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Livery is sufficient for what we today might call low trust transactions.
For higher trust transactions, the noble (lord or king) could give the bearer a sealed document - those who had legitimate business with the noble would recognize the seal. Even those who could not read would recognize the fact of the seal, and many would recognize the heraldry.
At a ...
34
Again complementing the above answers: I was in Zurich's Landenmuseum, and they have the original golden seal of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
One of the problems that lead to the defeat of Charles the Bold of Burgundy in a series of battles against the Swiss, was the loss of its golden seal. His military commanders only would trust direct ducal ...
32
I would contend that we tend to overestimate the effectiveness of bows vs armour, and that the armour would likely prevent at least some percentage of the damage to the mount.
If we look at the wiki article on Barding we find the following (emphasis mine):
During the Late Middle Ages as armour protection for knights became
more effective, their mounts ...
23
Expanding on the answer by Mark C. Wallace - Even high level transactions could be verified by livery, if not by the envoy personally then by accompanying personnel. Any counterfeit of such livery would have been an expensive and time consuming proposition, particularly as the livery of senior officials frequently incorporated precious metals, particularly ...
9
The Swedish mail (which in 1636 was created (?) as a government related body) had to freely transport mail for the administration. One trouble which came from the beginning basically was that persons in authority also sent private mail with post (which was exempt from tariffs.)
Which is a trouble because:
the farmers who was responsible for moving it by ...
9
Yes and no. Uniforms and rank insignia as we understand them didn't exist back then. It was very easy to see who was high(er) in rank, though. Members of the knightly class wore their coat of arms on their shield, clothing, barding and sometimes on top of their helmets.
It was very easy to see important nobles. The problem was what to do with them. The ...
9
The long bow was a particularly effective weapon against armored cavalry, and the French were surprised by this fact.
The (relatively thin) armor that you mentioned had earlier provided the horse some protection against "spears," particularly those wielded by enemy infantry. Although Swiss "pikes" (about 50 years into the future from the end of the Hundred ...
8
Knights didn't just face longbows. There were also swords, pikes, maces etc. on the battlefield and good plate armor also protected against firearms. Two knights fighting on the battlefield - they're trying to hit each other but sometimes the horses get hit instead.. There's an article called Armour which says a lot about this. For example,
The horse was ...
8
Not made up from 'whole cloth' but copied from ancient papyrii?
Many ancient cultures used molds, soil, and plants to treat bacterial infections. In Ancient Serbia, China and Greece, old moldy bread was pressed against wounds to prevent infection. In Egypt, crusts of moldy wheaten bread were applied on pustular scalp infections and “medicinal earth” was ...
7
I recently looked at this question again, and thought it might be another example of the colorization process being inaccurate. I thought to find other copies of this map (or other works at least by the same individual) showing the 'right' colors to prove a simple color error.
What I thought would be simple became very not simple. Here's what I have found.
...
6
Elaborating on the comment by Moishe Kohan, History of Penicilin -- Early History, emphasis mine:
Many ancient cultures, including those in Egypt, Greece, and India, independently discovered the useful properties of fungi and plants in treating infection.[7] These treatments often worked because many organisms, including many species of mold, naturally ...
4
Question: What was the point of horse armour?
Short Answer
The practice of giving body armour to a horse was called barding. It was more widely used and to great effect in antiquity long before the middle ages in the time of Alexander. During the late Middle ages when such tactics as using mixed troops were being re-introduced to European warfare, heavy ...
4
The Middle Ages lasted for about a thousand years in most parts of Europe, from about AD 500 to about AD 1500, depending on the particular definition of the Middle Ages.
And Europe is a very big place, about as large as the United states of America, and so at the beginning of the Middle Ages it had a very diverse set of cultures outside of the former and ...
4
No. You capture them alive for ransom.
Battles like Crecy are atypical. When you neck that fallen lord you’re losing your handful of silver of the share of your lords ransom of the toff.
Dismounting the Toff yes.
Threatening to kill the Toff yes.
Pissing months of trying to drink yourself to death down the drain with a short knife draw? no.
2
Hardly definitive, but I just took a search through the Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online database (MEMSO). There are about 150 references to jesters over about 300 years, and no indication of any disability associated with them, whether physical or mental. If anything, the implication is usually of sharp-wittedness and cunning. For instance, James VI ...
1
The Golden Bull of 1356 did not prohibit explicitly the creation of new kingdoms, but
a) there were many rules regarding the precedence of the existing electors
b) the king of Bohemia had some special status due to being the only king.
A new kingdom would imply on i) revising all the privileges and precedence rules to include the new king, which would ...
1
France's population was roughly three times England's. This meant that while small but efficient English armies could defeat the French in pitched battles - at least when they could fight on their own terms - there simply weren't enough of them to win the war.
Political division at home (the warm-up phase for the wars of the roses) was the last straw.
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