Knights

Beware The Landsknecht.

by Daniel Russ on February 5, 2013

  Landknecht Landknecht With Wife   Well, you have to be careful what you wish for. Or ask for.  When Byzantine Emperor Alexios asked Urban II  for help rousting Ottoman raiders, he expected about 600 armored knights. What he got was a teeming mass of hungry, illiterate peasants. The middle ages are rife with this […]

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No Knights Did NOT Have To Be Lifted On Their Horses Because Their Armor Weighed So Much.

by Daniel Russ on August 5, 2012

  It was during the filming of Henry, that the Master of the Armories at the Tower of London, Sir James Mann, had an absolute fit. He was acting as technical advisor to the filming of this famous movie and wanted to show King Henry in Knights armor that was so heavy he had to […]

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The Gastraphetes

April 11, 2012

  The Gastraphetes was a type of compound bow used about 400BC by the ancient Greeks and Macedonians. Heron of Alexandria, the great inventor describes it in Belopoeica, and  there exists also a description by the 3rd century BC engineer Ctesibius. The name gives away its western translated moniker: the Belly Bow. Once you locked […]

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Ruminations On Knights

September 21, 2010

Knights had an analogue organization in modern America. Ostensibly they were there to protect the weak, orphans, widows, and the poor, later to reclaim Jerusalem for Christianity. Often they were little more than killers, other times they were cagey military contractors, and once in a while they performed their mission. In reality they were given […]

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