Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2007 August 2

= August 2 =

A Moving Transcription
I would like to do an arrangement of a tune. The problem is I don't know what to do. I am planning on doing the transcription for a Wind Ensemble. I want something fairly famous, something where I could easily find a score online. I would like it to have big powerful chords. A couple examples off the top of my head (which I have already transcribed, so I don't want to do it again) would be Amazing Grace or Greensleeves.

Any suggestions? 24.1.137.20 01:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The Adagio from Khachaturian's Spartak. Carpetlunch 09:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thanks. 24.1.137.20 02:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

William Frederick Cody "Buffalo Bill"
How tall was "Buffalo Bill"?Oznils 06:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * According to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center he was "six-feet one inch in mid-life, and weighed about 180 pounds."  Rockpock  e  t  06:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

World War II
It seems that barely a day goes past without somebody posting a question about the Second World War. Why are people so obsessed with this conflict above all others? 64.236.80.62


 * it's the most recent major conflict, and also played a major part in our histories, assuming you are from Europe, North Africa, the US, Japan or the Commonwealth, and much of what happened shaped the world today. Philc  11:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In addition to those legitimate reasons, it is also the "Good War" for people in Allied nations. WW1 had been a "who knows why" war, and most wars since WW2 have been ideologically muddled.  WW2 had an ideology of world control and conquest, and so it allowed a pure "we must, or they will conquer" motivation.  For those in formerly Axis nations, the war allows for heroic stories of resistance and sad stories of victims, on the good side.  There is a darker appeal, too, though -- an appeal people won't want to admit -- and that is a fascination with the model efficiency and strategic brilliance of the losing side on the battlefield.  Finally, the darkest of all motivations is found among those who want to think that Hitler was right.
 * Compare WW2 to the US Civil War. It, too, has generated story after story, question after question (though not here, thankfully).  It too makes bookstore shelves groan.  It allowed a valiant, efficient military in the field and an abhorrent social policy off the battle field against an abhorrent military force representing a more (just barely) enlightened national ideology.  To some degrees, all major wars are "responsible" for how things are now, but WW2 has a peculiar (and somewhat rancid) system of romances attached to it that tell us more about ourselves, our desires, and the hidden Jungian Shadow lingering in our minds than other wars, like Korea, would.  Geogre 12:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As regards the former Soviet Union, the core issue is the unprecedented human toll of this conflict. Every fourth Belarusian died as a result of the war. Each Russian family was bereaved. According to the official statistics (and these figures are by no means the most ambitious estimate), from 23,000 to 23,500 Soviet soldiers were killed each day in summer-autumn 1943. These are wounds that won't heal. You should not be surprized when attempts to place this war on the same footing with others are viewed as sacrilegious here in Russia. The entire Iraq war claimed the lives of 3,601 US troops, according to Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003. The September 11, 2001 attacks resulted in 2,993 deaths. Everyone if free to draw his own conclusions. --Ghirla-трёп- 14:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * World War II also gave Americans in particular a core set of metaphors for how to deal with international conflicts, even if they are often misapplied (comparing 9/11 with Pearl Harbor, for example, is more misleading than it is informative). For Europeans it marked a complete upheaval and re-building of Europe. I am certain it also had great effects on Chinese culture as well (not just the revolution, mind you, but deeper than that), though I am less informed on such subjects. The effects were wholly global — hence the name. "World War I" barely deserves to be called a "World War" in comparison, in my opinion ("Great European War" is probably closer to it).
 * The Cold War was also global, and also had great effects, but it is also a lot closer to the present. It was itself largely built upon the foundation of the Second World War, both practically as well as metaphorically. --24.147.86.187 16:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

There's also the large amount of war films, history programmes etc that keep it in peoples conciousness - what sunday afternoon doesn't have a ww2 film showing on the TV?

Also up to recently most people would have been in or have had parents/grandparents that were involved in/affected by by that war.87.102.67.227 17:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As to the first, I might add that it also probably has the best (?) ratio of extant film to battle ratio of most of them. 68.39.174.238 02:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It involved most of the modern developed world, for a start. Most terrorist attacks in recent years have been confined to one country. Massive historiological debate.martianlostinspace email me 18:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with about everything that has been written here, I just think that the first World War (which is still considered THE Great War where I live) is being mistreated? I mean : the Ottoman Empire disappeared, so did Austria-Hungary, Greece and Turkey swapped populations, Yugoslavia was created, Finland and the Baltic states became independent, Poland appeared on the maps of Europe again, Germany became smaller, the Soviet Union was born...Sure,lots of movies have been made about this as well, but still ...Evilbu 20:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

In addition to all of the above reasons, WW2 involved many new techniques and technologies that changed the way wars were fought. So there are all these dramatic stories of things being done that were never done before, or had been done before but only in a much smaller way. Thus you have motorized armies, tanks and bombers deployed in the thousands, massive beach-landing fleets, artificial ports, technologically mature aircraft carriers and submarines, radar, radiotelephones, radio navigation and its countermeasures, electronic or electromechnical devices both for codes and for codebreaking, and finally nuclear weapons. Also, the war had major effects on civilian life far from the battlefronts, because of the "total war" concept. Also, in many theaters the war never developed to a static-front state like WW1; if fighting was going on, one side or the other was gaining territory.

Now add to all that the fact that the Nazis were such perfect villains, committing atrocities at the drop of a hat; and also the fact their own pride and arrogance contributed to their failures. (Believing that they had spies in Britain, believing that their codes were unbreakable, believing that the Normandy invasion was a diversion, refusing to retreat at Stalingrad or to attack at Dunkirk.)

What it all means is that the war, for someone who did not live through it, is an extremely dramatic story and therefore endlessly fascinating.

--Anonymous, August 2, 2007, 22:20 (UTC).

It should also be said that the Second World War cast a shadow over the twentieth century in the same manner that the Napoleonic Wars did over the nineteenth. It is also worthy of note as possibly the last total war in history, as developments in weaponry have made a war without limits a risk not likely to be taken by the sane. Clio the Muse 03:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * To the original asker: Asking questions isn't necessarily a sign of obsession. 68.39.174.238 02:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Folly and Madness
In 'The Praise of Folly' Erasmus' heroine is wise in spite of herself. In the plays of Shakespeare the 'fool' is usually the wisest person around. Did people in the early modern period have a different understanding of madness and folly? Love of Pete


 * That's at once a multifaceted question and somewhat impossible. What you're seeing in these instances from literature is a bit of special pleading.  The works are only effective if these "fools" and "madmen" are against the usual social understanding of those categories.  In other words, you have to have run of the mill village idiots and imprisoned mad men (see what happens to poor Malvolio) to make these special.
 * Ultimately, we can't know what "they thought" even as much as we know what "we think" about fools and mad people. However, you really have to watch out for the delicate nuances of "fool," in particular.  A fool is generally a person lacking wisdom, and wisdom is a particular concept we have conflated with intelligence.  Wisdom is, as nearly as I can summarize early in the morning, the knowledge of the hidden relationships between things, as well as "prudence" and "morally and intellectually sound plans."  Thus, a fool gets drunk, while the wise man gets slightly tipsy.  A fool spends all his money, and the wise man saves.  A fool believes the advisor who says he loves the king, while a wise man understands that he is trying to benefit himself against the interests of the kingdom.  In Shakespeare, we have the court Fool, and there are books on this category.  Basically, Shakespeare was inspired by some things he'd read in Holinshead, and he was inspired by some folk traditions, but he enjoyed situations where the fool was, in fact, entirely wise, where the fool understood the hidden relationships.  The joke there is that a person who is intensely wise seems like a fool to fools.
 * For Erasmus, as for the Greek philosophers, there was the είρον, the ironist. An eiron would pretend to understand absolutely nothing and infuriate people by making them go back to their assumptions and thereby illustrate their mistakes.  This is what Socrates did to tick off the sophists.  Aristophanes also employs eirons (see Ronald Knox, The Word Irony, Duke UP, 1950), as well as Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.  There are therefore enlightened fools.  If you are a fool, you can ask stupid questions and not grasp the misconceptions of ordinary society and end up stumbling upon wisdom and a full understanding of the hidden relationships of people and things.
 * "Mad" is entirely attenuated as well. There is "mad" in the schizophrenic sense, and such mad persons were often beaten and imprisoned.  There was also the "maddened," if you will.  Among these, you have some big possibilities.  The person maddened by grief is one special madman, and the person maddened by anger is another.  Shakespeare employs these figures often enough, and they often speak out their subconscious (as we would call it) observations and betray the hidden relationships between things.  They often speak truth that society forbids.  (They tend to be men.  Women driven crazy often pull an Ophelia.)  Finally, there are people maddened by God or Satan.  Those maddened by God are very, very precious.  They have visions and show the ultimately hidden, the truly hermeneutic truth, but you can mistake the demonic for the holy, if you're unwise yourself.  In those cases, though, it is supernatural.  It is not the mad person with the wisdom.
 * I'm throwing giant slabs out, here. There are innumerable refinements needed to almost every statement, but I hope it gets you started.  Geogre 12:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

A fascinating subject, indeed; and as ever Great wits are to madness near allied/And thin partitions do their bounds divide. There is a very real sense, to be found in the work of Erasmus and other Humanists, that in a crazy world only the 'detached' are truly sane. I am thinking here of Robert Burton and the Anatomy of Melancholy;

When I go musing all alone,

Thinking of divers things

fore-known,

When I build Castles in the air,

Void of sorrow and void of fear,

Pleasing myself with

phantasms sweet,

Methinks the time runs very fleet.

All my joys to this are folly,

Naught so sweet as Melancholy.

It was folly to be wise, for 'Much learning doth make thee mad', and Don Quixote, driven crazy by his books, goes off in search of windmills! The Bethlem Hospital in London, the source of the word 'Bedlam', used to be open to casual visitors, as both a form of entertainment and a warning. In one such visit Ned Ward, a journalist, saw one of the inmates "...holding forth with much vehemence against Kingly government. I told him he deserved to be hanged for talking such treason.  'Now', says he, 'you're a fool, for we madmen have as much privilege of speaking our minds...you may talk what you will and nobody will call you in question for it.  Truth is persecuted everywhere abroad, and flies hither for sanctuary, where she sits as safe as a knave in a church, or a whore in a nunnery.  I can use here as I please, and that's more than you dare to.'  Only the mad are free.  And as for the truly insane William Hogarth's Bedlam is a mirror held up to England.

There is actually a 'progress' for folly, as well as for rakes. By the time of Hogarth the day of the 'witty fool' had long passed. For Nicholas Robinson, an eighteenth century physician, madness was a medical condition, no more. The kind of subtleties and ambiguities, explored by people like Erasmus, was no longer admissible, as insanity was turned step by step into pathology. For the mad poet, and the outsider, the asylum opened its doors; even for James Carkesse, who, consigned to Bedlam, used the occasion to write Lucidia Intervalla (Lucid Intervals), a scourge for a crazy world.

And who is my favourite 'fool'? That would have to be King Lear himself;

FOOL: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

LEAR: Because they are not eight?

FOOL: Yes, indeed; thou wouldst make a good fool. Clio the Muse 01:43, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I take issue with that characterization of early Bedlam. The people who went to visit were often times going simply for the freak show quality of it, if Swift, Gay, and Pope are to be believed (and if Richard Owen Cambridge is right).  When Kit Smart got confined, it was a horrible occasion.
 * Quixote is an interesting subject. Although the Man of La Mancha reading of the story is popular now (the only sane man in an insane world appears mad), Quixote was a satirical victim, and the folly satirized was credulity.  The Don does live in a mad world of evil men, and 18th century readers were as liable to yearn for clear black and white chivalry as he (sales of French Romances were astronomical, after all, and plays continued the exoticism and chivalry long beyond its sell-by date), but they also saw the Don as a fool, a literal fool.  He made one mistake: believing what he read.  That one mistake is identical to the mistake Swift's narrator in A Tale of a Tub exhibits (and he, too, is mad, as we find out in section X).  Being unable to distinguish fancy from reality is the vital distinction between the mad and sane in these early century schemes and late century novels.
 * Swift goes to the subject of the fool and the madman extensively in Tale of a Tub, where he explains that the happiest person is the person who believes what he is told, the person who believes only what he sees, the person who never seeks a deep explanation for anything. That is the "serene peaceful possession of being a fool among knaves" (a "sucker among con-men").  (Obviously, he is lashing the gullible and demanding that readers strengthen their muscles of "judgment" (discernment and distinction).)  However, Swift returns to madness in Gulliver's Travels, both in the Projectors of Laputa and the conclusion of Book IV.  Gulliver returns to England mad.  Note that this madness is very, very different from the madness of the fool, for Gulliver chooses to live in the stable, preferring the unreal imaginings of rational horses to the confirmed reality of his irrational (and "smelly") wife and children.
 * The fool is blind. The madman cannot tell what is real and what is not.  I certainly believe that they had their ironists, holy fools, and sacred mad, but the attitude toward the run of the mill madness was cruel (and Swift was criticized for spending so much time and money trying to ensure they had good care), the attitude toward fools conniving.  Geogre 02:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Love of Pete, your question (presumably, an essay you have to write) strikes me as a poor question - as Geogre says, "at once a multifaceted question and somewhat impossible".


 * Did people... (people in general? educated people? writers who have survived?)
 * ...in the early modern period... (a vague term, but still one spanning different worlds, so that any answers need to address the views of people, whoever they are, living in those different worlds)
 * ...have a different understanding... (different from what? perhaps 'from our understanding today', but we should not need to guess at this; or could the question mean was there one view of madness and another of folly?)
 * ...of madness and folly? (are these two intended to be treated together, and if so, why? People's understanding of madness is always quite distinct from their understanding of folly. Folly is everywhere and is easy to see, madness is neither.)

Anyway, the question has prompted me to read The Praise of Folly for the first time, Project Gutenberg has it online in a 17th century translation here, and it's an enjoyable roller-coaster ride. If you haven't already, you may like to give it a try before setting about the question, a lot of it is quotable. Xn4 04:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm....multifaceted?, perhaps; impossible?, evidently not. Clio the Muse 06:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The Secret Royal Bunker
An old rumour has just been confirmed to me by a friend. I have been fascinated with the Royal Security for quite some time now and have always believed that a Royal bunker must exist. I have recently found out that it is true and is actually rather impressive. However why can't I find anything out about it? Has it ever been used? When was it built etc? Any information would be great!


 * Perhaps you mean "Burlington"? I can't immediately find a Wikipedia article on it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:34, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, it's Hawthorn, Wiltshire. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I am pretty sure it must be in London, perhaps near Green Park? It is habitable.


 * When you say "Royal", you don't specify which country you're asking about. Anyway, if the header that you used is correct and it truly is a secret, you won't be able to find out anything about it because no-one who knows is willing to say. That's the thing about secrets. Once they're not secret, umm, they're, ahhh, not secret. Also, please sign your posts by adding ~ at the end of them. Ta. --Dweller 13:38, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Once they're not secret... yeah, right. (Okay, explanation here.) --Anonymous, August 4, 2007, if I told you the time I'd have to kill you (UTC).

Sorry, I'm new to Wikipedia (today) and am unsure of how to use it. There is no need to be rude. If anyone else has any information it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. EMMA 13:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Apologies... you're not the first person to not appreciate my humour, but it rarely comes across as rude. Happy to help newbies. --Dweller 13:47, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets by Stephen Smith. It contains a chapter about a huge bunker underneath Whitehall; apparently you used to be able to see the entrance from a cubicle in the men's toilets at the ICA. Maybe this is what your friend was talking about (the bunker, not the loo). 64.236.80.62
 * The existence of this bunker was the inspiration for a famous concert at the ICA in 1984, when members of Einstürzende Neubauten and others attempted to drill through the stage in an attempt to reach the bunker. That was their excuse, anyway.  See the contemporary report from the NME here. --Richardrj talkemail 15:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think this site http://www.subbrit.org.uk/ has a lot of info and pictures about underground bunkers etc., so may mention it. 80.0.135.231 22:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Buckingham Palace has a nuclear fallout shelter, and, as it is officially owned directly by the Crown, is one of the few private homes to do so. (Alan MacDonald, ISBN 059011249) Laïka  18:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Bogdanov and immortality
Our article about Alexander Bogdanov claims that Lenin's opponent and the author of Red Star "was commissioned to study Lenin's brain and, if possible, to resuscitate his body. In his letters to the Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Bukharin he dreamed of physically rejuvenating the Bolshevik party leadership". What are the facts behind these assertions? --Ghirla-трёп- 14:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ghirla, I've had a look through all the sources I have on Lenin, Stalin and Bukharin and can find nothing that would give any support to such a grotesque claim. Resuscitate the man after removing the brain; surely not even in the more imaginative recesses of 'socialist' science!?  Besides, look at the matter politically.  For Stalin Lenin was better as a 'dead saint' than a living prophet.  Clio the Muse 23:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I do seem to remember a cartoon in which Lenin went 'Braaaaains', but I don't think it was very factually accurate. Random Nonsense 23:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Hogarth and London
What does Hogarth's work tell us about life in eighteenth century London? Tower Raven 20:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Beer is good, gin is bad... AnonMoos 22:49, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * ...sex is worse! Clio the Muse 02:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Tower Raven, this has the ominous ring of a homework question. Your previous ones ("How accurate is the traditional view of the Spanish Inquisition?" and "What would have been the likely political outcome of a Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War?") may have been out of the same stable, but they had more legs. Anyway, the William Hogarth article really isn't a bad start. Xn4 01:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What doesn't it tell us? Hogarth was a satirist and student of "character," so it tells us much about the period in which he worked, but read the articles.  Read the Hogarth article, and read Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress, as well as Gin Lane, and the other articles we have on painting/plate sets, and then you can form your own answer and get high marks without plagiarism.  Geogre 02:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You should concentrate, in particular, on the images presented in A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress, Marriage a-la-mode, Four Times of the Day, Industry and Idleness and The Four Stages of Cruelty. Taken together, its a journey through eighteenth century London, both high and low, and not a comfortable one at that. Four Times of the Day is worthy of particular note. It's a mark of Hogarth's genius that he makes one see real life not as a disinterested spectator but as part of the crowd; as if one was strolling through the streets of old London. It's direct, it's funny and it's brutal; raw life and raw art. Clio the Muse 02:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Greek Oracles
Is it true that as depicted in the film 300, they were chosen by the priests based on their attractiveness and then sexually abused in order to 'satisfy the desires' of the male priests. Philc 21:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I am aware, Philc, there is nothing in the sources to support such a claim. From the pages on Delphi and Pythia you will note that the practice was established early on that the oracle had to be an 'elderly' woman of 'blameless life.'  I will risk a personal opinion here: that movie is a bizarre and gross distortion of history.  Clio the Muse 23:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I suspected so, thanks for clarifying. Its just odd though especially as the term is used in the dialogue as effectively synonomous with 'beautiful virgins'. With as a bribe the Ephoros offered '100 oracles a day from the corners of the persian empire' taking the term Oracle in its actual meaning, one would think that the temple would soon be inundated with rather pleasant old women. Yes, I'd agree that it most likely is, but any historical movies out of hollywood have to be taken with a pinch of salt really, though spawning false accusations of the Priests, it did provide some good amusement for an hour and a half. ΦΙΛ Κ  00:36, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You threw me for a moment or two, Phil, with your new Greek identity! Anyway, if you have read the page of Pythia you will have noted that the oracle was at one time a young woman, but this changed, in the account given by Diodorus, for the following reason;


 * Echecrates the Thessalian, having arrived at the shrine and beheld the virgin who uttered the oracle, became enamoured of her because of her beauty, carried her away and violated her; and the Delphians because of this deplorable occurrence passed a law that in the future a virgin could no longer prophesy, but that an elderly woman ... would declare the oracles and she would be dressed in the costume of a virgin as a sort of reminder of the prophetess of olden times.


 * I do not expect any form of accuracy from Holywood when it comes to history; but to see real people and real events turned into a kind of 'video game' is far more than I can take. And Xerxes was positively the worst camp caricature that I have ever seen! Clio the Muse 02:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What's amusing/disheartening about the lore of that film is that Frank Miller claims to have read extensively all the historical research there was on the subject and then decided to ignore all of it. He therefore did not seek to have accurate tactics, numbers, personalities, or anything else.  In other words, he read the history for his own amusement and then wrote a comic book, or something near it.
 * The oracles weren't exactly chosen to start with. Their election differed by place and cult, but some of them (e.g. Sibyl of Cumae) had to be extremely ancient and small.  (Hence Trimalchio's boast in Satyricon that he had seen the Sibyl of Cumae with his own eyes hanging in a jar.)  There were sibyls, and then there were sibyls, oracles and Oracles.  In other words, you could consult an oracle that was just a woman with the gift of frenzy, or you could go to one of the oracular sites where there would be a fairly impressive and industrial prophesying business going on.  Geogre 02:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The fifth and fourth century shift from immemorial oracles to structured city businesses can be traced in the Wikipedia article on Didyma: Wikipedia Oracle leaves much to be desired: even a list of oracles would improve it!--Wetman 05:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

This historical disinformation by Hollywood is highly irritating, as people have no reason to disbelieve it. Braveheart is the one that makes me most angry, as a stupidly unhistorical mix of nonsense and fact. They're not all that bad, though. I once went to a lecture by a Biblical scholar who'd be employed as a consultant on Prince of Egypt. Apparently, they'd not always listened, but had been pretty good. I suppose it comes down to the individual director. --Dweller 11:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Braveheart? I find it difficult to understand why the Scots have so wholeheartedly adopted that awful pastiche of their history.  I suppose there must be some attraction in seeing the English as pantomime villains, and Edward I-one of England's most noteable kings-as little more than a psychopath, and Prince Edward as a silly gay stereotype.  And what about that 'operatic' armour on the English soldiers?  Ha, Ha, Ha.  Yah!, Boo!, Hiss!  Clio the Muse 00:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

In days of yore a drunken Classics grad student told me about some kind of Sybil who would -- ahem -- "mount" a ceremonial stone phallus which was situated over some kind of volcanic crack that would sometimes belch out stygian gases, which combination would put the prophetess in a frenzy of precognition. I had later assumed that the "Sybian" sexual device's name was a reference to that story, but I see from the article that it's not. Does this ring a bell for anyone, or was she pulling my leg? --TotoBaggins 13:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * See omphalos. I'm not sure about "mounting" it, but the waving it about and venerating of it was an important mystery rite.  I rather suspect that biology would argue against anything like your apocryphal story.  Utgard Loki 14:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a feeling that the Baggins leg was most definitely being pulled, Toto! Clio the Muse 07:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Just to pile on with the 300-bashing... I might have stomached the gross inaccuracies and outright fiction in both the movie and graphic novel if they had in some way made the story more exiting, interesting, or inspiring. The real story (or as close as we're likely to get) is one of the greatest action/ adventure/ warfare stories of all time - why would someone deliberately foul that up with demonic wolves, oracular whores, and a pre-op transgendered mutant? Were we supposed to identify with Leonidas all the more because he nicked Divine's wet dream with a spear? Graah! Matt Deres 23:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * When I watch movies like that I console myself by looking for the random things they did get right. "He said they'll fight in the shade! Cool!" (But I guess there must not have been much right about it, since that is the only relatively correct bit I can remember now...) Adam Bishop 06:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Western mercenaries in Muscovy
Was hiring western mercenaries a common practice in the days of Grand Duchy of Moscow and later, Russian Tsardom? I am particularly interested if there were any foreign ("Western") regiments in Muscovite army around the time of the Smolensk War (1633-1634). If they were, who would command them? Would they be hired for a particular campaign, or for several years? Who would they be composed of? PS. I am aware of De la Gardie forces (1609-1610), but as far as I can tell they were more 'an allied army', not 'hired mercs'. Battle of Dobrynichi also makes mention of the mercs, but it is completely unreferenced. PS2. On a related note, if anybody can tell me the approximate strengh of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth troops just before the Muscovite invasion in the Smolensk region, I'd appreciate it (I just ordered a monography of the war but it will not arrive till next week). As far as I can tell, Polish forces were ~1,500 garrison, ~1,000 pospolite ruszenie, and ~1,000-2,000 of something hetman Krzysztof Radziwiłł was able to gather (before king Władysław arrived with 20,000 men + Cossacks).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Hiring mercenaries was certainly common practice throughout Europe at this time. Many of them tended to come from the poorer fringes of the Continent, especially Scotland and Ireland, places with a strong martial tradition but little in the way of domestic opportunity.  During the Thirty Years War there were whole regiments of Celts in the opposing armies, men of both low and high birth.  Some of these people gravitated towards Russia, including Patrick Gordon, who took up service under Tsar Aleksei I, rising to the rank of lieutenant-general.  Scots, in particular, made their way to Russia even earlier than this, and we know that there were fairly large numbers serving in the forces of Ivan IV in his wars against the Crimean Tartars.  According to one contemporary account 1200 Scottish mercenaries "performed better service than 12000 Russians" (A. Stuart, Scottish Influences on Russian History, Glasgow, 1913).  I cannot say precisely how these men were distributed, but it's a fair assumption that they fought in their own unique formations, probably under their own officers, men like Gordon.  Many of these soldiers settled in Russia, gradually becoming little different from the native peoples.  Unfortunately I have no specific information on the Smolensk War.  Clio the Muse 22:52, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Supplementary to the above, I can tell you, Piotrus, that there were 3,500 men in the Smolensk garrison to face Tsar Aleksei's army of 30,000 during the attack of 1654; so your estimates for the earlier siege are probably correct. George Vernadsky's The Tsardom of Moscovy, 1547-1682, volume five part two of his History of Russia might be useful here.  It's quite dated now but contains a lot of solid information on this period. Clio the Muse 00:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Quite a few Russian families descend from the Scottish mercenaries who accompanied Jacob De la Gardie during the Time of Troubles. It should be noted that they were recruited by the Swedish king and not by the Tsar. A certain Learmont gave rise to the Lermontov family, of which the great Russian poet was a member. The noble Hamiltons russified their name as Gamentovs, which came to be mispronounced as Khomutovs, as if it were derived from the Russian word for horse-collar, "khomut". One woman from this family was the wife of Artamon Matveyev and mother of Andrey Matveyev, Russia's first ambassador in London. Natalia Naryshkina, who was tenuously related to this lady, was chosen by the elder Matveyev as the second wife of Tsar Alexis, with incalculable repercussions for the history of Russia. Another Muscovite Scotsman was Jacob Bruce, but his father was a merchant from the German Quarter, rather than a soldier. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, indeed, Ghirla. I know that large numbers went to Russia from the Swedish army after the end of the Thirty Years War.  Incidentally, during the siege of Smolensk in 1654 Alexsei was seemingly counseled by one Alexander Leslie, an engineering and artillery specialist, who had served in the army of Gustavus Adolphus and in the English Civil War.  Clio the Muse 00:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was able to find some more about both issues now too. Hope to improve the Smolensk War further in the coming days :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 01:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Western mercenaries were brought in when Russia's main enemy changed from the light-cavalry-based Tatars to the more big-guns and infantry-based Swedes and Poles (they'd always been something of an enemy, but much more serious beginning at the end of the 15th and in the 16th century as the Golden Horde fragmented and then the successor states succumbed). There were a number of mercenaries and military experts brought in during the reign of Ivan III (For example, Aristotile Fioravanti built the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin and other Italian engineers built the walls of the Kremlin and other cathedrals there. Foravanti also built a bridge to take cannons across a river during Ivan's campaign against Novgorod in 1478; other Italian engineers built the fortress at Smolensk, which is said to look very similar to the fortress at Milan). The experts were brought in due to the fact that Muscovy had little experience with forging cannons and other such weapons. These were usually individuals at this time and not whole units.

By the early 1600s, whole units were brought in, but sometimes the western mercenaries were unreliable and defected in the middle of battle, leading to a Muscovite defeat. The Muscovites then began to form "troops based on foreign formation," with Russian troops but usually Western commanders - this would have been about the middle of Mikhail Fedorovich's reign (1613-1645); they were set up by Patriarch Filaret (Mikhail's father). These persisted up to the time of Peter, who then formed whole armies on the Western model. See "The Military Revolution in Russia," in The Journal of Military History68, No. 1(Jan. 2004), especially at the references on John Keep's Soldiers of the Tsar and Richard Hellie's Enserfment and Military Change in Russia. Mcpaul1998 06:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)