I was reading about the ten tragic days and was getting very confused by all the different players, names, politics. Could someone explain exactly what was going on?

Hello my learned friends

I apologise if this has been asked before, however I was wondering whether wielding a weapon in each hand was ever regarded as a viable fighting style. At a glance I can see Florentine Fencing (sword in the main hand supported by a dagger) and Musashi (open to interpretation as to whether it was ever more than one sword), but I wondered if there was ever a well documented dual wielder?

I'm largely interested in precursors to figures such as Pietro Aretino in pre-Renaissance times.

During the aforementioned years how often would you find someone smoking tobacco, what places was tobacco smoked most often how much would it have cost, and what was used to smoke (cigars, pipes, snuff, chewing tobacco ect.)?

I've seen some information about this, but I'd love a more in-depth breakdown.

Thanks

In Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories series (which is set during the invasion of the great Heathen Army), the main character Uhtred remarks that Viking crews were manned by Danes, Norse, Saxons and Frisians - is that true? Would Saxons and Frisians fight alongside the Northmen?

Thanks

In my readings I've repeatedly come across references to the Roman Imperial Bodyguard being recruited from some of the Germanic tribes (mainly the Batavi). They generally acted as the personal bodyguards of the Emperors in the 1st century AD. So yeah, I'd like to know:

Why were the Germanic (barbarian) tribes chosen above, say, an elite group of Praetorian like guards?

How were members of the guard chosen from the tribes?

Why were they so trusted?

If you have any other information that you think I might find relevant/interesting I'd love to hear it

Hi All,

For obvious reasons, the Sykes-Picot agreement has been in the news recently.

One of my great uncles was (supposedly) the last Ottoman "governor" of what is now Israel/Palestine. A few years ago, my uncle showed me boxes and boxes of his memorabilia, including quite a number of correspondences my ancestor had with many European legations in the area. A number were written in Turkish (using the Arabic alphabet), but the majority was in French - my mother tongue.

What was interesting was that this uncle said to the French, Italian, British... legations that the British Balfour plan was a recipe for disaster, which would cause problems for centuries.

And this got me thinking. When the European powers were carving out the new countries of the middle east, did anybody of influence say "this is actually a bad idea", mixing sunnis, shiites, christians etc... in a country is a recipe for disaster?

Would be curious what Reddit's collective historical mind has to say about this!

Just to clarify, I’m not referring to the machinations of the court; I get the basic political maneuvers and their motivations. However, I’m curious about the backdrop to these machinations. In other words I would like to know what external motivations (be it overabundance of food, scarcity of food, debt, excessive wealth, demographic dividend of lots of fighting age men, etc) made the instability caused by the various successive civil wars viable. After all, a lot of the schemers were repeat schemers so it takes some backdrop to allow various nobles to say “sure you failed the last two times and we lost most our men but why don’t we try again.” In other words the factors that allowed such instability of the kingdom to become commonplace, acceptable, and a viable option.

Everybody (in the West) has at least a vague understanding of Ancient Egypt: the pyramids, the pharaohs, the mummies. Movies are made about them, as are books, TV shows, video games etc. But not the other Ancient Middle Eastern powers. For those mostly uninterested in history, if you mention the names of the Hittites, Assyrians, or others, you'll meet a blank stare. If you had a biblical education you may vaguely be aware of the Babylonians just because of their relationship to the Jews.

Why do we moderns have such an awareness of Ancient Egypt alone? Why not the rest of the Bronze Age world?

I am doing some just-for-fun research on Roman-British history and was looking for some suggestions for good and interesting books, movies, documentaries, websites, and podcasts from r/history. Thanks.

*Haile. Apologies in advance.

Thanks to a post on /r/badhistory I ended up watching the 1970 film Waterloo last night and I was reminded of a Staff Ride I attended some years ago. during a tour of Waterloo, the guide claimed that Wellington's choice of the ridge at Mont St Jean for a defensive position was based on Marlborough's assessment, 100 years earlier, that it was the ideal position to defend Brussels from the south.

In the film Wellington is portrayed as having surveyed the ground himself in 1814, but was he inspired by Marlborough?

So I am reading, "The One-eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Mannerbunde" and on page 93 the author mentions that, "the bean is sacred to Mars, and the bean belongs to the death-cult; it already had this significance in PIE antiquity". The source listed is Schroeder, Leopold von Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda. 1908 page 146. The source is old (so I don't know if there is more up to date info on the topic), I can't read German, but it is available online.

With all that in mind can anyone give me a rundown? Either a brief translation of the important part of the source or a rundown on the topic would be wonderful. I can't for the life of me figure out how beans are connected to the PIE death cult but I'd love to find out.