You know, when we here in This Sceptred Isle celebrate how narrowly our Parliament avoided being blown to Kingdom come in a plot by various religious radicals. Art!
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| "You'll believe Stephen Fry is a raging political victim" |
Usually shoe-horned into "Gunpowder, Treason And Plot", although one must wonder about the state of any such gunpowder if it was kept in damp con
ANYWAY Your Humble Scribe had a chance to shine on Quora yesteryon, as someone asked a rather interesting question:
Imagine, if you will, that we are comparing 1750 with 1650. Or, if you will, the Seven Years War, which was a general European-wide war with global outliers, to the English Civil War, a distinctly domestic Unpleasantness. Conrad, inevitably, had to weight in.
"I am not an expert but I’ll have a go. Two major differences were: the use of flintlocks throughout an army, rather than having them only equip the troops escorting the powder train, for safety reasons, the matchlock thus becoming extinct;"
Let me show you a matchlock to make the point. Art!
The 'match' was a lit taper, which is obviously inefficient (especially in wet English weather) and liable to generate sparks, which is not what you want if your powder train is full of gunpowder, which is why the party guarding a powder train had the expensive flintlock variant. Art!
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| Both flinty and locky |
Reliant on kinetic energy and the sparking power of a flint. No naked flames required.
thanks to bayonets, each infantryman was his own pikeman, so they also vanished from the battlefield (I think NCOs retained them as a symbolic weapon).
Pikemen had wielded what were essentially Giant Pointy Sticks, which prevented cavalry from riding over them with impunity. Art!
Once the bayonet came in - named after a French town, incidentally - an infantryman could lock it over the muzzle of his musket and become a pikeman-with-a-five-foot-pike. Horses were no more keen on encountering a five-foot-pike than they were with a fifteen-foot one and were deterred from that point onwards. Art!
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| Horsey no like |
Cannons also became smaller and handier, so you didn’t need a towing team of twenty-six oxen to haul your culverin. Art!
The Duke Of Marlborough’s logistical arrangements on the Continent were exemplary, and a far cry from the hand-to-mouth existence of soldiers during the English Civil War. Plus, more generally, The Enlightenment had arrived in Europe by the early 18th century; which still didn’t stop nations from going to war with each other, but they no longer used religion as a casus belli - see The Thirty Years War for a 17th century example of same."
The Thirty Years War was a thinly-disguised religious conflict that devastated Europe, where massacre and atrocity was pretty much par for the course. A hundred years later the penchant for bloody butchery had subsided, thanks to less rancourous relations between nations: you might disagree with your neighbour on grounds of politics or diplomacy or territory, and might well go to war on those grounds, if less propelled by sectarianism. Art!
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| Good luck making any sense of this! |
One Hundred And Five Years Ago Today
Back on the Western Front - that map above probably has legs - we find that the Teuton's March 1918 'Kaiserschlacht' offensive had been running for weeks and weeks. Ahead of the Teuton advance was 33rd Battalion Machine Gun Corps, led by the redoubtable Lieutenant Colonel Hutchison, who were squarely in front of the Teuton advance. Art!
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| Hutchy |
Hutchy had arrived back at HQ, pleading successfully that he needed men and machine guns at Meteren to prevent a Teuton breakthrough, so he was all ready to go.
Unfortunately, the nearest transport column, a section of lorries under an Army Service Corps (for which read: transport) captain, refused to move or allow their lorries to bring succour to the above mentioned.
Hutchy brought a splendid sense of urgency to proceedings, and flattened the ASC Captain with what was said to be a right hook. The truck transport was appropriated, the position secured and all went swimmingly.
In the official account the truck was stated as being 'abandoned'.
Yeah right. Art!
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| "Forsooth! I am plain abandoned!" |
"The Sea Of Sand"
Our gallant survivors are mustering their resources, including what they accept, rather gingerly, as a fission bomb.
The ignition keys went into his
pocket. On no account was he going to
risk an accidental explosion!
Towed
by two Sahariana’s, the Chevrolet was third vehicle in the little convoy that
made it’s way westwards, towards the wadi hideaway. A third Sahariana remained in the depot,
where Torrevechio stood on watch. If any
aliens approached, he would drive back to the wadi to warn them. No siren – Roger and Dominione agreed that
silence, and apparent abandonment of the depot would be better than making a
big fuss.
Sarah
remained anxious about the Doctor’s continued disappearance. Misfortune must have befallen him, or he
would have been back here long ago with the TARDIS.
Could
the bio-vores have taken it back to their homeworld? If so, how could the Doctor ever get it back
again?
‘Don’t
fret, Miss,’ encouraged Doretti, driving the Sahariana. ‘Doctor Smith is so daft he’s clever.’
‘That’s
a back-handed compliment if I ever heard one!’ replied Sarah
Another
disappearance was discovered when the three vehicles reached the wadi bed and
stopped.
‘Where’s
Albert?’ asked the Professor. ‘I thought
he was in the back of the Bedford.’
‘Where’s
Private Menzies?’ asked Roger. I thought
he was in the back of the Bedford.’
‘Where’s
the liquer-bombs?’ asked Sarah, looking in the back of the truck. Dozens of bottles were missing.
I rather think you need to concentrate on thorium, not Amaretto, Sarah.
Yep. Living In The Future
Your Humble Scribe has asserted this once or twice before and has now seen evidence. Whilst waiting at the bus stop in Lesser Sodom for the bus (nothing for twenty minutes and then three 409s at once!) I spotted a youth who was venturing forth boldly on a unicycle. They whizzed across the Pelican crossing, then the pavement and then they were gone beyond Wragg Taverns. Art!
Well, somehow, not entirely sure how, Conrad came across someone selling unicycles on Youtube. The model they were retailing was called the 'Veteran Patton' and in case you feel I am telling porky pies - Art!
Here it jolly well is.
Frankly, it looks like the perfect compact way to get into an accident. Moving at twenty miles per hour with no protection - yes the rider might be wearing a helmet but what about the pedestrian they pile into?
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| EYES ON THE ROAD! |
"Glitch"
I quite forgot to mention, this is the latest Korean television program I have chosen to watch, up to Episode 5 out of 10 so far. Art!
It's a conspiracy sci-fi aliens-are-amongst-us kind of thing, with the obligatory Sork inclusion of humour and quite a few verrrry dark moments that feel very jarring amongst the odd-couple pairing of meek Jihyo (port) and sassy Bora (starboard). It works a lot of contemporary UFOnology nonsense into the plot, so congratulations on successfully wowing the basement-dwelling beanie-wearing bonkers audience!
Are we done yet? I rather think we are. Chin chin!
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