Medieval warfare

[Hoss]

Bless those engineers and tinkerers for those handy guns of today!

The battle of Towton, March 29th, 1461

Arrows were not the only things flying through the air that day. Some of the first bullets were, too. The Towton battlefield has yielded up the earliest lead-composite shot found in England. Mr Sutherland thinks he may have found a fragment of a handgun, which was small enough to be carried around and probably set down on a trestle table or small carriage to be fired.

http://www.economist.com/node/17722650

[asmurff]

Good article  :thumb:

[asmurff]

History is one of my favorite past-times specially military history.

[Hoss]

Ja, fascinating stuff.  I can recall being mesmerized in grade school by the story telling in history class.

[asmurff]

I read more history than fiction and most of the fiction I read is Historical, right now I'm reading a series by Conn Iggulden on Ghengis Khan.

[Glowin]

But what it doesn't say is that in 1462 our government banned it  ;D

Glowin

[Hoss]

I read more history than fiction and most of the fiction I read is Historical, right now I'm reading a series by Conn Iggulden on Ghengis Khan.

Just read "The Hammer and the Cross" by Harry Harrison, and evidently co-written with Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey.  It's fiction, alternate history of a sort, but incredibly realistic.  Brutal though, and not for the faint of heart.  It was, however, utterly fascinating. 

Reminded me of The Chosen, The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, by Ricardo Pinto; which, as an aside, goes beyond cruel and into the unfathomably vicious.  However, the atmosphere in both books, and the realism of the particular cultures is something to behold.