Following Orders

[Femme Falchion]

what!!!!

Sister Hatchet runs from one end of her chambers to the other....tossing around piles of cloth, parchment and empty wine jugs, looking for her coin purse.  She finally locates it (hidden in the false bottom bible) and flies out the front gates, hollering her orders for her horse to be readied for a trip to the market....

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

[Sir William Marcus]

Barnes & Noble discounted book alert!

Weapons & Fighting Techniques of the Medieval Warrior 1000-1500 AD: M Dougherty

Fits well alongside Battles of the Crusades, and Battles of the Medieval World.

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

FLORINE OF BURGUNDY
(1083-1097)



It was said that the son of Sweno, king of Denmark, who had assumed the cross, and was leading fifteen hundred horsemen to the holy war, had been surprised by the Turks whilst advancing rapidly across the plains of Cappadocia. Attacked by an enemy superior in numbers, he had defended himself during a whole day, without being able to repulse the infidels, with all the efforts of his courage or the battle-axes of his warriors. Florine, daughter of Eudes I., duke of Burgundy, who accompanied the Danish hero, and to whom he was to be married after the taking of Jerusalem, had valiantly fought by his side. Pierced by seven arrows, but still fighting, she sought with Sweno to open a passage towards the mountains, when they were overwhelmed by their enemies. They fell together on the field of battle, after having seen all their knights and most faithful servants perish around them.

[Sir William Marcus]

What a woman, and such a sad story.

[Lady Christina de Pond]

that's love. hmmmmmm wonders, wonders many things and wanders off to wonder these things

[Sir William Marcus]

[Lady Christina de Pond]

wouldn't you like to know

[Sir William Marcus]

Uuuuummmm....NO...not really sister 

[Lady Christina de Pond]

it would probley confuse you anyway. 

[Sir William Marcus]

You're probably right

[Richard de Graeme]

What a woman, and such a sad story.

Yes, missing are angels carrying their blood soaked bodies aloft to meet their vengeful god. Aah, I here the tumpeters sound and chorus sing. I forget how much good war doth bring.

[Sir William Marcus]

Two centuries before the Crusades there was....

Charles"The Hammer" Martel

Defender of Christendom

The most important of his wars was one with the Saracens, who came across the Pyrenees from Spain and invaded the land of the Franks, intending to establish Mohammedanism there. Their army was led by Abd-er-Rahman (Abd-er-Rah'-man), the Saracen governor of Spain.

On his march through the southern districts of the land of the Franks Abd-er-Rahman destroyed many towns and villages, killed a number of the people, and seized all the property he could carry off. He plundered the city of Bordeaux (bor-do'), and, it is said, obtained so many valuable things that every soldier "was loaded with golden vases and cups and emeralds and other precious stones."

But meanwhile Charles Martel was not idle. As quickly as he could he got together a great army of Franks and Germans and marched against the Saracens. The two armies met between the cities of Tours and Poitiers (pwaw-te-ay) in October, 732. For six days there was nothing but an occasional skirmish between small parties from both sides; but on the seventh day a great battle took place.



Both Christians and Mohammedans fought with terrible earnestness. The fight went on all day, and the field was covered with the bodies of the slain. But towards evening, during a resolute charge made by the Franks, Abd-er-Rahman was killed. Then the Saracens gradually retired to their camp.

It was not yet known, however, which side had won; and the Franks expected that the fight would be renewed in the morning.

But when Charles Martel, with his Christian warriors, appeared on the field at sunrise there was no enemy to fight. The Mohammedans had fled in the silence and darkness of the night and had left behind them all their valuable spoils. There was now no doubt which side had won.

The battle of Tours, or Poitiers, as it should be called, is regarded as one of the decisive battles of the world. It decided that Christians, and not Moslems, should be the ruling power in Europe.

Charles Martel is especially celebrated as the hero of this battle. It is said that the name MARTEL was given to him because of his bravery during the fight. Marteau (mar-to') is the French word for hammer, and one of the old French historians says that as a hammer breaks and crushes iron and steel, so Charles broke and crushed the power of his enemies in the battle of Tours.



But though the Saracens fled from the battlefield of Tours, they did not leave the land of the Franks; and Charles had to fight other battles with them, before they were finally defeated. At last, however, he drove them across the Pyrenees, and they never again attempted to invade Frankland.

After his defeat of the Saracens Charles Martel was looked upon as the great champion of Christianity; and to the day of his death, in 741, he was in reality, though not in name, the king of the Franks.

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

I thought it only fitting to add a little biographical study on the Opposing side. The reason why we got here. Frere William posted a great article on Charles "The Hammer" Martel, but maybe there are some of you out there, that want to know how it got to that point? You'll notice a lot of things you're hearing on a day to day basis in today's world.

Many thanks to this article by Richard A. Gabriel. Originally published in the Summer 2007 issue of MHQ Magazine.




The long shadow of Muhammad stretches across centuries of strife to the present. Today an estimated 1.4 billion Muslims around the globe follow his teachings—the word of God as revealed to Muhammad and set down in the Koran—making Islam the world's largest religion (as of the 2008 Vatican public record statement). But despite Muhammad's remarkable accomplishments, there is no modern account of his life that examines his role as Islam's first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency. Had Muhammad not succeeded as a commander, however, Islam might have been relegated to a geographic backwater—and the conquest of the Byzantine and Persian empires by Arab armies might never have occurred.

The idea of Muhammad as a military man will be new to many. Yet he was a general. In the space of a single decade he fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned another thirty-eight military operations where others were in command but operating under his orders and strategic direction. Wounded twice, he also twice experienced having his positions overrun by superior forces before he managed to turn the tables on his enemies and rally his men to victory. More than a field general and tactician, he was also a military theorist, organizational reformer, strategic thinker, operational-level combat commander, political-military leader, heroic soldier, and revolutionary. The inventor of insurgency warfare and history's first successful practitioner, Muhammad had no military training before he commanded an army in the field.

Muhammad's intelligence service eventually rivaled that of Byzantium and Persia, especially when it came to political information. He reportedly spent hours devising tactical and political stratagems, and once remarked that "all war is cunning," reminding modern analysts of Sun Tzu's dictum, "all war is deception." In his thinking and application of force Muhammad was a combination of Karl von Clause­witz and Niccolo Machiavelli, for he always employed force in the service of political goals. An astute grand strategist, he used non­mili­tary methods (alliance building, politi­cal assassination, bribery, religious appeals, mercy, and calculated butchery) to strengthen his long-term position, sometimes even at the expense of short-term military considerations.

Muhammad's belief in Islam and his own role as the "Messenger of God" revolutionized Arabian warfare and resulted in the creation of the ancient world's first army motivated by a coherent system of ideological belief. The ideology of holy war (jihad) and martyrdom (shahada) for the faith was transmitted to the West during the wars between Muslims and Christians in Spain and France, where it changed traditional Christian pacifistic thinking on war, brought into being a coterie of Christian warrior saints, and provided the Catho­lic Church with its ideological justification for the Crusades. Ideology—whether religious or secular—has remained a primary component of military ventures ever since.

Muhammad forged the military instrument of the Arab conquests that began within two years of his death by bringing into being a completely new kind of army not seen before in Arabia. He introduced no fewer than eight major military reforms that transformed the armies and conduct of war in Arabia. Just as Philip of Macedon transformed the armies of Greece so his successor, Alexander, could employ them as instruments of conquest and empire, Muhammad transformed the armies of Arabia so his successors could use them to defeat the armies of Persia and Byzantium and establish the heartland of the empire of Islam.

[Monsignor de Beaumanoir]

Muhammad was first and foremost a revolutionary, a fiery religious guerrilla leader who created and led the first genuine national insurgency in antiquity that is comprehensible in modern terms, a fact not lost on the jihadis of the present day, who often cite the Koran and Muhammad's use of violence as justification for their own insurgencies. Unlike conventional generals, Muhammad did not seek the defeat of a foreign enemy or invader; rather, he sought to replace the existing Arabian social order with a new one based upon a radically different ideological worldview. To achieve his revolutionary goals Muhammad utilized all the means recognized by modern analysts as characteristic of a successful insurgency in today's world.
Although Muhammad began his struggle for a new order with a small guerrilla cadre capable of undertaking only limited hit-and-run raids, by the time he was ready to attack Mecca a decade later that small guerrilla force had grown into a large conventional army with integrated cavalry and infantry units capable of conducting large-scale combat operations. It was the first truly national military force in Arab history, and it was this conventional military instrument that Muhammad's successors used to forge a great empire.
Muhammad's rise to power was a textbook example of a successful insurgency, in all likelihood the first such example in antiquity. The West has been accustomed to thinking of the Arab conquests that followed Muhammad in purely conventional military terms. But the armies that achieved those conquests did not exist in Arabia before Muhammad. It was Muhammad's successful unconventional guerrilla operations, his successful insurgency that brought those armies into existence. The later Arab conquests, as regards both strategic concept and the new armies as in¬struments of military method, were the consequences of Muhammad's prior military success as the leader of an insurgency.
This aspect of Muhammad's military life as a guerrilla insurgent is likely to strike the reader as curious. But if the means and methods used by modern military analysts to characterize insurgency warfare are employed as categories of analysis, it is clear that Muhammad's campaign to spread Islam throughout Arabia fulfilled all of the criteria. One requirement for an insurgency is a determined leader whose followers regard him as special in some way and worthy of their following him. In Muhammad's case his own charismatic personality was enhanced by his deeply held belief that he was God's Messenger, and that to follow Muhammad was to obey the dictates of God himself.
Insurgencies also require a messianic ideology, one that espouses a coherent creed or plan to replace the existing social, political, and economic order with a new order that is better, more just, or ordained by history or even by God himself. Mu¬hammad used the new religious creed of Islam to challenge basic traditional Arab social institutions and values as oppressive and unholy and worthy of replacement. To this end he created the ummah, or community of believers, God's community on earth, to serve as a messianic replacement for the clans and tribes that were the basis of traditional Arab society. One of Mu¬hammad's most important achievements was the establishment of new social institutions that greatly altered and in some cases completely replaced those of the old Arab social order.