>>551078
>What was the size of the average army in the 15th century?
15th Century *Where*

Because it ranges from shit tribes with 50-man bands to Chinese/East Asian armies where 100,000 is normal for a single battle.

Redpill me on Nasser

>>551080
>15th Century *Where*
Europe

>>551078
Is history the most inaccurate form of academic study? What's the probability that our conception of the past is far off the mark and things were entirely different than how modern history lets us perceive them?

>>551108
for example?

don't really see how we could misconceive the peloponnesian war
>modern history
>how modern history lets us perceive them
we're somehow seeing things through "modern history" how?
and what is modern history

>>551096

Raised by some nobleman to fight in some familiar feud? Some dozens.
More serious campaign, by a very powerful nobleman or the prince? Some hundreds.
A great campaign called by the prince himself? Thousands.
Anything numbering over a couple of thousands would be considered a big force, raised with some objective, tens of thousands would be a very large one.

>>551120
What I meant by modern history is our outlook on history today, and I don't exactly mean wars more like how we look at things 5000-1100 years ago, how accurate are the evidence for us to conclude the life they lived back than?
how probable it is that crucial evidence for understanding their life as how they actually were are missing and we only represent a tip of the iceberg that survived through the years?
Just asking questions I'm not implying anything by the way.

Is it true that casualties in wars waged by feudal societies were generally very little (at the very least among knights) because people tried to get ransom money and general protection was quite decent?

>>551108
Yeah, probably.

Everything in history is based off of only bits and pieces. There are still literally entire archives full of documents from WWII that we haven't gone through, and that was only 70 years ago.

The further back you go, the fuzzier the picture gets.

Who knows, maybe somewhere in some secret Russian archive there are actually documents proving that only 200,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. Or perhaps there is a piece of a lost history text somewhere that shows how Rome wasn't founded by Romulus and Remus, but was actually a Greek colony. Or perhaps a contemporary account of the events of Jesus Christ's life will be found in the Middle East, written by the man who witnessed the miracles himself, and it will give more credit to Christian beliefs.

History is not an exact science. It isn't science. All of history is based on broken information, incorrect information, data hidden behind the fog of time and bias. We will never have the full picture, because we can never be in the exact moment in time that it happened.

So what I'm getting at here is that in a heartbeat, something can come along and completely revolutionize our way of looking at something. In all my years of studying history the only thing I know is that I know nothing.

>>551157

Casualties were relatively low, but it wasn't just because "capture for ransom."

Generally, the knightly classes had horses and decent armor. The latter makes it harder for you to get killed, and the former helps you escape when things go badly: In pretty much all pre-19th century wars, the bulk of the casualties were inflicted in the post-rout pursuit, which meant that being on horseback was inordinately less risky than fighting on foot.

>>551131
well that's disappointing

>>551173
I see. What about the protection itself? How was the knight generally equipped in, say, High Middle Ages? How good was it against the typical weapons of the time?

>>551174

Well, you have to raise, move, feed and provide the men that make up your army.

>>551180

If we're defining "High middle ages" from about 1,000-1300? Usually a mail hauberk, possibly patches of solid metal affixed here and there to provide increased protection, usually to the chest, a helmet, and a shield.

An outfit like that would make you pretty arrow-resistant, and most slashing swords would only be able to hurt you with a great deal of trouble. Something like another guy charging at you full tilt with a lance lowered is going to kill you real good though, if he connects and you can't deflect it away somehow (shields are good for this)

>>551191
I see. How was full plate? I heard that full plates we usually know appeared when weaponry got advanced enough to dispatch protection like that easily enough so it was mostly a status thing.

>>551166
So would you say it's worth studying with what we do have? Would you say in most areas of the study of history the evidence are strong enough to give us a high probability of accurate interpretation?

>>551197

What we tend to think of as "full plate" only started showing up in the 15th century.

And no, weapons did not dispatch them easily. The term "bulletproof" comes from the practice of firing a pistol at a new breastplate at point-blank range, and the dent demonstrating that the armor can hold up to gunfire.

Full plate was pretty good stuff, and generally could only be dealt with by either some specialized weapons (two handed hammers or the like), or by pinning the guy down and jamming a dagger into something not covered, usually the armpit.

It wasn't quite invulnerability, but it was pretty damn good. Now, firearms kept advancing, and really by the 17th century that wasn't true anymore, but when it first came out, full plates were amazing protection.