6 weird medieval battles that turned out to be cooler than modern cinema

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sometimes scenes in historical cinema seem too pretentious or grotesque - but sometimes the director does not play so badly, filming the events of old battles as if someone, retelling them, recklessly trolled the audience. People remain people, which means that they are capable of any absurdity - and sometimes indeed a ridicule that was unexpectedly witty for, for example, the Middle Ages. Here are some stories that moviegoers would not like for the far-fetched plot … If they were not real.

Normal show came out

At about the same time - five years later - one of the strangest medieval battles took place. The English and French commanders of the detachments decided to fight on their own, without armies, coming to the field with thirty men each. For several hours the knights blizzard each other, and a real crowd gathered around them, in which cunning merchants began to sell snacks.

At some point, the audience decided to take a break and stopped the battle: firstly, to bandage the wounded … And secondly, they probably wanted to go to the toilet. And after the break, the fight resumed anew. The French won with a score of “nine Englishmen killed”.

Our leader is blind

King of Bohemia Jan I, aka Johannes of Luxembourg, lost his sight during another crusade. This did not stop him, having learned that the English and French would fight, come with his army - he really wanted to take part. And as a result, he became a legend of the Battle of Crecy (1346). He ordered the knights to lead him into battle, that is, literally, so that the king was tied to the saddle, two knights held the horse by the bridle, and this whole structure moved on the British.

Since the king at a gallop swung his sword furiously, it remains a mystery why his knights were later found dead near his bodies - because they zealously defended their master or because he did not see who he was hitting, and at some point it became difficult for them dodge.

Give back the bucket

One of the most ridiculous pretexts for war was decided by the Italians in the fourteenth century, after a fight over the fact that the soldiers of one city stole a good, strong oak bucket in another. When the city of the kidnappers, Modena, refused to return the bucket to its homeland, to Bologna, the inhabitants of Bologna with obvious pleasure declared war: they already had a lot of claims against their neighbors. But it was not justice that won, but Modena, because its soldiers were good at not only stealing.

Battle of Grunwald

One of the most important battles in the history of Poland took place between the united army of Poles, Lithuanians, Tokhtamysh Tatars and soldiers from Smolensk and the Teutonic Order. The Teutonic Order was a little afraid of the skillful Polish knights and went for a trick: before the battle, they dug traps on the battlefield so that the knights fell into the pits and left the battle.

The leader of the united troops, Jagailo, either suspected something, or someone told him something, but in the morning, when the Teutonic knights lined up in iron ranks, he did not begin to build his troops, but began slowly, without haste, to accept his warriors - and this was the most massive knightly initiation in the history of Poland. In the meantime, the sun was flaring up, and the Teutons began to boil in their iron armor, but did not dare to move forward - in helmets they could not see their own traps, and there was no chance that the decks on top of them would withstand people in iron armor.

Jagiello has run out of people who can be knighted. He looked thoughtfully at the Teutons and before their eyes began to celebrate Mass before the battle - not himself, of course, it was done by the priest with him. The Teutons had to defend the mass in the sun. After the mass, Jagiello wished to confess and, in the eyes of both armies, without haste, kneeling, he repented to the holy father in everything he could remember.

And only when the Germans guessed to start publicly ridiculing his cowardice, Jagiello sent people into battle … Footmen, lightly armed Lithuanians, who perfectly noticed the traps close up, and in extreme cases, ran over their cover. The knights, contrary to expectations, Jagiello let in from the flank. The prank failed - this is how you can summarize what happened to the Teutons.

How good to be able to count

In the twelfth century, the fleet of King Magnus V of Norway and Sverre Sigurdsson, a contender for this title, clashed in a naval battle. When the opponents saw each other, Sverre discovered that he had almost half the number of ships, counted a little in his head and ordered his Vikings to attack Magnus' fleet with all their strength, let's say, from the edge, one ship at a time, forcing, when the ship begins to sink, his crew jump over to other ships of your master. As a result, the entire fleet of Magnus sank due to overloading of ships - along with his king. And Sverre put on the crown and ruled happily for eighteen years.

Triumph of humanism

The Battle of Bremuel in the twelfth century - between the British and the French - was remembered for its unusually low number of casualties. Of the nine hundred knights, only three died. And all because, according to one of the theories, that among the knights on both sides there were many acquaintances with each other - so they tried not so much to kill as to capture each other. According to another version, such a hunt for captives was carried out out of a desire to enrich themselves later on demands for ransom - and then, it turns out, greed won out on the battlefield. Moreover, she won death itself.

The Middle Ages are generally very far from their established popular prints, for example, from myths about the impossibility of a union between Christians and Muslims. Indigenous Tatars of Poland: Why there was no Pan over the Uhlans, but there was a Muslim crescent