[HN Gopher] 60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale
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60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale
Author : drdee
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-09-21 22:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historynet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historynet.com)
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| the combat of the thirty is indeed quite famous in some circles.
|
| Reenactors, in particular, love it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amm1gFbfPN0
| jasonjamerson wrote:
| I don't think I understand how they were going full out and so
| few died.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You underestimate how ceremonial battles were.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| That's not it at all. Armor and tight ranks are really,
| really good at keeping people alive right up until gunpowder
| weapons.
|
| It was entirely normal for armies of several thousand people
| on each side to clash and have <1% casualties for an hour or
| more. And you can tell this is not because of some ceremonial
| reasons because of what happens when ranks of one side
| finally break, because then the side that manages to hold
| cohesion will absolutely slaughter the losers.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| Go watch some videos of modern melee tournaments where the
| participants are in full armour. Armoured combat essentially
| turns all weapons into blunt objects unless you manage to get
| a point of a sword into a gap which is hard to do while being
| pummeled over the head.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| It seems from the wiki article that the loosing team was
| executed - or am I reading it wrong?
|
| > As evening fell that day, the victor, Captain de Beaumanoir,
| returned the prisoners to Josselin and had them executed.
| reidjs wrote:
| Armor
| somenameforme wrote:
| It also would not have been chivalrous to kill an opponent
| who yielded, so the only ones dying are those who were killed
| in short order on the battle field, or those who refused to
| yield in hopeless circumstance.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "you can't ransom the dead!" and basically all the
| combatants were noble.
| varjag wrote:
| Weren't they all executed in the end?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| >All the prisoners were treated well and were released
| promptly on the payment of a small ransom.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Thirty
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Tis but a scratch
| telchior wrote:
| Probably much more important than chivalry: you can't
| ransom off a captive who is dead.
|
| Ransoms were really, really large in that period. Five
| years after this battle, the English captured the French
| king at Poitiers. His ransom was 4 million gold coins plus,
| I think, various concessions. The French ended up having to
| pay a lot of ransoms through the whole war, and as a
| result, the nobility and crown were so poor they couldn't
| prevent banditry and famines.
|
| Barbara Tuchman's _A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th
| Century_ is a very engaging account of this period.
| renewiltord wrote:
| A bit confusing. The challenge was:
|
| > _Armed at all points, and on our steeds--and Heaven defend the
| right!_
|
| The battle was decided by
|
| > _Breton squire Guillaume de Montauban leapt on his charger and
| rode straight into the English ranks_
|
| The outcome was
|
| > _Though his mounted charge may have represented a breach of
| etiquette, the outcome proved such a crushing blow that the
| English could not carry on and effectively capitulated._
|
| Why is that a breach of etiquette if you're on the horse and you
| all agreed to be on your horses. But assuming for whatever sake,
| that this _was_ a breach, that makes the whole story absolutely
| hilarious. It is reminiscent of the Indiana Jones scene where
| Harrison Ford pulls out a gun to shoot a guy who does sword
| tricks.
|
| Hahaha, what a bunch of suckers.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| 'leapt on his charger' implies that he attacked very quickly,
| perhaps after the battle had officially started but both sides
| were still in fact glaring at each other and getting ready. I
| imagine it being a bit similar to a boxing match which begins
| when the bell rings, but opponents will typically touch gloves
| as a sign of respect before actually fighting. Sometimes a
| fighter will use this moment to sneak in an unexpected attack
| and catch his opponent off guard - well within the rules, but
| considered poor sportsmanship.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| They had already fought for several hours earlier in the day
| and then paused for lunch. After resuming, the English lost
| one of their leaders but kept fighting and bunched up
| tightly. As far as fighting on foot goes goes, this made it
| impossible for them to win but also impossible to defeat
| given the number of fighters available.
|
| The modern equivalent would be ending a gun battle by driving
| an armored truck through the enemy group.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The elaborate formalities of historical combat probably evolved
| as a way to minimize casualties. It's a pattern that appears
| over and over in military anthropology, where the goal of most
| conflict was to command good territory or carry off women.
| Going all-out to annihilate your enemy tribe completely was the
| equivalent of nuclear war.
| Wohlf wrote:
| It's also much deadlier for the winners to not let the
| opposing side retreat/surrender, if people feel trapped
| they'll fight to the death.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| Ransom money and family relations or treatment of the
| hostages the enemy had were probably the big motivators.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder if the breach of etiquette was that it was a squire
| who charged, not a knight.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| Combat like this without reserve cavalry likely devolved into
| dismounted melee immediately after the first charge. They would
| have started mounted, charged with lances, became embroiled in
| close combat, eventually dismounting or being pulled off, then
| melee combat on foot.
|
| The squire in question probably broke ranks and ran off and
| mounted his steed and then flanked his opens at full charge and
| just ran them over. That's usually the job of reserve cavalry
| to smash formations of foot soldiers but they agreed to not
| have any reserves so it could be considered against the terms
| they agreed to even if he was taking part in the fight from the
| start.
| peteradio wrote:
| > Guillaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaume ... de ... Montauuuuuuban!!!!!
|
| > Goddamnit Guillaume...
| beckingz wrote:
| He had his chicken it was time to go!
| david422 wrote:
| Harrison Ford was originally supposed to do a giant sword
| fight. But then for several reasons, it was shortened and the
| outcome was much better:
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/raiders-...
| some_random wrote:
| This might be the lamest nitpick I've ever written, but isn't a
| Battle Royale an individual/small team fight to the death? This
| is just a small fight between two teams.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Yep, and it requries computers. It is clearly a use avount la
| lettre. The title is to be understood as a play on words:
| "Battle Royale" == "Fight in the most royal manner possible".
| -- Whether it's a good play on words is for the reader to
| judge, though.
| troutwine wrote:
| > Yep, and it requries computers.
|
| Does it? Wrasslin' has had Battle Royals as long as I've been
| alive and conscious and I'm sure -- although I can't find the
| reference now -- that English bare-knuckle boxers used to
| have Battle Royals in the mercantile period for non-trivial
| money.
| Archelaos wrote:
| This is not essential for my main point. I did not want to
| be exhaustive. I only wanted to stress the avount la lettre
| aspect. As long as we have no medieval source for the term,
| you may choose whatever more or less contemporary meaning
| that seems fit as the modern scopus of the word play.
| otikik wrote:
| If all the members of both teams are kings or queens, then it's
| a Royal Battle.
| blendergeek wrote:
| I clicked the link really curious to learn why 60 knights
| engaged in a Battle Royale Death Match (every man for himself,
| fight to the death). I was disappointed to learn the click bait
| title had taken me in and all I would get to read about was a
| 30 on 30 arranged battle.
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| Its recent usage is largely an allusion to the film from 2000.
| The title refers to a contest where members of a graduating
| high school class are pitted against each other to the death.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)
| mkl95 wrote:
| Yeah this is a Last Team Standing.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| team deathmatch?
| Nowado wrote:
| Deathmatch tends to focus on frags.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Can you respawn?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| That is to be determined. I'll try to let you know if I
| respawn.
| fsckboy wrote:
| people try to nail down definitions of words that are only
| loosely defined. You know the fight scenes in movies where a
| fight breaks out in a bar, and before you know it, everybody is
| fighting everybody? That's a battle royale. Is it a fight to
| the death? not usually. Have some people used that phrase to
| refer fights to the death? yes.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/battle_royal#English
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royal
|
| books.google.com search "battle royale" in the 19th century,
| you'll see talk of ladies squabbling and how to conduct a mass
| cock-fight
| blendergeek wrote:
| A Battle Royale is when multiple combatants fight each other
| and they are not organized into teams.
|
| Here, the title qualifies Battle Royale with "Death Match"
| implying that this Battle Royale is to the death.
| fsckboy wrote:
| lower case, battle royale is just an expression in English
| that anybody is free to use to describe a conflict that had
| some aspect of getting out of control.
|
| > _...and they are not organized into teams. Here, the
| title qualifies Battle Royale..._
|
| but in this incident they _were_ organized in teams
| Kiro wrote:
| Not lame at all. You wrote what everyone _except_ lamers
| immediately thought of.
| andirk wrote:
| Is it true the knights mostly fought the peasantry and rarely
| other knights?
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I found this link to be much better for understanding what
| happened:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_of_the_Thirty
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's also playable in Age of Empires 4 heh.
| apetresc wrote:
| I played through that mission and was thinking "Wow, they
| must be taking huge liberties with the historical accuracy
| these days. There's no way this actually happened."
|
| Well, shows what I know.
| kipchak wrote:
| The seeming after the fact politicization of the battle
| hundreds of years later interesting. On the "French" side it
| turns from a fair fight between good men to honarable nobles
| defending the peasants from foreign mercenaries, and on the
| "English" side it's remembered as a loss inflicted partially
| due to dirty tricks by the "French".
| jcheng wrote:
| > According to the visitors' guide to the Chateau de Josselin
| "As evening fell that day, the victor, Captain de Beaumanoir,
| returned the prisoners to Josselin and had them executed."
|
| Yeouch
|
| Edit: Or maybe not?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32956302
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(page generated 2022-09-23 23:00 UTC)