So more than a few of us are History buffs and one or two of us have even studied it. So I think we need a place where we can discuss it freely. Be it WWII, the Crusades, Stone Age or even modern history. 

Let's not fight, but let's also not be afraid to speak our minds. The study of history needs one to remain neutral and distanced. For example being rased a Christian I automatically support the Christians when reading of the Crusades. However study reveals that in many instances the so called Christians were even worse than their Muslim enemies and acts of atrocity were commited by both sides. 

So with this amazingly well done speech by a very evil man (in fictional media so as to not offend anyone) let us begin! 

Aegon, tell me you read Amin Maalouf's The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. I'm sure many other authors touch on this subject from a similar perspective, but man, this is a must read for anyone interested in the Crusades. 

Luckily I had great teachers when it came to medieval history, and they helped us a lot with seeing things in a different light. 

I'm a Christian but what are those Christian rulers and their knights to me? Absolutely nothing, so I'm not in any way attached to them *or* the values they held. The fact that I'm Orthodox and not Catholic is not a factor in this. BTW, Aegon, "Cept for some heretical factions that count, the Catholic church was the only Christian power" is not true. The Komnenian period (which coincided with the first crusades) was one of the peaks of the Byzantine Empire (Orthodox church, mind you), and that was a time when the western world was nothing compared to them, both culturally and economically speaking. Alas! byzantine history doesn't interest anyone.  

The Crusades were about political power and about giving those people a common enemy, or else they would have just carried on doing battle among themselves. In essence, it was a highly effective way of diffusing the tension inside their own kingdoms. And yes, they were butchers. The accounts of what they did when they entered Antioch and Jerusalem left us all speechless when we read it in class. There was nothing holy about that. But yes, an example of effective propaganda, then *and* now. You don't want to know how many books I've read that compare what's happening now in the Middle East with the oh so holy crusades. Fascinating, really. 

Aegon the Conqueror wrote:

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 Plus I also really like Richard the Lionheart and find him fascinating. 

btw has mr Macha seen this? 

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 Aegon. Honey. We need to talk about this. Sit here and tell me why do you like Richard so much. *goes into The Wire mode* Cause that shit ain't right! 

Kidding. But seriously now. What i find fascinating is the fascination that people have with Richard. He's mostly regarded as this great figure when - except for his military skils, and I'll get tot that in a moment - he was lousy in every other aspect. King of England...really?He couldn't care less about England, he didn't even like the place. He was a bad ruler, a cruel man and his ambitions got the better of him. Firts rebellion against his father? Epic fail. He had nothing of his father's brilliance. He just squeezed England and his posessions in France to allow him to go play soldier in the Holy Land..where he did what exactly? Acre was captured (and I meant the siege of Antioch in my previous comment, not what Richard did with his prisoners at Acre), and he quarrelled with Saladin for a while, accomplishing what? Not that much. But then, Richard quarelled with everyone, and with his allies the most. See, this is what makes a great ruler: the ability to keep the peace, appease and keep his allies and leave everyone else to do their work. Richard was a conqueror, and not even a great one at that - this is my opinion. Because really, taking prisoners without realizing he can't keep them, only to butcher them shortly after? No, it doesn't make sense form a military perspective. He was just cleaning his own mess. He was a soldier and nothing else. For God's sake, the man couldn't return safely from his crusade. 

But Saladin? I agree with you on Saladin. Now that is a great conqueror. He's my baby. 

I meant the siege of Antioch and the massacre there in my previous comment, were you referring to Richard's episode with the prisoners at Acre when you said it's being judged too harshly?

Thanks for the heads-up on that trailer. Mr. Macha hasn't played RTW in a long time now but he was in love with it. And Carthage? He's gonna go ballistic over that. He specialized in Roman & Hellenistic history so that's a winner for him. 

 

Edit: Wow, lovely fragment, Aegon. Couldn't you find something in The Art of War that didn't involve the beheading of women? 

-- Edited by Macha on Wednesday 31st of October 2012 08:03:30 AM

Aegon the Conqueror wrote:

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He is still an interesting character. Hell I don't like Caligula at all, yet he's still a fascinating character. You forget that king Louis was to blame for a great deal of what transpired during the Third Crusade.
Emotions don't have a place in a discussion dealing with people who lived 800 years ago.

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Well I didn't say you shouldn't find him interesting. But when you say "fascinating", that term has a positive connotation, hence my 'why do you like him so much?' retort. 

Emotions exist, you can't just keep them in check. Hell, I get pissed about a lot of things. Richard pisses me off, for example. I don't take it personal, and I can talk about any subject. This is fun for me. I'll get angry sometimes, other times I'll make fun of it. But this is why things are controversial. Let's defend our POVs, but let's not ask people "we talk about this without getting emotional, or we don't talk about this at all", it won't work. Also, I happen to like rants. As long as we don't attack each other, I'm willing to discuss these things in any manner. But please, don't dismiss people's opinions just because they're more visceral than yours. Just explain your point of view better. 

 

-- Edited by Macha on Wednesday 31st of October 2012 10:56:59 AM

-- Edited by Macha on Wednesday 31st of October 2012 10:57:26 AM

Maybe I shouldn't comment cause my blood is boiling right now.

How can you even compare them when one side was defending themselves against a horde of warlords and fortune seekers a callous religious leader in another continent decided to entice to go to their front door with anihilation orders so that they wouldn't disturb the neighbourhood back home?

No, I just can't talk about this calmly. I'm sorry. I better leave this thread.

 

Ok Macha to answer this question will take a lot of typing for which I don't have time now, so I will just quote my favourite Historical Novellist on this. I never said he was a good king, but he was a fascinating man!
Anyways here goes Sharon Penman
"Richard I was never one of my favorite kings, although my knowledge of him was admittedly superficial. I saw him as one-dimensional, drunk on blood and glory, arrogant, ruthless, a brilliant battle commander, but an ungrateful son and a careless king, and that is the Richard who made a brief appearance in Here in Dragons. I saw no reason not to accept the infamous verdict of the nineteenth century historian, William Stubbs, that he was “a bad son, a bad husband, a bad king.”

So I was not expecting the Richard that I found when I began to research Devil’s Brood. I would eventually do a blog called “The Surprising Lionheart,” for after years of writing about real historical figures, I’d never before discovered such a disconnect between the man and the myth—at least not since I’d launched my writing career by telling the story of another king called Richard.

The more I learned about this Richard, the less I agreed with Dr Stubbs. I think Richard can fairly be acquitted of two of those three damning charges. I loved writing about Henry II. He was a great king—but a flawed father, and bears much of the blame for his estrangement from his sons. Certainly both Richard and Geoffrey had legitimate grievances, and it can be argued that they were driven to rebellion by Henry’s monu-mental mistakes; see Devil’s Brood. I bled for Henry, dying betrayed and brokenhearted at Chinon, but he brought so much of that grief upon himself.

Nor was Richard a bad king. Historians today give him higher marks than the Victorians did. Yes, he spent little time in England, but it was not the center of the uni-verse, was only part of the Angevin empire. After his return from his crusade and captivity in Germany, he found himself embroiled in a bitter war with the French king, and spent the last five years of his life defending his domains from Philippe Capet. The irony is that he has been criticized in our time for the very actions—his crusading and his military campaigns—that won him acclaim in his own world. By medieval standards, he was a successful king and historians now take that into consideration in passing judgment upon him.

He was, however, a bad husband, his infidelities notorious enough to warrant a lecture from the Bishop of Lincoln. Note that I say he was taken to task for adultery, not sodomy. I discussed the question of Richard’s sexuality at some length in the Author’s Note for Devil’s Brood, will not repeat it here since this Author’s Note is already going to rival a novella in length. Very briefly, the first suggestion that Richard preferred men to women as bedmates was not made until 1948, when it took root with surprising speed; I myself helped to perpetuate it in Here be Dragons, for I’d seen no need to do in-depth research for what was basically a walk-on role. But the actual “evidence” for this claim is very slight, indeed. I’ll address this issue again in A King’s Ransom, for that is where Richard will have his famous encounter with the hermit. The research I did for Devil’s Brood inclined me to be skeptical, and I am even more so after finishing Lionheart, for I had not realized the intensity of the hatred between Richard and Philippe. The French chroniclers accused Richard of arranging the murder of Conrad of Montferrat, of poison-ing the Duke of Burgundy, of plotting to kill Philippe by sending Assassins to Paris, of being bribed by the “godless infidels” and betraying Christendom by allying himself with Saladin. So why would they not have accused him of sodomy, a mortal sin in the Middle Ages, and a charge that would have stained his honor and imperiled his soul? If they’d had such a lethal weapon at hand, we can be sure they’d have made use of it.

Berengaria has remained in history’s shadows, a sad ghost, a neglected wife. She has not received the respect she deserves because her courage was the quiet kind; she was not a royal rebel like her formidable mother-in-law. She has been called a barren queen, unfairly blamed for the breakdown of her marriage. Since I knew of her unhappy marital history, I was somewhat surprised to discover that the marriage seems to have gotten off to a promising start. Because Richard shunned her company after he recovered his free-dom, I’d assumed this was true in the Holy Land, too. But Richard actually went to some trouble to have her with him when he could. It would have been easier and certainly safer to have had her stay in Acre instead of bringing her to Jaffa and, then, Latrun. We cannot be sure what caused their later estrangement, but I have some ideas; as a novelist, I have to, don’t I? I think we can safely say, though, that the greater blame was Richard’s.

What surprised me the most about Richard the man as opposed to Richard the myth? I already knew he was almost insanely reckless with his own safety, so it came as some-thing of a shock to learn that he was a cautious battle commander, that he took such care with the lives of his men. It is a fascinating paradox, and one which goes far toward explaining why he was loved by his soldiers, who seemed willing “to wade in blood to the pillars of Hercules if he so desired,” in the words of the chronicler Richard of Devizes.

It also surprised me to learn that his health was not robust, that he was often ill, for that makes his battlefield exploits all the more remarkable. The Richard of legend smolders like a torch, glowering, dour, and dangerous. But the Richard who comes alive in the chronicles had a sardonic sense of humor, could be playful and unpredictable; Baha al-Din reported that he habitually employed a bantering conversational style, so it wasn’t always easy to tell if he were serious or joking. And while I’d known he was well educated, able to jest in Latin and write poetry in two languages, I admit to being impressed when I discovered him quoting from Horace. Even his harshest critics acknowledge his military genius; he hasn’t always been given enough credit, though, for his intelligence. The mythical Richard is usually portrayed as a gung-ho warrior who cared only for blood, battles, and what he could win at the point of a sword, but the real Richard was no stranger to diplomatic strategy; he was capable of subtlety, too, and could be just as devious as his wily sire.

But I was most amazed by his behavior in the Holy Land, by his willingness to deal with the Saracens as he would have dealt with Christian foes, via negotiations and even a marital alliance. As tragic as the massacre of the Acre garrison was, it was done for what he considered valid military reasons, not because of religious bias, as I’d once thought. He was not the religious zealot I’d expected. The man who was the first prince to take the cross refused to lay siege to Jerusalem, alarmed his own allies by his cordial relations with the Saracens, and although he believed they were infidels, denied God’s Grace, he respected their courage. According to Baha al-Din, he formed friendships with some of Saladin’s elite Mamluks and emirs, even knighting several of them. That was the last thing I’d have imagined—knighting his infidel enemies in the midst of a holy war?

I don’t expect Lionheart to change the public perception of Richard I, any more than The Sunne in Splendour could compete with the Richard III of Shakespeare. But I do hope that my readers will agree with me that this Richard is much more complex and, therefore, more interesting, than the storied soldier-king. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised by what my research revealed. As an Australian friend, Glenne Gilbert, once observed astutely, “There had to be reasons why he was Eleanor’s favorite son.”

That's the problem with historical novelists, Aegon, especially those who focus on biographies. They can make anyone look good.

When I say I side with them, I'm not saying what they did was right, I in no way condone the invasion of European barbarians. However it should be noted that those Muslims also invaded the Holy Land and took it from Christian and Jewish rulers. So right of conquest applies all round. If you can seize it, it's yours by right. Such are the rules of Conquest. What I mean is that if I were to live in the 1100's as a christian knight I too would have joined the Crusade. I said as much earlier. So in no way am I saying what they did was just, righteous or holy. Fact remains there is no such thing as a Holy war. Same goes for a Jihad though.
I leave you with a quote from Balian in Kingdom of Heaven, " None of us took this city from Muslims. No Muslim of the great army now coming against us was born when this city was lost. We fight over an offence we did not give, against those who were not alive to be offended."

Aegon the Conqueror wrote:

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So right of conquest applies all round. If you can seize it, it's yours by right. Such are the rules of Conquest. 

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I profoundly disagree with this statement. There isn't such a thing as a "right" of conquest. You might be able to do as you want with something if you are able to steal it and strong enough to hold it, but that doesn't give you a right over it. It is not "rightfully" yours. The only things that are rightfully yours are whatever you create with your own hands and mind. The rest you may possess whether it belongs to you or not. But it isn't your "right" to do so just cause you could take it.

Aegon the Conqueror wrote:

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I take offense when someone does not want to respond because their blood is boiling. Just ask me what I meant or to state something more clearly and I will.

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 Again, I didn't mean to offend you and if I did, I apologize. That said, your dismissive answer offended me too. I am sure you didn't mean it, but it did.

I only wanted to clarify that even though my blood was boiling I thought my answer was civil and a reasonable statement. I didn't attack you, I just told you what I thought. And when I that it was upsetting me too much and I didn't want to get caught up in those bad feelings, I left. I refrained. I didn't realize there was a question you wanted answered from me and I ignored and that caused offence.

JUst to lighten things up a little ... Aegon , what did Richard have on his Coat of arms thing on his chest?

Aha! Apparently not! You fell into my trap .... they were called leopards when then were on the ground and Lions when they were on their hind legs (Scottish heraldry) it was on a program last night and I thought of you ! (seemingly they didn't know any difference between Lions and leopards )

Oh you did it now Aegon! Imma gonna get my popcorn! ( love the topic BTW)

That history can be done or write or discuss objectively it´s a 19th century concept from German Historicism and French Positivism and a lie. There is no such thing. History we know was written by the victorious, so is tinged with ideology. You can not avoid personal opinions and is not desirable to do so. The only desirable thing is to be polite and patient. History is personal, it reveals the depth and truth of your convictions, my dear Aegon.
I´m pretty weak at medieval history so I will stay away for now. The most interesting thing about Medievalism for me, till now, it´s economics and don´t know much either about that so I hold my peace

Black as Snow wrote:

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That's where my interest lies, those broader considerations that transcend individual battles, leaders and political boundaries.

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 This is how you study history as a whole nowadays, if you have good teachers. This is what gives you the best perspective on the world, not event-based history. On the other hand, this is what makes it less attractive for the general public. I'm actually surprised you feel this way, BaS, because usually people outside the academia don't have the interest or the patience to go looking for 'the bigger picture' (social, economical etc). Then again, you being you, this shouldn't come as a surprise.  

What andrea says is 100% true. The first thing that I've learned when I began studying history in college is that history is not (or should not) be a science that studies what happened in the past, but the discourse on what happened. History is not and will never be objective, because the people writing it cannot be objective. As a historian you should be balanced, and strive for objectivity, knowing also that you will never achieve it. Every text you study has gone through at least one personal filter. In the case of ancient texts, it's gone through tens or even hundreds, because of the copying and translations. So it's impossible to establish the truth. You can confront various sources and see what matches - it's easier for deaths and battles and marriages. But you can never truly know the inner workings of somebody's mind, unless they left a journal and even then you have to consider that perspective as being distorted to some degree. To conclude, for me it's way more interesting to look at the perception of a certain event or historical figure, than simply retelling that event all over again or trying to play detective.

Macha wrote:

 This is how you study history as a whole nowadays, if you have good teachers. This is what gives you the best perspective on the world, not event-based history. On the other hand, this is what makes it less attractive for the general public. I'm actually surprised you feel this way, BaS, because usually people outside the academia don't have the interest or the patience to go looking for 'the bigger picture' (social, economical etc). Then again, you being you, this shouldn't come as a surprise.  

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 I was telling her last night exactly that.  She´s full of surprises.

Annales, the historiographical school, was instrumental in the creation of my university programs but, living in the third world it is logical that our institutions are more inclined to Social History, micro history, English historians of the Industrial Revolution and the misfits like Walter Benjamin and some others.

Medievalists though, like Duby (Annales school) are great writers, almost novelists,  that emphasize long-term social and economic processes,  I think you´ll love it Bas. You should check his books.

andrea wrote:

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Medievalists though, like Duby (Annales school) are great writers, almost novelists,  that emphasize long-term social and economic processes,  I think you´ll love it Bas. You should check his books.

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 I will make a point of it, Andrea.  Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. 

Aegon, the history that they teach in school or highschool is very badly handled here as well, but that doesn't mean that it's the same at higher levels. Or is it? In any case, another thing that I've personally learned in college was that you only need to learn how to study history, from there on it's individual study. You just need to know how to look at things, after that you can learn everything yourself. 

Andrea, yes the good old Annales school of thought. Same thing here, we're very much French-oriented, at least with the study of the Middle Ages. Duby is my absolute favorite! BaS if you ever want to read a very good collection of history books, this is for you. You will not be bored, I guarantee it. They're pretty massive though. 

Aegon the Conqueror wrote:

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Didn't U2 write a song about the missing children? Mother's of the Disappeared. .

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 U2? don´t remember but Sting yes, he did that many years ago but just for the mothers and grandmothers of the "disappeared", the ones with the white scarves (?) on their heads. Should look for a pic.

Here

-- Edited by andrea on Saturday 3rd of November 2012 12:53:25 PM

 

 Aegon, I can´t say anything about your education but I wish our years of military coups were remembered enough in our education. We have 30.000 missing, tortured people. The military stole babies from their mothers' wombs. That sort of thing must be remembered.

It is indeed dedicated to the Mothers you speak of, first time I heard it it brought tears to my eyes. One of my favourite U2 songs. 

The clips might be from Chile, but the video is unofficial. It's that very concert that served as inspiration for the song.

I truly love P. Gabriel, sometimes I wonder about this political awareness though. Am I getting old????

Macha wrote:

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andrea wrote:

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 We have 30.000 missing, tortured people. The military stole babies from their mothers' wombs. That sort of thing must be remembered.

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 Have you seen the movie Imagining Argentina, andrea? If so, what did you make of it? It's very brutal, but it stayed with me.

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 I don´t think so Macha, I should check.