Hi, I was watching a YouTube video and it said that Marshal Bernadotte was supposed to support Marshal Davout but he did not show up. Why didn't he support him in such a huge battle and why was he not fired? Davout's Corp had lost a significant number of men after facing the main Prussian army alone.

This is a topic that really interests me because there are different opinions everywhere. Some say it was effective at stopping slashes but not stabs, while other say it protected against both types of attacks. Some say it was effective against projectiles like arrows, some say it wasn´t.

I recently read that Srivijaya employs the pirate tribe (orang laut/lanun) to guard the maritime silk road. I'd like to read more about this, but the only sources that I could find was some Indonesian articles from Historia, national geographic and bit of Wikipedia pages. Maybe you guys can link me some articles/books to read?

And is there a timeline of events that makes this more apparent, or is it the sort of thing that's hard to pin down like that.

"Progressivism" in the title is mostly meant the way you would expect in an advanced undergraduate history course. Increased acceptance of marginalized communities (LGBT groups, racial minorities, new or previously rejected schools of thought/understanding, religious minorities, etc.) increased representation of those groups in media are what stick out to me more than a decade after learning about it.

The cultural push against it, from what I recall, involved a conservative coalition of religious groups, disenfranchised young men upset with the cultural shift they were seeing among their peers, and nationalists blaming these new ideas and developments for ruining the country, among other groups.

How well does my understanding fit in to the realities for pre-Nazi Germany? Obviously there were economic and political concerns impacting these groups, and it's impossible to divorce the two from social concerns, but is it generally fair to say

There was a progressive movement in the Weimar Republic, with a corresponding conservative counter-movement

Those who have experienced terrible things such as war, sexual abuse, or losing a child will often bear the scars for the rest of their lives in our modern world. In pre-industrial civilisations did these relatively common things (such as pederasty in Ancient Greece) have the same effect on people?

This thought occurred to me while playing an online WW2 game. I crashed my truck into an allied tank and yelled at them for driving on the wrong side of the road. They yelled back at me in thick European accents that it was me who was driving on the wrong side. It occurred to me at that moment that similar incidents must have occurred during the real war.

What side of the road did allied forces drive on during World War 2? Did differences in road laws cause any significant or notable incidents? Was this a source of contention between different allied forces?

The Roman public school system during the time of the Antonine dynasty was supposedly really bad and made pretty much everyone who went through it dislike school because it was mostly just senseless memorizing. Marcus Aurelius was even grateful that he was spared from having to go to a public school.

This made me wonder if the school system really was as bad as was described to me and if it was that bad then why wasn't it reformed? (Especially by Marcus Aurelius who seems to have really disliked it?)

With the the multitude of reports of sexual violence committed by clergy within the Catholic, Anglican and other churches, along with the violence committed in Native American boarding schools and Mother and Baby Homes. That really left me thinking, the churches in Medieval and Renaissance Europe had an immense amount of economic and political control among multiple institutions. Where there any reports or "open secrets" of sexual violence? Maybe even criminal charge's brought against clergy?

From my understanding, the Romans used the phalanx until the Samnite Wars in the 4th century BCE. What made them adapt a new way to deploy their armies was the hilly and mountainous areas the war was being fought wasn’t conducive to the phalanx, but Greece is even more hilly and mountainous than Italy. Why did no one in Greece ever try something other than the phalanx? And if someone did try, why didn’t it stick?

Given the political charge of the question, it's hard to find objective answers and I'm reaching out to historians here for some quality discussion.

Context: a 1929 novel by an Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen. I'm researching gender/sexuality in the novel and was wondering if anyone's familiar with the meaning of this phrase. I've looked it up but can't find a clear-cut answer. Thanks for the help!

As far as I understand it, the Frankish peoples that settled France in the wake of the collapsing Roman Empire would have spoken Germanic languages, yet the French language is a Romantic language. How did this come to be? Is this because the people that lived in France prior to the invasion spoke Latin (or derivatives of Latin), and over time the languages merged? If so, how did this happen if the ruling class were presumably Germanic warlords? Or was it the later influence of the Catholic Church that brought in this change? Thanks in advance!

Edit: apologies I've chosen the wrong flair and I'm not sure how to change it!

I have a dream of becoming a Viking reenactor going around Viking fairs and markets with some sort of thing I can sell. While I know that a Nazar is barely found in the north and especially at the time of the Vikings - I have been playing with the idea of well pretending to be a viking who have been traveling around the known world - we know they went to places like Constantinople. And so, a Viking merchant bringing home Nazars to sell and trade in my mind would not be unrealistic. But I've googled around trying to get an idea of if any ever were brought back, which seems not being the case. And then also trying to figure how they would have looked at the time? My research has lead me to a few archeological examples of eye amulets. The earliest being the eye of Horus from Egypt. And then a few examples of either amulets with writing about avoiding the evil eye or even with a crude eye drawn upon them. I can not find when the idea of the blue glass bead eye appears. A website claimed they were created so due to blue eyed invaders coming from the north inspiring the eye's look - yet no time of when this would have happened or citation to prove this mention. So I am at a loss. Would a viking have been able to bring home a glass blue eyed nazar? If not - how would they have looked at the time? And do we know anything else about them?

Thank you for your time!

I'm watching Silence, I doubt it's perfect in its representation of the time period but it seems to present a picture in which missionaries more or less passively spread Christianity (as in, didn't force it like a conquering army) and it was subsequently harshly persecuted. Despite this many people remained fervently devoted to the religion and risked/gave their lives for it.

I'm curious what people would have found so appealing about it to convert in the first place, I can understand a devout believer withstanding torture and such, but it seems odd to me that people would entertain conversion let alone pay such high prices with no incentive other than spiritual fulfillment, especially when Shintoism and Buddhism were already well established.

Many concentration camp guards famously were killed or imprisoned after the war, including some female guards, for being inhumane.

Were there any guards who, after the war, were excused for not being a willing participant in genocide? I seem to remember there was a least one doctor and two guards who were excused from prison. IIRC believe the guards asked for transfer out and were one of the reasons that, "I was just following orders, or I would have been killed myself", did not work. That is, IIRC two guards had requested transfer and had been transferred because they objected. I think the doctor refused to participate in selections for death.

In Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284 Carpenter writes that in 1198 Normandy brought in 24,000 pounds in revenue while Aquitaine was worth "perhaps a thousand or so pounds". Looking at the map, Aquitaine seems bigger in size and even if Normandy was more developed, I can't see why Aquitaine would be so much more poor.

I know very little about these so-called sword saints, as I can't find any information regarding them online besides stuff from D&D, Sekiro, and For Honor, and it's driving me nuts. I know that Miyamoto Musashi was considered a sword saint, but that's all I know about them besides the fact that they were supposed to be legendary swordmasters. How much prestige did they have? What was their place in society as a whole? Were they regarded as celebrities? Who were some other kensei in history? All that jazz.

Does anyone perhaps have any resources or answers? I'm really curious about this now.

Hello. I am looking for recommendations on a book that covers the history of civilization in Central and South America. I am most curious in discussions of the rise and fall of the Inca Empire and the rise and fall of Aztec civilization and Mayan Civilization. If anyone could give book recs on any of these subjects I would appreciate it.