annotated notesheet2

franks

a group of germanic peoples who eventually come to control nothern france in the 5th century AD

merovech (c.411-458bc?)

said by the franks to be the founder of their kingdom, possibly mythical; from his name came the name for the Frankish kingdom, the Merovingian dynasty

clovis (c.466-511ad)

historical founder of the Frankish kingdom

theodoric (454-526a

king of the ostrogoths and ruler of the ostrogothic kingdom of northern italy (and clovis’ brother in law, having married his sister, audofleda)

charles martel (c.688-741a

mayor of the palace of the merovingian kingdom; victor over a moorish scouting force at the battle of Tours/Poitiers (732ad).

moors

North African Muslims who settled in Spain after the invasion of 711AD.

pepin (“the short”) (C.714-768ad)

Mayor of the Palace, who, with the consent of Pope Zachary, overthrew the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, to become the founding king of the Carolingian dynasty; father of Charlemagne.

charlemagne (742-814ad

building upon the old Merovingian Frankish kingdom, founder of the Carolingian empire; crowned “Emperor of the Romans” on Christmas Day, 800AD by Pope Leo III

vikings

Germanic peoples of Scandinavia; spread across western and eastern Europe to trade, raid, and colonize from the 8th to the 11th centuries

normans

a blend of local French people and Viking raiders/invaders on the western coast of France in the 10th century AD.

harold godwinson (c.1022-1066ad

briefly Anglo-Saxon king of England before being killed at the battle of Hastings, 14 October, 1066

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (c.1028-1087ad)

Duke of Normandy and, after Hastings, King of England.

EDWARD III (1312-1377)

King of England; refusing to acknowledge that he was a vassal of the King of France (which would have come from English possessions in France), in 1337, he began the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) to gain the throne of France for himself.

HENRY V (1386-1422)

King of England; mounted a successful campaign to regain control of France, but

died before being able to complete it; victor at Agincourt, 1415.

MEHMET/MEHMED II (1432-1481)

sultan of Turkey; conqueror of constantinople, spring, 1453, in part with the use of early bombards

MAURICE OF NASSAU (1567-1625)

Dutch nobleman and general; along with other family members, the creator of the “Dutch system” for organizing and controlling infantry units on a battlefield, Roman practice being a strong influence; victor of the Battle of Nieuwpoort against the Spanish in the summer of 1600

charles I (1600-1649)

King of England whose absolutist beliefs and behavior helped to launch the English Civil War (1642-1651); executed after being declared guilty by Parliament of treason.

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)

friar and priest; his objection to Church practices, including the selling of God’s forgiveness, called an “Indulgence”, gained him an audience, as well as the anger of the Church; established a Christian alternative to the Church which came to be known as “Lutheranism”

JEAN CALVIN (1509-1564

Franco-Swiss lawyer, theologian, and critic of the Church; establisher of another Christian alternative to the Church, now called “Calvinism”

HENRY VIII (1491-1547)

King of England; in seeking what he felt would be appropriate successors, married five times after leaving the Church and founding his own branch of Christianity, the Church of England, with himself at the head (Henry actually had six wives, but he had married the first, Catherine of Aragon, when he was still a member of the Church.)

HENRI IV (1543-1610)

King of France after converting to Catholicism, supposedly saying that “Paris is worth a mass”; ender of the 16th-century wars of religion; issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted limited religious freedom to French Protestants (called “Huguenots”) in 1598; assassinated in 1610

CARDINAL RICHELIEU (1585-1642)

French Church authority; minister of Louis XIII; believer in Absolutism, a theory about government which insisted that the king should be the center of everything and that all power extends from the king

CARDINAL MAZARIN (1602-1661)

successor to Cardinal Richelieu as minister to the French monarchy; his unpopular policies helped to bring about a period of civil war in France, called the Wars of La Fronde, from 1648 to 1653.

LOUIS XIV (1643-1715)

King of France who believed in Absolutism under the expression, “One King, One Law, One Faith”; his ambitious foreign policies brought war to France almost continuously from 1667 to 1713 and his spending on those policies, as well as on himself, moved France closer to that near- bankruptcy which was a major factor in bringing on the French Revolution in 1789

JEAN-BAPTISTE COLBERT (1619-1683)

finance minister to Louis XIV; believer in mercantilism—the idea that the state could and should oversee a nation’s economy.

SEBASTIAN LE PRESTRE DE VAUBAN (commonly just called “VAUBAN”) (1633-1707)

chief military engineer and architect to Louis XIV; influential theoretician and designer of fortifications as well as the creator of a standard system of siege warfare

ROBERT FULTON (1765-1815)

American inventor; his early steamboat, the Claremont, made a successful trip from NYC to Albany and back in 1807SEA PEOPLES a somewhat mysterious confederacy of peoples who were part of the great upheaval in the eastern Mediterranean from 1200 to 900 BC

rameses III (reigned 1187-1156 BC)

Pharaoh of Egypt; defeated the Sea Peoples in the Battle of the Nile, 1175BC .

assimilation

literally, “becoming like/similar to” - what happened to various peoples the romans added to their empire: in time, they lost their foreignness and became increasingly roman

MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY

the first Frankish ruling family (mid-5th century to 751AD)

CAROLINGIAN DYNAST

the succeeding Frankish ruling family (751-814AD).

EMPEROR OF THE ROMAN

title given to Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800AD.

longship

specialized boat created in Scandinavia and used by the Vikings for trade, exploration, and raiding. Its shallow keel made it possible for it to be used on small waterways, meaning that it could get behind shore defenses.

THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

a 20 inch high, 230-foot long (50cm by 70m) embroidery depicting the initial events of the Norman conquest of England, probably created in England within a few years of the events (told from a Norman point of view).

FEUDAL SYSTEM

an economic and social system based ideally upon a kind of pyramid: the king (who has gotten the land from God); his greater nobles (who are given land by the king in return for swearing loyalty to him and promising him their military support); the lesser nobles/knights (who swear loyalty to the greater nobles and receive their land from them, in turn supplying troops to the greater nobles and collecting taxes); everybody else (freeholders, who own their land and pay taxes on it; peasants, who are free, but work for others; serfs, who are owned as part of the land).

manor

the smallest individually-held land unit owned by a noble; usually a self-sustaining community of a village and its surrounding fields

siege

the surrounding of a town/castle/fortress and then an attempt to take it by: starvation, escalade, organized siege tactics, with saps and parallels and use of artillery of all sorts

page

the first step on the way to knighthood - began about the age of 14

knight

the final stage in the process—achieved at about age 21, depending upon the place and time; knights are the real enforcers of the feudal system, being in direct contact with the 99% of the population—a knight may live on the smallest land-holding unit for nobles, the MANOR—and he may even own several.

long bow

a Welsh/English invention: a man-high bow made of a single wood (yew was common), firing a long arrow with different specialized arrow heads, including chain mail (and possibly plate)- piercing ones; English longbowmen, able to fire as many as ten shots per minute, were a major factor in English victories at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415)

cross bow

a kind of mechanical bow—potentially as powerful as a longbow, but slower to load and later, more powerful, versions actually needed a crank to cock them; still in use during the early Renaissance—a single-hand version, called a latch was still employed regularly along the border of England and Scotland in the mid-16th century

merchant

a buyer and seller of goods; increasingly wealthy in medieval europe and a new source of power, along with guilds in towns

guild

the rough equivalent of a trade union: a group of men who made the same thing and who joined together to supervise the training of apprentices, the quality of their goods, and the price; along with merchants (whom they supplied and from whom they might acquire raw materials), a new source of power in towns

gunpowder

an explosive chemical substance made in the proportions of 75% saltpeter (potassium nitrate), 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur; probably invented in China; first known mention in the West by Friar Roger Bacon in the mid-13th century

ballista

a giant arrow shooter, first employed by the romans

mangonel

a smaller stone thrower, whose power is a pair of twisted ropes, which act like giant springs (the same propulsion used by ballista)

trebuchet

a giant stone thrower which uses a weighted counter balance as the basis of its propulsion

bombard

the first cannon; the earliest example were either made of wrought iron (iron rods beaten together and then wrapped in a series of iron bands) or were case, like bells, in a mold

hand gonne

the smaller, more portable version of the bombard, carried and used by individual soldiers; originally simply a short barrel on a stick

pike/pikeman

a pike is a very long spear (16 feet or more), like the earlier sarissa; a pikeman is a soldier armed primarily with a pike (usually with a sword as a secondary weapon); the Swiss, by the early Renaissance, had become famous for their use of it in big blocks, carefully drilled, and supported by missile troops.

schiltron

a Scottish formation, also called a “hedgehog” (porcupine), being a tight circle of spearmen; useful against cavalry, but extremely vulnerable to missile troops unless protected by its own missile troops, as the Scots learned in their defeat at Falkirk in 1298

halbert

basically, an axe blade on a long pole, in the later medieval period and early Renaissance used in a group of mixed polearms by the Swiss.

LANDSKNECHT

(plural, landsknechte) literally, (perhaps) “servant of the land”; a kind of German imitation of Swiss soldiers, used in the same way in pike blocks with missile men as skirmishers and flankers.

GENDARME

heavily-armored cavalry, the descendants of knights, used as a shock force on Renaissance

battlefields

PARLIAMENT

a legislative body; in England, arising in the Middle Ages in two houses: the House of Commons, increasingly made up of merchants and guildsmen (with some lesser nobles) and the House of Lords, consisting of rich, landowning nobles and senior Churchmen (not to be confused with a French parlement, a collection of senior lawmen in a number of the major cities—that in Paris claimed what they said was the medieval right to edit the King’s laws (which was not appreciated by kings)

ESCALADE

attack on a town/castle/fortress using ladders

ANGLE BASTION

Italian early Renaissance invention: a jutting part of a wall which allowed defenders to

employ crossfire against attackers

PARELLEL

part of siegeworks; a trench which paralleled enemy fortifications and provided some protection for attackers as they approached them; parallels were numbered, beginning with the farthest away, which was the “first parallel”

sap

the trench which ran, in a zigzag fashion, towards enemy fortifications, ending in a parallel; saps were zigzagged so that enemy cannon and musket fire couldn’t pass straight through them and kill either the original diggers or later soldiers passing along them

gabion

large wicker baskets, filled with earth, used during sieges either as part of trenches by attackers, or replacements for fallen walls by defenders

FASCINE

bundle of sticks tied together; used during sieges to help build up trench walls and also to fill moats during assaults

TERCIO

Spanish formation of a large central block of pikemen with missile troops in a outside layer (“sleeves”) and possibly with corner formations of smaller blocks of missile troops; powerful as a forward-moving unit, but also slow and clumsy, with much of its firepower always blocked (tercio means “a third” in Spanish and the name possibly comes from the earliest such formations, with 1/3 pikemen, 1/3 missile troops, and 1/3 sword and buckler men).

dutch system

a formation, based loosely upon Roman models, created by the Dutch nobleman and general, Maurice of Nassau and several family members, in which a unit of pikemen had a unit of missile troops to each side; this allowed for increased flexibility, as well as increased firepowe

musket

originally, a heavier firearm, with a longer barrel, which required a rest (a pole with a fork at the upper end) to support and steady it in the firing process; eventually a term for all smooth-bore shoulder arms, no matter the weight

ARQUEBUS/CALIVER

a shorter barreled lighter firearm

matchlock

an early firearm whose ignition system was based upon the use of a piece of burning matchcord to set off the gunpowder

wheelllock

an early firearm which used a spring-driven mechanism and a piece of pyrite to ignite the

gunpowder

BAYONET

originally, a short dagger stuck into the muzzle of a gun to turn the gun into a mini-pike (plug bayonet); later, as this proved impractical, a kind of dagger on a ring which fitted around the muzzle replaced it.

FLINTLOCK

an early firearm which used a piece of flint to cause a spark and set of the gun powder

indulgence

a pardon from god; sold by the late medieval church at different prices, depending on the sin

95 theses

martin luther’s list of points criticizing the church (including the selling of indulgences)

protestant

one of a group of Christians who protested what they believed to be corrupt Church practices.

Lutheran

a follower of martin luther and his beliefs about christianity

calvinist

a follower of jean calvin and his belief about christianity

HUGUENOT

an early French Protestant (original source for the name seems to be unknown).

edict of nantes

a proclamation by Henri IV in 1598, providing for limited rights of worship for French Protestants—stupidly revoked by Louis XIV in 1685

flinklock musket

a weapon which replaced the matchlock; used a firing system in which a piece of flint scraping along a short length of steel caused the primary ignition

COLUMN/LINE/SQUARE

by the 18th century the three standard formations for infantry: a. column for movement onto and off the battlefield; b. line for delivering the most firepower on the battlefield; c. square for defending an infantry unit against a cavalry attack

TRIREME

an ancient Greek battleship with 3 rows of oars per side

RAM

the chief weapon of a Greek or early Roman battleship—a large, pointed piece of cast bronze mounted on the bow (front) which was used to put a hole in an enemy ship

CORVUS

a Roman invention for fighting a land battle at sea; a gangplank with a big iron spike at the far end; when a Roman warship attacked an enemy, it approached from an angle and, when it was close enough, the gangplank was dropped, the spike snagged the enemy deck, and Roman marines rushed across; “corvus” is the word for “crow” in Latin, probably named for the spike and for the pecking motion which the dropping of it onto an enemy deck might resemble.

dromon

(literally, “runner”) a long, sleek Byzantine warship, powered by a lateen sail and oars, which

could be armed with a ram, marines, and a Greek fire dispenser

greek fire

a chemical compound which, when lit, could be sprayed a distance from a special dispenser and which could burn even on and under water—primarily a Byzantine naval weapon.

LATEEN SAIL

a triangular sail, which, by its shape, allowed for more movement of the sail and thus more flexibility in catching the wind; the name is based upon an eastern Mediterranean word for all Europeans: “Latins”

THE NEMESIS (1839)

the first steam-propelled iron-hulled warship; several of its guns, unlike earlier ones, which were placed at the sides of a ship so that the ship had to be turned in the direction of the enemy to fire a “broadside”, were mounted on revolving platforms, allowing much greater flexibility

iron clad

a ship with an armor plated hull

La GLOIRE

wooden hulled iron clad battleship built by the french in 1859

H.M.S. WARRIOR

iron-hulled iron-clad battleship built by the British in 1860 which then began a period of arms-racing, since the iron hull made the ship more invulnerable than an iron-clad with a wooden hull underneath.

CSS virginia

a US Navy frigate, the U.S.S. MERRIMACK, which the Confederates converted to an iron- clad.

U.S.S. MONITOR

an innovative US Navy iron-clad with the first revolving turret

BC THE BATTLE OF THE DELTA (c. 1175)

defeat of Sea Peoples’ attack on Egypt by Rameses III.

BC THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS (480)

victory of Allied-Athenian fleet over a Persian fleet during the Persian invasion of Greece in 480-479BC.

BC THE BATTLE OF ECNOMUS (256)

victory of a Roman fleet over a Carthaginian; saw the Roman use of the corvus to turn sea battles into land battles

DIOCLETIAN’S REORGANIZING OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (post 284AD)

in which Diocletian split the empire into East and West halves, each run by an Augustus, with a Caesar as his assistant.

THE BATTLE OF TOURS/POITIERS (732AD)

Charles Martel’s victory over a Moorish raiding force. CHARLEMAGNE crowned “Emperor of the Romans” (800AD).

THE BATTLE OF STAMFORD BRIDGE (1066AD)

victory of the army of Harold Godwinson, King of England, over a force of Vikings commanded by Harald Hardrada.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS (1066AD)

defeat of King Harold by Duke William of Normandy, which then led to Norman control and the introduction of early feudalism to England.

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR (1337-1453)

ultimately unsuccessful attempt by successive English kings to gain or regain control of France.

THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (1415)

victory over a much larger French army by Henry V of England in which English longbowman played a major part.