Answering viewers' questions with Schola Gladiatoria

as those who follow my Linda beige Facebook page would know I'm going to do a question and answer video with Matt Eastern okay now and I ask people to send in questions and they sent in I think they sent in enough mmm I don't think we're gonna run out of questions I don't think that's going to be the big problem here now first up Frederik Nielsen asks do you honestly believe that either of you is capable of giving a quick answer to the questions post yes Luke biddin who would win next question technology you see this is not I don't have a mobile phone you see I do that and I scroll up he just doesn't scroll up why doesn't it scroll up why haha he can't do it either I feel that's stupid right okay so it's okay Lee Brown says with modern body armors becoming ever more effective against ballistic attacks do you think we will ever see a return of melee weapons as a significant factor in combat well first up I would say that I have friends in the Armed Forces and melee weapons are still a significant factor in in combat but not necessarily in the sort of war hammer or can a fantasy view of how that maybe bayonets I've done some videos about bayonets recently and bayonets are still important objects I won't go on and on about that but in terms of increasing body armor do I think that will increase the use of hand weapons no and the reason is I think that at the same time that body armor is improving I think that that firearm technology will also improve so if people start to develop better armor just as always throughout history the weapons will improve as well and ultimately you can offend something you can damage something far more effectively within an explosive than you can with the power of your muscles it does tend to be that the offense is more effective than the defenses against it over time but I do I do like the film d'un where they got those belts with the shield generators and the going with the knives so you know yeah and that was explained I think because they could only you can only stab move Susan slowly fast moving objects yeah but I think I think hand weapons are still important and you know I know of people who've used bayonets in parts of the world in the last few years and so they're still important for many things including crowd control and things like that but yeah I think ultimately the increase or improvement of ARMA isn't the thing that will make hand weapons more prevalent ok I've pressed everything what you just towards the left of the screen yeah that's where you're OK right so yes it's doing it so Tom Keeley says I have heard that had the Roman Empire not collapsed and continued its technological advancements it would have achieved nuclear power in 200 years how much faith would you put in that statement none so the Roman Empire didn't collapse as such it well it did sort of it fractured so it splits into the Western Roman Empire in the Eastern Roman Empire and carried on in the Byzantine Empire the Byzantine Empire ultimately was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and I don't think that I believe from what I read they weren't showing any early signs of developing nuclear power I didn't have any heavy water and yet that's one of the first pre records but possibly if I may a more interesting question and this was actually when I was doing my archaeology degree this one actually came up was why didn't the Industrial Revolution kick off during the Roman period because they had them they had all the people they had the massive steel industry they had loads of good communications so a lot of what was in place for when it did actually start in Britain of many many centuries later a lot of those things were apparently in place and you may be to know that the jet the usual answer to this is slavery that if there was some problem that needed solving you just put more slaves on it in the Roman period and that was not something that was not part of the equation when the Industrial Revolution did actually start and and now it's died possibly you should do the mobile phone because I think this is going to happen in okay right Roman oh wow here we go Jamal's ski dig ancient and medieval armies have SpecOps units that we know of used like commandos or Marines in the modern days it's like a successful ninja you would never know about him because he was a successful ninja the SpecOps if they are actually trying to be covert if they were successful then they would have been covert so we wouldn't know about yeah I mean I think I think the basic answer is sort of yes in that you know there were the the machines or half assassins there were there are not a lot of these units that that that people who like the world's ultimate warrior shows they just want to to to pick them up as the kids say these days into into spec ops that they can have them against the SAS who would win so forth but I think what it comes down to is for most of history what you've had a Scouts and elite guards should we say or bodyguard elite gasps and the thing is modern special ops kind of they cover a lot of these areas that had spies there were definitely spies yeah but perhaps what there weren't were reasonably large units that were designed to operate behind enemy lines for long periods that's not something they went into no no of course forms of guerrilla warfare go back as far as we know in history so you could say that guerrilla fighters a reform of special ops and well spec ops to me suggests they're extremely highly trained yeah which darillium necessarily know so I think the answers sort of a bit yeah thought of a bit but those those the world's ultimate the etc shows massive pinch of salt or indeed you know I've been on a show I think two episodes of ancient assassins and you know I make no classify but yeah that has absolutely falls within the category that Lloyd is is describing and it's quite interesting working on a show like that because they very much try to extract you so they ask you a historical question and they try to angle it so so could they have been maybe they wore camo paints to do these guerrilla attacks is it possible there are things we don't know about these people yes so anyway that probably say so Roman has asked lots of other questions Oh Oh then here's one by Aaron Thomas right Oh what is the shortest time for building a well-made and defended military encampment or castle what is the overall best type of oh that's a secular question um well the Romans after learning how to make war by fighting Hannibal would every night on the March fortify a camp if you've got a very very large army and you put it into an area the amount of perimeter that each man is responsible for actually becomes quite small so you could say okay each guy has to put one up right in the palisade and and move one cubic yard of Earth from from the ditch and then he can go and have his tea and if you've got an army of tens of thousands of people you can actually have a pretty usefully fortified position in what would in less than a day because they would march to where they were going to camp for the night and then fortify for the night so in a matter of not many hours you can have a fortification that was not great but definitely worth having yeah that's the answer isn't it the Romans probably had got it too as fine an art as anyone else in history and they seem to have done it in an evening yeah and the Carthaginians at the same time there we go so next Matt Maggie q Matt Maggie q aha is the FS kymaro Fairburn Sykes commando dagger of any use outside of a fighting role no it's for stabbing people that's it you don't you don't chop onions with it it's not for peeling carrots it's it's for stabbing people and that's why they're so horrible you look at them and go oh this has one purpose and one only it's for stabbing a bit like the a lot of the Vandal daggers you see are for killing people and that you're not gonna Whittle with it rubbish for that yeah they're not very well although at the end of the day it does have a sharp edge so you could use it for it's not very well adapted for those things but you could chop carrots with it you could try things open with it and you know knowing knowing having been an army cadets and knowing people who've been in the army and still in the army whatever you give a soldier a tool for they will use it for other things so I'm absolutely certain I've seen a lot of original antique or vintage should we say feral and psychics daggers that have had to have the tips reshaped I suspect that's not because of all the Germans that they've stabbed I suspect that it's because they've been using the tip to pry something that has a very very thin tip in the manner to they actually so presumably they were snapping I'm sure that they use them for all the sorts of things it Birds for stabbing I mean you could tow an anti-tank guns with a herd of goats and you're big enough you could chop an onion with with a fairbairn-sykes commando dagger but no it's it's a stabby thing so next question okay this is balázs younger in the 15th to 16th centuries even the lowliest foot soldier had some sort of gambeson padding or some fordham form of armour fast forward to the 17th this is a long question to the 17th to 18th centuries the English redcoats had no armor what's worse they were expected to stay in formation faced cannon fire or a volley of muskets did soldiers suddenly become cheap granted that armors don't it's a very long question granted that armors don't provide protection against bullets but mounted Dragoon Guards and crassius had armors exclamation mark so the question is I think why why the later periods so so kind of industrial period soldiers might have forms of armor generally speaking but some forms of cavalry do when lowly foot soldiers did generally have some form of armor in earliest and did soldiers become cheap no a man has to be recruited transported trained fed clothed police patched up when he's wounded there is an awful lot of costs in the man de lysed yes in the roman we go back to Roman times to the cost of the actual man having him in the army for past 25 years was vastly greater than the cost of the armor he was wearing and a lot of the arguments I think about oh why did they use this armor not that Armour and it was all down to cost but if it were down to cost they were really penny-pinching off a tiny tiny fraction of the cost of putting an army together the Roman army for instance in peacetime had to be fed and that was a gargantuan task they had massive granaries all around the Roman Empire so that these these soldiers had bread and that would be four decades of peace perhaps in which their armor never even got used so no the idea that that humans suddenly became cheaper I don't think is the factor that really explains this change no I mean I think the the general abandonment of most forms of armor I mean people many books will famously point out that the gorge a that the ornamental gorge a is the last vestige of armour for infantry soldiers I think the reason it was abandoned was because the majority of your concern is about people shooting you and by and large you can't equip foot soldiers with enough armor or good enough armor to make them invulnerable to musketry and artillery so given that you can't armor them enough to protect them from the main thing that's the threat firearms hmm why bother giving them arm and why not spend the money on giving them better firearms or nicer uniforms or the uniforms nice all right yes as to the cavalry of course cavalry their role was to ride around and get into hand hand combat so of course they did maintain vestiges of armor to some degree key ratios with a breastplate back plate and a helmet and occasionally his arse had iron hoops inside there there were hats and sometimes they had chainmail and infantry well into the period when people are wearing try corns or cocked hats they very often had a metal protector underneath that because that was one threat they were worried about a downward cut from a saber from a passing Horseman so you you you wear armor to to deal with what threats you're expecting indeed I mean I know I know one account on the retreat to Karuna in in the Napoleonic Wars there's a British infantryman who was on rear guard and he held off I think it was for French his arse who were harassing the retreating British army and he lived to tell the tale but by the end of it they said that every bit of his equipment was covered in Sabre carts including his his Shaco hit all of his uniform the cross belt his backpack his musket and they described the bayonet as looking like a hacksaw with with just lots of notches up it but you know he held them off when he retreated and thick woollen uniforms shouldn't be under underestimated in their ability to protect you from superficial and blows and cuts and definitely a leather Chateau is actually quite good protection from a cut I mean try cutting through a leather tube with the top tips and really difficult Rumple zone yeah exactly so they didn't have armor per se because they were being shot at but what they were wearing did confer some degree of protection against saber cuts not so much against bayonet thrust but that's a that's another topic but I would say one final thing we do see Armour come back in World War one and when trench raiding became a big thing you know the National Army Museum in London has a big collection of trench raiding weapons and armor and they literally brought back armor they had breastplates they had helmets with visors the types of bevor and some of the German stuff actually looks quite gothic yeah they had run the nail early tank drivers even shrapnel have a chainmail so you know our Medivh come back and I don't you know we see armor has come back again today so today too because our soldiers cost Western forces so much money to train and equip and look after and ensure we want to make sure that they're wearing body armor so that if one piece of shrapnel flies across a battlefield that doesn't put them out of action so armor has come back to a degree yes on to the next question venca regard Ryan okay what would be the best secondary stroke backup weapon for a modern day soldier if he were not allowed to use a pistol stroke firearm but had to choose an old weapon like a sword ix axe etcetera knife is a quick answer to that one knives are very easy to carry and there was a stabby and you can find a gap and and soldiers do actually carry them they use them to affect sadly go with knife that's the answer and that is that is what they carry you know soldiers only do you have no of course not only as a weapon but as utility you know it's it's a tool as well um but it depends partly who they're fighting as to what type of knife well because well we get and we get into the body armor issue yeah and actually we could go back to things like Rundle daggers and stuff like that because the type of body armor the increasing number of the world's soldiers are wearing something like the Brundle dagger might in fact be the best type of dagger for them to carry yeah but you can't chop onions with it you can't chop onions without and I've played call of duty 4 modern warfare and a knife instant pay for every time so alright so this is a really good question by Mike Barch and Morris ok also this is a follow-up question to something what are your thoughts on last Anderson's fast archery I'm not sure many of you did review ok those of you who don't know Lars Hanson released the incredibly successful viral video in which he showed that mother but that archery is in fact every bit as effective as machine-gun fire and that whilst falling off your horse you you were expected to be able to shoot was it three arrows or something so he demonstrates this by jumping onto a pad offer of a vaulting horse in a gym know if you're galloping along and suddenly you fall off your horse you have you have other priorities then I think I'll get my bow out and load load it and shoot a couple of times I think not not dying horribly right now is your top priority I think I think the point that lots of people make and I've made in the past video and that Lars himself admits openly I have I've had a bit of communication with him directly incidentally I made a video which wasn't about philosophy was about speed shooters and he by pure coincidence released his video about two weeks after lots of people went you've made this video criticizing fellows Anderson and I'd actually if you look at the dates you can see I've released my video before anyway and the point that we all agree on is that he's using very light bows he's using for the most part about a 30 pound Rohit bow really simple pinch grip yeah and you know people say are but a 30 pound bow could still kill you could still hunt with it because still we used in tribal warfare at close range yes look at the knocks on these arrows as well yeah that wide yes that's very true and indeed in in you know tribal combat close range it could if you trained yourself to be as fast as Lars you could be a super lethal tribesman in that type of combat but honor say medieval battlefield whether we're looking at English long bows or whether we're looking at Turkish recurve bows or Mongol bows they all seem to be above 100 pounds draw weight and you cannot you cannot shoot that fast with a hundred pound draw bow well nobody has ever done it yet anyway I won't say it can't be done but nobody above about fifty sixty pound draw weight boat can do this speed shooting so very very nice trick shooting impressive trick shooting great for that and that's an important part it is still a very impressive skill isn't it I mean and the fact that he hits plates or something yeah we don't know how many edits he's done but oh yeah that's the practiced all afternoon together the notion perhaps what arches of the the old world used to look like no and when he said that there were no such things as backwards on the back that's just wrong look at all those representations of Persians on the the gates of Babylon and so forth they they used plenty of arrows taken from the back Quivers right Luka modica uh-huh oh those faces again I am left-handed I know that left-handed people could not be Knights couldn't they but they had to be left-handed heroes who were not Knights and throughout history question mark well put left handedness is a problem for ancient warfare if you've got loads of people who are all trained to guard the guy next to them with a shield and a spear and so forth but the notion that there weren't left-handed people in the ancient world I I think there were it is groundless that there is the quite nice idea that you put all left-handers on one end of the formation and and you have the guy with two shields on the join to cut it to cover the gap left-handed people bit like a left-handed tennis player can often do well in the tournament because he has a slight advantage having some left-handers on your side it might be quite handy and you might need to decide always put them on on the on the file after the formation and maybe they can do some do some good to the open right side of their opponents so the idea that they were they were always for Vidhan to fight left-handed I think seems too far-fetched and as for you weren't allowed to be a knight I know of no such rule why not would you not allowed what would no one like I would Knight you but you're left-handed we can categorically state actually that's not correct first of all there are fencing treatises that specifically talk about how to fight against left-handers so actually no 1531 talks about how to fight against the left-hander and what to do against a right-hander if you are a left-hander and so absolutely there were left-handed swordsman or fighters in the medieval and renaissance period secondly yes there was a bias against left-handers left-handers were sinister they were since a lot and yes that's true so they're probably children just as frankly in my parents and grandparents time were discouraged or tries to steer away from from being left-handed aiyah certainly was the complete opposite I write left-handed but I'm right-handed in every other way which is Oh which I can't explain that writing is one of the the technologies that educate educators put great emphasis on biasing with right left-handed because if you are trying to write in ink and you try left-handed you u-turns smear your own ink and they were taught people were taught until well into the 20th century to write right-handed even if they were left-handed as I understand it in British law which hand you write with is what dictates whether you're recorded as being left or right-handed so legally I'm left-handed even though if I was to stab someone I was having with my right hand which could be useful nobody but so yeah the long the short is that left-handers were around but they could be useful as well could be useful and some people might perhaps be a black perhaps less trained troops if you're trying to get a load of peasants to just act all together with their spears and shields today could you just hold the spear in the other hand you might have happened I can believe that but the notion that you couldn't be a knight I think there's a false premise in the question absolutely you could be and I would also just throw in one final point on that's actually there is an advantage to training with both hands and being able to switch hands sometimes you come up against an opponent and by switching hands it's advantageous to do that or indeed get injured in one of your hands and in fact there's a Cutlass manual from 1859 which says it gives you one of these complicated drills to teach the sailors teach the seamen and once they've done it they say now do it with the left hand so they actually were drilling them on Victorian naval ships to train Cutlass both with left and right hand and they give the reason that if you're hit in the right hand if you're right-handed and disabled you can switch to the left hand I also know of one explicit account of a Sudanese dervish doing this where he got hit in one arm with a sword I think and he switched their sword to his other hand and this was recorded because it was impressive essentially so Quentin Williams Quentin William Anson Williams how large did armies get throughout history they've all turrets for example were the average armies numbered in a few hundred nations but don't look gargantuan question um big ever so yes tens of thousand words a big civilization obvious the biggest bigger the the more organized civilization the greater the time of Plenty the more a greater population you can feed and to excess so you can actually have people who are not just being farmers all the time but can be soldiers so that tends to be that they're the height of the Roman Empire the height of the Chinese Empire so yes it is I suppose an indicator of how well as society is doing overall how big an army it can field I mean the Battle of Waterloo had a hundred plus thousand people at it didn't it whereas the Battle of Agincourt had around I think twenty twenty-five thirty thousand people at it yes there's a rough but Gaugamela with Alexander against Darius it was way bigger oh hang on there is it Xerxes Darius isn't it it's Darius yes it's Varys that was a way bigger than Waterloo again really I I have to say also if you put it in the context of the period that's even that's doubly called Rupali more impressive given the population sizes because you know after the Industrial Revolution population sizes started to go up a lot so you have to relate it to population size surely yes yes but it's also the people who can be spared indeed so are we doing what when do we actually finish this should we do three more there should be three more okay we can edit this bit out so how done relived in the Middle Ages oh okay Jacob Pross yes had either of you lived in the Middle Ages and had a choice of occupation strokes social position which would you choose and why if you could choose your social position surely the top that makes it really easy I the Holy Roman Emperor yeah throwing poo into a into a stream for a living so yeah being really really really assassin job it's a Monty Python I'm sure people yeah outside a lot of cities in Britain there there was a river called something like creek because that's what it was used for there were people yes who took poop outs of cities and threw it well let's say so so we could make this question more interesting I think by saying you were roughly middle-class what profession would you choose in the Middle Ages in Europe Oh rough the middle class well architect would be pretty good making making cathedrals and I would just tuck my gloves as a Master Mason into my belt show that I've qualified but I don't use them anymore and I could draw a nice geometry and tell people to do stuff and get lots of glory although one drawback is that some a lot of fact of cathedrals took so flippin long to build that if you started one it was your design your baby you would never actually get to see it finished so or maybe someone who travelled a lot so he can you can merge into yes but then you did a lot of sea travel and risk yes disease risk of disease high high and overall living in the medieval period is not actually fantastically operates and even if you're a king and you get a little cut in an infection there's no penicillin infant mortality very high no chocolate that's that's a deal breaker for me yeah but you know my answer would be arms dealer I'd like to be a medieval arms dealer right you are in fact now you basically yes yeah I actually I don't think I'd want to be a soldier I don't think being a soldier sounds like a good idea at all what do you like camping and hiking everyone at this this is fight camp we're all in tents okay he's staying in a hotel so that gives you the eye King don't be a soldier we riding surely not everyone gets to ride though yeah yeah no overall I'd like to be some kind of merchant or artisan I think making things or selling writings all both okay there we go right the phone's gonna have to get oh it's three months now were two more all right that was a old I think we won got to the end we'll have no I don't know would there were there were hoards although we did we hit we have skipped past a few in our haste you know we could building the suspense now we're probably using some some some background music you know like those three minute games in the crystal maze you know to make something that's actually quite dull seem exciting we'll find someone on YouTube that we could use for free couple this bit okay what about this is the last question right Luke Luke bidden who would work last quit it's a who would win question okay last question right who would win 500 British First World War rifleman with no machine guns nor artillery or 1000 Roman soldiers at the height of their military power each presumably pitched against the other riflemen well the First World War British riflemen was at the end of a tradition that came out of the Victorian period and in the Victorian period the British Army had many times fought against often quite largely outnumbering armies armed with spears and so forth and had very very consistently won and as a as an owner of a 303 smle at 303 by rifle rounds go through anything that the Romans can carry them straight it's going to go straight through the scooting straight through any type of lorica they're wearing and they're going to be dead and possibly through the person behind this I'll and here yeah he actually has them on earth on a flat flat grassy plains so there's no hiding involved yes so the British would just mow the front rank down then the second rank then the further the Romans would then I think I think we I think the real question should be how many seconds with the oh wow I didn't know you fought like that a Hudson rather unnecessary you've got me in the eye I got you in the eye right anyway the the camera at some of the footage we were halfway through a question about Romans being mowed down mercilessly by first world war British and I think it's a question not of who would win but how quickly with the Romans died how many seconds do we give them yes I think I think Ladbrokes will probably give you evens on maybe around 45 seconds and then the Roman army would think something something happening here that we don't understand that's all run away yeah the Romans have got anything that will stop 303 rounds they're gone us with no Spandau zorb Ren's required none at all no it's open field flat trajectory it's all over there we go yeah so much British army one Roman army no not another great victory thank you for inviting me thank you thank you very much coming to fight camp and enjoy the rest of the day ciao [Music] you

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 135,689

Rating: 4.9700947 out of 5

Keywords: answers, questions, schola, gladiatoria, schola gladiatoria, matt easton, sent in, contributed, viewers, romans, history, special forces, bayonets, knives, fight camp, soldiers, equipment, who would win, ww1, wwI, armor, armour, body, modern, medieval, ancient, infantry, helmets, occupation, choose, choice, q and a, Q&A, QnA, FAQ, audience, left handed, left, left-handed, sinister, sinistra, knight, army, size, large, many

Id: NGk-kNNlgzA

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017