Category: Book Excerpt

Even the words to describe the mystical shadow warrior art cannot be translated directly into languages foreign to Japan. Nin of ninjutsu and ninja, a single simple sound in Japanese, requires extensive English words to be explained. At its most elementary level, nin (also pronounced shinobi) can mean endurance, perserverance, and forbearance in both the physical and mental realms. Nin has a second dictionary definition of stealth, secretness, or concealment. The Japanese ideogram for nin…is composed of the lesser ideograms…for “blade” and…”heart.” The construction of the written character implies that the heart, or will, is channeled and directed in ways that give it the effectiveness of the blade as a tool for accomplishment. In this broader sense of the concept, nin really means to be in control of one’s body, mind, and perception of right and wrong.

It is easy to at least discuss being in control of one’s body, and it has become quite fashionable in the West to discuss personal responsibility in the control of one’s mind and emotions, but being in control of one’s perception of right and wrong, or what is appropriate, is a more difficult matter. To be in control of one’s perception of appropriateness is to be able to rely on one’s “sixth sense” and to have a working knowledge of one’s subconscious level of thinking. This broader perception of reality being based on one’s own unique viewpoint is what set the ninja apart from the conventional military tacticians during the warring states and feudal eras of Japan.

The eighteen levels of training were as follows:

1. seinshin teki kyoyo (spiritual refinement)…
2. tai-jutsu (unarmed combat)…
3. ninja ken (ninja sword)…
4. bo-jutsu (stick and staff fighting)…
5. shuriken-jutsu (throwing blades)…
6. yari-jutsu (spear fighting)…
7. naginata-jutsu (halberd fighting)…
8. kusari-jutsu (chain and sickle weapon)…
9. kayaku-jutsu (fire and explosives)…
10. henso-jutsu (disguise and impersonation)…
11. shinobi-iri (stealth and entering methods)…
12. ba-jutsu (horsemanship)…
13. sui-ren (water training)…
14. bo-ryaku (strategy)…
15. cho ho (espionage)…
16. inton-jutsu (escape and concealment)…
17. ten-mon (meteorology)…
18. chi-mon (geography)…

Though not listed as a separate item in the eighteen qualities above, a crucial part of the Togakure ryu ninja’s training was the application of the kyojitsu tenkan ho philosophy. In the world of combat survival, the superior fighter makes use of all advantages at hand, including the influences of the mind. As a means of increasing the difficulty for an enemy, ninja of old developed the strategy of kyojitsu tenkan ho, or the interchange of the concepts of falsehood and actuality. A strategy for winning that relies on the presentation of truth and falsehood in ways that permit the antagonist to be deceived, kyojitsu tenkan forms the basic approach for all ninjutsu activities and thinking.

Because the ninja is dealing freely with the concepts of truth and falsehood, fluidly bending one into the other, he must be well grounded in his own concept of reality. To prevent becoming lost, misguided, or swallowed up by his own deception or awareness altering, the ninja must maintain seishin, or purity of heart. In this sense, the word pure means “complete” or “total.” The ninja carries the truth in his heart, though he may appear in many psychological guises to others. His intentions remain resolute, though others may have no idea what those commitments entail. Because he is totally honest with himself at all levels of introspection, he can venture into the realm of falsehood and untruth without defiling himself or his spirit. He can willingly plunge into the cold darkness, knowing full well that he has the power to create his own light from the brightness he carries in his heart.

— Ninjitsu, pp. 10-18

“Put the clubs away, Hardy,” [Rannulph Junah] said in a voice nearly inaudible. “I see no profit in them or this whole fool enterprise.”

I turned desperately to Bagger Vance. The caddie as always was the soul of composure. He motioned me to set the bag down, there in the dune grass beside the champion.

“Your mind is clearly in torment, Junah,” Bagger Vance spoke slowly and evenly. “Tell me please: what is the nature of your complaint?”

Junah glanced up sharply at this word, which seemed to trivialize his emotion. “It couldn’t be more obvious, could it?” He gestured toward the multitudes in their bright battle lines, visible across the linksland. “This whole endeavor is a freak show. A joke. What good will any of it do me, or anyone attached to it?”

“I perceive much good,” Bagger Vance replied in that same even tone. “But tell me more specifically, what is it you perceive?”

Junah’s eyes remained cast down. You could see his shoulders tremble and broaden as anger, long and deeply held, began to swell powerfully within him.

“‘Victory’ and ‘defeat'”—he spat the words with revulsion, as if their very sound were obscene—”I’m sick to death of them, and of men contending as if there was any difference between them! What good ever came of human beings facing one another in conflict? To see men of such stature as Jones and Hagen steeling themselves for this child’s game, it was all I could do to keep from howling with hysteria, or despair, which would have been more appropriate. While the world is coming apart, our countrymen starving by the millions…here we disport ourselves, chasing a dimpled ball across a millionaire’s playground. And for what? An heiress’ greed and desperation? A few dollars to be scraped from our visitors’ pockets, the pathetic need of Savannah’s war-haunted psyche to ‘redeem itself’—and through my efforts! I won’t do it. I won’t be a part of this circus.

“They’re here for blood,” he said, gesturing with contempt toward the distant hosts, “make no mistake about it. To see men contend against each other, hoping to watch one or all be torn and fall. This is war, for all its summer cottons and ladies’ frocks, and nothing good ever came from that.” Junah’s hands were trembling. He ran them in pain through his hair, eyes gazing hollowly before him into the dunes. “What is ever gained by ‘defeating’ others? What can be gained here today? If I win I take no pleasure, and if I lose…”

Here Junah’s voice choked and broke off; not, one felt, with the thought of his own possible defeat or disgrace, but with the overweening futility of contention itself, which even at my tender age I could see he had wrestled with long and hard.

Junah’s eyes rose now and met Bagger Vance’s. “I have been a warrior,” he said in a voice tremulous with emotion. “I have fought, and nearly died, in battles as grave and calamitous as any in the history of man. I have seen friends perish, and enemies who might have been friends but for the madness of war. I will never take up arms again”—he gestured toward the bag and its clubs—”even surrogates as preposterous as these.”

Saying this, Junah slumped yet deeper onto the running board, his mind tormented by grief.

Now Bagger Vance spoke. “This conduct is disgraceful,” he said. “Unworthy of any man, but more so of you, Rannulph Junah, whom I hold dear and bless beyond all others. Get ahold of yourself! It provokes me to fury, to see you cast down your eyes and give voice to such ignoble thoughts!”

Vance’s tone had changed utterly. He did not, and never did in my hearing, regress to rage; rather he spoke with a fiery primordial force and emphasis. Junah’s eyes rose again, shaken by the tone of his servant’s voice.

“What do you know of life?” Bagger Vance stood before the champion. “Are you a god that you have plumbed the depths of existence’s meaning? What statement can you make about what is real or important? Have you pierced the veil? When you have, then you may display the temerity to which you now presume! Despair. Death. You know nothing of them! Are you a god? Then shut up and do your duty!”

Junah started to speak, but Bagger Vance’s force overrode him. “What if I tell you that before a thimbleful of sand has slipped through the glass, one of your opponents today will need another man’s hand simply to rise from his chair…and the other will have passed into eternity? What if I tell you of your own death? And how swiftly it follows on the heels of this disgraceful moment?

“And war, since you yourself raise the subject. Shall I tell you of another conflagration coming—soon, Junah, soon—which will dwarf your Great War, breaking nations and peoples in their millions and culminating in horrors beyond the race’s imagining?”

Junah’s countenance was now chastened, even fearstruck. He looked up at his servant, with pure heartbreak in his eyes. “You upbraid me as if I were a child, and no doubt I deserve it. But please don’t abandon me. Do you think I want to feel these awful emotions, that I take pleasure in the desperate conclusions my heart leads me to? I’m lost, Bagger. Help me, my friend and mentor. Tell me what I must do.”

Across the dunes now sped a Krewe Island station car, a marshal’s vehicle, with a blue-blazered official driving and Dougal McDermott white-faced in the passenger seat. Its high undercarriage skimmed clear, approaching fast over the tufted greenskeeper’s road.

It was coming for us. Beyond, we could see the galleries massed in readiness, swollen to six and seven deep along the first fairway. Jones and Hagen had finished on the practice green. You could see their party, moving along the crested path to the first tee.

“We have spoken in jest many times, you and I,” Bagger Vance addressed Junah, “about why I initially attached myself to you, and why I’ve never strayed far from your side all these years. It was for this day, Junah. As we go, I will teach you.”

He nodded to me; I bent to the golf bag and passed it to him. Bagger Vance set it upright before the champion, its hickory-shafted irons flashing like quivered arrows in the sun. The Krewe Island car pulled up alongside us. Across the duneland you could hear the galleries cheer as Hagen and Jones approached the first tee.

“Your heart is kind, Junah. You have seen the agony of war and you wish never again to harm anything or anyone. So you choose not to act. As if by that choice, you will cause no harm.”

“This intention is admirable as far as it goes, but it fails to apprehend the deeper imperative of life. Life is action, Junah. Even choosing not to act, we act. We cannot do otherwise. Therefore act with vigor!”

Vance glanced once to McDermott, to let the professional know we were coming. Then he turned back to his champion.

“Stand now, Junah, and take your place. Do honor to yourself and to your station!”

— The Legend of Bagger Vance, Chapter 13

It may have been the effect of the plough and the need to feed more draught animals as its use spread that gave rise to a practice that some think caused the centre of European wealth and power to move north of the Alps. The practice was that of running three fields at once. For centuries it had been customary to run two fields: one to grow crops on, and one left fallow for the animals to graze and fertilize with their droppings. With an increase both in population and in the number of animals being used, it may have been the need for more food than could be provided simply by assarting that caused the change to three-field rotation. It may also have been the fact that, unlike the Mediterranean, the north has enough rain in the summer to water an extra crop. Whatever the reason, the new system was to sow oats and legumes (beans or peas) in the spring, and cereals in the autumn, letting the third field lie fallow. Until then the population had lived mostly on cereals, and so legumes were an important addition to their diet. (Small wonder that one eminent historian has described the Middle Ages as being full of beans.) The advantage of legumes is that they fix their own nitrogen from the air, thus being self-fertilizing, and enrich the trace elements in the soil. They also provide a diet rich in protein, or amino acids. With the combination of carbohydrates from cereals, fats from animals, and the 50 per cent increase in output from the three-field system, the population of Europe took off. The way people lived began to change very much for the better.

— Connections, pp. 65-66

The other innovation that came to agriculture at much the same time as the [horse-drawn plow] was the nailed horseshoe, and its origins are equally doubtful. Some dated in the ninth century [C.E.] have been found in Siberia, and there are references from the same period to their appearance in Byzantium. By the eleventh century the horseshoe was in use in Europe. Its effect was to put the horse to work in all weathers and over all terrain, for it protected the animal’s feet against both rough ground and foot rot. The horseshoe also permitted horses to be used more for transport, and because people could now ride their draught animals to the fields at a reasonable speed they could afford to live further away from them. The villages grew, as the peasants sought the benefits of community living.

— Connections, pp. 65

As armor improved, and more and more foot soldiers as well as knights were equipped with it, the sword became less and less effective as a weapon. To a degree this was acceptable, because in many medieval fights between knights the object was not to kill your opponent, but rather to render him helpless so that he could be captured. After all, when ransomed he was worth a great deal of money! Another very valid reason for this “compassion” was that if you started killing others of the aristocracy, you might very well be killed yourself!

— The Book of Swords, p. 65

The original lore of 1981’s Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord computer roleplaying game (CRPG):

The land of Llylgamyn is the basis of many legends. It is the center of commerce throughout the land, and home of the academy where some of the bravest warriors are trained. In its early days it was a monarchy ruled by the royal family, but as time passed the power shifted to aristocrats and theocrats, and eventually the royal family became more symbolic then anything else.

Under a more democratic system, the High Council of Sages appointed an Overlord to govern over the kingdom. With that, the power of the royal family diminished almost completely. The Overlord was a former warrior of the realm, and a local hero. His name was Trebor. At first everything seemed well, but as time went by Trebor’s thirst for power began to show. He began searching for ways to expand his rule. He learned of an ancient amulet held in a forgotten temple somewhere outside of the kingdom. Eventually, through unknown means he was able to find its hidden location. He gathered his best men and sent them on a mission to retrieve this legendary artifact. They returned successful. Trebor, however, was not the only person who wanted this artifact. Only hours behind him in reaching its original destination was the…wizard Werdna…. When Werdna discovered that someone had found the amulet before him he grew very angry. Using his magic he was able to discover its new location. That evening the Wizard made his assault on Overlord’s Castle. Making himself invisible he was able to sneak past Trebor’s guards. He found the overlord sitting in his throne room with a group of sages studying the amulet. Werdna cast a powerful spell that made Trebor and everyone in his immediate vicinity frozen with fear. With Trebor unable to move, Werdna plucked the amulet right from his hands and left the castle.

Werdna knew that once the Trebor regained his senses he would be prime suspect. He couldn’t return to his tower, he needed a new hiding place. That’s when he was struck with a brilliant idea. Werdna decided to use to amulet to make a new home right beneath the city of Llylgamyn! There was enough underground mining activity already, he should go unnoticed. Upon the thought of this very plan, the amulet began to glow. Suddenly there was tremendous earthquake, and in a flash Werdna found himself in a giant…labyrinth in the ground below the city. Summoning monsters to be his allies Werdna explored his way to the lowest depths and made a home where he would be able to study the powers of the amulet undisturbed.

After losing the amulet and discovering the existence of the mysterious maze beneath his city, Trebor became unhinged. His madness grew daily, all he could think of was getting his amulet back. He called for the greatest warriors in the realm to enter the maze and find Werdna, but the monsters grew greater in numbers and they began to spread to even the highest depths of the maze.

A year after the discovery of the maze, Trebor had managed to secure the first four floors. Most of the warriors who tried to journey deeper were never seen again, those that were returned with their minds warped, speaking of demons and dark magic. Trebor ordered the passages to the deeper layers of the maze to be magically sealed, thus preventing these creatures from making their way to the town. He also ordered that traps be set on the first three layers. Upon completion, Trebor declared the maze his own personal proving grounds. New cadets enrolled in the training academy would be offered the opportunity to brave the maze. Those that could find the secret he had hidden for them would be rewarded. Trebor decided he could use the maze as a test, those that would be able to able to make their way to the fourth floor would be deemed worthy and told the truth about Werdna and the amulet. They would be given the chance to go deeper into the maze. If they could return with the amulet, they would be inducted as members of Trebor’s Personal Guard.

It has been five years since the disappearance of the amulet, and this time it is your characters that have volunteered to challenge the maze.

William pummeled his forehead in frustration. "I’m never going to remember all this!"

"Bards have remembered it for a thousand and a thousand years," Mathilda said, gently implacable, "and a thousand times more than this besides."

"Bards have years to learn," he shot back. "You’re giving me days."

"Months," she said….

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 8

The reaction of the Carthaginian proconsul Martianus Capella to the fall of Rome was more pragmatic. He saw that the expansive, public life of the Empire was gone for good. If the Romans were to survive at all, it would be in a very different world,with everything on a much smaller scale. Without the centralising influence of Rome, the Empire would be fragmented into tiny states and cities that would have to exist autonomously on limited resources. They would need condensed forms of Roman knowledge to help them.

Such a condensation was Capella’s packaged version, in nine volumes, of the imperial school curriculum. That course had been divided into two sections, the first of which contained all the rules for the teaching of the primary subjects of rhetoric, grammar and argument. These had been the staple of early instruction in an expanding Roman imperialist society with a need to win over conquered tribes with oratory, teach them Latin, and formulate complex legislation to hold everything together.

To these three early subjects Capella added four more from the Empire’s later years. As Rome grew it had become necessary to expand the school curriculum with more practical subjects relevant to the day to day organisation of sophisticated urban life. Music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy were added. These subjects formed the advanced studies. Capella’s book detailed these seven subjects, which were known as the seven liberal arts, together with an encyclopedic anthology of all the facts relating to them. His work was to become standard reference for education for the next six centuries.

— The Day the Universe Changed, Chapter 2

…Roland had bound himself in ways that he could not begin to understand. Not only to Merlin, but to all that Merlin had done, both good and ill. And—

“Child,” Merlin said in the vast silence after the oath, “be wary. Oh, be wary! The sorcerer who made me, who through your foremother bound me, is still alive. He is still powerful, though never what he was before Parsifal cast him down. That is why I was guarded—as the Grail was, to protect me from him. That is why Nimue and our daughter and our granddaughter stayed hidden here. We are all safe in this place, as the Grail is safe in its stronghold. But if we are betrayed—if the sorcerer finds us—”

“Let him find us,” said Roland in the arrogance of his youth. “He’s grown weak. We’re strong. And maybe, if he’s destroyed forever, all magics that he made will be destroyed, too. And that will free you from your prison.”

“Child,” Merlin began, but he could not go on. He should have known. He should have waited till the boy was older to tell him this of all stories—till the boy was a man, and preferably a man of ample years. Youth knew no restraint, and despised prudence.

But it was done, and could not be undone. Nor was Roland strong enough yet to break the spell. Maybe he would never be—and maybe the enemy would never find him. Even when, as he must, he went out into the world; when he took up the lordship that was his by right, and stood up before his peers and his king, and made himself known to them by name and face.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Prelude

The most common infantry weapon remained the spear, which changed name and appearance according to its place of use in Europe, although it was always characterized by a sharp point. The pike, a long spear, which had been so important in the Macedonian armies of the Hellenistic period, returned to dominate the battlefields of Europe under the Swiss by the mid-fifteenth century [C.E.], but was used rarely before that. When it reappeared, it was associated with other weapons: the glaive, the bill, and the halberd. [They] were among the medieval contributions to warfare, developed from the application of the agricultural bill-hook to a pole. Around 1300 or so we find the first variations on this simple instrument. In the case of the glaive, the metal component became longer and included, besides the hook, a long spear in front and a shorter one at the back of the blade. The halberd became something like a great axe with a spearlike top and usually a hook on the back of the axe blade. Both glaive and halberd became deadly instruments against cavalrymen, for they could bring down a horse and finish a horseman who fell to the ground.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 135

Ultimately, the most important organizational fact about armored divisions is not the number of tanks on hand; indeed a division can have too many tanks. In order to operate with maximal effectiveness, the tanks have to be supported by other arms such as, infantry, artillery, engineers, and so forth. Experience has demonstrated that the critical factors in mechanized organization are

1. a rough parity among the numbers of tank, infantry, and artillery battalions, in the ratio 1:1:1, and
2. that all elements be equally mobile. This greatly enhances tactical flexibility and enables the division to hold the ground it takes, a task that tanks cannot do without infantry, as tanks are most effective attacking, not defending.

To further strengthen the ability of an armored division to perform its duties it ought to have a strong reconnaissance element able to seek out and secure information. Ideally, a reconnaissance battalion ought to be something of an armored division in miniature, with tank, artillery, and infantry elements enabling it to fight for information when necessary. Similarly, an armored division requires considerable support from engineer and signal troops, the former to facilitate overcoming natural and tactical obstacles, and the latter to keep the fast-moving elements of the division in constant communication. On this basis, it can be seen that most of the divisions formed in the prewar years were deficient in some form or another.

— Dirty Secrets of World War II, Chapter 1

The influence of the state did not usually reach far into the lives of individuals. When frontier provinces changed hands at the end of a war, the affair was normally managed with a sedulous regard for established local institutions, so that from being an ‘Austrian’ you could find that you had become a ‘Sardinian’ without noticing any difference in your everyday routine. We are a world removed from the twentieth century, when wars have frequently been fought with the purpose of eliminating the core area of an enemy state and imposing an alien regime and ideology.

— The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, p. 12

There was one important reason that allowed this “mystery” of making a sword or knife to continue and flourish. The reason was very simple. The makers themselves did not know why the swords they produced were good, mediocre and a few really bad. These last they threw back into the pot to be re-melted and re-forged. What they did know was that if they used ore from a specific place, and did certain things by rote, taking a specified time to do it, and in a certain manner, they frequently came up with a good sword blade. And rarely, a truly superb sword blade appeared. But they did not know why.

The real secret to this was simply carbon content in the iron. But since the science of chemistry and metallurgy had not yet been developed, no one knew it. The average person is quite surprised to learn how late it actually was before the impurity, carbon, was proved to be what turned iron into steel. Some recent discoveries in England have shown that very high quality steel was produced in England in the “Dark Ages” (circa 476-1000 [C.E.]). Hamwic was a Saxon port that is under modern Southampton. Much of it has now been excavated, and a very interesting discovery was made. Several blooms of very high quality steel were found, plus several knives with high quality steel edges. These blooms are homogenous steel, with about two percent carbon. Properly forged, this could produce exceptional quality blades.

Shortly before this discovery, another one equally fascinating was announced. It seems that a monastery, abandoned when [King] Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church, was also a metal producing factory. This is not unusual in itself. But what is unusual, is that the process they used was identical to the Bessemer process that was invented by Sir Henry Bessemer in the 19th century, and was in use in manufacturing until quite recently.

In 1740, Benjamin Huntsman, a maker of watch springs, found that he could produce much superior steel by melting the steel, allowing the slag to rise to the surface, and then skimming it off. This is much the same technique as was used in producing Wootz steel of India. But carbon wasn’t discovered until 1774 by Swedish metallurgist Sven Rinman. In 1786 French chemist Guyton de Morveau showed that the substance isolated by Rinman was carbon, introduced into the iron, that turned the iron into steel.

As early as 1540 an Italian had suggested that steel was the “pure” form of iron, and to achieve this purity the iron was heated up: and charcoal, leather, and other such substances added to help burn out the impurities. Since charcoal and leather both contain carbon, he was on the right track, but going in the wrong direction. It was the impurities—sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, hydrogen, total oxygen, and sometimes carbon—that frustrated steel production. Modern steelmakers grapple with these impurities today, but with a clear understanding of what they are fighting.

The ancient blacksmith could only fall back on empirical knowledge gained from trial and error.

— The Book of Swords, pp. 26-27

The line between medicine and magic was blurred in ancient Egypt, and priests of Sekhmet often also acted as doctors. In the absence of effective remedies to cure many ailments, they turned to spells and rituals. Some magic was “sympathetic,” using curative substances that were similar to the perceived cause of the ailment, such as dung to alleviate gut problems.

Magicians used spells either as a direct measure, such as “ordering” a stuck bone to leave the patient’s throat, or indirectly, for instance, telling the spirit (often identified as a foreign demon) responsible for the illness to leave the sick person. Amulets were also placed on afflicted parts of the body or used to stave off illness.

Death was the greatest challenge. Observances on behalf of the dead were elaborate, at least for the elite, and aimed to unite the ka and ba, the two parts of the soul, in death. Incantations and mummification were carried out to protect the ka, the life source, and to release the ba, which contained a person’s character, on its journey to the underworld.

For kings, Pyramid Texts, written down from the 27th century BCE, let their souls fight demons, pay off otherworldly boatmen, and reach the next life. It was another 600 years before texts appeared offering magical protection to a wider section of society.

— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, A Universal Force

In ancient Egyptian belief, the ba (the element of the soul that contained the personality of the deceased) faced a series of trials on its journey to the underworld. Failing these trials would mean a second death—obliterating earthly memory of the deceased, who would wander as a ghost forever. To avoid this second death, the Egyptians covered the walls of their tombs with The Book of the Dead, texts containing spells for the soul’s protection. The scene here shows the ba (in white) accompanied by jackal-headed Anubis, who watches the soul’s sins being weighed against a feather. If the sins are heavier, the ba will be devoured by Ammit, a crocodile-headed demon.

The Book of the Dead was never codified and no two copies are the same. Each was composed at a patron’s request, incorporating prayers that best reflected the individual in order to help them in the afterlife. Composition of Books of the Dead began around 1700 BCE, replacing earlier texts. Spells were added until a body of around 200 became common by about 1500 BCE. Contained in scrolls up to 22 yd (20 m) in length for commoners, or for royalty painted on tomb walls, the spells were said to be spoken by the ba at key points along its journey. Spell 4 is to let the ba turn into a snake, Spell 89 to return to the tomb at night, and Spell 98 to grant it passage on a ferry to the underworld. So powerful was ancient Egyptian belief in their efficacy that the scrolls were popular until the Roman conquest in 30 BCE.

— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, Spells For the Afterlife

[An eleventh century, C.E.,] knight would look to have a string of horses: a palfrey for everyday travel, a war-horse for combat (not yet the immensely heavy horses of later medieval warriors), mounts for servants and baggage which in Spain would often be mules rather than horses because they consume less water.

— The Quest for El Cid, chapter 8

…The Japanese have always shown a particular form of reverence toward the bow, quite beyond its use in battle. One has to go back as far as the Assyrians to find this same veneration for the bow, for they considered it to be the most noble of all weapons. As for the Japanese, the Way of the sword and the Way of the bow rule supreme. There is a Japanese expression: “the house of bow and arrows” which denotes a person’s quality as a result of noble birth. The arrow which draws the bow is like the strength in man which can draw in the subtle power of the universe.

Finally, the bow and arrow were considered to be sacred by the Assyrians when they belonged to kings or generals.

In Shinto, the arrow is often an aid to purification. In fact, many temples have taken to selling arrows, which are carried home and which, during the course of the year, absorb all things evil and impure. These arrows are then burnt during the end of year ceremonies. The manufacture of arrows itself has to follow a set of rules, which means the work always carries with it a deep significance.

— The Overlook Martial Arts Reader, pp. 283-4

Wearing amulets was another part of protective magic, and such amulets often portrayed the spirit they were supposed to ward off. For instance, Pazuzu, the king of the wind demons, would be depicted as a creature with a bird’s chest and talons, holding a thunderbolt, and Lamashtu, who preyed on pregnant women, as a hybrid of a donkey, lion, and bird. Amulets could protect a traveler in hostile territory inhabited by demons, such as the desert, or keep disease away from a house during an epidemic. In the Mesopotamian world much was unpredictable, and magic tilted the balance just a little in people’s favor.

— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, Magic All Around

The Mesopotamians believed that objects had an animate quality and could act as the receptacles of enormous magical power, helping to ward off evil spirits and thwart their actions, or gain the favor of a god needed to drive them away.

Royal palaces were guarded by monumental statues of lamassu, winged creatures with the head of a man and the body of a bull or lion, which blocked and supported gateways, corridors, and the entrances to throne rooms. These thresholds were seen as particularly vulnerable to infiltration from the underworld by demons such as Rabisu, “the crouching one.” Poorer people placed figurines of gods or hybrid creatures such as fish-men with pointed hats and scaly skins under doorways or windows….

— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, Magic All Around

William the Conqueror and his sons amazed continental contemporaries by the extent of their financial resources. Their financial resources were great not only because of England’s wealth, for certainly, taken as a whole, the kingdoms of France and Germany were much richer, but because the Anglo-Norman king was able to tax the resources of his realm to a degree far exceeding that of any ruler in Europe. Money was needed to support the king and his family, his central administration, his local representatives, and his military establishment. The relative effectiveness of English royal taxation inaugurated by William the Conqueror is an important key to the political history of the Middle Ages. It helps to account for the fact that as late as the fifteenth century the king of England was able to inflict crushing defeats upon French kings, who ruled a country with three times the population of England and whose landed, commercial, and industrial wealth, if we could estimate it precisely, would be even greater. In the Middle Ages, no less than in the twentieth century, wars cost money, and the power of any particular king was greatly dependent upon the comprehensiveness and efficiency of his taxation system. In this regard the Anglo-Norman king was at least a century ahead of the Capetian monarchy, and no German ruler of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ever had any comparable command of the financial resources of his country.

The chief source of income of early medieval kings had been their own estates, and William naturally drew a substantial part of his income from the royal demesne, whose administration was the sheriffs responsibility. The law courts were also a lucrative source of income, but it was their clever and unrelenting use of the feudal possibilities for taxation that accounts for the great financial resources of the Anglo-Norman rulers. Like any other feudal lord, William enjoyed the prerogatives of relief, wardship, and the regular aids, and his treasury found that these old institutions could be made to produce great sums. Not only the lay vassals but also the bishoprics and abbeys that owed feudal obligations to the crown, were subjected to this kind of taxation. In addition to all these sources of royal income William inaugurated the practice of allowing his vassals the option of not sending their knights to serve in the feudal host on payment of a certain sum per knight’s fee; the practice came to be called scutage (literally, “shield money”) in the early twelfth century. William’s tenants-in-chief were glad to be freed of the burden of keeping their knights trained and equipped for war, and William preferred to use the income he obtained from scutage to hire mercenaries for his continental wars. Paradoxically, the same king who brought feudal institutions to their highest refinement and used them most effectively for enhancing royal power was the earliest to realize the inefficiency of the feudal method of raising armies. By feudal law the vassals were required to serve only forty days a year, which was a tremendous nuisance in a long campaign; the knights who were provided to his feudal host were not always adequately prepared and armed; it was advisable to leave most of the English army at home in case of another Scandinavian invasion, which threatened during most of the Conqueror’s reign; and William had the special problem of transporting the knights and horses across the channel, which was both expensive and risky. He preferred to hire mercenaries among the landless knights of Normandy, Flanders, and Brittany for his frontier campaigns against various French princes. The Anglo-Norman monarch’s envious continental enemies were not slow to realize the significance of this military innovation. A chief minister of the French king in the first half of the twelfth century referred to the English ruler as “that wealthy man, a marvelous buyer and collector of knights.” William initiated the slow substitution of mercenary forces for feudal armies, which is one of the central military developments of the High Middle Ages.

— The Civilization of the Middle Ages, Chapter 12