Arabs conquered third the Eurasian in 50 years, but some show Europeans couldn't even put WRE together.
Cuck emperors like Barbarossa couldn't even control Italy, utterly pathetic.
Why couldn't Europeans be more like the Chinese?
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Chinese are bugmen just waiting to be forced into submission and conformity by an authoritarian regime, Europeans are more individualistic and demand their own nation states
They called it the "Balance of Power". Europeans were so petty that whenever a new challenger appeared capable of unifying Europe, everybody else would temporarily team up to stop them. This kept going until Americhads and Sovietchads finally conquered them all.
I thought that idea emerged in 18th century.
I suppose you could argue anti-Ottoman coalations were something like that.
>I thought that idea emerged in 18th century.
Before that that unifying Europe would've been even more difficult because of how weak and decentralized the feudal states were. No king would've been able to muster enough men to conquer everything.
The malign influence of the israelite robbing the Teutonic peoples of their natural empire.
The Teutons sound weak and easy to manipulate. Skill issue.
European have no concept of loyalty, the natural inclination of a euro is to sell out his brothers for personal gain. Everything is about the self. This is not really a good or a bad thing, but its probably going to be their downfall soon since they cant even agree to keep their own countries hemogenous.
Good point.
Chinamen, Koreans, and Japanese retainers had insane loyalty.
Like daimyo could tell his samurai to kill himself for random shit and he would do it without hesitation.
In medieval Europe, a lord told his knight to do it, the knight would run away and become a bandit.
Id say religion?
Doesn't Charlemagne count?
this is the worst map I have seen this year.
why?
Arabs got really lucky to overrun two empires extremely exhausted from fighting with each other and Visigoths who weren't strong in the first place. When they met a proper army at Tours they got BTFO.
>Visigoths who weren't strong in the first place
They were able to BTFO Romans and prevent Franks from taking Narbonne
Tbf after the Abbasids had fractured in the 9th century, no power in the Muslim world was close to the total domination either. Roughly speaking, no power controlled both economical cores of the Caliphate - Egypt and Iraq, even with repeated invasions of Turks and Mongols.
*until Ottomans, ofc, but that's not medieval. At that time we have huge Hapsburg Empire, consolidation of France and growth of Moscowy. You could argue that there was a chance for the 30yw to turn HRE into a proper centralized empire if not for the Swedish intervention.
Europeans instead conquered the whole planet. Turns out unifying large swathes of lazy plebs only to get raped by Mongols isn't a great model for an empire.
Europe has a lower population density while the eastern kingdoms tended to be much more geographically localized around the rivers they needed to survive, which in turn leads to nations that have more centralized bureaucracy and places of power. While this tend to make individual rulers/governors wealthier and more powerful, in the event of their defeat it's also easier to conquer their territory in an effective manner since you only need to replace parts of the ruling class and bureaucracy or buy/win their loyalty. Wars are INCREDIBLY expensive, and so is maintaining an army of soldiers if you need to garrison forts/cities and pacify lands. Medieval rulers often didn't have that kind of cash and soldiers were often paid in plunder since nobody could afford to pay for a professional, standing army for long periods of time. This makes putting down rebellions over large areas prohibitively expensive and it only got worse and the Europeans started building more and more castles. This didn't stop European nobles from feuding and conquering each other's lands when they smelled weakness, but the very decentralized system also makes it very hard to conquer and administrate large swathes of land if the locals aren't cooperative.
It also didn't help that their succession system tended to fragment the realm every time a king died, or that it was relatively common to have elective monarchies where the aspiring king would either have to make huge concessions (further decentralizing the realm) or bribe his way to the throne, if the nobles didn't intentionally elect a weak king who would be unable to do anything. The French monarchy did it best, under the Capets their dynasty rapidly began to conquer lands, establish a functioning bureaucracy to generate more tax income to fund further conquests until they were the most powerful family in France not because they were the kings but because their family owned the most land.
A superb commander raises an army.
Moves 15 km and reaches a motte and bailey.
Has to siege it.
Wins.
Moves 9 km and reaches another shitty motte and bailey.
Has to siege it.
Wins.
Moves 44 km and reaches a stone castle.
Frick.
Has to siege it.
Win.
Well shit.
Moves another 4 km
Reaches another shitty motte and bailey.
Has to siege it.
Wins.
Army turned to shit, often literally,
By the time he won the sieges his lands were invaded 11 times, his local lords fricked with the politics 12 times. he lost like 40% of his holdings in foreign neighbouring lands and all his income.
His army revolts because of how low the loot was.
Genius.
>the king manages more than two sieges before he is entirely bankrupt or half his army got wiped out by dysentery
Sorry anon I can only suspend my disbelief so much
Keep in mind that this map only shows larger fortifiations like castles and such,
youd have like 20 times more other shitty forts, enclosed towers, fortified pillarias and other siege shit
Middle East and China was about having grand fortifications at strategic locations.
Europe was about having 15 000 shitty forts after every village, and a stone designed fricking deathtrap at strategic locations that you could defend with like 16 dudes.
Remember there was that siege in Wales where the wife of a lord defended a stone death fort with 9 of her household guard against 4000 men
It was unimaginable misery assaulting those tiny stone shits
that pic can't be all castles in france right? there must have been more
replace castles with cities, Edward III besieged Tournai for a month, it cost him 3 years revenues
>that pic can't be all castles in france right? there must have been more
I would assume that they are (especially) noteworthy castles that are still standing today as tourist attractions, the total amount of castles and military fortifications that have existed over the centuries is probably at least a hundredfold higher.
The popes were very ineffectual rulers with no real say in European politics for until sometime in the 1200s IIRC, that leaves a pretty big gap where no one save Charlemagne managed to create a huge European empire regardless of what the pope wanted.
It's almost like Europe isn't like China or something. The Roman Empire was exceptional compared to other Empires precisely because it rose in circumstances which were completely counter to the formation of Empires, other than the Inca's.
>Arabs conquered third the Eurasian in 50 years
literally a bunch of sand with nothing relevant in it
still managed to destroy everything the romans left
that said, europeans are not bugmen you can control from a strong central power. we are intrinsically “diverse” in the noble meaning of the word
So, why not just pull Caesar and genocide 33% of the conquered population, that worked for Rome, Gauls never rose up again
Because of muh jesus
>So, why not just pull Caesar and genocide 33% of the conquered population, that worked for Rome, Gauls never rose up again
A millenium of Roman Imperial and later Catholic had pacified the mores of the general population by that point. Slaughtering entire tribes of people became le bad.
>that said, europeans are not bugmen you can control from a strong central power. we are intrinsically “diverse” in the noble meaning of the word
Cope
It's true even at a regional level. Non-Europeans have never lived in free societies. Europeans have always had freedom, low taxes etc. except until very recent times.
Europeans frequently kicked out the israelites, free societies don't do that
What were subversive israelites doing in Europe?
Trading slaves, castrated males and female sex slaves.
They got them from other peoples raiding Europe, and they also made deals with Christian European rulers they could snatch whatever pagans they want but not Christians. The Rhone Valley in Southern France seems to have been one of their headquarters, all their trade routes started there.
This. They moved into a region where the militaries of three superpowers had already annihilated each other, then never won a major campaign again.
They were already united enough through the Church
But they literally had massive wars against eachother because they liked the wrong Church!
I assume it has something to do with the Pope and the Church not wanting one guy to conquer every with him then having the power to have primacy over the Church.
The church acted as an intermediary between rulers, taught the nobility to read and write in latin, handled their mail and sometimes finances, the fact Europe was unified by the church meant less need for an Emperor figure.
Dying young?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_balance_of_power
The israelites and the radhanites.
didn't Napoleon do that or try?
Lost greatness after Rome fell.