The English seemed to have used the same longbow-centric strategy in all three battles to decisively crush any French charge. Why did the French not change their strategy to counter the advantages of the longbow?

I've been reading a little about this lately, and something I've been wondering is just how the Romans were able to defeat enemies like Parthia.

Just because the Roman method of war revolved around their exceptional heavy infantry, with little regard given to cavalry or archers. This army structure seems like it would struggle to defeat, say, a Parthian army made up largely of mounted archers, but Rome did defeat Parthia on several occasions and hold onto the Eastern provinces for centuries.

So how was this possible? How did the Romans adapt to the situation?

Thanks for all responses!

Is it more small skirmishes? Where do we make camp? Are we constantly moving trying to find the American forces? What are my opinions about being in the South vs the North?

This is largely inspired by an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon called Pirates of Darkwater. The heroes, 3 humans and their "monkey-bird" sail around their sea or ocean and can pilot their small sailing ship.

In real life, what is the smallest crew you could really have sailing an ocean-going vessel? What were the smallest ocean-going vessels in the 16th century?

It has been said that the American Revolution had an impact on the French Revolution in multiple ways. Some of the ideals expressed during the US' Independence Movement made its way to France and it is said, particularly by those in the US, that it lead to the French Revolution. Fighting to remove a tyrannical tyrannical king from power in their land, equality (relatively speaking), etc. etc.

On the other hand the France played a big factor in assisting the US achieve independence, which resulted in massive debt for France and ironically this was a major factor for the revolution.

On one hand they were able to witness the ideas of the Founding Fathers and their Revolution spread, however on the other hand the government that supported you was overthrown. Were they proud? Did they not really care? What did they think?

Do we have any records of say drinking songs or lullabys from any point in Roman history?

I'm currently in the midst of writing a research paper concerning the levying of troops during the Early Medieval period and their experiences as being part of a Medieval army. After some thought, I decided to be adventurous and use the Fyrd of King Harold's army as my case study as this is one of the most written about battles in history.

I'm currently using some contemporary works concerning Hastings, but the core text I'm using is The Gesta Guillelmi by William of Poitiers. As excellent as Poitier's account is, it shows Hastings through the Norman perspective and here I hit the crux of my problem. I'm have a devil of a time trying to find any Medieval texts that contain an Anglo-Saxon account of Hastings or any other text I could use that would have been contemporary then talking about the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd.

So good Historians of Reddit, I pose to you my question. Are there any sources that are readily available concerning the Anglo-Saxon experience at Hastings from the point of view of levied troops?

Houses? Works of art? Libraries? Spoon collection? What did he own?

With this topic being in the news recently, I was wondering what effect raising the minimum wage has had in the past on the economy

Has it lead to mass layoffs, sharp increase in the cost of basic goods and services, etc, as tends to be cited as reasons against raising it?

On the converse, has it lead to people having demonstrably higher quality of life?

I was sitting around drinking some coffee, chewing some chocolate and having a smoke, after having a great dinner of popcorn and chips and I was wondering.

All these amazing foods and chemicals were things brought to Europe and asia from America.

Did Europe bring anything delicious to the new world? Milk, wine etc? Or was our continent pretty sucky in the delicious stuff department?

I've read that after the Mukden incident the government in Tokyo had no intention to invade all of Manchuria, and it was the local army command that chose to go forward with this. Why wasn't the Japanese government able to restrain it's army in this situation?

1. In a family did every person have a horse? Or was there one "family" horse and they either all got on it or only the father used it?

2. When did the carriage become popular?

3. So how far did they go to meet friends? Did people invite each other over for dinner or were there outdoor events that people gathered to watch?

4. When did the tradition for talking Vacation come in? I imagine regular people from the 1850's would not have taken a vacation for 2 or 4 weeks.

I just realised I went on a bit of a tangent there, but I hope you guys can answer these for me!

I assume this would be very hard to work out, but is there any statistics on this out there?

Hello all,

If I remember correctly from my philosophy of biology classes there was a book that was published years before Darwin's Origin of Species that presented a comprehensive overview of animalia and suggested that a process of change was responsible for the introduction of variant traits in various animals. However, it did not present any potential mechanism for this change, differentiating it from Darwin's work. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.

I also have memory of a work that suggested that variations in animals came about through the actions of their ancestors while alive (Giraffes getting long necks by stretching for fruit in high trees, etc.) but I believe that this is a separate piece.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? a (p.s. I'm asking in /r/AskHistorians because I suspect that this isn't technical enough for /r/AskScience)

I read a comment on a thread in a different subreddit saying that humans have been seafaring for 100,000 years. That sounds a little ludicrous to me. Do we have any idea how long humans have been using boats to travel on oceans?

Are there economic, cultural or resource-based reasons that China discovered and used gunpowder and saltpeter so long before the Europeans did?

Is this just something that happens in the United States, or are there similar traditions elsewhere?

I'm reading Shackleton's account of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and I'm quite surprised by the constant references to smoking pipes. Why would someone who took such care to individual rations, and who made sure that no extra weight was carried, allow tobacco? I can't seem to think that it would aid in anyone's survival.