Stratavarius

@Stratavarius

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Stratavarius
@Stratavarius
austin
@austin
DavidForbes
@DavidForbes

Pact and pike: how medieval peasants organized and fought

My latest piece, Pact and pike, is an in-depth look at the deep networks of aid and resistance built by peasants across feudal Europe. Often dismissed as mindless mobs with pitchforks they instead sparked revolutions in communal organizing and fought their oppressors with a wide array of innovative tactics.

Over a year in the making, this anarchic history winds its way through community pacts, masked secret societies, revolutionary conspiracies, skilled ambushes, peasant militia breaking whole armies and a whole hell of a lot of dead nobles.

(If you like the piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or supporting my writing by donating a few bucks.)

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NireBryce
@NireBryce

this reminds me of how in the US at least, most protest tactics and especially Occupy tactics are largely medieval because of the rules of engagement everyone is working over.

siege ladders, siege towers, thrown objects, room temperature oil, shield walls, sallying through doors away from the front line, shoving as a mass, etc. even the formations and manouver are medieval.

messengers on bicycle instead of horseback, formations signaled by Standards, messages transmitted with flags and drums.

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NireBryce
@NireBryce

this is one of the examples I'm thinking of re: medieval tactics, though not about what comes next like pike tactics

https://libcom.org/article/introduction-after-fall-communiques-occupied-california

ctrl F to III. Vortex: Wheeler, if you read it and want to skip some text.

but one of the things imo that occupy did right, was figure out what skills could be taught quickly, and rapidly disseminate them such that when people showed up, you could be assured something like 10% of the crowd would be able to teach the rest either by example or as they saw situations starting.

and how so much of what's worked end up looking in retrospect like lenses for the diffuse nature of things-as-they-stand, instead of trying to concentrate or steer it in other ways.

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rotsharp
@rotsharp

what a gorgeously hopeful thing to learn. you, with the power of a promise to your friends, and some good stout sticks, can say no to kings

i did not know the famous mercenaries were related to the communes at all before and what a tragic ending for a social force that effectively delayed the corporation of europe for hundreds of years in total

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DavidForbes
@DavidForbes

Thank you, that is the best endorsement for this piece I could imagine.

Yes, that later history was difficult to go through. "The rot through the oak" section was honestly one of the hardest things I've ever had to write, even if it's an instructive tragedy. There's no silver bullet to staving off corruption in any era - it's constant work - and the throne has more tools than just armed force.

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DavidForbes
@DavidForbes

Thanks for noting this. It's Balthasar Spross. I'd misspelled his name and slightly mis-rendered the quote due to a small mistake in my notes. Fixed now.

Quotes from the drama he penned are from Randolph Head's "William Tell and his comrades," which delves into the changing culture of the Oath Alliance, including some of its shifting hierarchies/egalitarianism. The only change is that his 1995 piece translates eidgenossen as "confederate" (in line with "Old Swiss Confederation" and older historiography) whereas throughout the piece I translate it as "comrade," as mentioned in the first section on the Oath Alliance, so the "Drama of the Old and Young Comrades."

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