Here’s a nice photo tutorial on making half timbered, thatched roof country cottages.
15th Century
Clockpunk Blog
Clockpunk is like Steampunk — except it’s set in the Renaissance. The science fiction sub-genre is set in a Renaissance where technology that was invented many years later comes into play. Here’s a new blog called DaVinci Automata dedicated to the genre. Plenty of ideas here — especially if you already (as many of us do) own Renaissance era figures.
I remember playing a game at a Chicago convention some years ago called DaVinci something-or-other that involved a large number of Leonardo DaVinci’s war engines. It was a lot of fun.
The Battle of Towton Documentary
Painting up a couple of Wars of the Roses armies has been on my project list for some time. I found this documentary informative and inspiring.
Battle of Naseby Documentary
This episode of Battlefield Britain covers the Battle of Naseby, fought on June 14, 1645. Engaged in the battle were the the main Royalist army of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.
It’s St. Crispin’s Day – Battle of Agincourt October 25, 1415
Today is the 600th Anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, in which the heavily outnumbered, archer-heavy English led by Henry V defeated an army of French knights.
Yet it likely wasn’t the arrow storm that defeated the French, says Bernard Cornwell in a terrific article in The Telegraph.
Legend says Agincourt was won by arrows. It was not. It was won by men using lead-weighted hammers, poleaxes, mauls and falcon-beaks, the ghastly paraphernalia of medieval hand-to-hand fighting. It was fought on a field knee-deep in mud, and it was more of a massacre than a battle. Olivier’s famous film shows French knights charging on horseback, but very few men were mounted.
Cornwell notes that the English archers could have unleashed an arrowstorm consisting of a thousand arrows a second. Even if you cut that rate by a third, it still is a blistering rate. And yet, Cornwell notes, French advances in armor saved the bulk of the French knights from becoming pincushions:
So the many reached the few, but the many were exhausted by mud, some were wounded and the English, enjoying the luxury of raised visors, cut them down. What seems to have happened was that the front rank of the French, exhausted by slogging through the mud, battered and wounded by arrows, disorganised by panicked horses and by stumbling over wounded men, became easy victims for the English men-at-arms.
At the end, Cornwell addresses the question of why a battle that had such little immediate tactical or strategic value still stirs the blood. Was it Shakespeare? No, Cornwell argues, Shakespeare wrote about Agincourt because it already was legend. Rather:
The battle of Agincourt is part of the binding of England, the emergence of the common man as a vital part of the nation. Those common men returned to England with their stories and their pride, and these stories were told in taverns over and over, how a few hungry trapped men had gained an amazing victory. The story is still remembered, even six hundred years later, because it has such power. It is a tale of the common man achieving greatness. It is an English tale for the ages, an inspiration and we can be proud of it.
Read the article. I think you’ll find it interesting, even if you — as am I — are well versed in the details of the battle.