Tag: war

…Before the Tokugawa period [in Japan], when the feudal [daimyo] depended upon the martial skills of their retainers, inspired leaders understood the fundamental importance of foot soldiers in the winning of battles, and warriors of the lower ranks, such as the nakakosho, the tomokosho, and the kachi (that is, the huge mass of foot soldiers (ashigaru)), were properly trained and even encouraged to develop their abilities to the point where the might even attain a position of supreme command as had Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and others equally famous. The age of heroes defeating armies singlehandedly had always been more myth than reality—history proving with depressing regularity that battles were usually worn by using masses of troops in the most advantageous manner.

Even great warriors, vastly skilled in the arts of archery and spearmanship, were, upon occasion, cut to pieces by veteran spearmen of hirazamurai rank or by their attendants (chugen) led by leaders of kogashira rank. Each group of spearmen composed of warriors of these ranks was a formidable unit of combat that could be neutralized, not by a lonely knight charging blindly and vaingloriously into their midst, but only by similar body of trained archers or spearmen. Once the compact unity of the group had been shattered, the warriors of higher rank and their sword-wielding officers could finally engage in individual, close-range swordplay. And there is evidence to indicate that even then many of these officers and leaders fell beneath the skilled spear-thrust of an obscure veteran of the lower ranks.

— Secrets of the Samurai, pp. 108-9

The conduct of a siege [in the Renaissance period] was a hugely expensive undertaking in terms of supplies, consuming tons of food, gunpowder and shot. When an army was engaged upon a siege it was unable to threaten anywhere else, and also became vulnerable to outside attack. This situation is exemplified forever by the comical situation at the Siege of Turin in 1640 [C.E.]. The French in the citadel were besieged by the Spanish in the city who were in turn besieged by a French army outside the city walls who were also besieged by a Spanish army in siege lines!

— The Art of Renaissance Warfare, Chapter 8

The optimum combination of pike and shot, both as a numerical ratio and as a form of deployment, remained hotly debated in military treatises. Setting aside the numerous theoretical models, essentially only two formations were used in the field. Those adopting the Dutch-style counter-march needed thinner lines and more shot than pike, deploying a ratio of two to one in a ten-rank line by the 1590s [C.E.], with the pikemen in the centre, flanked by equal numbers of musketeers. The Spanish and imperial infantry favoured the larger, deeper formations that had been the norm earlier in the sixteenth century. Their pike were grouped as a central block with always twice the number of men in each line as there were ranks deep, because each man needed twice the amount of space in depth as in width to wield his weapon. The effect was to produce a square block that would be flanked by ‘sleeves’ of musketeers. An additional three to five ranks of light arquebusiers generally lined the entire front to maximize firepower. If caught by a cavalry attack, the musketeers could shelter under the pikes that would stretch over their heads. When attacking enemy foot, the arquebusiers would retire round the flanks once they had fired, leaving the pike free to charge. Spanish and imperial commanders sometimes grouped additional blocks of musketeers on the four corners, which can be seen in many battle engravings from the early seventeenth century. This was simply a formation for deploying and advancing, and the additional shot would fan out towards the enemy to fire, falling back to a less exposed side of the square if the formation came under attack.

The large square formation has become known as the tercio after the term used by the Spanish for their infantry regiments, while the thinner, longer Dutch formation is called a battalion. It has become a historical convention to see the latter as inherently superior to the former, not least because of its association with firearms that have appeared to later generations as obviously more advanced than pikes, weapons first used by the ancient Greeks. This distinction is not accurate, nor does it correspond to sixteenth-century military thinking that drew directly on the ancient world for its inspiration. The deeper block formations offered better all-round fighting ability than the thinner Dutch lines, where each unit relied on its neighbours standing firm or its vulnerable flanks would be exposed if the enemy broke through. Though only the first five ranks of the tercio could fire at any one time, the presence of another ten or more behind stiffened the resolve of those in front, or at least made it harder for them to run away. The unit assumed a more imposing presence on the battlefield; something that was a considerable advantage as it bore down on a wavering foe. In an age of black powder, the battlefield soon filled with smoke, making it extremely difficult for commanders to see what was happening. It was easier to lose control of long thin lines, composed of smaller, but more numerous battalions, than a deployment of fewer, larger tercios. These could be positioned en échelon, or diagonally staggered in chequerboard fashion about 200 metres apart. If one became detached or separated, it was generally large enough to fight on alone until rescued.

There was a trend towards increasing the ratio of shot to pike and to stretch formations into thinner lines that became pronounced in the 1630s, as we shall see later. It was partly related to minor technological advances producing the lighter muskets, and possibly also to pressure from soldiers themselves. Recruits generally preferred becoming musketeers rather than pikemen, who often had to stand under fire without personally being able to retaliate. Pikemen had originally received higher pay and were still seen by officers as more honourable than musketeers. Men who rose from the ranks did so ‘from the pike up’ (von der Pike auf), and not from the musket. Pikemen killed using cold steel, like the traditional knight’s lance, whereas musketeers relied on the devilish invention of gunpowder producing thick clouds of acrid smoke, striking their foes from a distance, rather than looking them in the eye. Pikemen also accused their more lightly equipped colleagues of being more prone to plunder, whereas they could not enter houses with their long weapons—something that clearly had a ring of jealousy to it. Certainly, pikemen were more likely to throw away their weapons if their formation broke, thus becoming defenceless, whereas musketeers could flee still fully armed.

The trend towards more shot around 1590 was also due to the deployment of musketeers in smaller, looser formations to open a battle or to delay an enemy while the rest of the army assembled. Parties of 50 or more musketeers would be pushed out in front of the main line, covered by groups of 250 pikemen as a reserve and rallying point. Such methods anticipated those of 200 years later, but generally disappeared around 1630 with the growing emphasis on massed, disciplined firing by ranks developed by the Dutch and copied by the Swedes. Given the inaccuracy of individual shots, commanders emphasized the volume of fire, and later also its rapidity, culminating in the disciplined firing by platoons adopted around 1700.

— The Thirty Years War, pp. 89-91

A samurai may…be more simply understood by his practice of bearing arms rather than any social status or aesthetic sensibilities. The word therefore becomes a generic term for any pre-modern Japanese fighting man, and there is something to be said for such a pragmatic view, because the official definition of the word samurai changed considerably over the centuries. For much of Japanese history (if contemporary writings are to be believed) everyone with something to defend—a landowner, a villager, a priest or a pirate—was armed to the teeth and was therefore a warrior (bushi or musha) of some sort at some time. Yet back in the tenth century [C.E.] no fighter of any reputation would have wished to be called a samurai, because that expression still had connotations of menial rather than military service. By the thirteenth century the word had acquired the exclusively military meaning it enjoys today, although to be a samurai still involved the notion of subservience to someone else. The samurai’s superiors were leaders called gokenin (‘honourable houseman’), whose elite status derived not only from their skills at warfare, but also from the ownership of the patches of land from which they took their surnames. Gokenin expected loyalty from the non-landowning samurai who followed them into battle. Their samurai followers (the European notion of a squire is a good parallel) were able to rise in society because of good service and the rewards that followed.

And rise they did, until the expression ‘samurai’ acquired an elite connotation that allowed it to encompass the entirety of Japan’s military aristocracy. The samurai’s upward social mobility found its greatest expression during the Sengoku Period, Japan’s ‘Age of War’, which is conventionally dated from 1467 to 1603. The long conflicts of the Sengoku Period sucked into their whirlpool a huge number of elite mounted warriors, lowly fighting samurai, armed monks, village communities and an intermediate class of jizamurai (‘local samurai’), who owned some land and were both farmers and fighters at the same time.

— The Lost Samurai, Chapter 1

…To illustrate just how tough knights had to be in [the early 16th Century (C.E.), Blaise de Monluc‘s] memoirs record vividly how the enemy:

…peppered me in the meantime with an infinite number of arquebus shot, one of which, pierced my target [shield] and shot my arm quite through…and another battered the bone at the joint of my arm and shoulder that I lost all manner of feeling….

De Monluc was so determined to continue his military career that he refused to have his arm amputated. This was, in any case, a surgical procedure that threatened either death or lifelong poverty, so he chose instead to lie on his back for two months, experiencing a physical pain that he regarded as nothing compared to the torment he was enduring by missing the subsequent campaigns….

— The Art of Renaissance Warfare, Chapter 9

Emphasis mine.

The first important break from the conventions which dominated medieval warfare was the triumph of the Swiss pike-squares over the mounted knights of Burgundy in a series of pitched battles (1475-7 [C.E.]). The lesson of Morat, Grandson, and Nancy was immediate, important and ineluctable: victory in battle could be won by infantry over cavalry. This shift in military effectiveness removed a crucial restriction on the scale of warfare in Europe. Since a warhorse was not only expensive but also a mark of social rank the size of a cavalry-based army was necessarily circumscribed by the dimensions of the social class which was entitled to go through life on horseback: the knights. There was no such bar to the number of men who could be recruited and issued with a helmet and sixteen-foot pike. Accordingly the eclipse of cavalry by infantry meant that victory in war after the 1470s came to depend not on the quality of the combatants nor on the excellence of their armament, but on their numbers. A government bent on war had now to mobilize and equip every man who could be found.

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, p. 5

Emphasis mine.

To modern readers of these gloriously bloody legends [told in The Tales of the Heike], a remarkable feature is the role played by women. Some of the champions in the war tales are girls, for in the early feudal age the women of Japan had not yet been reduced to the humble submissiveness that would be their posture in later centuries. They were expected to exhibit the same loyalty and bravery as the men, and occasionally a woman exceptionally endowed with these qualities won an honored place in the warrior coterie. Tomoe of the Minamoto faction must have been such a one.

Tomoe had long black hair and a fair complexion, and her face was very lovely; moreover she was a fearless rider whom neither the fiercest horse nor the roughest ground could dismay, and so dexterously did she handle sword and bow that she was a match for a thousand warriors and fit to meet either god or devil. Many times had she taken the field, armed at all points, and won matchless renown in encounters with the bravest captains, and so in this last fight, when all the others had been slain or had fled, among the last seven there rode Tomoe.

— Early Japan, Chapter 4

[Commander Riker is allowed only 40 crew on an obsolete starship for a combat simulation, but 40 of his choosing. He goes to the quarters of Worf, the Klingon member of the Enterprise‘s crew.]

Commander Riker:

You know of the simulation. What do you think?

Lieutenant Worf:

Waste of time.

Commander Riker:

It’s just designed to be an exercise.

Lieutenant Worf:

Useless. If there is nothing to lose—no sacrifice—then there is nothing to gain.

Commander Riker:

You mean besides pride. Well, in this case, it doesn’t matter. I probably haven’t got a chance.

Lieutenant Worf:

[defensive] There is always a chance.

Commander Riker:

Slim. The Hathaway‘s most sophisticated weapons system, even in a computer generated mock-up, can’t hope to defeat the Enterprise.

Lieutenant Worf:

Well, still—

Commander Riker:

You’re outmanned, you’re outgunned, you’re outequipped. What else have you got?

Lieutenant Worf:

[ponders for a moment before looking up in challenge]

Guile.

Commander Riker:

[smiles]

Join me.

— “Peak Performance” – Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2 (1989)

The military hospital had to deal mainly with surgery cases—limbs injured by sword, pike or gunshot. Of the three, bullet-wounds were by far the most serious. On one occasion when many of his men were wounded, Don Luis de Requesens reflected that: “Most of the wounds come from pikes or blows, and they will soon heal, although there are also many with gunshot wounds…and they will die.” All the medical textbooks of the time confirm this judgement: a bullet was more likely to cause internal bleeding, induce blood-poisoning or shatter a bone—three conditions which sixteenth-century medicine was powerless to cure. Yet within these limitations, the Army’s doctors and surgeons registered some remarkable successes. Of 41 badly injured Spanish veterans in 1574, for example, 1 had lost both legs and 3 both arms, 5 more had lost the use of one leg and 13 lacked a hand or an arm (left and right limbs suffered equally); 11 more were recorded as having bad gunshot wounds (in their mouth, their eye or disabling a limb) and 4 more had lost a limb by a cannon ball. The roll-call is gruesome but it gives a remarkable testimony to the skill of the army’s surgeons: all these unfortunates had survived their injury. For such mutilated survivors a special home was established in the seventeenth century: the “Garrison of Our Lady of Hal”. In January 1640 there were 2 officers, 236 soldiers and 108 entretenidos in the garrison, all of them injured veterans too maimed for service in the field.

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, p. 168

[In 1587 C.E., English Captain Francis] Drake had captured the single richest prize of his swashbuckling career, one of the grandest hauls of the century. The [Spanish galleon] San Felipe carried an imperial fortune in pepper, cloves, cinnamon and other spices, in silks and calico, in indigo and ivory, in gold, silver and caskets of gem stones. The total worth came to £114,000, more than three times the value of all the goods and shipping captured or destroyed at Cadiz. The Queen took £40,000 as her share, Drake £17,000, and the rest was split among officers, crew members and other shareholders. At a time when the Navy Board under Hawkins’ direction spent £6,000 a year, Drake had brought home more than enough money to underwrite England’s defense against any impending invasion. The capture also gave another hard knock to [King] Philip’s credit rating, further delaying his preparations for the Armada.

— The Armada, pp. 60

[…The three women who coexisted as the Incarnation of Fate] had lunch and adjusted a few threads, preoccupied. Then Clotho donned slacks, low-heeled shoes, and a businesslike shirt, and rode a thread back down to the dojo.

Mars appeared as she landed before it. He was garbed in a white gi. Niobe had never been certain how Mars traveled, but it seemed to be related to his sword. Each Incarnation had a symbol of office that was imbued with much of the magic, and the red sword was obviously Mars’ symbol.

“Follow me,” Mars said, handing her his sword.

Clotho looked at it. The thing was unsheathed—a massive instrument, with a handle almost too big for her small hand to hold, and a gleaming double-edged blade that glowed red from some deep layer. The whole thing had a magical aura of menace; it made her nervous. She held it awkwardly by two hands, the blade pointing straight down.

Even Niobe was astonished. What’s he up to? He never sets aside his red sword!

We’ll find out soon enough, Atropos thought.

The girl at the desk recognized Clotho. “Please leave,” she said. “You are not welcome here.”

Mars leaned over the desk. “I am her champion. Signal your hirelings.”

Two men appeared at the inner doorway. Both were in gi‘s and wore black belts. “The lady has asked you to leave, mister,” one said, stepping forward.

I think we’re going to see some man-style foolishness, Atropos thought with a certain relish. When they don’t have sex on their minds, they do like to fight.

“I have an appointment,” Mars said. He stepped into the man, caught his outstretched arm, spun about, and sent him rolling across the floor.

The other man turned—and Mars’ leg shot out and swept the other man’s foot from under him, so that he landed on the floor with a resounding slap.

“Now go in and announce me,” Mars said. “I expect a full turnout, and the courtesy of the dojo.”

Without further word, the two men hurried away.

“But you could have hurt them!” Clotho protested.

Mars walked back to Clotho and proffered his arm. “Not with a simple hand throw and a foot-sweep; they know how to take falls. I merely showed them a hint of my competence.”

She held his sword out to him, but he demurred. “I shall not be using that here, but cannot trust it to the hand of a mortal. Hold it until we are done.”

Clotho managed to hold the dread sword by one hand, and took his arm with the other. She walked with him through the bamboo curtain and down the hall toward the main chamber of the dojo. “Are you planning to fight all of them?”

“Certainly,” Mars replied.

“But—”

“I will run the line. Then it will be your turn.”

“But—”

“Do not be concerned, cutes. It will be all right.”

I hope so, Clotho thought nervously.

He knows what he’s doing, Niobe thought reassuringly. The three of us may not know what he’s doing, but he knows.

They reached the second curtain. “Take off your shoes,” Mars told her. He was already barefoot.

She took them off. They stepped through.

About forty students were lined along the far wall, standing barefooted on the edge of the big mat. They seemed to be arranged roughly in order of rank, with the white-belts at one end and the black-belts at the other. There were, she noted, several women among them.

In the center of the mat stood Samurai. He turned to face them.

Mars stretched out his right arm. A red cloth appeared in his hand. Slowly, deliberately, he wound this belt about his middle and tied it in place with the odd knot that martial artists used. There was a murmur of amazement from the line of students. It was as if they had never seen a red belt before.

Is something significant happening? Niobe thought.

Mars stepped up to the mat, and halted, and bent forward at the waist. He’s bowing to the mat! Atropos thought, finding it funny.

But Clotho had heard of this. “It’s the ritual,” she murmured. “Always bow when joining or leaving the tatami, the mat, for it breaks your fall and spares your bones. Always step on it barefooted.”

Now Mars stepped onto the mat. “You assume the belt of a Master Dan,” Samurai said, as if in challenge.

“You are observant,” Mars replied.

Samurai turned and walked to the black end of the line of students. He dropped into a cross-legged seated position.

Mars faced the class, and bowed to the line. The line bowed back.

Then Mars strode forward and took hold of the student at the white end of the line. This was a young woman, so small and light that her bare feet left the mat when he brought her forward. He can’t attack her! Niobe thought with horror.

Yet no one else protested, or even seemed dismayed. They merely watched.

Mars brought her to the center of the mat and held her by the right lapel and left sleeve of her gi. “Try a throw,” he told her.

The girl turned and hauled on his jacket. She got nowhere. Then Mars stepped back, drawing her along with him so that she had to step quickly forward to avoid losing her balance. At the moment her right foot touched the mat, his left foot swept against it. Her foot went up and she fell backward. She landed on the mat, her left arm outstretched, slapping the mat resoundingly, her right arm captive to his grip.

“De-ashi harai,” Mars said. “The Advanced-Foot Sweep. Remember it.” Then he let her go, and she scrambled up, bowed hastily, and returned to the line.

Mars nodded to the next student, a boy in white belt. The boy came out, took hold, and tried a throw of his own. It also got nowhere.

Mars drew him forward, as before, but this time set his left foot against the boy’s kneecap and hauled him into a tumble on the mat. “Hiza-guruma,” Mars said. “The Knee-Wheel. Practice your falls, son, or you’ll get hurt.”

“Yessir!” the boy exclaimed, scrambling up, bowing, and running back to his place in the line.

Mars nodded to the third student, another woman in a white belt. Again he gave her the chance to try to throw him, and she failed; then he threw her spinning to the mat with a hand-and-foot motion that seemed to be in between that of the prior two throws. “Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi,” he said. “The Propping-Drawing-Ankle Throw.”

There was a murmur along the line. “He’s doing the First Course of Instruction!” someone said behind Clotho. She turned to look. A brown-belt had come in behind her, off the mat. It was the instructor of the morning beginners’ class; evidently he had returned too late to join this one, so was watching from the side.

“Is that significant?” Clotho asked.

Now he recognized her. “You’re the—”

“The same,” she agreed. “I brought my champion to meet Samurai.”

“In a red belt!” he murmured, amazed. “That’s ninth or tenth Dan!”

“Is that good?”

“Oh—you don’t know judo?”

“Nothing,” she confessed. “I just came to talk to Samurai, and then things went wrong.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Just so,” he said after a moment. “Very well, I’ll be glad to explain. The master grades of judo are the Dan, as opposed to the student grades, the kyu. The Dan are black belt. But the very highest grades may wear the red belt. Normally such grades are only achieved as honors for service to the art, by masters who no longer compete. A competitor with a red belt should be the finest judoka in the world.”

“Oh, that explains why the class was so surprised.”

“It certainly does. As far as I know, there is no living, competing red belt today. So this man is bound to be an impostor.”

“He is Mars, the Incarnation of War.”

“Oh? Then maybe he—” The brown-belt shrugged. He returned to her prior question. “There’s nothing wrong with the First Course,” he explained. “They’re all good throws. But once people catch on to the order, they’ll know exactly which throw he’s going to do next. That makes it much harder. It doesn’t matter for the white-belts, but he’d have trouble throwing me with a throw I expected, and it would probably be impossible with a black-belt.”

Mars threw the next student over his right hip. “There’s the fourth—Uki-goshi, the Floating Hip Throw,” the brown-belt said. “I’ve never seen it done better. But I wonder where he could have gotten his training?”

Mars threw the next backward. “O-soto-gari,” the brown-belt murmured. “He certainly knows the basics.”

The next student fell. “And O-goshi,” the brown-belt said.

“Didn’t he just do that one?”

“No, that was Uki-goshi, a different throw. It looks similar and the footwork is similar, but the feel is quite different. Uke takes a much harder fall.”

“But I thought Uki was the throw, not the faller.”

The brown-belt smiled. “You really don’t know, do you? The one who does the throwing is always called Tori, the taker, and the one who gets thrown is Uke, the receiver. Anyway, the Uki-goshi is done stiff-kneed, while O-goshi flexes the knees, and—oh, there’s O-uchi-gari, the Major Inner Reaping! Beautiful!”

Clotho—and Niobe—were having trouble distinguishing the throws. They were ready to take the brown-belt’s word that they were being properly done. Clotho took advantage of his presence to ask another question. “What is this—this running the line?”

“Well, a challenger shows his superiority by defeating a number of others in rapid order,” the brown-belt said. “For example, a black-belt should be able to run a line of five brown-belts and throw them all, because his skill is greater. When the line is mixed, they do the lowest grades first, the Kyus, and work up to the Dans. Of course, by the time someone has thrown twenty or thirty people, he’s apt to be getting tired, so it gets harder both ways. No one has ever run our full line victoriously; if your friend makes it, he will have proved his rank. Some of ours are Sandans, and one’s a Yodan, and of course Samurai is Rokudan, the sixth level, and the champion of the eastern states. He’ll be world champion one day, if he decides to go for it.”

“He might not go for it?”

“Well, he’s getting old for competition, and judo is only part of his interest. He’s a master in karate, too, and aikido, and his specialty is the sword; no one can touch him there. He’s been searching for this mythical finger-strike, too— Say! Look at that Tsuri-komi-goshi! I’ve never seen a prettier throw! Did you see how he got full extension? I’ve never been able to do that on an Uke my own weight!”

The throw had looked just like all the others to Clotho and the other Aspects, but evidently there was a difference.

“But now he’s into the yellow-belts, and when he hits the green-belts he’ll have to work a little for it. Oh, nice Okuri-ashi-harai! That’s not as easy as it looks.”

Clotho was willing to take his word for it.

“God, I wish I was in that line!” the brown-belt said after the next throw. “It’s a privilege to be thrown by a master like that! Is he really the Incarnation of War?”

“Yes, he—”

“Oh, there’s the Uchi-mata! Samurai himself couldn’t have done it better!”

They watched while Mars moved into the green-belts. They were trying to throw him and failing as dismally as the white-belts had, and had no better success in resisting the return throws.

“That’s amazing!” the brown-belt commented. “I’ve never seen someone give them a chance like that; usually they put them away as fast as they can. He’s got a lot of confidence.”

“He should,” Clotho said, though she was amazed herself.

Then she saw Mars drop down. Someone had thrown him! But immediately the brown-belt opponent fell too. Both of them were lying on the mat.

“Yoko-otoshi! The Side Drop!” the brown-belt exclaimed. “Beautiful!”

“You mean it’s supposed to look like that?” Clotho asked.

“Of course. It’s a sacrifice throw.”

“Oh.”

They watched several more standing throws. Then Mars went down again. He had his foot in the other’s belly, and lifted him over so that he did a roll and landed on his back. “Tomoe-nage, the Stomach Throw,” the brown-belt said.

The throws continued as Mars progressed three-quarters of the way down the line. There seemed to be no end to them. But obviously the class was highly impressed.

“Soto-makikomi,” the brown-belt remarked as both men went down again. “I hate to take falls on that one! Of course it’s a power-throw; there’s not much stopping it once it starts. If he can do the next one, the Uki-otoshi—”

It seemed to Niobe that the brown-belt who was Uke at the moment simply threw himself on the mat, but the one beside her whistled softly. “Perfect!”

A black-belt came out of the line. Mars waited while the man tried a foot-sweep without success, then said, “Try another.” There was a chuckle along the line.

“What’s so funny?” Clotho asked.

“The situation. He’s up to the thirty-seventh throw in the Basic Forty. That’s Ushiro-goshi, the Rear Loin. It’s a counterthrow following an attempted hip-throw. Clyde didn’t try a hip-throw.”

Clyde tried a sacrifice throw, without effect; it was as if Mars were an immovable wall. There was another chuckle.

Then, moving like lightning, Clyde tried a hip-throw—and Mars picked him up and threw him to the mat. Clyde had gambled and lost. He got up, bowed, and smiled; he didn’t mind losing to an artist of that skill. “And he did it left-side,” the brown-belt murmured in awe. “Clyde tried to fool him, left-side, and he was ready.”

“Left-side is different?”

“And how! I really sweat on them!”

The last man in the line approached and took hold, but declined to try a throw. “Randori,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Clotho asked.

“That’s our Yodan,” the brown-belt said. “He’s a top competitor; he doesn’t like to do stationary throws. He prefers to counter, or to seize his opportunity. He knows your man will try the Yoko-gake, the Side Body Drop; he wants to make him do it in a moving situation.”

“Interesting,” Clotho said, unenlightened.

The two men moved about the mat, almost as if dancing together. Suddenly the black-belt screamed piercingly, his foot moving like lightning. But Mars’ foot moved too, just as fast—and they both fell to the mat.

The brown-belt shook his head. “Beautiful! He did it!”

“But how do you know who threw whom? And why the scream?”

The brown-belt smiled. “The scream was a kiai yell, to facilitate the throw. Didn’t work, this time. And sometimes it can be hard to tell, on a throw. I saw a match once where the award was given to the wrong judoka, before the judges corrected it. But this one was a perfect Yoko-gake, no question.”

Indeed, the class seemed to know it. Mars returned to the center of the mat, and exchanged bows with the class. It seemed he had successfully run the line.

“And he’s not even tired!” the brown-belt murmured.

Then Mars walked to the edge of the mat, stepped off, turned about, and bowed to it. “All right, girl,” he said gruffly. “He has to meet you now.”

“He what?”

“As your champion I conquered his class. I did not challenge Samurai himself. It is you who must meet him.” He took her by the elbow, urging her forward. “Honor the tatami.”

Bemused, Clotho bowed and stepped onto the mat….

— With a Tangled Skein, Chapter 12

Author’s emphases in italic. Mine are in bold.

“So,” Tomita said calmly as he kneeled again, “to the task at hand.” He sat up a bit straighter and said, “I am Tomita…”

“Formerly of the Kunaicho,” I interrupted, just to rattle him a bit. Some of the true danger in him shot out briefly from his eyes, escaping from behind the barrier he had placed there.

“I am a student of the Morita-ha Tengu-shin ryu. I am menkyo-kaiden there and a yudansha in Yanagi-ryu jujutsu and kendo. I have killed four men in duels. I request a lesson.”

It told me nothing, other than that there were more victims than we were aware of. I had never heard of the Tengu-shin ryu. Tengu are the winged mountain goblins of Japanese legend. Master swordsmen, in the old stories they sometimes teach mortals their art. Depending on how “shin” was written, it could refer to some sort of divine revelation, the heart, or a deity of some sort. All I really could tell was that the man before me had had a variety of training. And he killed people.

He bowed toward me at the conclusion of his recital. It was my turn.

“I am Burke,” I began. The Japanese tend not to use the given name in situations like this. “I am a student of Yamashita-ha Itto ryu. I am yudansha in Shotokan karatedo and Kodokan judo. I have killed no man in a duel.”

Tomita grinned ferally at me.

“Until tonight,” I concluded. His grin just got harder looking.

— Sensei, Chapter 18

For the children of the samurai, training for their martial way of life began early…. Particularly between the ages of seven and eight they were encouraged to be sociable and cooperative with their playmates, and discouraged from being confrontational or overly self-absorbed. At nine and ten, they concentrated on more academic subjects like reading and writing, although from the age of seven they were likely to be studying regularly at temple school.

The serious work took place between the ages of ten and twelve, when the child’s day could include as many as twelve hours of work in subjects ranging from abstract academics to learning musical instruments or undergoing physical training.

By the time he was thirteen, he was ready to fight: more than one famous daimyō fought in his first engagement at this age….

— Samurai 1550-1600, p. 10

While discussing this excerpt last week with my brother, a comment of his gave me a crystal-clear mental image. He said, “remember our [American high school] freshmen football team.”

[In Japan, the] last half of the sixteenth century [C.E.] was a period of almost constant warfare; weapons training was more often than not done ‘on the job’. It was a sink or swim mentality, where warriors fought their first battles at a youthful age, and if they lived, they had learnt something for the next time. Tokugawa Ieyasu was a general at sixteen years of age.

Most who fought in the campaigns were in their late teens or twenties. Save the generals and the lords, samurai armies were very young in makeup. Few from the ranks attained a venerable age.

— Samurai 1550-1600, p. 15

Xenograg was also a general at age 16. 🙂

Since many historians use the infantry’s salary of the time as a reference to estimate the cost of armor in monthly wages, we suggest using a similar means of assessment. According to open sources, a US Army corporal earns about $30,000 a year, which gives us a monthly wage of $2,500. Now, this means that depending on the type, quality, place of manufacture, and finishing, a set of XV century plate armor would cost from $8,000 to $40,000 or more. At the same time, a simple set of armor for a regular foot soldier, especially if some obsolete pieces of equipment were used, could cost around $2,000—but a good one would still be somewhere near $4,000 and more.

But.

When we talk about this price range, we still mean one of the most numerous parts of the armies—men-at-arms—ordinary soldiers, not the true elite, though their status allowed them to be referred to as “gentlemen”. By definition, those who fought in full plate armor were called ‘men at arms’, while a knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a political leader. And the price difference between the regular men-at-arms’ plate armor and knight’s plate armor is huge! It can be compared with a difference between a regular modern business suit and a modern exclusive designer limited edition bespoke business suit. Such armor was made to order by renowned armorers, and, as a rule, had decals and decorations, even if we are talking about combat, not ceremonial armor, and its cost converted by the above mentioned method was in the range of $100,000 to $250,000.

— The Cost of Plate Armor in Modern Money – Armstreet

Being a miles did not mean being a vassal, that is, an individual who had been granted lands in exchange for military service. Initially many knights were soldiers in the court of a great lord who provided a livelihood and the accouterments necessary to fight on horseback. Naturally the people selected combined physical vigor and fighting skill with fealty and homage to the lord. The profession of knighthood attracted those who could find the weapons, armor, and horses necessary; as such, it became the refuge of the younger sons of a lord to whom the future may have seemed financially bleak (by custom, only the firstborn son inherited most of the father’s lands). As Duby claims, knighthood was the profession of youth in search of adventure, prestige, and fortune, which they expected to receive from war or sometimes from marriage to a rich woman. Initially it attracted not only the sons of the lower nobility but also better-off peasants who owned the instruments of a heavy cavalryman. This was the case of Guigonnet of Germolles, a rich peasant of the twelfth century. Guigonnet had his living quarters not in a tower or a fortified manor or castle, like the nobility, but in an agricultural center, where the products of the land—wheat, wine, fruits—were gathered. What distinguished him from the other peasants was his higher standard of living. Probably he did not work the land with his own hands anymore; he had subordinates to do that. Moreover, he spent time hunting like the aristocrats and belonged to religious organizations, where he met social superiors. But the most important aspect of his life was that at times he wore the knightly weapons and armor that he owned, rode his strong horse, and joined the other knights.

Guigonnet is obviously the exception, even at the emergence of knighthood….

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 173

[Ahmed rides back into the pallisade after taking a risk to rescue a child who fell behind the evacuation from the imminent attack by a proported fire-breathing dragon.]

Herger:

So you saw the fire worm?

Ahmed:

It’s cavalry.

Herger:

I rather prefer a dragon.

Ahmed:

Hundreds, with torches.

— “The 13th Warrior” (1999)

…[For] most of the Middle Ages the weapon that best typifies killing from a distance was the crossbow…. Constructed initially of wood, it was made of steel by the fifteenth century [C.E.]. It was essentially a bow mounted crosswise that shot metal bolts that could pierce any cuirass at most distances. It could be effective to 370-500 meters. Crossbowmen had two advantages over bowmen: they did not need extensive and continuous training to become adept, and they could prepare the crossbow ahead of time. Yet the complex mechanism to cock the crossbow meant that it was much slower than the longbow (probably six arrows to one bolt) and left the person firing a visible target for enemy bowmen. This meant that crossbowmen often operated in combination with a footman, called a pavisier, armed with a spear and a very large shield (pavise) behind which the crossbowmen could cock his weapon.

The best crossbowmen were considered to come from Catalonia, Gascony, or Liguria, the Italian region where Genoa is located. They tended to be a large component of most medieval armies, considered an elite corps occupying a central position in the battle line and opening the encounter or attempting to outflank the enemy. Membership in its ranks was so highly valued in Spain that service was considered equivalent to that of a cavalryman.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 135

Armies are like prize fighters training for a bout: They reach a moment of supreme preparedness—muscles taut, reflexes swift, determination fixed at the highest pitch. But with a lull in activity they start growing flabby. This is what happened to [the Duke of] Parma’s invasion force [in 1587-8 C.E.]. All through that dismal winter, as the snows and freezing rains held the battalions in camp, the war machine began to disintegrate. Provisions were consumed at an alarming rate—Parma had to send the cavalry inland to scavenge—and budgeted funds began to give out. As spring passed, the men went unpaid and unfed, and they began to sicken and to desert. “We are bound to conclude that the delay is for God’s greater glory,” Parma wrote in exasperation to Philip, “but the Enterprise, once so easy and safe, will now be infinitely more difficult, and will incur a much larger expenditure of blood and trouble.”

— The Armada, pp. 70

[Glover] Johns…showed marksmanship for what it ought to be. This full colonel would stroll along the [rifle] range for a while giving encouragement and instruction, then stop by a soldier.

“You got a quarter, son?” he’d ask.

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me your rifle there.” The trooper would hand over his weapon. After taking a good hard look at it, Johns would turn to the kid. “Now you just throw that quarter up in the air. High as you like.”

The trooper would toss up the coin, and before he had a chance to blink, Johns would put a bullet—sometimes two—right through the middle of it. He’d hand back the kid’s rifle as the quarter ricocheted to the ground, and continue down the firing line until he got the urge to display his prowess once again.

The “Johns Quarter,” as it was called, was a sought-after prize. More than that, though, was the pleasure of watching him “produce” one. The troops loved it. Johns was a showman in the truest sense of the word (and he was also the first to admit it)—for him it was a basic principle of leadership.

— About Face, Chapter 12