Hey Reddit,

I’m looking for Literature on the Lombard Duchies, specifically between 600-800.

Were citizens only just subjugates of their leaders or did they have any freedom to move up in class?

I know that the witch trials were shut down after a while and people pretty quickly figured out it had gotten out of control, but for a while people still believed that some of the accused were guilty of witchcraft, it was just that the accusations were starting to fly wildly. But I've read that by the Founding Fathers' time, they considered belief in witchcraft to be a superstition, and the witch trials to be a shameful relic of medieval barbarism. Was their opinion widespread or was it only popular among educated elites with Enlightenment philosophies? Did regular people generally still believe in witchcraft?

In the 18th and 19th centuries did anyone ever write revisionist histories trying to claim that actually the witch trials were correct and perhaps didn't go far enough in rooting out all the witches and sorcerers? Apparently in the 21st century there are evangelicals who still believe witchcraft is real and dangerous (and therefore refuse to read Harry Potter or play Dungeons & Dragons). What do those people believe about the Salem witch trials?

I feel like there is a lot of information on how the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence and why but almost no information on how Congo Brazzaville did. And even if there is information, it's really hard to find. Help please?

What did different people (Peasants, Knights, Clergy , King) in England think about the fallen empire, People like Julius Caesar and Augustus. Was it revered or criticized for its Polytheism

Clearly the issue of Russian logistics is in the middle of the news today but it got me thinking about the historical perspective of the Red Army as an unstoppable land force.

A thread that I have seen lately is that Putin has spent the last 15ish years building up the Russian armed forces to become a more modern force after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the collapse of military spending/military preparedness in Russian armed forces. This thought implies that the Soviet Union was a vaunted land force prior to collapse and clearly it was given NATO direct defense spending and preparedness not to mention proxy war and other indirect costs.

I was trying to go through the major examples of Red Army operations post-WWII to come up with evidence that the Red Army was actually vaunted and not just perceived as vaunted. Afghanistan rings out as the major example of Soviet forces operating extraterritorially and then the Czech and Hungarian interventions on a smaller scale. Those operations didn't involve invasion against a fully hostile state - there's an argument that some part of the state apparatus cooperated thus simplifying the logistical side of the operation (i.e. rail/air access)

Is the last point at which at which we have evidence Red Army logistics matched the outward perception of Red Army combat power the Eastern Front in World War II? I seem to remember that a huge number of American trucks were the backbone of the Soviet advance during Bagration and the like. Is it possible that our perception of the Red Army in combat is a vestige of access to the "arsenal of democracy" via Lend-Lease?

I’ve always been fascinated with the enigma machine and the breaking of German and Japanese codes. What I’ve never understood is, how were coded messages intercepted? Was it garbled words over the radio? Or some form of Morse code? How did we store messages? We’re they recorded onto tape reels? Or hand transcribed? Did the method of sending a message differ significantly from county to county?

So, from my understanding, chariots were used in the Bronze age and were essentially the lynchpin of Bronze age armies, then the Bronze age collapse happened and most people stopped using them.

I would desperately love to know why.
They seem to still be extremely effective for centuries afterwards.
I was always under the impression that later Kingdoms and empires just weren't as heavily centralised as Bronze age kingdoms and so couldn't keep training a permanent charioteer class and a permanent chariot engineer class to keep the things running, but if that's the case then how come they turn up not only in the hands of the Persians but in the hands of the BRITONS of all people.

How and why where the Britons able to use chariots?
And given how devastatingly effective Caesar records them as being, why did no one else use them except for the Achaeminids?

It can't be because of terrain issues because the Mycenaeans used them in the Bronze age despite Greece being mountainous as all hell and the Britons used them in the forested areas around the Thames.
It can't be because of lack of centralised leadership and wealth because the Britons are able to use them in their small tribal confederacies.
Why did chariots stop being used?

I know medieval kingdoms and various nobles gain their wealth through owning estates or taxing peasants under their rule, or taxes indirectly obtained from their vassals, but where do they spend their money on? I assume there would be defense (procuring of arms, training retinues, constructing castles), infrastructure, churches, lavish living style etc. But in general, what is the most costly thing that medieval kings and nobles need to pay? Are there sources (maybe budget records)where I can look at to see how medieval nobles spent their money?

Apart from not wanting the other guy to be bigger than you and take you over, was there any other reason as to why each country joined their alliance? I need to create a lesson plan about this topic so I figured I'd ask history buffs about it to get more perspective.

Were there what we would consider record stores or did customers, when purchasing a phonograph, get some records as a bonus? Did record companies mail out catalogues to the public?

I've been doing a bit of homework about King Aethelberht of Kent, and his conversion by Saint Augustine to Christianity got me thinking. How exactly did these rulers simply give up their oftentimes pagan faiths and declare it the kingdom's religion on top of accepting it themselves? Was it truly some kind of spiritual awakening or was it some kind of power ploy?

So for example, Queen Victoria (as far as I understand), had about the same amount of influence as Queen Elizabeth (present-day) within her native country/empire - relatively little, if any at all.

I refer to political power in practice; I understand that on paper the Queen still has quite a bit of power that is fundamentally useless as it can never be independently enacted by a monarch.

At what point did the tables turn? When Elizabeth I was Queen during the 1500s-1600s, was she the one calling most of the shots exclusively? Could she have signed laws into effect, changed economic practices or waged war on other countries of her own independent authority?