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thunderlips11 says

This all being said, the late middle ages were dominated by fortifications and sieges, which is why the French beat the English despite losing every major battle in the 100 Year's War, and almost all the decisive Crusading Battles were sieges.

Siege warfare came into eminence because cavalry was sweeping the field outside the castles. If mass infantry warfare had been the norm, there wouldn't enough room in the castles to house the infantry. We are not talking about Chinese or Roman style continuous walls along frontiers, but castles built at isolated points.

The French did not lose nearly every battle in the 100yr War. They had major successes late in the war after a chance massacre of numerous unready English (Welsh) archers in a battle where the English cavalry failed to scout properly and detect French cavalry nearby. Longbow archers took decades to train, and the English simply couldn't replace the loss, and the war went down hill for them from then on. The arrival of artillery also helped French as that both negated English advantage in projectile weapons (longbow archers could fire 3-5 times as fast as crossbow archers) also gave the French an advantage in breaking sieges.

thunderlips11 says

Reality says

A classic case was inviting the far away Otto I to Rome to reduce the local warlords controlling lands around Rome, preventing the rise of a Rome based reunification power.

Wasn't there a King who was excommunicated while on Crusade?

The Kings also kidnapped each other. The Crusade may well have been the church's successful attempt at preventing consolidation in Western Europe by top warlords.

Greenland Icecaps Reveal Pollution in the Past

Judging from the Greenland ice core, the smelting of lead-bearing ore declined sharply after the fall of the Roman Empire but gradually increased during the Renaissance. By 1523, the last year for which Dr. Rosman's group conducted its Greenland ice analysis, atmospheric lead pollution had reached nearly the same level recorded for the year 79 B.C., at the peak of Roman mining pollution.

The 1523 date for *nearly* the same level, puts us solidly in the Renaissance, about a generation after Columbus' voyage of 1492 and a few years after Martin Luther's 99 Theses of 1517.

Reality says

Towards the very end, when the empire was collapsing and the handouts trickled to stop, the city of Rome was depopulated to less than 10% of its peak population within a few generations.

I've seen figures for 400AD Rome as low as 170,000 and as high as 500,000. There's no doubt Rome was shrinking, but it's relative to the growth of Constantinople, the newer capital with a fabulous port and the new darling of the Emperor's eye. Rome is looted of art in the 4th Century for Constantine's Byzantium Project. People followed the money.

According to Peter Heather, the archaeological evidence is that the Eastern Empire's towns and farmland actually expanded during the 5th and 6th Centuries, particularly in the East. Funny how all the depopulation and deurbanization in the 5th Century is in the West, with those 1099 Contracted German Managers simply changing management with a minimum of violence and disruption as the revisionists claim.

Reality says

, the primary effect of armor/tanks/knights is in the exploitation phase, where the most casualties are inflicted on the enemy anyway even in pure infantry battle

Yep, Heavy Cav pushes a wavering line over; it doesn't make the line waver - unless the infantry is very undisciplined to begin with. I imagine after the first few defeats, a European Warlords quickly revised their use, and armament of infantry. This is not the era of Clausewitzian total war or Roman total subjugation, either.

The Hallmark of the Late Medieval Era is fortification building, and armies generally become less willing to duke it out in the open.

Reality says

Pitched infantry battles were simply cost-ineffective compared to cavalry raids and exploitations. That's how cavalry rose to pre-eminence in Western Europe after the fall of WRE. Then many generations later, some of the offsprings of early cavlaries forgot what cavalry was for and fell for their own propaganda designed to cower peasants, ending up dying in silly head-on charges.

Here's my problem: The Franks are conquering the Saxons and other German Tribes in heavily wooded, pre deforestation and pre-drainage Dark Age Germany where the roads, when they exist, are basically goat trails. So the Franks take the German tribes with cavalry-heavy army?

Take the battle of the Teutoburg forest. Yeah, different era I know - but the same enemy (Tribal Pagan Germans) and similar terrain (German heavily forested/marshy areas). If the Romans had more Kataphracts or even Light Horse, do you think the battle would have went much differently?

Tanks are also not so great in built up, rough, or heavily forested terrain, either.

Reality says

If mass infantry warfare had been the norm, there wouldn't enough room in the castles to house the infantry. We are not talking about Chinese or Roman style continuous walls along frontiers, but castles built at isolated points.

Yeah, we're talking walled towns, fortified bridges, as well as castles. Hell, Castile means "Castle" and there's a big castle on the Castilian Arms.

Why is there this orgy of fortification, not only in Northern France but in Italy, Germany, and of course Southern France and during the Reconquista? Surely, they serve some purpose. This is the cornerstone of medieval warfare.

By the First Crusade, Europeans have plenty of experience fighting sieges, both on attack and defense, and generate very complicated defenses and counters to those defenses. The fortifications they build are much more than just a show of power or protection against raiders, although that was probably the initial spur before their use was realized for intra-European fighting.

Raiders seldom do sieges, they want plunder and easy pickings, so why all the increasingly complicated defenses of murder holes, arrow slits, ditches, complicated gate defenses, circular towers, etc.? A Viking sees a fortified bridge, tests it's defenses, realize he can't get past it, goes back out to sea to find easier pickings. But squabbling nieghbors have every reason to start a siege.

We know from the Church's attempt at a "Peace of God" than intra-European warfare was endemic. We know that chivalry was bullshit, and if you couldn't cough up a ransom, you were often killed or at least maimed. Chivalry was only for the nobility.

The Heavily Horsed Knight of the Dark Ages as the predominant mover of military clashes is largely a die hard myth from the Romantic Period of the 19th Century that has found it's way into textbooks. Infantry was always the predominant arm of European militaries, from the Greek Hoplite to the Roman Legion to Frankish Axe-Throwers to English Longbowmen, Genoese Crossbowmen, and Swiss Pikemen.

Reality says

Siege warfare came into eminence because cavalry was sweeping the field outside the castles. If mass infantry warfare had been the norm, there wouldn't enough room in the castles to house the infantry.

The Infantry are feudal levies, not a standing army. Castles are garrisoned by a lord and his retinue. Walled towns by urban militia.

As for cavalry sweeping the fight, we've talked about Tours, Hastings, Marienburg, Crecy, Agincourt, Poiters, Bannockburn.

Reality says

Mongols will later work that tactic to high perfection, and build the world's largest empire ever by area, stretching from German borders to Korea, and from Siberia to India.

Damn annoying horse archers. Basically, herding infantry. Even used the same crescent formation they used to herd animals. Their compound bows often outranged the archers of the victims' infantry.

thunderlips11 says

Why is there this orgy of fortification, not only in Northern France but in Italy, Germany, and of course Southern France and during the Reconquista? Surely, they serve some purpose.

Eonomy of force. Fortification was/is a force multiplier. When rising market economy made human life more expensive than worthless in market terms relative to the lord's own capital, hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option, in contrast to the prior period when Greek and Romans flooded the field with hordes of citizens and slaves, or the latter period when "democracy" allowed Napoleon to have 30,000 lives to spend every month at no cost to himself. Feudal armies meant either paid mercenaries or levies for which the lord/prince was forgoing other productive output of the same people.

thunderlips11 says

The Infantry are feudal levies, not a standing army. Castles are garrisoned by a lord and his retinue. Walled towns by urban militia.

Feudal levies were not useful field divisions. At the best, they were the equivalent of security divisions to deal with enemy infiltrators and fortification divisions with little initiative. Heck they couldn't even be counted on as fortification divisions, lest they sell the castle to invaders. The Lord/Prince's own retinue had to hold the fort.

As for cavalry sweeping the fight, we've talked about Tours, Hastings, Marienburg, Crecy, Agincourt, Poiters, Bannockburn.

Nearly every single one of those was considered a big "upset" (i.e. surprising outcomes) by their contemporaries. They ran against the general expected outcome, except for Hastings, where the combined arms with cavalry component did win against the pure infantry army.

thunderlips11 says

Reality says

Mongols will later work that tactic to high perfection, and build the world's largest empire ever by area, stretching from German borders to Korea, and from Siberia to India.

Damn annoying horse archers. Basically, herding infantry. Even used the same crescent formation they used to herd animals. Their compound bows often outranged the archers of the victims' infantry.

The enemy infantries were useless as soon as the nomadic archers disposed of the enemy mounted forces. The vast Roman army under Crassus was slaughtered by Cythian mounted archers the same way 1200 years before the Mongols. Superior range and superior mobility, that's how Aircraft Carriers won against Battleships. The side with initiative can intentionally sea-saw the battle and prevent the slower moving side from ever using their weapons or concentration of force effective, provided there is enough room for manuever. That's another reason why fortifications were built in Western Europe: limit room for manuever so as to infantry a chance against cavalry without being sliced and diced in detail in manuever battles. Longbowmen were not infantry, but more like artillery force, or the medieval version of Katusha rocket launchers with rapidly delivred area bombardment.

Reality says

Eonomy of force. Fortification was/is a force multiplier.

Yep - and a territory marker, an impediment to raiders, mark of subjugation (esp in the Baltic Crusades and in Norman England), and most importantly, a way of preventing your neighbor from ambushing your men and taking over your lands in the endemic warfare of the Dark (and Middle) Ages. Until the rise of gunpowder, a well-supplied fortification required a substantial investment of time and effort to take.
Reality says

When rising market economy made human life more expensive than worthless in market terms relative to the lord's own capital

I think it was more the MWP increasing yields and finally making some surplus production possible given all the lost abilities of a deurbanized, depopulated, warlord-led Europe.

Can you point me to any sociologist, historian, or economist that argues the a civilization that is less urban and less populated tends to be more advanced than civilizations that are more urbanized and more populated? Or one that argues that deurbanization and depopulation isn't a clear marker of a civilization in decline?

Reality says

hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option,

Infantry is a helluva lot cheaper than horsemen.

If you can't afford infantry, you definitely can't afford mounted knights, who not only need warhorses to charge with, but several other horses to ride off the battlefield, as only in D&D or Skyrim can a Lord Falkenhoof the Half-Elven Paladin in AC4 Armor ride the same horse for 16 hours straight. Then there's all the sundry goods needed to keep a heavy cavalryman in the field (horseshoes, bridles, stirrups, fodder, etc.) and for his and his squire's (at least, probably more in the entourage) person and baggage as well.

I think this is one of the stronger arguments against the alleged dominance of Cavalry in the Dark Ages, which was poorer than the ages that preceded it or followed it.
Reality says

hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option, in contrast to the prior period when Greek and Romans flooded the field with hordes of citizens and slaves,

I don't recall Greek or Roman armies using slaves on a regular basis in battles.
Reality says

Feudal levies were not useful field divisions. At the best, they were the equivalent of security divisions to deal with enemy infiltrators and fortification divisions with little initiative. Heck they couldn't even be counted on as fortification divisions, lest they sell the castle to invaders. The Lord/Prince's own retinue had to hold the fort.

Okay... I take it you agreeing with me when I said...
thunderlips11 says

The Infantry are feudal levies, not a standing army. Castles are garrisoned by a lord and his retinue. Walled towns by urban militia.

Reality says

That's another reason why fortifications were built in Western Europe: limit room for manuever so as to infantry a chance against cavalry without being sliced and diced in detail in manuever battles.

I agree with much of what you wrote except this. Equipping soldiers were expensive, so infantry predominated. I can find no evidence that between 500-1000AD, Heavy Horse was the decisive weapon of European Armies, as opposed to Light Cav or Horse Archers with the Arab or Eurasian peoples. Furthermore, I'm asserting that heavy cav wasn't even the decisive arm in the Late Middle Ages, either.

With all the previous examples I've given, I can't see how one can compare the Knight to the Carrier. There is no example of a Battleship - or even a surface combat task force without air cover - defeating a Carrier Force. We have many examples of infantry and archers slaughtering heavy cavalry over multiple battles that span multiple centuries.

As for any battles where the Cavalry pursues and runs down the losers, or attacks open flanks or from the rear, that's been happening long before the Middle Ages. The Greeks and Romans used Cavalry the same way in their battles. No Medieval Innovation there.

Great minds think alike.

www.youtube.com/embed/zDwr8Ptq3gc