Japan. By then, however, their worth was somewhat limited. The Japanese had modern repeating rifles that were far deadlier at a longer range. The Japanese won that war.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Medieval Mondays: The Man-Catcher

Here's one for all you fantasy romance fans. This unusual looking polearm is called a man-catcher. It's not so much a weapon as a rather nasty police enforcement tool.

A quick jab would catch someone in the spring action and the spikes would discourage them from moving around.This would be very effective for catching criminals without killing them. It would certainly hurt them, but curbing police brutality was even less of a priority in the Middle Ages than it is now. While it would have been of little use against armored targets in a battlefield situation, it would prove effective in pulling a rider off his horse.

This type of weapon was long lived. There are examples from the Middle Ages (although like the flail, its origins are unclear), the Venetian police used a type of man-catcher in the Renaissance with hinged blades, and police in New Guinea used a rather nasty type right into the twentieth century.

The New Guinea example was a loop of rattan with a spike at the end of the pole. The loop would go around the fleeing culprit's neck, and a quick jerk brought his neck up against the spike. A strong enough pull would save a lot of paperwork back at the station.

Photo courtesy Jeremy Hunsinger.

Medieval Mondays: Byzantine Greece

Today on Medieval Mondays we have a special guest post from historical novelist and travel writer Sean McLachlan. Sean recently wrote a travel series about Greece and included lots of medieval sites. Here's here to share some photos and insights with us. Once you're done, check out his Civil War blog and Civil War novel. Take it away Sean!

Hi everyone! Last month I traveled through Greece researching a travel series about how that country's tourism industry, museums, and archaeological sites were holding up during the financial crisis. Being in love with all things medieval, I made a point of visiting various Byzantine sites. I've always been fascinated with the Byzantine Empire.

This is Acrocorinth, a massive castle overlooking the famous city of Corinth. There's been a castle here since Classical times, perhaps earlier, and the triple walls and massive keep were rebuilt and strengthened by the Crusaders, Byzantines, Ottomans, and Venetians.

If you're passing through Athens, make sure to stop by the Byzantine Museum and see their amazing collection of art and artifacts.

Here's one of 400 icons on display. There are even parts of entire churches built into the museum galleries!

Also on display is this nice suit of chain mail and helmet. They look like they were inspired by Persian armor. Since the Byzantines and Sassanids were in almost constant warfare, I suppose this isn't surprising. There wasn't much on Byzantine arms and armor actually, because the Athens War Museum just down the street covers that topic very well.

Here's a reproduction of a medieval flame thrower at the War Museum. One of the reasons the Byzantines were so powerful was their use of Greek fire. While the recipe has been lost, it appears to have been an early form of napalm that was squirted from jets.

My favorite site was Mistra, a Byzantine ghost town with several decorated churches from the 14th and 15th centuries that still retain their painted interiors.

I hope you liked this brief trip through Byzantine Greece. Check out the links for more information and pictures!

Medieval Mondays: The Black Gate

Many fantasy fans know and love Black Gate Magazine. They publish heroic fantasy as opposed to the grittier fantasy I did for Roots Run Deep, but I love a good bit of heroism too.

There's also a real Black Gate, which you can see at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was added as a barbican to the older Newcastle Castle between 1247 and 1250. A barbican is an outer defense to the gate, providing crossfire for the archers and extra gates for the besieging army to crash through. Often when they did so they came under murder holes from which all sorts of nasties came down on them. I've blogged about this a bit before in my post on the myth of boiling oil.

Newcastle Castle was, like so many others in England, built upon an earlier Norman motte-and-bailey castle, which itself was built upon a Roman fort. Strategic positions don't change much over the years, only the ways of holding them.

The Black Gate has gone through some changes--like the later windows and roof--but it's still one of the best preserved parts of the castle. Actually only the keep, shown below, and some bits of wall are left. Now the Black Gate houses the offices and meeting rooms of the local Society of Antiquaries. I'd love to go to a meeting there!

Top picture courtesy Wikipedia. Bottom photo courtesy Hans Peter Schaefer.

More Medieval Weapons in the American Civil War

Earlier this week we had Sean McLachlan blogging about Medieval Weapons in the American Civil War as part of his virtual book tour for his new Civil War novel.

He didn't have enough space to say everything he wanted to, so he's done another post over at his own blog titled Lancers in the American Civil War. Go on over and check out this interesting post!

I didn't realize there were lancers in that war. The term "lancer" brings to mind the cavalry of the Napoleonic Wars, like this French lancer I nabbed off of Wikimedia Commons. I bet the Texan Confederates didn't have such snappy uniforms!

Medieval weapons in the American Civil War

One of John Brown's pikes. Credit: Hugh Talman (Smithsonian Institution)

Today I'm proud to host the first stop on a book tour for A Fine Likeness, a historical fantasy novel set in the Civil War. It's written by Sean McLachlan, a historian who guest blogged here before about medieval handgonnes. Today he tells us how the American Civil War still saw the use of some very medieval-style weapons. Take it away Sean!

When the Civil War started in 1861, most Americans had no experience with warfare and were completely unprepared. This led them to use some weapons that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Middle Ages.

This started even before the war, when radical abolitionist John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859. His wanted to steal the weapons to arm a planned slave insurrection. Before the raid, Brown had a blacksmith make 500 pikes like the one pictured above. They had a 9 ½ to 10-inch long double-edged blade of forged cast steel and a 4 ½ inch wide iron guard fitted onto a six-foot ash handle. Brown and his followers used these pikes (as well as some more effective guns) to take the armory, but were soon captured by troops commanded by Robert E. Lee (!) and the planned insurrection never happened.

Once the actual war started in 1861, volunteers showed up with whatever weapons they could get. A report from the Battle of Lexington, Missouri said one rebel carried a corn scythe. At the Battle of Athens, Missouri, that same year, the rebels had a cannon made from a hollowed out log. It blew up the first time it was fired.

Rebel with "knife" (Library of Congress)

Soldiers also carried swords and long knives that often saw use in hand-to-hand combat. Notorious rebel guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson, who is a character in my novel, carried a tomahawk and a Bowie knife; the latter he used to scalp his victims. In the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) and the Far West, native Americans fought on both sides. They also operated independently, taking advantage of the war to raid white settlers. While many had guns, some still used tomahawks, spears, and bows and arrows.

The Civil War was a savage conflict, and the savagery of the medieval battlefield, with its fearsome weapons, was part of that grim reality.

A Fine Likeness is available as an ebook at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon FR and will soon be available in print and on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. the back cover blurb is below:

A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.

Jimmy Rawlins is a teenaged bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the Cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.

Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while Jimmy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.