ceebeegee | Entries tagged with military tactics

Well, the glow from that didn't last too long because we got our final grade--and I got only an A-. I'm not happy about this, needless to say but there's not much I can do about it. (Or I should say, will do--I despise grade grubbers.) My midterm grade dragged down my average a bit--I got a B/B+ on it (I don't know for sure because the TA made a mistake grading it--he added incorrectly) which definitely had its affect. But my papers were A and A-, and my class participation was A+++. I'm guessing my final was an A- but only just--it had to have been on the A/A- bubble.

What's annoying is how little class participation apparently matters--there were many incidents where I pointed out stuff he'd never considered, and he seemed genuinely impressed/thoughtful. Examples below:

*The first day of class, he was talking about different justifications for battle tactics--sometimes you do the right (or wrong) thing not because you're adhering to the laws/customs of war, or because you're bad, but because it's most expedient. (Example: Richard I slaughters the garrison at Acre. One tactical explanation might be because he's about to march, and he doesn't want to have to feed/guard an extra 300 prisoners.) He talked about the cherem in Deuteronomy, the charge to "kill them all," and we were suggesting various reasons for that. Root out infidels? Protect yourself? And afterward I said to him--what about a genetic/biological urge, like when new head lions kill all the cubs of the former head lion? He said that had never occurred to him.

*When we first started looking at the Bayeux Tapestry, he was comparing the texts (which had Harold as Guy's prisoner) with the imagery on the Tapestry, which shows Harold on a horse, riding with Guy through a crowd. He saw that as a contradiction--then I suggested "perhaps Guy was trying to humiliate Harold?" He literally stopped talking when I said that, to think it over, and then said he'd never thought of that. (What flashed through my mind was the Palm Sunday hym "In lowly pomp, ride on to die" and Aslan's scourging before the Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)

*I even sent him extra stuff he requested! (He'd talked about a WWII incident which brought to mind a Richard III Mad magazine history thing in a book--I mentioned it to him in an email and he said "you must copy that for me." So I brought it back from my visit home Easter break and scanned & emailed the piece to him.)

And the A- for the first paper annoys me, because all he wrote was:

Well done; I learned a lot. You managed to keep this nicely focused on the question of honor/gender. When we get around to chivalry, you will see better how this fits in! - ajk

And the final exam REALLY annoys me, because of how difficult it was to study for. The midterm was the same way--we had to be prepared to identify one obscure passage out of the 1000+ pages of primary sources that we've studied? Are you mad? Let me tell you, after reading six of them in a row, all of those early Christian apologists start to sound alike! The study session for the final--you could feel the fear in the air. NO ONE knew what "reverse identifications" were supposed to mean. You can't just tell your class "go over everything" with a history exam--we studied thousands of pages. My exams for Roman History and Medieval Intellectual Life, though difficult, were approachable.

Grrr...well, I must console myself by saying:

*My average is still a pure 4.0 (because I had an A+ for Roman History).

*I looked up his reviews on Culpa (a Columbia-only Rate Your Professors kind of thing). Apparently he has a rep for being a tough grader--one reviewer said their class average was a C. Yikes!

*Also, I had an illuminating meeting with him during office hours a few weeks ago. More about that later but I know he likes my work.

I'll just have to chalk this up to: difficult grader. The CULPA review said that he was very stingy with full As. I had a professor at Sweet Briar like that, I got a string of A-minuses on paper after paper. Naturally on the one subject that didn't excite me that much (Their Eyes Were Watching God, not one of my favorite books although it is certainly worth reading)), I finally got a full A! (What's even weirder is that I dreamed I would.)

LORD, am I glad this semester is over! Between this class and non-stop drama-queen nonsense during the whole Macbeth debacle (months of months of drama-queen nonsense, though after that was all resolved, the show ultimately turned out very well), I am completely exhausted. Can't wait for a whole summer in which I can just bake in the sun (while perusing primary sources from Columia's delicious libraries) and play softball.

So, this past week has been a bit stressful--we got the study sheet for the final last Tuesday and it was really no help. Basically it was "go over everything we studied in class." We studied at least 1000 pages of primary sources, not to mention at least that much of secondary sources! And the man really does lecture VERY quickly. But at least this time we didn't have to identify actual passages from the sources (he did that for the midterm, VERY HARD). The TA ran a study session that confirmed my hunch that going over the themes of the class would be a useful way to break it down. Last week I made up a study guide--25 PAGES LONG. It took so long to type, I actually didn't finish typing it until Friday night, when I no longer had access to a computer at work or home. (I actually have a home printer but it's crap, doesn't feed very well. I really just keep it for a scanner.) I figured I might be able to send it to a printer on the campus network, but I read how to do it on the Columbia site--it's sort of complicated, there are queues and a quota. I wandered around my neighborhood Saturday morning and found a UPS "store" that also offers office service, including printing, and for much less than I'd feared. So banged out that job! I stayed in my apartment for most of the weekend, going over this material. OY. So much more stressed for this final than my others--I really, really do not like this final format. I was not that worried for my finals in Roman History or Medieval Intellectual Life, I felt very prepared for them. Oh well, if I was worried, I can only imagine my classmates were as well.

The exam. I probably got a 95% on the first section (reverse identifications) and I know I nailed the middle section. He gave us a document that we hadn't studied--we had to pick it apart as a source, looking at the language, possible bias, try to figure out who wrote & when, find contradictions, etc. I had a blast with that, especially when I snarkily pointed out a contradiction that reflected some ass-kissing on the part of the chronicler. The third part--that was hardest and naturally it was worth the most. I thought I did okay, but not as well as the middle section. I finished up pretty well though, I wrote how "the canon texts of the Laws of War of the High Middle Ages were like so many distant mirrors, reflecting the giants who had preceded them and and each other, building" blah blah blah--basically the point was that these pieces drew on each other and the past [very medieval, they all made constant reference to previous writers, especially Aristotle and Augustine]. And shoutouts to Baabara Tuchman* can only help! Anyway, I sat there for at least a couple of minutes before I came up with that last concluding line--extemporaneous eloquence is not easy!

When I turned in the blue books, I asked about our papers--we were supposed to get them back after the final. Jay (TA) has suggested before the final but Professor Kosto vetoed it--I said to Jay "probably for the best. Can you imagine being in a classroom trying to concentrate on your final while someone next to you is silently weeping or angrily scratching in their blue books? Bit distracting!" Anyway, Jay whispered to me that I'd gotten an A--I made him repeat it! I was thrilled, not least because I got an A- on my first paper--and I still don't know why, because they seemed to love it! Nothing but compliments. Anyway, very happy about that, and then later Jay mailed our papers' comments to us.

Jay'd said : Very nice intermingling of cultural/military issues, perceptive reading of sources, and lovely writing. Good work!

And Kosto said: I wasn´t sure where you were going with this, but it turned out very well. Super readings of the written sources, and a nice use of the visual ones. You don´t blindly apply the models of chivalry, but extract a model of moral behavior from your own reading of the sources. Well done.

Eeeeehhhhh! I love this because--when I first discussed the topic with them (the role of the cavalry in the Battles of Hastings (1066--the Normans invaded England) and the Golden Spurs (1302, Courtrai--the French cavalry were smashed by a bunch of Flemish burghers and peasants))--*I* wasn't sure where I was going with it! I had an idea about the imaginative connection with the horse, but I didn't have this firm thesis I was definitely going to prove. I just had a feeling, and followed my instincts, exploring through my writing. I'd wanted to use as one of my sources the Bayeux Tapestry--Kosto said that I should use another additional source to explicate the tapestry, so I used William of Poitiers's Gesta Guillelmi, and for the Battle of the Golden Spurs, a Flemish source. But I knew--somehow--the Tapestry would be useful, I could do something with that--and in the end, the piece also talked about the power of the imagery of the Tapestry (which I wrote in my last entry).

*Her A Distant Mirror is a classic in this field--EVERYONE'S read it. And it has a whole delicious chapter on the Black Death!

After the thorough defeat of the English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, early medieval observers could be forgiven if they believed they had witnessed the demise of the infantry. Harold’s tight column of foot soldiers had ultimately proven no match for the mobility, speed, and sheer force of weight displayed by William the Conqueror’s Norman cavalry, and the 11th century nascent warrior society, which William exemplified perfectly, took notice. And so, encouraged by William of Poitiers’s panegyric portrait of the Conqueror leading his troops on horseback to overwhelming victory and the vivid, dashing imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry, the cult of Chaucer’s “verray, parfit, gentil knyght,” the elite mounted warrior guided by a moral and social code, emerged in the generations following Hastings, inspiring poet and historian, king and soldier. For over 200 years the cavalry’s invincibility in medieval warfare and the mystical righteousness of the knight were held as an article of faith—until the Battle of the Golden Spurs at Courtrai in 1302 proved the infantry was far from obsolete, and that the highly trained warrior caste could in fact be brought low by its presumed inferiors....

Whew. Banged out most of this Monday night but did some Tuesday night and Wednesday as well. This was actually kind of interesting because I used the Bayeux Tapestry as a source, and "quoted" sections of it in the paper, c&p-ing it into the body of the paper.

Even the etymology of Poitiers’s original text binds soldier to horse—William’s sobriquet of “redoubtable mounted warrior” reads as “terribilem equitem” in Latin. Appropriately the Norman horses share in their masters’ triumph: we read “[e]ven the hooves of the horses inflicted punishment on the dead as they galloped over their bodies” and the final image in the Tapestry shows William’s cavalry pursuing the fleeing English.

And my conclusion:

...[L]ater on we read “[m]ore than a thousand simple knights…fell there, and more than three thousand splendid chargers and valuable horses were stabbed during the battle.” These horses are not just valuable but splendid—the bewilderment of the anonymous Annales chronicler at this disaster is manifest and there is an elegiac quality to these passages, as though medieval chivalry itself were dying. Generations of cavaliers, nurtured on tales of the Conqueror and inspired by the imagery of the Tapestry, are now betrayed by their faith in the assumed superiority of the mounted warrior. But perhaps the knights themselves betrayed the code of chivalry—perhaps, as the cult of medieval knighthood developed and armor grew heavier, they took for granted their own invulnerability, and trusted that a cavalry charge and elite status were proof enough against the rabble. Courtrai would challenge such comfortable assumptions—and as a final insult to knightly and aristocratic privilege, we are told that “[d]uring the battle many [infantry]…who previously little thought that such a thing could happen to them, were knighted.”

I think you can tell I'm a Southerner from this passage! There is an echo of Rhett and Ashley's wistfulness for gallantry and the old days in this writing, now that I think of it, especially when Ashley looks at Scarlett and admires her gallantry (in the book, it's when she's making the dress out of the curtains). And the Southerners were crazy for medieval chivalry, they loved Sir Walter Scott.

DONE. Now, on to finals. And softball.

Sweating through my second (final) paper right now, on the role of the cavalry in Hastings and the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Will surface when it's done (probably tonight, I'm on the conclusion right now).

St. Patrick's Day coming up soon, yay! I am looking up Irish knitting patterns in honor of the season--I bought two Aran sweaters back in Dublin but you can never have too many Irish sweaters. I like this one.

Just finished (re)watching 2005's Kingdom of Heaven. Okay, the history is sort of crap--it really, really wasn't just Frankistani = bad, Musselmen = good. Very simplistic view of the Crusades, although it does get you interested in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And holy crap, Reynald de Chatillon! Pretty much WAS that bad. Saladin didn't suffer fools gladly. The leprosy stuff, though--leprosy wasn't genetic, even then they knew that. It was contagious, that's why lepers were quarantined. I love the bitchslapping Baldwin IV gives Reynald.

But the best parts were the battles! Especially the siege of Jersualem--I'm starting to think I should've gone to the Naval Academy after all (I did consider this for a time in high school, my dad's uncle is friends with Bush Sr. and Daddy told me he would be able to get me the appointment). Battle tactics are very interesting--they never change. It's all the same principles. The cinematography in the siege of Jerusalem was GREAT, especially when they start shelling the walls with FIREBALLS. From trebuchets! You see it from the defenders' POV at first, and you just see this glowing orbs approaching and then they hit and you realize what just entered the walls. And THEN they pan over to these glorious, towering trebuchets, these precise, elegant machines of war and death, swaying back and forth and snapping these fireballs over the walls. Trebuchets were *very* accurate because you could make the counterweight larger or smaller.

The only real change I can think of in battle tactics in the last 3000 years would have to be the introduction of air attacks, which combine artillery and cavalry (you can shell and you can use your plane as an intrument of blunt force although although only as a suicide maneuver). Which makes me wonder how the hell Leningrad held off for two and a half years. Against the Wehrmacht *and* ground troops? Supposedly defense is the inherently stronger position in war but not when your fortifications are THAT porous! It's pretty incredible.

I'm on a couple of history listserves at Columbia, and they're having an event next week--an inaugural event for a group called Quadrivium, which explores medieval history along with other disciplines. My professor from last semester who taught Medieval Intellectual Life, will be one of the panelists.

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Entries tagged with military tactics

Last Week of Class, Part II

Last Week of Class, Part I

My paper

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Kingdom of Heaven and seige tactics