Pawn Stars: 1589 Instructions for the Warre & Practise of Fortification | History

- I brought something What's that? It's a book on the military and warfare from the time of Queen Elizabeth I. It's called "The Instructions for the Wars" and was printed in 1589. It's actually one of the first military field manuals for the English. And it's also got a second book inside, which is the first book on fortification. Fornication? - Fortification. - OK. [laughs] [explosion] This book was printed in 1589 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It's one of the first English military manuals and one of the first books on fortification. I want to sell the book because I studied it. I enjoyed it. And I have to pass it on to the next person. I'm asking for $14,000 for the book today. The man who translated the first of these books-- it was actually translated from French into English-- his name was Paul Ive. And he was actually both a military engineer, but he was also a spy under the English Secret Service under the grand spymaster of Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth, she doesn't really get the credit she really deserves. Probably because she was a woman. She-- I mean, she was literally one of the greatest leaders of the past 1,000 years. By the time Queen Elizabeth died, it was an extremely powerful nation. It was not someone to be messed with. It has some very wonderful woodcuts in it that show the formations of the cavalry and what's necessary for an army. And then there's another diagram here that shows the fortifications, or an example of how you would build a fortification, to ward off your enemy. This is pretty amazing. This book was printed in the 1500s, and it's in the English language, which makes it kind of rare. But rare doesn't always mean money. This is really cool. How much do you want for this thing? I'm going to ask 14,000 for it. OK. Let me-- you've met Rebecca a million times. - Sure. - She's my book person. And let me have her come down and look at it. Yeah. I think she'll be excited by it. Sounds great. - All right. Hang on for a few minutes. Be right back. This is a contemporary vellum binding. This is very exciting. - OK. [laughs] So Elizabethan era, one of the great sort of rivals of Shakespeare was Kit Marlowe. And Marlowe wrote one play. It was very famous, successful, called "Tamburlaine." And he actually quotes almost verbatim some passages from this practice of fortification book. Let me show you something. Practice of fortification, imprinted 1589. Most scholars believe the "Tamburlaine" was completed by 1588 at the latest. You mean Marlow might have copied from this? Or-- He absolutely used passages from that book. - That's very cool. - Isn't that awesome? Yeah. That is. One of the reasons I loved this book is because it has this interesting connection to Kit Marlowe. People thought maybe he was actually a spy. And this book connects him to another known spy, which is Paul Ive, because he took portions of Paul Ive's manuscript and incorporated them into a play. Interesting connection. I am really excited to see these plates here. They're super unusual to see them with these folding plates intact. There aren't really any comps for this. OK? That's the tricky thing about it. OK. What do you think it's worth? Looking at this, this has plates, and this has that awesome Marlowe connection. So I would place it around 12,000. All right. You're the best. - I know. [laughs] - I second that. - Nice to see you. Thank you so much. I think that it would be great book to have in the shop. It really strikes someone as rare book. This is what people think of when they think of an old, valuable, important book. All right. So I am definitely not going to give you 14,000. OK. You know that she said it's extremely rare. [sighs] I'll tell you what. I'll give you a 8,000 for it. I just think it has a lot of appeal. It's an exciting book. It is an exciting book, but-- Well, what's the absolute best? Will you come up at all? I can go $8,500. You know, I really want the book. But-- - OK. I'll give you my best. But you've got to come up a little. I'm coming way down. 9,000. I'll go 86. [sighs] It's so hard to give this one up for that. I'll go for it. I'll bring you some more stuff. OK. Cool. Meet you right over there, man. I'm settling on $8,600. I don't really want to sell it for that. But I'm going to use the $8,600 to go reinvest in other things and that I can hopefully learn about and possibly sell.

Channel: Pawn Stars

Views: 495,591

Rating: 4.8305883 out of 5

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, Pawn Stars, Pawn Stars clips, Pawn Stars full episodes, las vegas, gold & silver pawn shop, gold and silver, pawn shop, rick harrison, corey harrison, pawn stars toys, ooze it, history channel shows full episodes, history channel pawn stars, pawn stars show, history pawn stars, pawn stars season 12 clips, pawn stars s12 e16, pawn stars 12X16, pawn stars full season 12, pawn stars 2018, pawn stars episode 16

Id: MgaoNnSu2v4

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Suck-You-Bus]

Fuck this hurts me. Their holding it without any sort of caution this shit belongs in a museum not some greasy pawn shop. If I was that dude I would have donated it because it would have eventually been destroyed in my possession.

[u/hborrgg]

It looks like the book is this one: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo2;idno=A06617.0001.001

The english translation attributes the text to a "Monsieur William de Bellay", but it seems to be a copy of Raimond de Fourquevaux's Instructions sur le faict de la Guerre first published in 1548. So the the first part at least was already somewhat outdated by 1589 standards. It was also fairly prescriptive rather than really describing pike&shot formations at the time. It drew a lot of inspiration From Machiaveli's The art of War including the proposal of a very similar modern "roman" style formation, although rather than roman-style sword and shield soldiers Fourquevaux wanted to have the heavy infantry be all pikemen wearing small, lightweight targets strapped to their backs to use in close combat with their swords once they lost the use of their pike. He was also somewhat dismissive about the growing number of arquebusiers in the french army at the time, he did consider it a very good weapon, but only in the hands of expert shooters, stating: "wherein there must be an order taken, to appoint fewer Harquebusiers, and those that are good, then many that are worth nothing."

https://imgur.com/a/w0yeq

[u/GuttlessCashew]

Pawn stars is a great show if you feel like experiencing the space between life and dealth for a few.