A family friend of mine is a quadruplet (born in the early 60's), and the doctors thought the four of them were just twins. My uncle and aunt are twins (born in the 60's), but my grandparents didn't know they were expecting twins until they were born.

As a woman who has never been pregnant, I just can't imagine not knowing I'm expecting multiples.

The Polish in their defense plan against Germany counted.on Western Allied support. They knew that they would never win on their own. Yet, the French never launched a large scale offensive. So far, so unfortunate for the Poles. But there is a sentence in the Wikipedia article on the Phoney War that surprised me: "General Maurice Gamelin, ordered his troops to stop [...] Poland was not notified of this decision. Instead, Gamelin informed Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły that 1⁄2 of his divisions were in contact with the enemy and that French advances had forced the Wehrmacht to withdraw at least six divisions from Poland.".

This sounds to me, the uninformed reader, like the Western Allies deliberately misinformed the Poles.

Is this really the case? Did they sacrifice and betray the Poles by promising military assistance and never seriously attempting it? Or am I misunderstanding it?

In the mid-late middle ages, how were the logistics of a large army handled?

(Personal Research. Found sources vary greatly and don't provide quality answers.)

• What was the largest force a country could expect to be able to muster-in terms of ratio of soldiers to citizen?
• What sort of animals would follow an army on the march, and would they keep them long-term while encamped?
• How would travelling livestock be managed, who would tend them? added
• How much did soldiers rely on foraging, hunting, and acquisition-ing? added
• How were supply trains managed, guarded and established?
• What is the longest consecutive duration one could expect an army to stay encamped in the field?
• What was the typical make-up of an army? (Cavalry, footmen, pikemen, archers, knights and gentry, etc)
• Would the army handle its own construction and manual labour, would they be organized groups of military men, or civilian camp followers?
• During longer encampments could one find individual soldiers planting quick-yielding crops, or tending to nearby ones?
• What was the typical meal for a common soldier? How did they contrast to the meals of the army's commander/s?
• When a commander fields a large army, who does he have to help him manage it?
• Would there typically be a lot of camp followers, or a small number? Would they be forced to camp away from the troops?
• How would one expect to receive orders while fighting in a group of men? Would there be drums, and horns? What about when there are multiple independent but allied forces?
• What could you expect a typical levy to have in his possession upon engaging in a battle? Would he be given a spear, sword, or basic armour, or would he be expected to bring whatever he could get on his own means?
• How often were soldiers neither levy, mercenary, knight, or commander, and instead a free-man being paid to fight by his own volition?
• At what age could one expect to be conscripted as a levy, and at what age would you no longer be wanted? added
• Could one opt out of military service in most of the feudal world? At what cost? added
• How common were accidents in camp? Such as fires, lacerations, or concussions.
• What would a typical levy's tent be made of?
• How many supplies would be provided by commanders, and how much would one be expected to bring/provide for himself?

Basically, if you could just throw a quality book on medieval logistics at me.

Sorry if this is a bad format or place to ask these questions-or this many-I'm sure I could reformat it, or rephrase it to "Tell me about military logistics, and life in the middle ages" .

Added a couple questions, which are marked.

So my moms grandma told my mom about a story of some soldiers coming from the mountains with cartridges of dead people nearly 100 years ago,they decided to bury their dead on the mountains(back then our village was below the mountains,so there were no houses there)my mom never told me about this and about 5 years ago when they were digging ground support for a cellphone tower they found a tunnel full of skeletons,most people thought it was those soldiers that came,some people decided to go onto the tunnel but they stopped half way through(don't know why)so I thought there might be some important historical artifacts of sorts,even if we find some weapons from 1920 its still pretty big find,right?So I came here to ask if this was the Armenian–Azerbaijani War or not and where can I contact someone to research these tunnels.My village is located in Turkey-Konya,our village is called Kusca.

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Hi i'm looking for some information on the above and also public reaction when first seeing the camps.. would it have been post war when these photos were released?

I recently got interested in Roman history. While reading about different types of gladiators, I stumbled upon a certain quote (it's from wikipedia, regarding Equites) :

"In Roman times horses were no larger than today's ponies and as Romans did not use stirrups fighting on horseback was impractical."

There was no reference backing it up. There are also lots of records about Roman cavalry. Is this statement on Wikipedia incorrect, or am I missing something here?

Thank you in advance for any answers - cheers!

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I'm an aspiring Martial Artist and looking for some books/material. I'm interested in the competent and talented Warrior or fighter Tribes/civilizations from any time period that implemented magical systems (runes,sigils, etc.).

Was the change from Catholicism an immediate switch or did the common people resist the conversion campaign in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century?

I'm mainly looking at their general fighting ability and logistics and how it broke down after a month of invasion.

You know, as in "zzz"

Hi there, i'm an italian historian and i'm looking for some infos about medieval preaching and the elaboration of sermons for the scholar audience in XIII and XIV centuries. Has anyone everworked on this subject? I've already read some of the International medieval sermon studies publications and i'm searching for new material to beef up my knowledge of this subject. Thank you for your knowledge! :D