"The Blitzkrieg of 1494" Topic

"One of the most technologically forward-looking military expeditions in history was launched for the most retrograde of reasons. Fourteen ninety-four was a time of momentous change. Less than half a century had passed since the first printed book had appeared. The Moors and Jews had been expelled from Spain just two years before. Only a year before, an Italian sailor in Spanish employ named Columbus had returned from an overseas voyage claiming to have discovered a New World. Yet none of these events loomed as large at the time as the loss of Constantinople forty-one years earlier to the Turks. Byzantium, the bastion of Christianity in the East, had fallen to the Mohammedans! Any self-respecting Christian monarch felt a duty to take up arms. King Charles VIII of France had the means to act and the inclination to do so.

His kingdom had been greatly enlarged and substantially strengthened over the past half century. The English had been kicked out of Normandy and Guienne in 1453 at the end of the Hundred Years' War. In subsequent decades, Armagnac, Burgundy, Provence, Anjou, and Brittany had been wrested from their feudal rulers and added to the crown domains. With France almost at its modern boundaries, Charles VIII presided over the most powerful nation in Europe at a time when the very concept of a "state" was just taking shape…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Armand

The map you have re-gurgitated has the wrong labels.

Everyone knows that Charles the Eighth spoke English.

Maybe he knows French also…? (smile)

Very common in those days… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Armand

No. No French.

Only a very affected nasal English, With pomade.

Armand

more history:

www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/57493 => Napoleons vision for a new Rome

nicked from here:

news.ycombinator.com

Many thanks!…

Amicalement
Armand

I only skimmed it, but it looks like some old fashioned concepts in there. When Michael Mallet's book "Mercenaries and their Masters" was reprinted, the price was very affordable -- why doesn't anybody read it? :-)