Okay, I realize that by the first day of the official war starting, I had been on site for three nights and two full days. I made notes of them before lightly, but mostly I was just getting a good lay of the land. So Monday was the official start of the war and I was so looking forward to getting involved in the big battles. On tap for the day was bridge battles with limited fronts and a lot of hard pressed up tight quarter constant engagement.
First is the complaint about the lack of history on the history channel these days. Granted Modern Marvels is indeed sometimes historical, but generally not so much, as most often it focuses on the today of the situation. But the show where they moving big things, most often buildings really just does not belong at all in a historical context.
Show on Spike that a friend was telling me about, the episode explained I thought was kind of bad from the get go. Basic premise, pick two famous warrior classes from history, gather information on weapons, armor, etc, and then run a computer model simulation to see who would have won in a contest of arms. I had my doubts when I heard about the show and now that I am finally watching an episode I am in even more doubt about the true measure of any outcome. The current episode I am watching is pitting the William Wallace era Scottish warrior against the Shaka Zulu warrior, and more specifically those two leaders pitted against one another.
Ulrich von Liechtenstein has been a hero of mine for some time, ever since I first of heard of him and what he had done in his life. I know some of you are thinking of the movie from a few years back by the the name of A Knight’s Tale, which starred the late Heath Ledger and somewhere in the back of your mind you recall that was the assumed name the peasant turned jousting knight used. Someone associated with the movie must have actually had a bit of medieval history in their background, for there was indeed a true knight from the 13th century by the name Ulrich von Liechtenstein.
The real Ulrich had a life that was probably just interesting, perhaps more so, and certainly as ruled by the notions of courtly love and how to win the favor of his this lady that inspired in him all things. Further, the true Ulrich was not only a knight and jouster of some fame during his lifetime, but he was further was educated and used his talents to write poetry describing his exploits pursuing the love that spurned him. The title of the work the famed poet-jouster, as he is often called, wrote in the original Middle High German was Frauendienst. Translated to modern English, it reads as Read the rest of this entry »
A recent article on a blog by the name of Muhlberger’s Early History has me really taking a bit of an issue with it. The blog can found at http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/2008/07/re-enacting-medieval-cavalry-henrik.htm. In the article, one of the founding members of the SCA, who has participated in the re-enactment of Hastings starts to claim that perhaps horses in medieval warfare were perhaps not as much a factor as we would like to believe. Read the rest of this entry »
