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spoiler(s) Wars to come

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: spoiler(s) Wars to come
Post by Bluesqueak   » Fri Jan 25, 2019 5:16 am

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SilverbladeTE wrote:Funny thing is, while I consider myself largely a "socialist"....I agree that wee need a vastly broader and diverse government and that "Big government" is indeed *bad*
But then, my concept of "socialism" is completely different to the zealots and political parties who are puirblind control freaks and power hungry rats!
Lincoln was probably on that road as well (humane careful socialism) as back then Republican, Democrat *and* Libertarian meant completely.different things than today.

Celtic and then Saxon views and crucially, laws, were vastly different than the Norman scum who warped our countries, sigh. Concern for the welfare of the community and its resources, not egotistical greed or loony control freakery
Read up.on the ENCLOSURE ACTS in UK history to see how things went to hell.
Socialism to me should be about caring about the community, not arrogance of "the Big Party" hammering its cyclopean will on everyone...and making a ghastly mess in the process.

Worst scum in the UK were the Dukes of Hamilton, not only did they sell our Parliament out (official history we were taught is a lie, those vermin did it for tax evasion etc), but they made Debt Bondage slavery the rule of law for miners, salters and metal workers from around 1600 to 1700AD in direct contravention of the prior rule and absolutely the spirit of our law, grrr!
So if you tried to leave your job you had to pay back an impossible sum, thus folk were brought back in chains, whipped of even executed

See also the Hamilton's association with the Nazis.(prewar support and Hess' flight to Scotland) and Satanists (Hellfire Club, recorded historical fact, doesn't tell you what locals knew about them however, Hellfire Club had lot of jaded hedonists and protestors against the hypocritical straight jacket morals of the church so most of em were not "evil"...Hamilton's though were just bloody evil and that is NOT from mere gossip, sigh)

Hamilton's built the biggest non-royal palace in Europe from the suffering and death of my ancestors...but their greed made them force their miners to dig out every coal and iron band seam...and undermined their palace and it collapsed, buhaha!
Iirc they owned over 2000.slaves in Barbados?? Alone, never mind their other plantations, we know this from the moneey they demanded from freeing their slaves when slavery was banned

Horrendous family, hence in alt history story I'm slowly writing, they get wiped out :p they were also toadies for Edward Longshanks...who, fyi was a monster, he had over 20,000 civilians butchered when he took Berwick, cause they "dissed" him and he wanted to financially ruin Scotland, of course he didn't understand commerce and that it also wrecked England's trade systems...as well.as his abuse, robbery and banishment of the Jews from England
Another of history were weren't taught about....
Pity the Jewish folk.of Europe didn't settle.here, Declaration of Arbroath gave them equal.rights (in Medieval sense) and we never had antiSemitism here as a social evil

Scottish Norman nobility were our worst problem, never the "english" (who also suffered under.similar scumbags)

Britain avoided the huge slaughters of the Continent thanks to being an island and it helped concepts of Human Rights, Rule of Law, Science and Democracy grow...but we sure had our problems, ick!
Industrialists and nobility secretely funded Sectarianism in late 1800s, both sides, catholic/irish against protestant/scots, so neither side would work together for fair pay and treatment

Rather than heroic war stories, I can give you ghastly ones of how men and children died in the steel works etc.
Relative of mine had a mental break down after.his best mate.was torn apart above him by the winding cables of an overhead crane, for example...no safety systems, bosses didn't care...also they didnt invest, so men were slaughtered and maimed and the owners businesses became more and more uneconomic and failed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyway...
First Past the Post voting systems ensured UK and USA became Two Party Systems and that is not Democracy and is eventually, as we see....CATASTROPHIC! :(
It's not about "left" or "right" it's all about crony corruption :( we have "kleptocracies"

The System has all become about lobbyists, manipulating political office to gain corrupt positions and wealth after they leave office with corporations or lobbying groups
I can give plenty of examples from both sides and how dangerous it's actually got....the morons PRIVATIZED the maintenance and safety of the Coulport munitions base...where the UK stores two hundred hydrogen bombs....30 miles from Glasgow....
The military and many others had kittens over that lunacy
They also privatized Aldermaston that makes and up keeps the bombs...which then had a disastrous fire....
Etc etc


Yeah Democracy is the best of a bad bunch but we don't even have Democracy at all! :(

~~~~~~~~
Back to Safehold
Charis will have to support Dholar
why let an ally get wrecked by a nation gone to hell?
Siddermark will.have to learn painful lessons alas
And the Harchong Emperor and Mahris need butt kicked too...losing a war will spark revolutions ;)


I was wondering why so much of your history of the U.K. is what you might call 'highly interpreted', but then I came to 'the official history is a lie'.

Anecdotal Evidence is not 'The Truth'. It's part of the truth, told by people who were there. One of the major problems in Safehold is not 'the official history is a lie' ( though it is) - it's the mountains upon mountains of anecdotal evidence, all completely truthful. And all of which combine to support that lie, even though the people concerned are being completely truthful.

I can give you ghastly war stories too, of corners being cut and my grandad being nearly killed because the rush to build planes was so great they were still doing the final checks as they flew them down to the airfield. Or Safeholdians could tell you how they met real, living angels and Archangels.

But what's the wider context? Everyone 's telling the truth, but is the big picture right? People not caring, or people terrified of invasion? Real Angels, or a Command Crew with PTSD?

Context. I hope Schueler is really Scueler, because it takes us into a new phase, a new person's perspective.
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Re: spoiler(s) Wars to come
Post by SilverbladeTE   » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:50 am

SilverbladeTE
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Bluesqueak
When we were in school, back in the day, lol, they still taught the "sanitized" Imperial history, which left out a LOT of things. Same with the Soviets and most.of Europe

Go check for yourself on the Massacre of Berwick, even wikipedia only states a death toll, ignoring the fact it was NOT the military who are numbered but the civilians
The garrison surrendered after.their leader broke down witnessing the slaughter of innocents in the town (the garrison had retreated to the castle)
To this day when construction in the twon digs foundations they discover lots of human bones including kids.

Hamilton Palace
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Palace
Again though it misses some of the details, like:
To get those enormous stone columns through the town streets, the Duke had folk in street corner homes tossed out of their houses and the buildings demolished

Etc etc
The details MATTER.

To give another and somewhat obtuse one, again we weren't taught this as we were educated to be "ignorant but technically semi-competent slaves for the Establishment", and some of my family are Indian....

During the Sepoy Rebellion, there was an infamous case where captured British women and children were massacred and their remains tossed into a well
The Scottish troops were told this and were encouraged to go berserk and commit atrocities
They were not told that it was ONLY the local leader and his cronies behind this and forced Untouchables to do the crime, while the local folk were totally against it and refused to do such evil and stymied him for about 2 weeks iirc
And so lots.of Indians who were.innocent.of massacres ended up tied over the muzzles of cannons, which for both primary religions was an unholy method of execution
That is a story that I think RFC could well use in the madness South Harchong and Siddermark are descending into.
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Re: spoiler(s) Wars to come
Post by Bluesqueak   » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:52 am

Bluesqueak
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Posts: 429
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:04 pm

SilverbladeTE wrote:Bluesqueak
When we were in school, back in the day, lol, they still taught the "sanitized" Imperial history, which left out a LOT of things. Same with the Soviets and most.of Europe

Go check for yourself on the Massacre of Berwick, even wikipedia only states a death toll, ignoring the fact it was NOT the military who are numbered but the civilians
The garrison surrendered after.their leader broke down witnessing the slaughter of innocents in the town (the garrison had retreated to the castle)
To this day when construction in the twon digs foundations they discover lots of human bones including kids.

Hamilton Palace
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Palace
Again though it misses some of the details, like:
To get those enormous stone columns through the town streets, the Duke had folk in street corner homes tossed out of their houses and the buildings demolished

Etc etc
The details MATTER.

To give another and somewhat obtuse one, again we weren't taught this as we were educated to be "ignorant but technically semi-competent slaves for the Establishment", and some of my family are Indian....

During the Sepoy Rebellion, there was an infamous case where captured British women and children were massacred and their remains tossed into a well
The Scottish troops were told this and were encouraged to go berserk and commit atrocities
They were not told that it was ONLY the local leader and his cronies behind this and forced Untouchables to do the crime, while the local folk were totally against it and refused to do such evil and stymied him for about 2 weeks iirc
And so lots.of Indians who were.innocent.of massacres ended up tied over the muzzles of cannons, which for both primary religions was an unholy method of execution
That is a story that I think RFC could well use in the madness South Harchong and Siddermark are descending into.


These sort of conversations always remind me of the old TV programme Buffy The Vampire Slayer. One of the teenaged characters, having just discovered the terrible history of the massacre of the local tribes, indignantly exclaims "People must be told!"

On which the rather older Giles dryly remarks "It's in the history books, so I rather think they have been."

Sorry your school was so bad. Mine included historical episodes like the Harrying of the North, the Massacre of Peterloo, and the Merthyr Rising - so there you are.

Details matter, but so does context - for example, your story of the massacre of innocent Indian civilians, which is a good example of the kind of ferocity that the British inflicted. But you might be interested in this short article from a left-leaning Indian historian. https://www.rediff.com/news/special/the ... 170814.htm

If you look at one place and time you can find dreadful stories of Welsh peasants being flung out of their homes to make way for English peasants. The context is that Wales was being invaded by ... guess who ... Edward I.

Getting back to Safehold, the Safeholdian Rules of War are largely based on the medieval/early Renaissance ones. You will note that it's definitely not nice for various Charisian sailors to threaten to burn surrendered ships with their crews still on board, or to explain to a place they're besieging that they'll slaughter every single person inside if they have to take it by force ... and these are supposed to be the good guys. :) And in fact, all these horrific acts are allowed by Safeholdian rules of war.

Go back to medieval times, and events like the Massacre of Berwick are par for the course. It's shocking to us now, but the main reason it was shocking then is it's one of the very few British examples. The slaughter of an entire town or city was a common response if the people in it didn't surrender immediately - or if the attacking troops got out of control.

'Don't slaughter the civilians' is a fairly late-modern idea - totally ignored in WW2, for example. Safehold has it because they're not really a medieval/early modern culture, but an insane reconstruction by mad 'Archangels'. :)
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Re: spoiler(s) Wars to come
Post by SilverbladeTE   » Fri Jan 25, 2019 4:14 pm

SilverbladeTE
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 308
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:14 am

Bluesqueak
Victors write the history books :p
Worse, the "system" supported it, was still very backward and "Imperial" and the schools WAY more concerned with their "reputations" than educating or protecting us kids....

Actually even for that period in history Edward's brutality was unusual and nearly got him excommunicated.
Wallace etc sure as hell weren't "gentlemen" and carried out reprisals, kidnaps and massacres, Wallace MOSTLY stuck English troops and nobles, others were not at all so choosy, and even Wallace had Edward's leader at Stirling Bridge flayed post mortem, but then....he was hated for a great many crimes.

The Border Reivers Walter Scott.lionized in fiction were in reality, bandits, very organized bandits, lol hence King James the 6th iirc had them and many of the Galloway kerns forcibly removed to Ireland to go cause bither for the Irish Catholics and thus rid him.of two problems...and made more.
I think that is another thing you can see bei g done in Safehold


The general rule of war was that that if the garrison refused to surrender when a breach in the fortress was made then no quarter, of course that was ignored now and then but most leaders didn't want cities sacked because it robbed long term wealth etc so it was done more as a punishment or as things got more and more extreme or bitter like the Thirty Years War...sometimes troops got out of control, sometimes it was a miserly nasty way to pay mercenaries
Edward's action was shocking but his brutality got worse as time went on, I often wonder if pain from war wounds, age and his doubts about his son's likelyhood of staying on the throne etc made him more and more nasty?
He was the most "effective" English Medieval king, but he was notorious even at the time for his savage temper
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