#Swiss Knight

[retropopcult]

Swiss Fright cheese Wacky Packages, 11th Series 1974

[grimewart]

SWISS ARMY KNIGHT

[illustratus]

The Battle of Grandson by Jacques Onfroy de Bréville

[riddlersbimbo]

me and my weak spot for paul dano's beautiful teeth pt. 3 (pt. 1) (pt.2)

[racefortheironthrone]

I understand that knights normally followed a fairly set career path: start as a page, get taken on as a squire, and then if they merit it and have resources, knighthood. How did it work for other classes of soldier? How would one go about becoming say, a man at arms, or a specialist like a long bowman or a crossbowman or a pikeman for example?

Ah, excellent question!

One preliminary thing, you do have to be mindful of the distinction between actual training and social organization. Let's take your "career path" for knights, for example - at its heart, the whole page/squire thing was essentially a two-stage apprenticeship, but there was both a mix of actual martial training (I'll get into the curriculum in a bit) and what we would think of as socialization into the noble class - things like music, dancing, literacy, manners, and so forth aren't really directly related to the job of an armored heavy cavalryman, after all.

Importantly, when it comes to the distinction between various ranks, we have to keep in mind the importance of both material resources and sociocultural status. As you note, the difference between a squire and a knight was really about whether the squire could afford the full complement of arms, armor, and a horse, and there were more than a few grown men who were squires their whole lives (this is the inspiration for characters like Squire Dalbridge) because they just didn't have the money to advance to knighthood.

At the same time, the difference between a knight and a man-at-arms came down to social class - in order to be a man-at-arms, you had to have the same training as a knight and own the same equipment (arms, armor, and horse), which is why a lot of the written sources simply call all such men men-at-arms whether they were knights or not - although some sources took more pains to distinguish between the milites gregarii (the plain man-at-arms) and the milites nobiles (which, as you probably have guessed, refers to actual knights).

The former tended to be from the gentry rather than the nobility, and as a result of their lower status, they were usually paid half the wage rate of knights despite doing the same work and taking on the significant risk of providing their own equipment. (The fact that they were cheaper also explains why the proportion of actual knights on the campaign rolls dropped rather rapidly between the 13th and 14th centuries - knights were more expensive, so hiring men-at-arms instead meant you could stretch the budget for heavy cavalry.)

The Knightly Curriculum

As I suggested above, the training for knights was essentially an apprentice system where the page and then the squire provided service to their master in exchange for education. When it comes to the actual content of this training, the curriculum was actually pretty ecletic:

As you might expect, training in arms was an important part of the program. However, this training included a lot more than just swordsmanship. While the sword was very culturally important, when it came to the actual military function of a heavy cavalryman, the lance was arguably of greater importance. Training also tended to include other sidearms - axes, maces, and the like. In later periods, as armor got a lot better and mounted frontal charges tended to be de-emphasized in favor of having men-at-arms fight as dismounted heavy infantry, the curriculum expanded to include new weapons like the poleaxe and other polearms that Gary Gygax was obsessed with.

Training in horsesmanship was also a core part of the curriculum. GRRM is not wrong when he says that "jousting was three-quarters horesemanship," and this is why pages and squires were not only taught formal equestrian lessons, but were also taught how to hawk and hunt as part of their training. Hawking and hunting were the past-times of the nobility in no small part because they involved riding horses very fast through difficult terrain while simultaneously handling either a dangerous animal or weaponry, and were thus were considered good training for future cavalrymen. As Hillary Mantel puts it, "la chasse...we usually say, we gentlemen, that the chase prepares us for war."

Training in armor tends to get downplayed or overlooked, but it was considered so important that a major portion of what pages and squires did was deal with armor - carrying it, maintaining it (scrubbing with abrasives to prevent rust, oiling the straps to keep the leather straps supple, polishing - it was really endless labor), repairing it, putting it on their master and taking it off, and so on and so forth - so that they would understand every step of the process and be able to fend for themselves later on if they didn't have attendants of their own. The famous French knight, Jean "Boucicaut" le Maingre, was held up as an example to pages and squires for constantly wearing full armor while undertaking exercise:

What About the Man-at-Arms?

As you may have noticed, I've been mostly talking about how knights trained rather than men-at-arms. So how did your gentry-born homme d'armes train? Essentially the same as a knight, but with less of the aristocratic bells and whistles of ritualized service and socialization to the nobility. So a son of the gentry would probably be training under the tutelage of their father or other male relative - and given that we're talking about a society in which the overwhelming majority of people did the same jobs as their parents, often being legally bound to do so, this was a very common phenomenon all the way from peasants upwards - or perhaps from a professional tutor who would most likely be a veteran in working retirement.

Towards the later Middle Ages, as literacy rates increased and book production expanded to match supply to demand, your more traditional systems of apprenticeship and one-on-one tutoring became supplemented with written manuals of arms. While this genre of military literature goes all the way back to classical antiquity - and indeed, Roman manuals like De re militari were very popular in the Middle Ages, as were translations of Byzantine manuals - these lavishly illustrated manuscripts were both practical teaching tools and status objects for the families who owned them.

Specialists: Longbowmen, Crossbowmen, and Pikemen

Ok, enough about the upper classes, what about the commoners who served as specialist infantry in Medieval and Renaissance armies?

Well, I've already written a bit about longbow training, but the gist of it is that what started out as a (Welsh) hunting tool was recognized by the English royal government as a vital aspect of military readiness, so laws were promulgated that required essentially all but the poorest to own a longbow and that "that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows… and so learn and practise archery." This training started at a fairly early age and lasted at least a decade, because it involved both the acquisition of technique and the development of the body (not just the arms, but also crucially the back muscles, as the "special sauce" of the English longbowman was his ability to "lay my body in my bow" rather than relying solely on the arms) - such that archeologists can identify longbowmen from the over-development of the shoulder and arm bones.

What about crossbowmen? Well, as I've already written a bit about, one of the major advantages of the crossbow over the longbow is that you could train someone to be a crossbowman in as little as four months, compared to the decade at minimum for a longbowman, because most of what you were teaching them was accuracy in shooting (hence why the recruitment process often involved eye exams) and the procedures for loading and cocking the crossbow - which required a certain amount of physical strength to pull back the string to the nut that would hold it in place, or to work the winch or the lever or the gaffe or the windlass if you were using a heavier crossbow, but nothing like the physical conditioning required for a longbow.

One of the reasons why the term "Genoese" is so often associated with the crossbow is that the Republic of Genoa established a corps of crossbowmen to serve both in the army and as marines in the navy and these experienced soldiers in turn provided a ready supply of labor for mercenary companies. While the captains who recruited on behalf of the great companies might have to put in the up-front investment of equipment (the crossbow and its accessories, pavise shields, armor,and sidearms), they were able to essentially outsource the training costs to the Republic.

When it comes to training, pikemen were somewhere in the middle between the longbowman and the crossbowman. Because pikemen have to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with lots of other pikemen without stabbing one another accidentally or getting their polearms tangled up, coordinating movement and action was vitally important. Hence, pikemen learned a series of quite complicated drills to teach them how to move in formation in different directions, how to change formations from line to square and back, how to switch from pike to sidearm and back, how to work with missile infantry, and so forth.

As I've talked about before, a big part of the reason why Swiss pikemen were so feared on the battlefield is that, because they were very well-drilled and disciplined due to the policies of universal military service adopted by the Swiss cantons, they could execute these drills very quickly, which meant that the Swiss pikemen could turn on a dime from an impenetrable defensive pike square to a shockingly fast and aggressive deep column which beat the ever-loving shit out of the Burgundians, the Hapsburgs, the Italians, the French, and pretty much everyone - until the Swiss ran up against a nasty combination of the German Landsknecht and the Spanish tercio.

[cbartonscoffee]

The Swiss Mark | Luka Jungo

Batman: The Knight #6

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

I feel like I missed something. is teddy lupin gonna show up??? how/why???? is he gonna recognize harry as his younger self and be like "yo pops why you chilling with babymort?"?? cause that's fucking hilarious oh my god. oh my god the absolute shit that would occur!

something that comes to mind is if tedward shows up, will harry try to explain their relationship??

♡

tom: who the fuck is this?

theo: oh no

harry: he's my godson

teddy: Hey dad

tom: HE'S LITERALLY AS OLD IF NOT OLDER THAN YOU WHAT DO YOU MEAN???

harry: well-

♡

anyways, I absolutely love your work and I visit your blog all the time to check out your funny lil memes of your fic LMFOAOAOAK

This ask is hard to answer without giving away spoilers, so all I can say is Oh-oh-oh, It’s time magic, ya know? Like if ghosts are disappearing & parts of citrus fruits are being projected into different realities, then people would also find themselves stumbling from 2008 Hogwarts to 1944 Hogwarts with no idea how they got there!

Ultimately, Teddy will be showing up because I want to include him in this fic because putting a metamorphmagus into a time travel AU involving alternate realities is like having a Swiss Army knife in your back pocket. Like it’s so versatile from a writing perspective because I can put him almost anywhere.

*Teddy Lupin’s future in UDLTTOM*

However in answer to the question: Does he recognize Harry? The answer is no. At least not at first. Harry immediately recognizes him on sight because Teddy disappears from his reality a few short months after Harry does & looks just like he remembers, but as far Teddy knows everyone thinks Harry died. (They didn’t find a body, but there was still a funeral.) And the physical changes that Harry went through from being a almost 30 yrold man to a scrawny teenager would be drastic enough that if someone hadn’t known him at that age, they probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

Teddy: But you can’t be Harry…Harry’s old—

*Harry arches eyebrow*

Teddy: –er. Older.

Harry: You think I’m old?

I think Teddy’s about 11 or 12 when he meets up with Harry & you can imagine that Tom & Co. are confused AF. Because this kid comes outta nowhere, he’s a metaphormagus, Harry’s super attached & over protective of him, & then they learn he’s somehow Harry’s godson? Like how?? As far as they can tell there’s max 4 yr age difference between them. They keep try to add together 2 plus 2 & keep getting WTF 😂

Of course, Tom will inevitably try to use Teddy as a means to get close to/ manipulate Harry—Which will ultimately lead to a big blowout in Slytherin House.

[evilhorse]

Overblown incontinent fossil!!

[age-of-moonknight]

Kahhori: Reshaper of Worlds (Vol. 1/2024), #1.

Writer: Kelly Lynne D’Angelo; Penciler and Inker: Jim Terry; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Travis Lanham

[bylertruther]

hey guys just checking in to say that i am um Fucking Dying out here 👍

edit: thank you for your support, friends 🥺🫶

[drgluckenstein]

H're f'r a valorous timeth, not necessarily a longeth.

[lupusdei018]

Recently I found a new power / heavy metal band called Emerald Rage. (They are from the USA.)

And the last song on their new album (High King), 'Wings of Solitude' sounds very much like an Emerald (swiss heavy metal band from Düdingen) song from their early 2000s era when Jvo Julmy was the singer before Thomas Laszlo Winkler replaced him in 2009.

Emerald - Independence (from "Calling The Knights" - 2001)

Emerald - Battlefield (from Calling the Knights" - 2001)

<><>[]====<><> (it's a sword...)

Emerald Rage - "High King" (2021) Tracklist :

1. Into the Sky

2. Wrathful Eyes

3. High King

4. Heart of a Pagan

5. Dire Wolves

6. White Stag

7. Empress

8. Goddess Freya

9. Wings of Solitude

Songs I recommend to listen from "High King" :

• Into the Sky (the intro is just *chef's kiss*)

• Wrathful Eyes (this song has got one of the best guitar solos I've ever heard in my life.)

• High King

• Dire Wolves

• White Stag

• Wings of Solitude

Emerald - "Calling the Knights" (2001) Tracklist :

1. Calling the Knights

2. Emerald Knights

3. Unreasonable Violence

4. Hard to Be True

5. Across the Sea

6. Victims of Society

7. You Belong to Me

8. Shadowknight

9. Medieval Steel (Medieval Steel cover)

10. Battlefield

Some songs I recommend to listen from "Calling the Knights" :

• Emerald Knights

• Unreasonable Violence

• Hard to be True

• Across the Sea

• You Belong to Me

• Medieval Steel

• Battlefield

• Independence

[grimewart]

swiss army knight and some of her villains

[illustratus]

The Battle of Murten by Ary Johannes Lamme

[aigle-suisse]

Aigle Castle par Geolilli Via Flickr : Switzerland

[xruiiii-blog]

(According to your AU, where Mountain is a knight and Swiss is a murderer)

Swiss *when meeting tries to hug Mountain*

Mountain — You are wanted in 15 countries,want to be searched in another one?

Swiss *Sadly leaves*

HUG HIM DONT LET HIM STOP YOU JUST FOLLOW UR HEART MR MURDERER!!!!😻😻😻🤲🤲