Military historical jokes. Food of Ra - Chronology - As it really was. Use of effective long-range weapons

Military Historical Hochmas,

A few notes on traditional history

in terms of real military practice

A sharply negative attitude towards the hypotheses put forward by supporters of alternative versions of history is completely natural. Modern historical science, based on the Scaligerian chronology (compiled by magicians and numerologists in the 16th century), has the task of its own survival, and so it brushes aside everything that contradicts this task. Therefore, when it, historical science, is caught by the hand, directly pointing to unreliable reports, stupidities and other endless "failures", then instead of a serious conversation, historians begin to scold.

Meanwhile, D.V. is absolutely right. Kalyuzhny and A.M. Zhabinsky, when in his book “Another History of Wars” they write:

“Many of the statements of historians look strange. They are all blinded by the Scaligerian chronological theory. If in every opportunity a professional in any field (writer, artist, military man) could explain to the historian what is wrong when he talks about the history of literature, art, wars, then we would now have a genuine historical science. Not the conglomeration of myths that Richard Aldington called "the worst kind of the worst vice."

I am a professional in military affairs, and therefore I intend to speak about the military aspect Canonical Version of History (hereinafter - KVI).

Inconsistencies in the military field historical science noticed by many, and more than once, and not in one place. As far as I can tell, one of the first, if not the very first, was Hans Delbrück, who was not too lazy to visit the places of "ancient" battles, and was surprised to find that those many thousands of fighters who allegedly fought on these fields simply could not fit there. And that the ingenious maneuvers attributed to Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Scipio, and other strategic geniuses are almost all impracticable in practice.

Delbrück and I are colleagues: he is a combatant, and so am I. Starting to carefully read the literature on this issue, I discovered a lot of interesting things. And, willy-nilly, I was forced to come to some conclusions, which, to my unspeakable surprise, in a curious way fit into the historical scheme proposed by the authors of alternative versions of history.

Below I give, slightly edited, my notes made in 1985-2000, even before I got acquainted with the works on the New Chronology. Now a lot has fallen into place. I apologize, if anything, for the language: barracks, sir.

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

So, the point of view of the KVI. Here were such ancient Greeks at the time of ona, who created a harmonious and perfect tactic naval forces, and successfully applied it first against the Persians, and then against each other, either in the Peloponnesian War or in the continuous quarrels of the epigones of Alexander the Great. Then the iron Roman legions went out to sea and, although not suddenly, they also perfectly mastered the art of war at sea, first defeating the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars, and then victoriously defeating one another in the course of various civil strife. Then, for some reason, the era of the gloomy Middle Ages came, the noble concept of naval tactics was completely lost, and the maximum that the dumb-headed barbarian Christians were enough for was to pile on the side of the nearest enemy ship, and blizzard each other on the heads with different blunt and sharp iron.

Only with the advent of the Renaissance, European naval commanders, having read Plutarch and Suetonius, began to use some of the simplest tactics, although even the Battle of Gravelines (1588) is more like a dump than orderly meaningful maneuvers.

No, here honestly, but in the CWI there is a very strong, very stable and therefore especially dangerous "system of likes and dislikes", and, upon closer examination, the system is completely irrational, designed at the level of "like - dislike". It's like a high school girl: Petya is cute, I like him, which means Petya is good. Accordingly, everything he does is worthy of praise, or at least not to be blamed. But Vasya is not at all attractive, a dork, I don’t like it, which means that Vasya is not able to accomplish anything worthy of attention.

So here too. The "ancient Greeks" entered the KVI exclusively with a plus sign. It is clear: they are all so plastic, so wise, don’t feed them with bread - let them discuss the high and the eternal, prove a theorem or sophism abruptly bubble. They made beautiful statues. And they had Homer! Blind, blind, but he composed such a poem that later all the shepherds in Hellas vyingly sang it. After all, he, the shepherd, has nothing to do, in general: know the strumming all day long on the mellifluous lyre and the bawl of the Iliad. All 700 pages in a row. By the way, a typical look of a lumpen-intellectual who is familiar with sheep only by lamb cutlets and astrakhan hat.

And what are the names of the heroes and authors! Anaximander, you understand, Euripides! This is not John or any Fritz. The fact that these same Anaxipides with Eurymanders recklessly cheated on their beloved Hellas, sold, betrayed, poisoned each other with poisons, debauched, that is, they led a completely normal medieval lifestyle, they prefer to mention in passing and less often.

Oh yes, they still had a democracy! The most sacred cow of the lumpen intelligentsia. True, they somehow more and more spread over to the oligarchy, then to the dictatorship, but - no need for terrible things ... Better about Empedocles and Agathocles. And for contrast, let's say about the Romans. Compared to the "plastic Greeks", the Romans, of course, look a little dumb. How many statues in Syracuse were broken; Archimedes was killed for nothing. But he could still live and live! Fortunately, they quickly realized that the Hellenic way of life was the only correct one, they got the hang of writing iambic and sculpting statues, and in the eyes of historians they gradually also acquired a “plus” sign. And they knew how to compose such wonderful aphorisms! And they brought culture and order to the conquered peoples! (What familiar reasoning! Cecil Rhodes, I remember, said something like that. And Alfred Rosenberg, too ...) So to condemn them for the exploitation of slaves and gladiatorial battles somehow does not even raise a hand.

And whoever looks like a complete and unconditional "minus" is, of course, the barbarians and their heirs - the crusaders and other "uncouth" Christians. These, in general, not having time to tear their eyes awake, were already feverishly wondering: where can we find a statue to break it with a sword? (Option: where would I find a library to burn it down?) Stables were arranged in the temples. Naturally, they could not do anything worthy until they came to their senses and began to read Suetonius with Ovid.

We are not talking about the Slavs at all yet - these half-monkeys are still learning with difficulty to distinguish the right hand from the left.

It is sad, but true: historians in their views on the role and activities of this or that people are exceptionally biased, and precisely “from the point of view of the presence / absence of statues.” And this must be strictly taken into account when studying the writings of the KVI apologists.

And at sea, according to the KVI, the dynamics of the development of methods of armed struggle is as follows (main milestones).

5th century BC e. The wise Themistocles, who just yesterday was chatting in the agora (simply a politician), confidently commands a fleet of 370 (!) ships against 800 (!!) Persian ones, maneuvers this way and that, deftly smashes the Persians and returns to Athens all in white and in wreaths.

3rd century BC e. The Roman consuls Gaius Duilius and Mark Attilius Regulus in the battle at Cape Ecnom command 330 ships against 250 of the Carthaginians. The detachments cunningly maneuver, go to the rear, crush the flanks, the battle is in full swing, the Carthaginians are defeated, the winners are in triumphal purple.

1st century BC e. In the battle at Cape Actium, 260 ships of Octavian and Agrippa against 170 ships of Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian's victory.

What unites these battles? Firstly, the main typical warship of all participants: the trireme (trireme). According to the definition of the KVI followers, this is a ship with a three-tier arrangement of oars and, accordingly, rowers. No, of course, there were also deviations in one direction or another; it’s natural - at all times, an inquisitive design idea, no, no, yes, and bucked up, giving rise to various non-standard technical means: either super-aggro monsters, or, on the contrary, something relatively small against the background of the base model. There were, for example, biremes, ships with two rows of oars. Or kinkerems - with four. And then the penthers, with five. I don’t remember who, either Strabo or Pliny, reported about decers - ships with ten rows of oars, respectively.

Secondly, these battles are combined into one type of methods of causing damage to the enemy. The entire ancient world, it turns out, widely used at the stage of approaching the enemy a variety of throwing machines, all sorts of such ballistas-catapults, threw stones and pots of burning oil at the enemy. Then, converging on the minimum distance, he strove to strike with a ram - a stem bound with copper on the side of an enemy ship, and, finally, having lost speed and the ability to maneuver, fell down with the enemy to board.

Military Historical Hochmas,

A few notes on traditional history

in terms of real military practice

Meanwhile, D.V. is absolutely right. Kalyuzhny and A.M. Zhabinsky, when in his book “Another History of Wars” they write:

I am a professional in military affairs, and therefore I intend to speak about the military aspect Canonical Version of History (hereinafter - KVI).

Inconsistencies in the military field of historical science were noticed by many, and more than once, and not in one place. As far as I can tell, one of the first, if not the very first, was Hans Delbrück, who was not too lazy to visit the places of "ancient" battles, and was surprised to find that those many thousands of fighters who allegedly fought on these fields simply could not fit there. And that the ingenious maneuvers attributed to Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Scipio, and other strategic geniuses are almost all impracticable in practice.

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

So, the point of view of the KVI. There were such ancient Greeks at that time, who created a harmonious and perfect tactic of the naval forces, and successfully applied it first against the Persians, and then against each other, either in the Peloponnesian War, or in the continuous quarrels of the epigones of Alexander the Great. Then the iron Roman legions went out to sea and, although not suddenly, they also perfectly mastered the art of war at sea, first defeating the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars, and then victoriously defeating one another in the course of various civil strife. Then, for some reason, the era of the gloomy Middle Ages came, the noble concept of naval tactics was completely lost, and the maximum that the dumb-headed barbarian Christians were enough for was to pile on the side of the nearest enemy ship, and blizzard each other on the heads with different blunt and sharp iron.

No, honestly, but in the CWI there is a very strong, very stable and therefore especially dangerous "system of likes and dislikes", and, upon closer examination, the system is completely irrational, designed at the level of "like - dislike". It's like a high school girl: Petya is cute, I like him, which means Petya is good. Accordingly, everything he does is worthy of praise, or at least not to be blamed. But Vasya is not at all attractive, a dork, I don’t like it, which means that Vasya is not able to accomplish anything worthy of attention.

We are not talking about the Slavs at all yet - these half-monkeys are still learning with difficulty to distinguish the right hand from the left.

And at sea, according to the KVI, the dynamics of the development of methods of armed struggle is as follows (main milestones).

1st century BC e. In the battle at Cape Actium, 260 ships of Octavian and Agrippa against 170 ships of Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian's victory.

What unites these battles? Firstly, the main typical warship of all participants: the trireme (trireme). According to the definition of the KVI followers, this is a ship with a three-tier arrangement of oars and, accordingly, rowers. No, of course, there were also deviations in one direction or another; this is natural - at all times, the inquisitive design thought no-no and even kicked up, giving rise to various non-standard technical means: either some super-aggro monsters, or, on the contrary, something relatively small against the background of the basic model. There were, for example, biremes, ships with two rows of oars. Or kinkerems - with four. And then the penthers, with five. I don’t remember who, either Strabo or Pliny, reported about decers - ships with ten rows of oars, respectively.

Inconsistencies in the military field of historical science were noticed by many, and more than once, and not in one place ...

Meanwhile, D.V. is absolutely right. Kalyuzhny and A.M. Zhabinsky, when in his book “Another History of Wars” they write:

I am a professional in military affairs, and therefore I intend to talk about the military aspect of the Canonical Version of History (hereinafter - KVI).

Below I cite, slightly edited, my notes made in 1985-2000, even before I got acquainted with the works on the New Chronology. Now a lot has fallen into place. I apologize, if anything, for the language: barracks, sir.

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

So, the point of view of the KVI. There were such ancient Greeks at that time, who created a harmonious and perfect tactic of the naval forces, and successfully applied it first against the Persians, and then against each other, either in the Peloponnesian War, or in the continuous quarrels of the epigones of Alexander the Great. Then the iron Roman legions went out to sea and, although not suddenly, they also perfectly mastered the art of war at sea, first defeating the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars, and then victoriously defeating one another in the course of various civil strife. Then, for some reason, the era of the gloomy Middle Ages came, the noble concept of naval tactics was completely lost, and the maximum that the dumb-headed barbarian Christians were enough for was to lean on the side of the nearest enemy ship, and blizzard each other on the heads with different blunt and sharp iron.

So here too. The "ancient Greeks" entered the KVI exclusively with a plus sign. It is clear: they are all so plastic, so wise, don’t feed them with bread - let them discuss the high and eternal, prove a theorem or sophism abruptly bubble. They made beautiful statues. And they had Homer! Blind, blind, but he composed such a poem that later all the shepherds in Hellas vyingly sang it. After all, he, the shepherd, has nothing to do, in general: know the strumming all day long on the mellifluous lyre and the bawl of the Iliad. All 700 pages in a row. By the way, a typical look of a lumpen-intellectual who is familiar with sheep only by lamb cutlets and astrakhan hat.

Oh yes, they still had a democracy! The most sacred cow of the lumpen intelligentsia. True, they somehow more and more spread over to the oligarchy, then to the dictatorship, but - no need for terrible things ... Better about Empedocles and Agathocles. And for contrast, let's say about the Romans. Compared to the "plastic Greeks", the Romans, of course, look a little dumb. How many statues in Syracuse were broken; Archimedes was killed for nothing. But he could still live and live! Fortunately, they quickly realized that the Hellenic way of life is the only correct one, they got the hang of writing iambic and sculpting statues, and in the eyes of historians they gradually also acquired a “plus” sign. And they knew how to compose such wonderful aphorisms! And they brought culture and order to the conquered peoples! (What familiar reasoning! Cecil Rhodes, I remember, said something like that. And Alfred Rosenberg, too ...) So to condemn them for the exploitation of slaves and gladiatorial battles somehow does not even raise a hand.

We are not talking about the Slavs at all yet - these half-monkeys are still learning with difficulty to distinguish the right hand from the left.

And at sea, according to the KVI, the dynamics of the development of methods of armed struggle is as follows (main milestones).

5th century BC e. The wise Themistocles, who just yesterday was chatting in the agora (simply a politician), confidently commands a fleet of 370 (!) ships against 800 (!!) Persian ones, maneuvers this way and that, deftly smashes the Persians and returns to Athens all in white and in wreaths.

3rd century BC e. The Roman consuls Gaius Duilius and Mark Attilius Regulus in the battle at Cape Ecnom command 330 ships against 250 of the Carthaginians. The detachments cunningly maneuver, go to the rear, crush the flanks, the battle is in full swing, the Carthaginians are defeated, the winners are in triumphal purple.

1st century BC e. In the battle at Cape Actium, 260 ships of Octavian and Agrippa against 170 ships of Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian's victory.

What unites these battles?

Firstly, the main typical warship of all participants: the trireme (trireme). According to the definition of the KVI followers, this is a ship with a three-tier arrangement of oars and, accordingly, rowers. No, of course, there were also deviations in one direction or another; this is natural - at all times, inquisitive design thought no-no, and even kicked up, giving rise to various non-standard technical means: either some super-aggro monsters, or, on the contrary, something relatively small against the background of the basic model. There were, for example, biremes, ships with two rows of oars. Or kinkerems - with four. And then the penthers, with five. I don’t remember who, either Strabo or Pliny, reported about decers - ships with ten rows of oars, respectively.

Thirdly, the excellent organization and confident management of squadrons, numbering two or three hundred ships. And this is the most amazing thing! Squadrons converge, disperse, maneuver, retreat, advance, go around the flanks, rush to help their injured units - in a word, they act as if every skipper has at least a cellular radiotelephone in the bosom of his tunic.

In general, Greco-Roman and, in general, ancient sailors demonstrate a really unusually high, without any quotes, naval class.

And then Rome played in the box, the obscurantist churchmen came, they burned all the scrolls, they broke all the statues.

And what? And here's what.

XIV century AD. Hundred Years War, Naval Battle of Sluys. The French ships anchor under the shore, the English fleet descends on them downwind, and the classic, unfussy hand-to-hand combat begins. No maneuvers! No catapults! No rams! A simple, unpretentious meat grinder. Apparently, the English "marines" in the course of training were engaged in fencing and boxing more diligently than the Gauls, and poured them hard.

XV-XVII centuries. The era of the most tense confrontation between Christian Europe and the Arab-Turkish world, as well as continuous internecine wars of European powers with each other, including, and first of all, in the Mediterranean.

The picture is the same! Here are the classics of the rowing fleet: 1571, the Battle of Lepanto, 209 Christian ships against 296 Muslim ones. And how do they fight? And so: the squadrons perform the simplest maneuvers like “forward!”, On approach they fire at each other from arquebuses and falconets, very imperfect firearms, with the aim, if possible, to thin out the ranks of enemy soldiers, and then - yes, you guessed it, the good old boarding meat grinder. No maneuvers! No rams! We are not talking about catapults, because they gave way to bombards. Why, exactly, did they give up? Like catapults were more efficient?

And here is the year 1588, the battle of Gravelines, as they call in English historiography a whole series of battles between the British fleet and the "Great Armada". This is truly a landmark battle. For the first time, the dubious romance of hand-to-hand combat, as a means of achieving victory, gave way to the no less dubious romance of an artillery duel. But this did not make the battle more beautiful: small detachments and individual ships converge under the pressure of the wind, as God puts it on their souls, and from the same soul they thrash each other with cannonballs and buckshot within their fire capabilities.

And now let's consider in order those four positions that so indisputably prove the technical and tactical superiority of ancient (?) sailors over medieval ones.

First, these are the ships themselves.

Military Historical Hochmas,

A few notes on traditional history

in terms of real military practice

Meanwhile, D.V. is absolutely right. Kalyuzhny and A.M. Zhabinsky, when in his book “Another History of Wars” they write:

I am a professional in military affairs, and therefore I intend to speak about the military aspect Canonical Version of History (hereinafter - KVI).

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

Military-historical jokes - 1

Georgy Kostylev

Part 1.

A sharply negative attitude towards the hypotheses put forward by supporters of alternative versions of history is completely natural. Modern historical science, based on the Scaligerian chronology (compiled by magicians and numerologists in the 16th century), has the task of its own survival, and so it brushes aside everything that contradicts this task. Therefore, when it, historical science, is caught by the hand, directly pointing to unreliable reports, nonsense and other endless "failures", then instead of a serious conversation, historians begin to scold.

Meanwhile, D.V. is absolutely right. Kalyuzhny and A.M. Zhabinsky, when in his book "Another History of Wars" write:

“Many of the statements of historians look strange. They are all blinded by the Scaligerian chronological theory. If in every opportunity a professional in any field (writer, artist, military man) could explain to the historian what is wrong when he talks about the history of literature, art, wars, then we would now have a genuine historical science. And not that conglomerate of myths that Richard Aldington called “worst kind of worst vice”» .

I am a professional in military affairs, and therefore I intend to talk about the military aspect of the Canonical Version of History (hereinafter - KVI). Inconsistencies in the military field of historical science were noticed by many more than once, and not in one place. As far as I can tell, one of the first, if not the very first, was Hans Delbrück, who was not too lazy to visit the places of "ancient" battles and was surprised to find that those many thousands of fighters who allegedly fought in these fields simply could not fit there. And what cunning maneuvers, which the anthology is attributed to Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Scipio and other strategic geniuses, almost all practically impossible.

Delbrück and I are colleagues: he is a combatant soldier and so am I. Starting to carefully read the literature on this issue, I discovered a lot of interesting things. And, willy-nilly, I was forced to come to some conclusions, which, to my unspeakable surprise, in a curious way fit into the historical scheme proposed by the authors of alternative versions of history. Below I give, slightly edited, my notes made in 1985-2000, even before I got acquainted with the works on the New Chronology. Now a lot has fallen into place. I apologize, if anything, for the language: barracks, sir.

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

So, the point of view of the KVI. There were such ancient Greeks at that time, who created a harmonious and perfect tactic of the naval forces and successfully applied it first against the Persians, and then against each other, either in the Peloponnesian War, or in the continuous quarrels of the epigones of Alexander the Great. Then the iron Roman legions went out to sea and, although not suddenly, they also perfectly mastered the art of war at sea, first defeating the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars, and then victoriously defeating one another in the course of various civil strife.

Then, for some reason, the era of the gloomy Middle Ages came, the noble concept of naval tactics was completely lost, and the maximum that the dumb-headed barbarian Christians were enough for was to lean on the side of the nearest enemy ship and blizzard each other on the heads with various blunt and sharp iron. Only with the advent of the Renaissance, European naval commanders, having read Plutarch and Suetonius, began to use some of the simplest tactics, although even the Battle of Gravelines (1588) is more like a dump than like orderly meaningful maneuvers.

No, honestly, but in the CWI there is a very strong, very stable and therefore especially dangerous "system of likes and dislikes", moreover, upon closer examination, the system is completely irrational, designed at the level of "like - dislike". It's like a high school girl: here is Petya - cute, I like him, which means Petya is good. Accordingly, everything he does is worthy of praise, or at least not to be blamed. But Vasya is not at all attractive, a dork, I don’t like it, which means that Vasya is not able to accomplish anything worthy of attention.

So here too. The "ancient Greeks" entered the KVI exclusively with a plus sign. It is clear: they are all so plastic, so wise, don’t feed them with bread - let them discuss the high and eternal, prove a theorem or sophism abruptly bubble. They made beautiful statues. And they had Homer! Blind, blind, but he composed such a poem that later all the shepherds in Hellas vyingly sang it. After all, he, the shepherd, has nothing to do, in general: know the strumming all day long on the mellifluous lyre and the bawl of the Iliad. All 700 pages in a row. By the way, a typical look of a lumpen-intellectual who is familiar with sheep only by lamb cutlets and astrakhan hat.

And what are the names of the heroes and authors! Anaximander, you understand, Euripides! This is not John or any Fritz. The fact that these same Anaxipides with Eurymanders recklessly cheated on their beloved Hellas, sold, betrayed, poisoned each other with poisons, debauched, that is, led a completely normal medieval lifestyle, they prefer to mention in passing and less often.

Oh yes, they still had democracy! The most sacred cow of the lumpen intelligentsia. True, they somehow more and more spread over to the oligarchy, then to the dictatorship, but - no need for terrible things ... Better about Empedocles and Agathocles.

And for contrast, let's say about the Romans. In comparison with the "plastic Greeks", of course, they look a little stupid. How many statues in Syracuse were broken; Archimedes was killed for nothing, for nothing. But he could still live and live! Fortunately, they quickly realized that the Hellenic way of life is the only correct one, they got the hang of writing iambic and sculpting statues, and in the eyes of historians they gradually also acquired a “plus” sign. And they knew how to compose such wonderful aphorisms! And they brought culture and order to the conquered peoples! (What familiar reasoning! Cecil Rhodes, I remember, said something like that. And Alfred Rosenberg too ...) So, to condemn them for the exploitation of slaves and gladiatorial battles somehow even the hand does not rise.

And whoever looks like a complete and unconditional "minus" is, of course, the barbarians and their heirs - the crusaders and other "uncouth" Christians. These, in general, not having time to tear their eyes awake, were already feverishly wondering: where can we find a statue to break it with a sword? (Option: where would I find a library to burn it down?) Stables were arranged in temples. Naturally, they could not do anything worthy until they came to their senses and began to read Suetonius with Ovid. We are not talking about the Slavs at all- these semi-monkeys are still learning to distinguish the right hand from the left.

Sad but true: historians in their views on the role and activities of this or that people exceptionally biased, moreover, precisely "in terms of the presence / absence of statues." And this must be strictly taken into account when studying the writings of the KVI apologists. A on the sea, according to the CWI, the dynamics of the development of methods of armed struggle is as follows (main milestones).

5th century BC The wise Themistocles, who just yesterday was chatting in the agora (simply a politician), confidently commands a fleet of 370 (!) ships against 800 (!!) Persian ones, maneuvers this way and that, deftly smashes the Persians and returns to Athens all in white and in wreaths.

3rd century BC The Roman consuls Gaius Duilius and Mark Attilius Regulus in the battle at Cape Ecnom command 330 ships against 250 of the Carthaginians. The detachments cunningly maneuver, go to the rear, crush the flanks, the battle is in full swing, the Carthaginians are defeated, the winners are in triumphal purple.

1st century BC In the battle at Cape Actium, 260 ships of Octavian and Agrippa against 170 ships of Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian's victory.

What unites these battles?

Firstly, the main typical warship of all participants: trireme (trireme). According to the definition of the KVI followers, this is a ship with a three-tier arrangement of oars and, accordingly, rowers. No, of course, there were also deviations in one direction or another; this is natural - at all times, inquisitive design thought no-no, and even kicked up, giving rise to various non-standard technical means: either some super-aggro monsters, or, on the contrary, something relatively small against the background of the basic model. There were, for example, biremes, ships with two rows of oars. Or kinkerems - with four. And then the penthers, with five. I don’t remember who, either Strabo or Pliny, reported about decers - ships with ten rows of oars, respectively.

Secondly, combine these fights into one type of ways to inflict damage on the enemy. The entire ancient world, it turns out, widely used at the stage of approaching the enemy a variety of throwing machines, all sorts of such ballistas-catapults, threw stones and pots of burning oil at the enemy. Then, converging on the minimum distance, he strove to strike with a ram - a stem bound with copper on the side of an enemy ship and, finally, having lost speed and the ability to maneuver, he fell down with the enemy on boarding.

Third, excellent organization and confident management of squadrons, numbering two to three hundred ships. And this is the most amazing thing! Squadrons converge, disperse, maneuver, retreat, advance, go around the flanks, rush to help their injured units - in a word, they act as if every skipper has at least cellular radiotelephone in the bosom of the tunic. In general, Greco-Roman and, in general, ancient sailors demonstrate a really unusually high, without any quotes, naval class.

And then Rome played in the box, the obscurantist churchmen came, they burned all the scrolls, they broke all the statues. And what? And here's what.

14th century AD. Hundred Years War, Naval Battle of Sluys. The French ships are anchored near the shore, the English fleet descends on them downwind and the classic, unfussy hand-to-hand combat begins. No maneuvers! No catapults! No rams! A simple, unpretentious meat grinder. Apparently, the English "marines" in the course of training were engaged in fencing and boxing more diligently than the Gauls and poured them hard.

XV-XVII centuries. The era of the most intense confrontation between Christian Europe and the Arab-Turkish world, as well as the continuous internecine wars of the European powers with each other, including, and first of all, in the Mediterranean Sea KWI definitions! These are not my personal views!). The picture is the same! Here are the classics of the rowing fleet: 1571, the Battle of Lepanto, 209 Christian ships against 296 Muslim ones. And how do they fight? And so: the squadrons perform the simplest maneuvers like “forward!”, On approach they fire at each other from arquebuses and falconets, very imperfect firearms, with the aim, if possible, to thin out the ranks of enemy soldiers, and then - yes, you guessed it, the good old boarding meat grinder. No maneuvers! No rams! We are not talking about catapults, because they have given way to bombards. Why, exactly, did they give up? Like catapults were more efficient?

And here is 1588, the battle of Gravelines, as they call in English historiography a whole series of battles between the British fleet and the "Great Armada". This is truly a landmark battle. For the first time, the dubious romance of hand-to-hand combat, as a means of achieving victory, gave way to the no less dubious romance of an artillery duel. But this did not make the battle more beautiful: small detachments and individual ships converge under the pressure of the wind, as God puts it per soul, and from the same soul thrash each other with cannonballs and buckshot within their fire capabilities.

And now, let's consider in order those four positions that so indisputably prove the technical and tactical superiority of ancient (?) sailors over medieval ones. The first is actually the ships.

Rowers and oars

Even a land hedgehog in the Tambov forest understands that a ship with three rows of oars will be faster than one. And with five - faster than with three. And so on. Also a ship with a diesel engine of 3000 hp. (with other equal or close parameters) will be faster than with 1000-horsepower. As I have already said, “ancient triremes” float from book to book, singing waves, though for some reason always in a modern image. Not a single "antique" vase, no one, in my opinion, has yet been able to present a single “antique” fresco with a reliable, unambiguously interpreted and equally unambiguously dated image of a ship with a multi-tiered arrangement of oars.

Everything that sources offer us (for example, Shershov A.P., “On the history of military shipbuilding”), upon closer examination, turns out to be either sculptural compositions of certain monuments (triumphal / rostral columns, etc.), or decorations on dishes or on something else. "Painting on a wine goblet", for example. And, by the way, muralists and graphic designers of all times and peoples have never considered themselves bound by the need to accurately observe the shapes and proportions of the depicted objects. You can comply, but you can do that, sir! There is even a term "stylization". There is also a term "canon". Where did the portraits of Peter I and Alexander Suvorov come from, clad in blued steel of knightly armor? Which they never wore? And such was the canon in those days. No more.

Nothing has come down to us, which could at least be considered a "drawing of a trireme" at least with a stretch. The pictures have arrived. The canon has arrived. Two questions: 1) to what extent does the canon correspond to the prototype? 2) when did it start? If during or after the formation of the KVI, then there is simply nothing to talk about. The artist painted not what he saw, but what his history teacher convinced him of.

It would be nice to have an independent, so to speak, "absolute" method of dating all these columns, bas-reliefs, vases and chamber pots. According to the principle - they put a sensor on the object, the device squeaked and gave out the age of the product. But what is not, is not, which means These images have no evidentiary value.. However, perhaps modern historians know better than eyewitness Greeks what the Greek triremes looked like. Those of them who are more honest, and indicate in the captions to the illustrations: "reconstruction". The same A.P. Shershov, there are drawings of "triremes" with cuts, where everything is painted in detail. Also in the book Dudszus, Henriot, Krumrey. Das Grossbuch der Shiffstipen (Transpress, Berlin, 1983), and in general a sea of other literature on the history of shipbuilding. And everywhere - reconstruction.

This can be seen with the naked eye: all these drawings are made in accordance with modern requirements. GOST. I am not an inventor, not a creator, not even a designer or a reenactor, but in descriptive geometry I always had a reinforced concrete “five”, both at the institute and at the military school. Yes, plans, "sides" and cuts are nice. But it seems to me that the authors of these paper triremes themselves never tried to row against the wind even on a standard naval Yal-6, a six-oared lifeboat. Displacement (roughly speaking, weight) empty - 960 kg. With a full-time team, equipment and supplies, approximately one and a half tons. In school I was the captain of the boat crew. So, I say with authority: hard labor. Especially if the wave is divided by four points.

It is no coincidence that “penal servitude” is the galley on which convicted felons serve their sentences as rowers. It was later that the maritime term crawled onto land with the preservation of its, so to speak, penitentiary content. Rowing is a very hard job.. Firstly, it requires great physical strength to even just lift and carry a heavy oar, and, secondly, an excellent sense of rhythm. I beg you not to confuse a pleasure boat on the Moscow River with a lifeboat, and even more so, a galley!

With a freeboard height of the "six" of the order of 40-50 cm, the length of the oar is about 4 m, it is made of ash - a heavy durable tree, and the roll, the counterweight, is also filled with lead to make it easier for the rower to lift the oar out of the water. Let's think about it. For a six-oared boat, a board height of half a meter is quite sufficient: its full-time crew is 8 person, weight 1500 kg.

Suppose our hypothetical trireme has only 10 oars in a row on each side, total 60 . Let's say, a rower per oar, plus ten deck sailors, about thirty soldiers, plus superiors and "artillerymen" - only about 110 people. I especially emphasize that all my “assumes” are taken not just at a minimum, but below the lower limit, outrageously small, I simplify all calculations here to the limit and far beyond this limit! But, even with such an unrealistically preferential approach, we get a ship with a tonnage of 150 tons. Such a vessel must have a board height of at least a meter, unless, of course, it is a river barge or a port pontoon. It takes a long time to explain why, take it on faith or ask the ship's engineers. Just do not forget to warn that we are talking about a seaworthy vessel.

Now let's build a simple drawing. Newton's binomial is not needed here, it is enough to recall the Thales theorem. We get the length of the oar of the lower row is about 8 meters! The boat oar weighs about 4-5 kg, unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly. How much will the galley weigh for the bottom row? 8-10? Dudki, 32-40 , since the dependence here is cubic, any engineer will confirm this to you, not only a shipbuilder. Is it possible to toss such an oar alone? Many, many hours in a row?! No. Who doubts - I ask for oars, at least for the same yawl. So we have two rowers per oar, and even that is speculative! - who tried it? maybe there are three of them? - and not one at a time, which automatically increases our crew from 110 man before 170 .

What happens to the displacement? It is the same automatically increases! A vicious circle has already begun, or rather, a spiral, which at all times has been a form of curse, a bogey for engineers designing mobile technical means, and it doesn’t matter which ones - wheelchairs or strategic bombers. The power grows, the mass grows, the greater the mass, the greater the required power! At least cry! Therefore, qualitative leaps in this area were achieved only by a sharp increase in the specific power of engines and the efficiency of propellers. Example: Parsons created a workable steam turbine and immediately warships significantly increased in speed with a sharp improvement in other combat qualities.

But these are just flowers. We still have two rows of oars left. I take the height of the tier in 1 meter, which again is not enough, well, God bless him. We will assume that slaves served as rowers on all ancient galleys, for whom this space between decks was quite enough even during many days, or even many months of voyages, although this, in fact, contradicts even the KVI, according to which legionnaires were rowers on victorious Roman galleys , free Roman citizens.

Respectively, second tier paddle it turns out 16 meters long and weighing approximately 300 kg. For the life of me, it is impossible to toss with such an oar while sitting. Not two or five. No, actually you can, but how long will those rowers last? For an hour? For half an hour? For ten minutes? And most importantly: what will be the frequency of that rowing? Ten strokes per minute? Five strokes? One?

I'll come back to this a little later, but for now look at the third tier. And here paddle long 24 meters, mass 0.7-0.8 tons. How many people will you order to put on the oar? Five? Ten? How much heavier will the ship be after this? So, we are building up the side again, the displacement will increase again, the ship will become much wider and more draft; Will those rowers pull him? It is necessary to increase the number of oars in a row, but by how much will the size of the ship increase? What about displacement? There is grass in the yard, firewood on the grass ... And the wind in the face and the wave of a score of four? And, God forbid, at six? And how, may I ask, will synchronize rowers of the first, second and third tiers?

Again, as an experienced captain of the boat crew, I report: to debug the synchronous, well-coordinated work six rowers on a lifeboat is a very difficult task, and despite the fact that the boat crew are all enthusiasts, there is almost a fight for the right to take the place of the rower in the boat. And in the galley, sorry, bastards, sir. And they have (according to the KVI) many days of work on oars of completely different masses, therefore, with a completely different moment of inertia, therefore, with a completely different rowing operating frequency, and all this is completely synchronous! I emphasize: perfectly in sync! Lose at least one rower and khan, at best, the trireme will stop, at worst, it will go off course (crashing into the next one) and break half of the oars before the battle.

It is impossible to use oars with different moments of inertia on a rowboat. The oars should be close in parameters to each other. Preferably - generally identical. But any scheme proposed by the "reenactors" suggests the presence of oars of different lengths and masses, that is, with different moments of inertia (By the way, there are two standard spare oars on the yawl, as much as a 30% reserve. And where do you order to store 30% on a trireme stock of her oars?

Having reached this point in my reasoning, I, frankly, doubted myself. In the end, my calculations, whatever you say, sin with an approximation, since they are based on a simple application of the principle of geometric similarity. Maybe it doesn't apply in this case? For verification, I turned to a professional, a metalworking engineer, an employee of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D. M.V. Degtyarev, with a request to carry out an appropriate calculation in accordance with all the rules of sopromat.

Mikhail Vasilievich kindly went to meet me, and this is what happened: in order to get, so to speak, the “right to life”, a twenty-five-meter oar must have a diameter at the oarlock 0.5 m(!) and weigh 300 kg - this is provided that it is made of pine. Ash, clear to everyone, will be harder. So, it turns out that the principle of similarity let me down a lot? I don't think so. 300 kg or 700 is not the difference. Both are equally unsuitable for classic, seated rowing. So, if I was wrong, then not by much, not fundamentally.

And now we are looking at paintings and engravings of real galleys, well dated and documented, from the 16th-18th centuries. Luckily for us, the galley is like a class warship, remained in the navies of many countries quite long time, until the end of the 18th century, until somewhere earlier, somewhere later, it was replaced by a more advanced type of coastal ship, the so-called gunboat (eng. gunboat), which more successfully combined oar, sail and artillery weapons. And here we have whole herds of galleys: Spanish, Genoese, Venetian, French, Swedish, Peter's, Turkish, Arab. All to one with one row of oars.

Well, okay, Christians are dumb as traffic jams, but the Arabs - or something, they also forgot how to build triremes ?! To clarify the issue, we read smart books. Here is what the same professor A.P. Shershov, who just a few pages ago painfully tried to recreate a trireme, about the Mediterranean galley: oars could reach a length 25 m, mass of the oar - 300 kg, the number of rowers - up to 10 per paddle. venerable "Das Grosse Buch der Schiffstipen" reports: oars could reach a length 12 m, oar mass 300 kg. With a galley side height (galeas - a heavy deck galley) of 1.5-2 m.

As you can see, there is a discrepancy here. But it shouldn't bother us. Firstly, it, again, is not of a fundamental nature: all the numbers, whatever one may say, are of the same order. Moreover, it cannot be otherwise. In the sources cited, the characteristics of the oars are indicated in meters and kilograms. But the meter and kilogram, strictly speaking, are very young units of measurement. In the "age of the galleys" they were not. In the "epoch of galleys" the discord and hodgepodge in this area could drive any specialist in metrology crazy. All these pounds, pounds, spools, ounces, stones, Turkish livres, etc., etc., etc., not only differed from each other, but also constantly “fluctuated” here and there, depending on the place and time. use. In addition, they still managed to change their meaning in principle: for example, both the pound and the livre are both a measure of weight and a monetary unit.

So, if a certain chronicler, well, let's say, Father Bernard from Saint-Denis, writes that the Count of Montmorency used 60-pound guns during the siege of Château Reno, this does not, in itself, mean anything. Did the guns cost him £60 each? Or weighed 60 British pounds? Or is 60 pounds the weight of a core? But then - what pounds? English? Russians? (After all, he could have bought it in Muscovy!) Or special “artillery” pounds (see Shokarev Yu., “History of weapons. Artillery”)? There are more questions than answers. Therefore, there is no question of any unambiguous translation of the ancient mass-dimensional parameters into modern ones and cannot be. We can only talk about approximate, plus or minus bast shoes, translation. So, there will be discord - it's natural. But it will not be – and is not – fundamental.

Indeed, my calculation is rather rough, Degtyarev's calculation is engineering-accurate, the reports of historians (based on reliable Renaissance documentation) fit very close to one to one. Nowhere there is a spread at least an order of magnitude.

Let's go from the other side. Thirty years ago, the so-called replicas, copies of various ancient equipment, made as close as possible to the historical prototype, came into fashion. They copy everything from Egyptian papyrus boats to World War I fighters. Including, copying and rowing and sailing old ships. So, in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, a great many replicas of longships, Viking ships, were built. All are single row! Englishman Tim Severin created replicas of an Irish row-and-sail vessel and - oh happiness! - the Greek galley, the notorious Argo. But here's to you: both this and that - single row!

But, perhaps, no one has simply yet reached the point of reproducing the formidable combat trireme in nature? The answer to this question is amazing! That's just the point, that "reached". We tried. And nothing happened!

In the late fifties and early sixties, Hollywood was swept by another fad: the fashion for films from ancient history. Many of them have even become world classics: there are Ben-Hur, Spartak, and Cleopatra. Their budgets, even in today's times, were crazy, especially since the dollar in those days was much more expensive. The producers did not spare money, the scale of extras and scenery exceeds any imagination. And so, in addition to everything, for the sake of heightening the surroundings, it was decided to order full-fledged replicas of antique stone throwing machines and ancient trireme. Catapults are discussed below, this is a separate and very interesting topic, here - about ships.

So, bad luck came up with the trireme: the case, which seemed so familiar to ancient shipbuilders, suddenly turned out to be beyond the capacity of professional ship engineers of the mid-twentieth century. I foresee an instant response-objection of the KVI defenders: the ancient shipbuilders owned "special techniques", magic and hermetic, which allowed them to solve technically impossible tasks today. And then unknown nomads came, the masters were chopped into cabbage, and the scrolls with magic spells were burned. And ends in the water.

No, except for jokes. In place of the guards trad. history, I would erect in front of every humanitarian university Monument to the Unknown Nomad. Truly, if it were not for this ubiquitous and elusive guy of an indefinite appearance and mysterious origin, it would be much more difficult to hide the ends in the water. And if we remain realistic, then it is clear: the “ancient Greek” carpenter did not know and could not know even a thousandth of what is known to modern specialists in materials science, mechanics, ship architecture, etc. He did not have at his disposal either aluminum-magnesium alloys, or titanium, or ultra-light carbon fiber. If this were not so, we would all now speak Greek and colonize the moons of Jupiter at an accelerated pace. In general, filmmakers had to shoot triremes in the pavilion, making them out of foam and plywood. With a frame made of duralumin pipes or I don’t know what. Well, they're not used to it.

Conclusion 1. No two-, three- or more tiered ships, neither the Greeks nor the Romans did not build, because, unlike historians, they were friends with the head. Opinion about the existence in antiquity of "bireme", "trireme", etc. there is a misunderstanding that has arisen either: a) as a result of a complete misunderstanding by the authors of ancient texts of what they write about; b) due to problems with translation and interpretation. It is very likely that Pliny and Diodorus had a good idea of what they were talking about, but when writing the originals of their works, they used some marine terminology that had not come down to us, which was familiar and generally accepted in their time. It never occurred to them to put a glossary at the end of the scroll.

Then the translator - as usual, through and through a land robe, besides, perhaps not a first-class connoisseur of the language, without understanding some kind of speech turnover and without delving into the topic, created (on paper) "trireme", "quadrireme", etc. . And then the original was lost. And that's it, cover the truth. Another variant: The author was writing a science fiction novel. Today we have ships with one row of oars. Let's dream up how many enemies we will scare and drown if we have ships - wow! - with two, three, ... fifteen rows of oars. Third option: the authors, by terms containing numerals, meant something else, some other characteristic feature that makes it possible to distinguish vessels of one type from another. What?

Here is an option. All terms with a numeral do not mean the number of rowing tiers, but the regular number of rowers per oar. Subject to this condition, perhaps even an incredible decera will gain the right to life. Interesting: in the absolutist and early bourgeois fleets, the criterion for the distribution of warships by rank was something similar, namely the number of guns. Note, not the number of battery decks, but the number of guns!

That is, it turns out that trireme is a medium-sized galley, single-row, of course, with three rowers per oar. A pentyrema or decera - a large rowing and sailing ship, on which the oars, of course, are more massive, as a result of which more rowers are required. Again we reread the description of medieval galleys and their "sisters" from the New Age. What do we see?! The number of rowers per oar reached ten people !! At the same time, the rowers did not sit on the benches, but continuously walked back and forth across the deck.

Here it is! Indeed, with this method of rowing, you can put ten people on the oar and they will work with approximately the same efficiency. Just the outermost rower will take one or two steps, and the outermost rower will take five or six. If you put at least five rowers on the cans, then the outermost one will only slightly move its hands, and the outermost one will dangle at the end of the oar, like a rag on a pole. Absurd! From three to ten people to one oar can be put only in standing position. But then, again, there can be no talk of any multi-row ships: if this is the first row, then what will the oars of the second or, God forbid, the third row be, given that the height of the tier has automatically jumped up to at least two meters , rowers are standing tall!

As for the galleys of Northern Europe, for example, Swedish or Peter's identical ones, this is already a different shipbuilding tradition, coming from the Viking drakkars. Its formation was influenced by the harsh conditions of navigation in the Baltic, in the North and Barents Seas. Rowing there is exclusively sedentary, no more than two people per oar and oars, respectively, and shorter and easier. By the way, the Mediterranean galleys and galleasses in the inhospitable northern waters felt very uncomfortable and lost to the ships of the northern European type.

I do not claim that I am right unconditionally and unambiguously. Perhaps someone can offer a more elegant explanation. What matters now is that the "antique" sailors did not have any multi-deck rowing ships and it could not be, but there were ordinary galleys. Some are larger, others are smaller, but in general they are similar in type and all, of course, with one row of oars.

Use of effective long-range weapons

If you believe the representatives of the KVI, on the decks of ancient galleys (see above), various catapults, arcballists, doribols, onagers and other stone-throwing devices towered like batteries. They fired at enemy ships with both cobblestones and pointed stakes and pots with "Greek fire". The saga of the pots forced to sweep away from the threshold. No one will allow you to play with flammable liquids on a wooden ship. Incendiary arrows are another matter, they are lit from a torch just before the shot is fired, and an arrow that accidentally fell on the deck does not pose a great danger. Well, it fell, well, pick it up and throw it overboard. It’s another matter when about twenty of these arrows are firmly stuck into the side: don’t yawn here, knock down carcasses. And the "fire pots", gentlemen, are more dangerous for your ship than for the enemy.

Go ahead. Our catapults are installed on the deck ... Which one? The design feature of the galley is just no clear deck, with the exception of small areas in the bow and stern - forecastle and poop. The catapult is a spreading structure, it has many long moving parts. Let's say we still managed to squeeze into the tank and ut one at a time (it won't fit anymore), so what? These two decks are the kingdom of deck sailors. All sail control is concentrated here, in the sense of all the running ends of the ship's gear and the main part of the standing rigging. With the first shot, we break half of all these ropes!

Even with the advent of much more compact weapons, cannons, arming galleys was a problem. As a rule, it was possible to spread 5-7 small-caliber guns on the bow and stern platforms and nothing more. This, in the end, ruined the galley: the gunboat with its large-caliber guns simply survived her “retirement”. In addition, we, with our stone throwers, greatly interfere with the archers and legionnaires, who already do not have enough space, and then there are the sailors, and then there is Mr. Quaestor with his assistants, and here we have taken the lion's share of the space.

Okay, in spite of everything, we still loaded the catapult with a pood of cobblestone and heroically fired! AND where did we go? I answer: a finger to the sky. 102% guarantee, all our cobblestones will either stick with force into the water right at the side, or helplessly tumble in the sky.

The one who made it all up, simply never went to sea on a small, by today's standards, vessel. Notice, I'm not talking about rowing anymore - to hell with it, just go out to sea. What is the difference between a deck and a city square? That's right, she swings all the time. All the time and any. The smaller the ship, the more noticeable the pitching. Calm as a mirror, the sea is extremely rare. You can devote your whole life to the sea and not meet such a phenomenon. The absence / presence of wind does not play a role: it is quiet here - it means that somewhere it is storming and the waves from there (swell) will roll here and will roll our galley from side to side. And someone thinks that in such conditions, with such aiming devices (without them at all), it is possible to hit a moving target from a moving platform ?!

Even with the advent of artillery accurate shooting of a ship against a ship remained a difficult task, and only ... - when would you think? - to the Second World War, with the creation gyroscopic stabilizers fire control devices. But, let's say, a miracle happened: our cobblestone hit the side of the enemy quadrireme. What will happen? But nothing. He'll just bounce, another 102% guarantee. For more details about catapults, see the next “Hochma”, but for now I limit myself to writing off all the stone throwers from the deck overboard without regret. Such weapons cannot be shipborne, and in general, nobody needs it.

Now it becomes clear why the Barbary corsairs and Castilian hidalgos changed ballista to falconets. Nobody changed anything: there have never been any catapults on warships. and culverins, bombards and falconets - this is the first weapon of increased power adopted by the fleet. And before that? And all the same: a bow, a sling, a spear and a sword.

Conclusion 2: no stone throwers were used by ancient sailors. But after all there was still a ram?

Ram as a decisive means of struggle

The first thing is disturbing. For three or four hundred years in a row, the ancient galleys have been hacking at each other with rams; then, for about 1800 (!) years, no one in their right mind and sober memory uses a ram, and only in 1862 did the Confederate battleship Virginia deliver its famous blow to the federal sloop Cumberland. Then, during the battles in the Mississippi basin, special armored rams of northerners and southerners repeatedly poked wooden river gunboats with their noses, moreover, not without success. This was followed by several naval ramming attacks, both deliberate and unintentional: in 1865, at the Battle of Lissa, the Austro-Hungarian battleship Ferdinand Max sinks the out-of-control Italian battleship Re d'Italia with a ramming blow. In 1870, the Prussian battleship Preussen rammed its own brother, the battleship König Wilhelm, in the fog and drowned it; in 1979, the Peruvian monitor Huascar rammed the Chilean wooden Esmeralda corvette. Finally, in 1891, while practicing squadron maneuvering, the British battleship Camperdown crashed into the side of the flagship battleship Victoria and sent it to the bottom.

The “ramming” direction of military shipbuilding thought, popular after the feat of the Virginia, and then the Ferdinand Max, quickly faded away and in 1906 the first battleship without a ram, the British Dreadnought, entered the water. However, in World War I, the ram again revived and was actively used until the very end of World War II, this time as a method of close combat of light ships and as an effective final blow of an escort ship on a surfaced submarine. Artillery boats and destroyers, anti-submarine frigates and giant liners went to the ram. A lot of successful rams, in the end, gave rise to a stereotype of thinking: if we now operate so successfully with a ram, it is logical that the "antiques" used it with no less success then, in their hoary antiquity.

Well, it's illogical, damn it. The clue lies precisely in the very battle that became the catalyst for the “ram boom” in naval circles. We are talking about the so-called "battle on the Hampton roadstead" (the water area of the port of Norfolk), where the Virginia so effectively rammed the Cumberland. Hypnotized (you can't say otherwise) by the speed with which the wooden Yankee corvette went down, historians did not notice that this ram should hardly be considered successful! And that's why. The fact is that the battleship of the southerners "Virginia" was wooden. Before the capture by the Confederates, it was a large American frigate "Merrimack", according to the European classification battleship, equipped with a steam engine with a propeller.

It was a valuable acquisition for the small fleet of the southerners, but then take it and burn it. We must give the rebels their due: the measures were taken unexpected and radical. The charred tree was cut almost to the waterline, and on the newly built deck, barely rising above the water, they built a wooden covered battery with sloping walls and a flat roof, like a barn, sheathed with armor from two layers of rails flattened on the blooming. And someone's "particularly gifted" head (it is possible that the author of the idea had read a lot in Plutarch's gymnasium) proposed to strengthen the artillery armament of the battleship with a ram. The Virginia ram was a faceted iron rod, a spike attached to the wooden stem of the ship.

So, the victorious blow to the side of the Cumberland was by no means painless for the Virginia. The spike flew out, breaking off a piece of the stem at the same time; it could not be otherwise: after all, it was iron, and the stem was wooden. As a result, an unrecoverable leak opened on the Virginia, which neither the ship's carpenters nor the pumps could cope with. I had to leave for repairs without completing the task of unlocking Norfolk. It's all to blame - attempt to ram a wooden ship.

Here's the thing! If you have fragile bones and flimsy ligaments, put on any gloves, even iron, even titanium, put on any brass knuckles and invite me to the ring - I won’t even take my hands out of my pockets. Your very first blow, comrade historians, will end for you with a fracture or sprain, and the referee will only have to raise my hand and proclaim victory by “technical knockout”, no more, no less.

So, all the successful rams of the armored era were made by ships specially designed for this purpose. Professional shipbuilders, unlike the improviser from the Confederate shipyard (and unlike professional historians, if there can be any talk of professionalism at all), immediately realized what the highlight was. Their ships hit their opponents with might, multi-ton, solid-cast stems, and not some hinged, albeit sharp, spikes.

What is the difference? Here is the difference. The stem is one of the most important parts of the power set (frame) of the ship, which serves to perceive and most rationally distribute loads between the longitudinal (keel, stringers, deck) and transverse (frames, beams, pillars) elements of the set. An iron or steel ship, whose iron or steel stem is specially designed to withstand the shock load of a ram, can afford the luxury of gore even an armored enemy. After all, the armor of warships until 1914 was not a power element of the hull; she was just an overlay, designed to provoke a premature burst of an enemy projectile. But the strength characteristics of the tree will never allow you to create a ship capable of ramming its own kind without significant damage to itself. Simply put, it's too brittle.

Chu! I already hear objections. The battering rams of ancient triremes, according to supporters of the KVI, were bound with bronze (option: copper). And they even had solid-cast knobs in the form of sheep's heads (or some other, also animal). They say they are very beautiful. Answer: if the set of the ship is not strong enough, no shackle will help him. And no knob - too.

To learn this thesis easier and faster, attach a bronze knob of any size to the power set of your car (in front). You can even in the shape of a ram's head. Now - gas and ram the neighbor's car to the side. I guarantee: you will drive your neighbor into expenses, but you will also have to put your car for overhaul. And then write off as unrecoverable. And all because the frame of your car is not designed for such escapades. And the frame of the "ancient" galley cannot be prepared for a ram for the simple reason that its material - wood, in principle, is not able to withstand such loads.

Let's look again at the engravings and paintings depicting galleys of the 16th-18th centuries. No rams! No bronze heads - no mutton, no boar, no elephant, no bullock. Although, not really! There are still some "heads". On the territory of present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden, many well-preserved (surprisingly well!) Viking ships have been found, even in the water. True, no bow decorations were found, but, according to the same KVI, the stems of Viking ships on a campaign were decorated with animal heads - moreover, above, above the water, precisely as an ornament. Clearly, carved wood, not metal.

Firstly, metal was very expensive in those days, and, secondly, even bronze, not to mention gold, is a very heavy thing and no one will allow you to overload a non-functional ship, that is, not carrying a combat or seaworthy load, with the weight . Moreover! Until the end of the 19th century, the glorious custom of decorating the stem of a combat (and not only combat) ship with a carved bow figure, connected in meaning with the name of the ship, was preserved. There is an idiom in English specifically designed to refer to this peculiar direction of sculpture: "Nose art", or "The Art of Nasal Decoration". And only the First World War, the bloodiest and most senseless (for the uninitiated) of wars, erased bow decorations from the faces of ships, turning warships from living beings into floating platforms for guns.

Personally, I have no doubt: the bow decoration of a medieval galley really played important role, but not functional-combat, but, let's say, mobilization-educational. It personified the ship. Daggering the enemy in a boarding fight, protecting your saint, is by no means the same as fighting, protecting a floating stack of boards. Well, in conclusion - the most interesting example of a battering ram, which I specifically saved for last.

In 1898, the English four-masted iron sailboat Kromantishire hit the side of the French wooden steamer La Bourgogne in thick fog. It would seem that all the advantages are on the side of the English ship: firstly, it rams, and not it, and secondly, after all, iron against wood! And as a result, two bow holds were partially flooded on the English ship, the bowsprit and the first two masts were lost, and the captain was forced to give a distress signal. The La Bourgogne, of course, sank, but the Cromantisshire also escaped only thanks to the proximity of the port and the fortunately turned up steamer that took her in tow.

Again, a nuance that is incomprehensible to a land person: a sailboat cannot afford to lose the bowsprit and foremast (front), because this means for him an immediate and complete loss of controllability. These are the laws of aero- and hydrodynamics, the combination of which, in fact, only makes sailing possible at all. You can do without a mizzen mast (rear), losing the main mast (middle) is bad, but not fatal, even without a rudder, with some luck, you can get out, but without bow sails, foresail, jib and staysails, it’s a real disaster.

And with a ramming strike, the bowsprit and foremast carrying them fall automatically, inevitably, and any sailing captain knows this very well. Installing a temporary spar instead of a lost one is hellish, many hours of work even in a calm environment, and in battle this is generally impossible. Naturally, no commander in his right mind would deliberately deprive his ship of mobility. If he is lucky enough to get out of the battle alive, then only in order to immediately go to the tribunal. Well, if only they were removed from command, otherwise you would remain in the same galley - only as a rower.

Conclusion 3. The ancient army did not produce any rams at sea and could not produce them. For wooden sailing ship ramming is just an intricate way of committing suicide.

Communication and control

This is the most important and, unfortunately, the most difficult element in the presentation of the "Greco-Roman" theory of maritime dominion. I, sinfully, seriously fear that I will not have the ability to explain everything properly. But I'll try. For quite a long time, I had to meet young recruits - twice a year - and put them into service, that is, teach the most elementary basics of military discipline and combat work. And invariably, every time, there was some young figure, brave and narrow-minded, "rebelled" against the "senseless drill", more specifically - against combatant exercises.

Praise the Almighty, in my youth I had a magnificent father-commander, Captain 3rd Rank Evgeny Murzin. In a good way, he would have been a doctor of pedagogical sciences, but, yes, he didn’t give a damn about diplomas, preferring to mess around with greenhorns like me. He taught me how to quickly bring to life such a fighter against the "barracks drill". I simply put the "democrat" out of action and offered him a little command over the company (50-100 people, when), for example, rebuild it or bring it from point A to point B, or something else like that. So, such an experiment always ended in the same way: the army mixed up in a heap, experienced sergeants, looking at the mess that had arisen, cursed through their teeth, and the ashamed freedom-lover, red as a cancer, returned to the ranks in disgrace. Thus, two birds with one stone were killed at once: firstly, the recruits were convinced that commander's bread was far from being as sweet as it might seem from the outside - managing a group of people is a very difficult task, and, secondly, they realized the value of training for practicing clear joint actions. Why am I telling this? And here's what.

Manage military units, parts, connections and associations - it means to indicate to them the direction and end point of movement. And that is a very, very rough definition! On land, this is relatively simple: point A and point B are usually connected by one or two roads, and, so to speak, well-trimmed: here on the right there will be a cemetery, here - the Three Minnows tavern, on the left - a gallows for robbers, etc. . However, leading the army even today is an art form that many have burned themselves on.

And at sea? Where there are no cemeteries or gallows as landmarks? At sea, you need a device that will help determine the point of your location. And another device that will help to maintain the course to the point of concentration. What are such devices called? That's right, a quadrant and a compass. Without them, your squadron will simply be pulled apart by waves, night and fogs. How to explain to captains in which direction should they swim? Show by hand? Not funny.

So, according to the Canonical Version of History, the Greco-Romans have neither a quadrant nor a compass there was no. But without them, it was possible to sail the seas only by keeping exclusively within the line of sight of the coast, and with the onset of darkness, each time anchoring. And this is in ideal weather conditions! No, whatever you want, you can’t do without elementary navigational instruments at sea, especially when it comes to large ship detachments, and this consideration automatically discards all tales of "ancient" sea campaigns in the late Middle Ages!

Now - attention! The most difficult and crucial moment in our story is coming! I ask the question: how were orders given and received in the ancient fleet?..

Thank God, no one claims that the guys had radio communications. Joking aside, there are actually three possible communication channels: audio, visual, and messenger ships. But the sea excludes voice communication as a means of operational control: at sea, especially on a wooden rowing ship, it is always quite noisy: the wave splashes, the overseers give the rowers a bill, and all the pieces of wood around continuously creak. If you shout, then the maximum is to the neighboring ship. Send voice messages on the principle of "pass on!" is also problematic. How long will it take for a squadron of 100-200-300 ships? And how many times will that order be distorted and not heard? In short, this is not a method.

You can, of course, use a horn or a horn, but even here the range of reliable reception will be very limited, and most importantly, this method suffers from an unrecoverable drawback - low information content. Simply put, many signals, especially complex ones, cannot be encoded into a sound form. Even today, when sailors have incomparably more powerful sound signaling means: sirens, typhons, steam and pneumatic whistles, the set of signals transmitted with their help is very narrow. “I stand still”, “change course to the left”, “reverse” - all that sort of thing.

For tactical command and control of squadrons sound signals were used extremely limitedly. For example, a cannon shot often signaled the start of an attack. Agree, the shot is still much louder than a bugle or a horn. But even more bleak are the prospects for the use of such signals during the actual battle. As soon as we fall on board with the enemy and everything around inevitably mixes up, there will be no talk of any horns and gongs: the roar of sailors and soldiers, the screams of the dying, the infernal clang of weapons, the crackle of oars flying to pieces and collapsing masts - yes, there is a neighbor you won’t hear by the oar, not like some kind of bugle or bell ...

The scope of messenger ships is also very narrow.. This tool can be used to transfer to commanders or junior flagships some long-term, general, orders, and only when there is enough time for this - say, at the anchorage on the eve of the battle. Judge for yourself how long it will take, for example, three messenger ships to run around a squadron of three hundred pennants and shout to each commander? And if at the same time, again, the battle is in full swing around? And it’s not very clear where are our own people here, and where are strangers?

Remaining visual cues. This is a set of conditional flags or objects raised on the mast, a hand semaphore (a dashing sailor with flags in his hands) and signal lights, the same ones that are a dot-dash. We discard the lantern immediately: before the invention of acetylene burners, arc lamps and parabolic reflectors, sailors had nothing but a wick floating in a bowl of oil. And such a wick at night, except for its bowl, does not illuminate anything, and during the day it is even more useless.

Flag signals and hand semaphore. This is, of course, closer to the truth, but here we again run into the limited capabilities of the human senses, in this case, vision. A simple calculation: under Salamis, Themistocles lined up 370 of his "triremes" in two lines. The minimum allowable interval between ships is fifty meters. Less impossible: the slightest mistake of the helmsman and - a bunch of small with all the ensuing consequences. But then the width of such a formation along the front will be neither more nor less than the order of 4 km! To set this armada in motion, the naval commander, of course, can raise a certain shield on the mast of his flagship, that is, an object about the size of a meter by a meter. Assuming that the flagship is located in the center of the battle formation, we get a distance of 2 km to the flank ships! We will see a lot from 2000 meters, not even considering that between our ship and the flagship, a whole forest of masts and a web of rigging cables are swaying and swinging?

There is an option. (I say, we are gradually approaching the solution). The nearest ships - those who see the signal well - immediately raise the same one on the mast. This is called "rehearse the signal". By this, they seem to report to the flagship: “Your signal has been noticed and understood” and at the same time transmit it to the next ones. However, even the use of this method reduces the problem, but does not completely eliminate it. Indeed, the length of our “wing” is 92 ships, and no matter how quickly the signals are rehearsed, some time will still pass between the start of the movement of the flagship and the flank ships. During this time, the front is already not ideal (and the sea is not a field, it’s oh so difficult to keep the formation on the water), it will inevitably turn into an uneven arc or a wedge turned at an angle to the enemy, and this will automatically put the flagship at risk of a simultaneous strike from two sides .

But this is an inevitable evil, you cannot do without risk in a war, so go ahead! And so, we fell hand-to-hand with the enemy. And then what I have already said begins: chaos and hell, everything is mixed up, our own, others' shrouds burst, the masts fall down, in the eyes there is a bloody mist in half with a gleam of steel; someone is already on fire and the repeatedly tarred tree, engulfed in flames, will cover the horizon with a completely impenetrable mane of black smoke. This ship has already been captured by ours, but the flag on it is still enemy; the enemy had already repulsed it, but they did not have time to pull off our flag - in a word, Sodom, Gomorrah and a fire in a madhouse during a flood.

What commands can there be? What orders?! What are the reports from junior flagships?

The admiral is simply not able to at least tolerably assess the situation, let alone influence it. Even if for some reason he decides that the alignment is not ours and it is necessary to leave the battle before it is too late, no one will see his signals. In addition, everyone is already up to their ears in a fight and the only way to survive is to win every single boarding battle. And then we'll see.

Therefore unequivocal and immutable conclusion: the admiral of that era could, strictly speaking, give a single signal: - let's start! And then rely only on the courage and skill of their fighters, and on the mercy of God. No more. What we observe in the battle of Sluys. Amen.

AND could not neither the Greeks, nor the Romans, nor the Carthaginians elegantly maneuver, pull up and pull back, without the means for fast and reliable signaling, for the error-free transmission of reports from the bottom up, and orders from the top down.

However, all contradictions are removed if we assume that the "Greeks", "Romans" and others have one tool - an optical (spyglass) telescope. The appearance of this instrument in terms of its importance for navigation is quite comparable with the appearance of the compass, quadrant and nautical astronomical tables. For military navigation - especially. Only it made possible operational visual communication between individual ships and allowed the admirals to influence the development of events even in the slightest degree directly during the battle. Well, at least bring the reserve into battle in a timely manner. It is clear that the new opportunities were mastered by the military not immediately and not suddenly. More or less ordered and regulated sets of flag signals appeared in the fleets only in the 17th century AD!

But after that, victory is always - always! - won the admiral who patiently and carefully prepared his junior flagships, ship commanders and sailors, achieved a clear understanding between everyone and everyone during training voyages, carefully instructed the commanders before the battle, explaining his tactical plan, and directly in battle tried to limit himself to a minimum of the most simple, not allowing double interpretation of orders. That is - with God, guys! Begin!

Moreover. Years and centuries passed. There was a manual semaphore, Morse code, signal searchlights, wireless telegraph and, finally, VHF radio communication, which allowed the defendants to naval battles talk to each other like on the phone. And what? And the fact that to this day the history of the war at sea is a mournful list of distorted signals, misunderstood or not accepted orders and messages, missed opportunities and fatal errors in assessing the situation. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of sailors paid with their lives for the fact that someone was unable to transmit a message in time or failed to take the proper order. And this is only in the near, well-documented past. Such is the price of unreliable communications at sea.

And someone will convince me that some Greeks interacted effectively, having only their own eyes and ears as means of observation and signaling?!

Finally, the last consideration.

Where are the shipwrecks?

Where are the wreckage? Where are the artifacts dear to the historian's heart? I want to know, where is the archaeological evidence for the existence of "triremes" and so on? Marine (underwater) archeology has existed for more than a dozen years, scientists and amateur enthusiasts have found and explored many sunken medieval and "antique" ships, and among them - that's strange! - not a single "ancient" combat trireme. Meanwhile, historians assure us that they know exactly where the grandiose battles took place, during which many warships perished.

I agree that searching under water is not the same as excavating a barrow. But they do find it! Just not triremes. And meanwhile, the bottom of the same, say, the Salamis Strait, should be simply littered with the skeletons of the dead Greek and Persian ships. Okay, the tree, for example, almost did not survive, but they would show rams! You look and at the same time they would prove the reality of a ramming strike, as the main method of "antique" naval combat.

By the way, these places - Salamis, Aktium, Eknom - are simply heaven on earth, from the point of view of a light diver. This is not the icy Baltic Sea with its eternal storms, useless visibility (at a depth of 20 m you can’t see your own palm) and lousy soils. The Mediterranean season is almost all year round. However, Swedish archaeologists found and raised - in the Baltic conditions! - ship "Vase". And the British - "Mary Rose" in the English Channel, where conditions are no better than the Baltic. Trireme - no.

Everything that was found at the bottom of the sea "ancient" refers to the same category of vessels, repeated with insignificant variations. These are short, clumsy "boxes" that have nothing to do with an elongated predatory galley. Their remains are not and, I predict, will not be. For the simple reason that they didn't exist.

So, general conclusion on Hochma #1: there were no "ancient" naval battles in the form in which they are presented to us and could not be. In the historical works of Plutarch, Diodorus, Thucydides, etc., etc., some battles of the late Middle Ages are described, when the compass, the quadrant, and the telescope were already in use everywhere - a truly great creation of Galileo, when on the battle decks ships appeared cannons and arquebuses. And how they were driven into "antiquity" is a special question. I would say political.

One thing is clear to me: lamb heads decorated by no means "rams" of medieval ("antique") galleys. They decorated (and still decorate) the shoulders of gentlemen patented historians, adherents of KVI. Well, well, free - will ...

Georgy Kostylev

A few remarks on traditional history from the point of view of real military practice

Hochma No. 2: Who invented the catapult or humorist Leonardo

In the previous "Hochma" I briefly touched on the topic of "antique" artillery - throwing siege engines, catapults, ballistas and so on. But a close look at this topic reveals the most interesting, one might say, juicy details! It's curious: the ancient sources are full of drawings and engravings, poor and primitive, depicting guns and gunners at work. Perspective, poses, composition - everything is no good, but at least the guns are recognizable. More or less. But, there are no such weak, children's drawings of ballistas and catapults! If the catapult is a catapult, then the laws of proportion are strictly observed, the muscles on the arms and backs of the legionnaires twisting the “loading collar” bulge in relief and anatomically correctly, the horses rear up intimidatingly, etc., etc.

Why is that?

The answer of the "knights" KVI - Canonical Version of History- ready: the Roman Empire fell under the blows of nomads, Europe plunged into the darkness of the early Middle Ages, after which the Europeans had to re-learn how to read, write and do their natural necessities ... Including drawing, of course. Therefore, in the books of our historians, wonderful pictures depicting ancient "stone-throwers" quite legitimately coexist with primitive sketches of medieval artillerymen.

Okay, let's go to the other end. Where are the archaeological remains?"antique" (as well as medieval!) stone-throwing machines? They are not observed. Exactly, as in the case of triremes, whose decks those ballistas allegedly decorated.

It’s interesting: there are Paleolithic scrapers and cutters in the arsenal of archaeologists, archaeologists have harpoons and spears of the Neolithic, swords-daggers bronze age they also have it. There are even fossilized excrement of the Silurian trilobite. But, there are no relatively recent stone throwers - how cut off. If there is such a thing somewhere fighting machine, sure: remake. Moreover, incompetent.

Yu. Shokarev ( “History of Weapons. Artillery"), describing the “ejection” period in the history of artillery, he himself suddenly notices with bewilderment that the situation with archaeological evidence on this topic is, to put it mildly, problematic. Like, once a message flashed about the alleged discovery of the remains of an ancient ballista, but, upon closer examination, they turned out to be so doubtful that it was decided not to consider them, out of sin. And even better - do not consider at all and pretend that they did not find anything.

And you can go from the third end. If there is no direct evidence, perhaps indirect? Oddly enough, they stayed. This - those same walls, against which, in fact, all the so-called stone throwers were mastered.

We will not understand anything if we do not consider the history of fortification in dynamics. There is a very clear boundary: the XV century, the second half. Starting from that time, the fortifications began to rather quickly "settle into the ground" and "spread out in breadth." Tall stone or brick walls turn into low thick earthen ramparts, towers - into tetrahedral bastions-bastions, also low, thick-walled, earthen. Finally, the fortress wall, as a means of accommodation and cover for the shooters, died for a long time.

WITH late XIX century, a fortress, a fort is a system of small (visually small, because inside is full of concrete, weapons and complex life support systems, sometimes built in two or three tiers; - I saw it myself), extremely sunk into the ground and superbly camouflaged fortifications, equipped with machine guns and quick-firing caponier guns. From caponier to caponier there is no continuous chain of fighters along the scarp or rampart. The ditch rampart itself is just a means to delay the attacking enemy infantry for the seconds it takes for the machine gun flanking the ditch to cut it off. The high stone wall has been replaced by an invisible wall of bullets and gunshot. Of course, in combination with earthworks and barbed wire. Especially if the wire is strengthened by the "know-how" of General Karbyshev: fishing hooks on steel leashes. Pretty annoying stuff, you know.

What am I talking about, exactly? I'm talking about firearms siege weapons.

Before its appearance, the fortification engineers, as it were, did not even know about the existence of any other ranged weapon. All these "antique" and "medieval" walls are purely anti-personnel structures. Roughly speaking, the higher the fence, the more difficult it is to climb it. Of course, it is easy to slam a cobblestone from a stone thrower into a high "fence". But for some reason, the fortifiers do not care at all, unlike their descendants, who had to build fortifications against cannons. They know that their walls cannot be broken, and therefore they pile them up both five and ten meters high - magnificent targets for the "ancient artillery". And the thickness of those walls is determined solely by the requirements of stability: the higher the building, the larger should be the area of its base.

But even the commander of our imaginary siege corps knows this! He cannot but know: otherwise he simply would not have been appointed to this post. And what, with a dull doom, he drags heavy colossus on bulls from God knows where and with hopeless persistence planting obviously useless stakes and stones into the walls? And some duke, who finances the entire campaign, with his hands folded on his stomach, calmly watches how his money is literally blown into the air? What an absurdity!

Let's try to approach the problem from the fourth end, namely, from the point of view of physics. Let's ask: is it really possible to create such a throwing machine so that it destroys the defensive wall of the model, say, the 12th century, with stones and stakes?

The practice of modern engineers shows that No. Above, I have already mentioned the attempts of American engineers to create workable replicas of "stone throwers" commissioned by film producers. It didn't work out. Reason - there were no materials suitable for this purpose at the disposal of medieval and "ancient" masters. I had to, reluctantly, design "ballistas" and other abracadabra using rubber bands, elastic elements made of modern steel and synthetic materials.

A ballad wanders from book to book about the selflessness of certain women, residents of a besieged city, who, in a fit of patriotism, donated their hair to the defenders, allegedly for the "maintenance" of stone throwers. This feat is attributed either to the townspeople of Carthage, or to the ladies of Montsegur, or to someone else. Moreover, it always follows from the context that the aforementioned hair went precisely to the equipment of some “ballistas”. Meanwhile, it is well known that women's hair is very good for making bowstrings. I don’t know if it was voluntary or not, but the ladies cut their hair just for archers and nothing else ...

Or maybe the "ancient Hellenes" had nylon fiber?

Everything is fine! - KVISTs tell us. They knew such special ways of either soaking or drying all sorts of bull sinews or guts, then weaving them with women's hair and rawhide belts, then attaching pieces of ox horns and almost whalebone, in general, everything they worked as they should! And then, - historians sigh sadly, - the secret was hopelessly lost...

This notorious Saga of the Lost Secret(SUS) is already so intrusive that it is comparable, perhaps, only with the Ballad of the Unknown Nomad (see above). Sometimes you are amazed at the complete lack of elementary erudition among people who simply, by definition, must be erudite, at least at the top. Well, you don’t have to go into the intricacies of technological processes, at least deal with their results! What was not driven into the SUS category - Damascus steel and Zlatoust damask steel, Inca jewelry and an iron column in Delhi.

And the boobies don’t know, really, you can’t pick up another word that a semi-literate medieval blacksmith-empiricist could not know more than a whole metallurgical research institute, and it doesn’t occur to them to look into that research institute for an hour, catch some MNS in the smoking room and a little bit of it ask around. And the Ministry of Taxes and Duties would explain to them that the manufacturing technology, say, “Damascus” steel, in principle, is simple, but damn laborious and absorbs a lot of time, if you wish, you can bungle it, but it will cost such a pretty penny, it will take so much time that it’s easier to order a knife , say, from a file. We will do it ten times faster and ten times cheaper, and the quality of the blade will be even higher. It’s just that the Damascus blade is more beautiful, its polished surface seems “wavy”, that’s all. And I would tell about the Delhi pillar. And the Zlatoust damask steel did not even think of disappearing anywhere, to this day officers' daggers and ceremonial broadswords are forged from it in the same Zlatoust. I had such a dirk. Steel is a miracle, even cut glass.

Anyway, stakes and stones at some point did start to fly. But how to fly? It is not enough to throw the projectile to the target. It is necessary that at the end of the trajectory it retains enough energy to break through or at least damage the barrier. In our case - a medieval (“ancient”) fortress wall. Such a wall consists of two walls of stone blocks or bricks, with a thickness of a meter or more, with cross braces and caisson compartments filled with densely packed soil.

Kinetic energy of the projectile is defined as half the product of its mass and the square of its speed at the moment of impact with the obstacle. So, the shells of cinematic catapults do not have such energy!

Suppose the legionnaires, groaning, laid as much as a twenty-kilogram cobblestone into the catapult bucket. I take its initial speed at 50 m / s, no more, and for the following reasons: in the frames of films, it is perfectly visible in flight. I had a chance to shoot a lot from the GP-25 underbarrel grenade launcher; the initial flight speed of his grenade is 76 m / s. The shooter - or an observer looking over his shoulder - sees the grenade for a fraction of a second, since his line of sight coincides with the line of throwing the grenade launcher. In other words, the angular displacement of the grenade relative to the shooter is zero. But it is worth shifting a little to the side and you will no longer see a grenade in flight. So - 50 m / s and no more.

We have: the kinetic energy of our imaginary cobblestone at the time of the shot 25 kJ. Is it a lot or a little? There is something to compare! A similar indicator for the 23-mm anti-aircraft gun "Shilka" - 115 kJ. More than four times more. And, nevertheless, even dreaming about using such an anti-aircraft gun to break through, say, the wall of an ordinary brick "Khrushchev" - three bricks - is not necessary. I had a chance to try. You can “drill” by slamming a long burst of fifty shells into the same place, but this is with sniper accuracy, which can only be provided by rifled automatic weapons with their high accuracy of fire! I don’t even stutter about the Kremlin wall.

And it doesn’t matter at all that the weight of a 23-mm projectile is 200 g, and the weight of a cobblestone is 20 kg: it’s not the weight itself that matters, but energy. Moreover, due to its non-optimal, from the point of view of aerodynamics, shape, this cobblestone will very quickly lose speed in flight and crash into the wall already completely exhausted. And if you take a larger stone? But it will fly more slowly, and it will lose speed faster due to the large geometric dimensions with the same unsuccessful shape. He may not reach the target at all.

Okay, what about stakes? And even worse. The projectile, among other things, must be made of a material whose mechanical strength, at least not inferior to the strength of the barrier. A piece of wood - on a stone ?! And if the end is bound with iron? And if you attach a thick, powerful knob? Impossible: weight! Such an “arrow” will generally slap right in front of the ballista, and it will also cripple one of its own.

Okay, the opponent is not appeased, and pots of flammable liquid? Why not a "flamethrower"? And with what kind of liquid? All modern liquid and condensed fire mixtures are made on the basis of light, flammable fuels, type of gasoline. Crude oil for this business, oddly enough, is of little use; I don’t want to clutter up the presentation, so I’ll only say that it lights up extremely reluctantly and burns sluggishly until it heats up, and during this time it can be easily extinguished, and oh, how little it is in a pot. Any vegetable oil? But it is very expensive even now, with modern agricultural technologies, and, besides (what a shame!), Again, it does not burn by itself: you need a tow, a wick that contributes to its heating and evaporation. So show me, please, an antique cracking column.

Well, we poured some combustible rubbish into the shotgun, loaded it into the catapult, set it on fire and pulled the trigger ... Where would that fuel be in a second? Right, on our heads. Do we need it?

Briefly speaking, it's all nonsense. In modern napalm bombs, an impact fuse, an explosive charge to destroy the hull, and an igniter that instantly gives ultra-high temperature to vaporize and ignite the mixture are used to ignite the fire mixture.

You can, of course, just throw tar torches. But after all, they won’t fly far: they are light, with high air resistance ... If only they could be given a decent aerodynamic shape! Well, it's already been done. We build a company of archers and distribute to each a quiver of incendiary arrows. The firing range is higher than that of any heavy flamethrower. The rate of fire is immeasurably higher. And most importantly: a lot of fires are created quickly and inexpensively. Arrow - it is small, nimble, track the fall of each - out of hundreds! - unrealistic, and one arrow not found in time gives a fire. So why do we need a non-effective remedy, if there is efficient?!

Somewhat apart in historical fabrications about ancient flamethrowing are some "flamethrower pipes". Historians are trying to convince themselves and others that we are talking about "classical" flamethrowing, that is, a jet of combustible liquid. Of course, they saw the flamethrower in action - in the footage of military newsreels. But take, for example, a book by V.N. Shunkov "Weapons of the Red Army" and read in it a description of the device of that flamethrower, they hardly bothered, otherwise they would not have written nonsense. An integral part of the classic flamethrower - cylinder with air under pressure 100-200 atm. If the Hellenes, relying on the level of the then metallurgy, could make a bronze tank designed for such pressure, then what would they charge it with? Hand furs? Not funny.

But the solution lies on the surface. "Pipe Throwing Fire"- it's simple A GUN, such as the observer who is not accustomed to this spectacle sees her. The then gunpowder, being of low quality, did not have time to burn out completely in the barrel, and the gun, indeed, spewed out monstrous flames. It is now high-quality powders that provide an almost flameless shot. And that’s all: the “ancient” text mentioning “flamethrower tubes” has safely left for where it should be – in the Middle Ages.

There are still so exotic ammo like pots of filth and the corpses of contagious patients. It's just an ineffective weapon. Even if we pour gold to a few idiots so that they drag such a corpse to the "battery", how to throw a 70-80-kilogram dead man over the enemy wall ?! What catapult do you need? Why, even on the other side, not idiots are sitting, they will realize that the matter is unclean and they will call doctors and corpse-bearing orderlies. And they know what to do. After all, in fact, a serious danger is not the corpses of those who died from diseases, but quite alive and outwardly healthy infected people who, within the incubation period, do not even suspect that they are infected. I agree that our ancestors were not strong in microbiology, but they knew how to take quarantine measures. So this thesis does not work either.

Finally, the very term stone thrower. "Stone Throwing Device", nothing more. Catapult - the exact translation from Latin: "thrower", nothing more. And so everywhere! "Lito-bola" from Greek: "a device that throws stones." Nowhere - not a hint of the use of any elastic elements. But after all, the cores of the first cannons were entirely made of stone! Means?!

Let me make a small remark.. All of the above should by no means be understood as if guns appeared only in the middle of the 15th century. Of course not. It was just that by that moment the qualitative growth in the power of artillery had reached such a level that it made the very existence of traditional sheer high walls impossible and unnecessary. The guns dealt with them too quickly. At that moment, again, a qualitative leap in the development of fortification architecture simply took place. The guns appeared much earlier, but to gnaw through the "traditional" walls, they needed a considerable amount of time and a monstrous consumption of ammunition. Just like the Anglo-French-Turkish invaders near Sevastopol in 1855-1856: history repeated itself at a qualitatively new level. And by the way, the middle of the 15th century is exactly the capture of Constantinople by Suleiman the Magnificent, in which a huge role was played by siege guns.

It was after this that the fortifiers became thoughtful: if such walls could not resist, it means that something fundamentally new must be urgently invented. And it was the Italians who first thought about it, as one of the closest candidates for the role of the object of the next Turkish onslaught (see Yakovlev V.V. "Fortress History").

General conclusion on Hochma No. 2: No "ancient", no "medieval" combat vehicles, the principle of operation of which is based on the use of some kind of elastic elements, simply did not exist. There were only a bow, a crossbow... and that's it. Question: where did they come from? I mean, in the pictures - how is it now becoming clear, from the time of the Renaissance and later?

There is an opinion. We should take a closer look at the work of the brilliant artist/scientist/inventor Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).

"Leonardo"

I subscribed, subscribed to books at the publishing house "Terra" and now I was rewarded for diligence with a "bonus" - a free book. It's called The World of Leonardo. The author (a certain Robert Wallace) spared no sensual breaths to describe how great and brilliant Leonardo was. It would be better if he didn't, honestly. Because the result turned out to be just the opposite, at least if you read the book, and not just flip through the pictures. It turns out that in 67 years of his life, the genius worked already 12 paintings. Not a lot for a classic, but it happens. However, "iron" belong to da Vinci's brushes only two of them: the “La Gioconda”, which set the teeth on edge, over which “every cultured person” should enthusiastically gasp and “Baptism”, which even art critics embarrassingly call “an inexplicable mistake of a great artist”. The ownership of the remaining paintings is defined as follows: “The authorship of Leonardo is irrefutably indicated by the predatory pose of an ermine and the graceful bend of a woman’s hand ...” This is about a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of the Duke of Sforza. The argument is, of course, irrefutable. That would curl up an ermine and that's it, and no longer Leonardo.

The rest is even more indistinct, even more illegible. Yes, and "La Gioconda" ... Of course, my personal opinion and I do not impose it on anyone, but point-blank I do not see anything out of the ordinary. A woman of dubious beauty with a cramped mouth. In addition, there are at least eight of them - "La Gioconda" and all of them are not signed. Why does the Louvre portrait belong to the brush of the "great"?

"Baptism" but in general a complete nightmare, if not blasphemy. Only a pederast could portray John the Baptist, a teacher, an ascetic and an ascetic, as a young playful pederast, which the maestro, apparently, was, since he spent his whole life as a kept woman with one or another foul-smelling sexually magnate.

But the titan painted a fresco ( "The Last Supper"). Well, I already wrote it, I wrote it that way! But she immediately peeled off and crumbled. And there was nothing left but "amazing tones." After that, the fresco was repainted more than once by other artists. The question is where is Leonardo? Plaster, they say, is to blame. Yes, it’s not the plaster that’s to blame, but the titan, who doesn’t know what a painter of the 3rd category is obliged to know after graduating from a vocational school: where you can already paint, and where you can’t, because it hasn’t dried out and how to prime it so that it doesn’t fall off in five minutes.

Scattered here and there in abundance throughout the book - open dough! - direct indications that the maestro was lazy, unorganized, did not know how to organize his work and did not want to. Meanwhile, it has long been noted that genius is 1% talent and 99% sweat. Apparently, Leonardo had talent, but the luminary categorically did not want to work. Nevertheless, he lived widely, only in old age he had to shrink in requests; kept servants and horses (according to medieval concepts, an extremely expensive pleasure, a symbol of belonging to the nobility!), allowed himself various grand gestures (which always require money). Trait: I picked up a nice boy, bought him pants and jackets... The boy stole everything from the master, and the master only sighed knowingly and continued to buy velvet pants... Until his very last breath.

The picture looms repulsive, but for psychiatrists and sexologists it is quite familiar: a pederast lives at the expense of another, rich pederast, for the sake of decency, he is listed as someone, imitates some kind of activity, but receives money for completely different services. "For the soul" contains a young pederast, without demanding from him, in turn, any tangible work and forgiving him small weaknesses like kleptomania. Lives and prospers. And under this curtain elderly honored ped turns out to be of no particular use to anyone, and therefore he has to take shape as a host at Francis I (?). Tempore, you know, mutandis.

And now it's time to take a closer look at the personality of Leonardo as a "scientist" and "inventor". We are told (including the authors of the supposedly serious journal Technique for Youth) that Leonardo anticipated this and that, the fifth, and the tenth... Helicopter, plane, tank, diving equipment, etc. , and so on. The basis for such statements were the pictures scattered here and there in handwritten treatises, let's put it in quotation marks, "Leonardo". No words, beautiful pictures. Some of them even look like blueprints. But who looked at them?

As a child, I also drew diagrams of various spaceships, submarines and six-legged tanks (thank God, it never occurred to anyone to translate these projects into metal). But this is no reason to proclaim me a brilliant inventor ahead of his time! Again, I do not want to clutter up the presentation: any, I repeat, any invention of "Leonardo" suffers fatal flaw: it does not agree not with basic laws physics, but even with the usual, everyday practical experience that any artisan has to one degree or another.

Genius clearly did not understand how power and mass, force, volume and pressure are related, and so on - throughout the SI table. The genius obviously did not hold a real arquebus in his hands when he designed its five-barreled version: where can one get so much health to toss with such a weapon ?! Corypheus clearly had no idea how much the armor and armament of his “tank” would weigh, did not know what the real strengths of those four people who were supposed to set this monster in motion, did not realize that this miracle of technology would sit in the ground along the very axis, barely rolling off the paved road. Next - everywhere! He enthusiastically chewed on small technical details, without solving fundamental problems, without even setting them, without even noticing! Titan fluttered in the skies of fantasy, providing "dirty work" to all sorts of Cartesians with Pascals. Come on there Torricelli understands why the duke's fountain does not gush. Galileo, fool, drops the cannonballs from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, schoolboy. And here I am!

However, all the "technical miracles" of Leonardo very well drawn. What is, is - it cannot be taken away. The drawings are cute. The so-called "Renaissance" is a surge of human arrogance, perhaps the first, but, unfortunately, not the last, when people imagined that science would allow them to overcome all obstacles and soon give them the opportunity to finally triumph over nature. You just need more axles, pulleys and gears. Something does not work? So there are few gears.

Sad but true. Beautifully lined mechanisms "Leonardo" inoperable. Beautifully painted ballistae with catapults are obviously inoperable.

My opinion is this. The master lived just at the very time when it began to form artificial version of "antiquity" and "medieval". And so, historians had a problem: they knew perfectly well that cannons and arquebuses appeared relatively recently. And in their version of history, a “military-technical vacuum” was formed, so to speak: what replaced the ancient siege artillery? And here some titan flashed. I highly suspect Leonardo. Flashed - and historians picked it up. He flashed - and for the fifth century our brains have been powdered.

I do not know who Leonardo da Vinci is and what his real name is, and whether he lived at all in reality. But I know that the "ancient" and "medieval" throwing machines were someone just drawn on paper. Not without talent drawn, it's true. And the first candidate for authorship is the one whom modern historiography called Leonardo da Vinci.

Tsar Cannon - "Russian Shotgun"

No, here's my word of honor, a solid and seemingly sensible magazine - "Technology - Youth". But, as soon as it comes to "the affairs of bygone days, the legends of antiquity," he strives to act as a hotbed of date oaks. This press organ spoke about the Tsar Cannon in the following way. Like, yes, the nuclei folded in front of her in a neat pyramid are purely decorative. Yes, indeed, a richly decorated iron casting machine is absolutely non-functional, but also purely decorative. But, they say, this decorative Cannon was intended for firing, but not with cores, but with “shot” - buckshot, moreover, from a wooden machine with a constant elevation angle.

Sorry, but this nonsense at the level of corpse throwing. Casting such a gun, deliberately excluding the possibility of aiming in elevation, that is, in range, is nonsense. This is sabotage. In the thirties of the twentieth century, a certain genius named Tukhachevsky also fell into such projects. I.V. Stalin showed truly angelic patience, explaining to the genius that even the marshal's fantasy should have some limits, but, having exhausted the arguments and not achieving understanding, he was finally forced to say goodbye forever to both the genius and his protege - Kurchevsky, Grokhovsky and others like him. with them. By the way, contrary to the current "democratic" fabrications, while the same Grokhovsky was engaged in serious business (parachutes), he lived and prospered. Has suffered in the wilds - do not be offended: the Country of the Soviets is not so rich as to finance your technical dislocations.

But let's get back to our Cannon and take into account the following nuance: at all times, anti-assault guns, the main task of which is firing with grapeshot for self-defense, have always had a small caliber, and the main requirement for them was a high rate of fire. Otherwise, they simply will not fulfill their combat mission. The rate of fire of the Tsar Cannon is no more than one or two shots per hour. Thus, the "shot" version disappears completely. So maybe the cores are still real? Maybe we really have a siege weapon of unheard of power before us? ..

No, everything is correct. The cores are fake. And in order to understand, finally, what's the matter, you need to put two photographs in front of you: the Tsar Cannon and some authentically combat large-caliber cannon. And everything becomes clear. The insufficient strength of the metals used for casting the barrels forced the casters to make the walls of the barrels very thick, approximately commensurate with the actual caliber of the gun. Meanwhile, the picture of the Tsar Cannon clearly shows that the thickness of the walls of its barrel is obscenely small - no more than a quarter of a caliber. 102% guarantee: it will simply break when you try to shoot that core. The most interesting thing is that the same thing will happen when shooting with buckshot, since the mass of a buckshot charge is approximately equal to, or even exceeds, the mass of a solid shot for the same gun - see any reference book on smoothbore artillery.

My conclusion and try to argue: in front of us is a memorial of the glory of Russian weapons. Wonderful, but only a memorial and nothing more. And in this regard, it would be interesting to check two things directly, so to speak, "on the ground." First, is there a trunnion on the barrel? These are such cylindrical horizontal tides in the middle part, due to which the barrel swings in a vertical plane. In the picture, the place where they should be is covered with some kind of decorative gun carriage blotches. Secondly, is there a priming hole in the breech of the barrel? Naturally, this cannot be determined from the photograph either. If there is not at least one thing, the topic is closed and is not subject to further discussion in principle, although for me personally the question is clear and so.

Hochma #3: Brilliant Admiral Lee Sun-sin

The historical canon says that in 1592 the bad Japanese admiral Hideyoshi attacked good Korea. But then a problem arose: at the head of the Korean fleet was a brilliant military leader, Admiral Lee Sun-sin. This genius was 263 years ahead of his time by creating iron-clad, that is, armored ships, invulnerable to the enemy, with iron spikes for ramming, and with such a fleet he defeated all the Japanese. And that's it, and the "turtles" - kobuksons, swam along the paper waves, exactly like the Greek "triremes". And wise people there, in the east! Iron spikes alone are already enough to send "Admiral Yi Sun-sin" along with his "turtles" to where they belong only: in the wastebasket.

But now it's not about spikes. It's about iron armor, "ahead of its time." Ends don't meet here for two reasons. The first is economic. The authors of popular (and not only popular) historical literature simply cannot imagine what it means to sheathe a whole ship with steel or, at worst, with iron. Both from a production and financial point of view. These people believe that if they can afford to cover the roof of a garden house with galvanization without much effort, then the state is quite capable of sheathing its fleet with iron. At the same time, they lose sight of the fact that, firstly, armor and tin, after all, are slightly different things, and secondly, it will take a little more metal to armor a fleet than for a country roof, and most importantly - in the yard - it is not the 16th, but the 21st century.

I could not find any digital data on the characteristics of the "turtles", but you can make a simple calculation. What is characteristic: whenever specificity is required, historians sweetly, in a purely feminine way, move on to the next topic, walking mainly in the garden of emotions. However, based on the “reconstruction” pictures and general considerations about the then level of world shipbuilding, I took the approximate “turtle” tonnage of 400 tons, with a length of 40, a width of 10 and an armored freeboard height of 1 meter. The total armored area, given that the deck of the “monster” is also armored, is emphasized by all sources! - will be about 400 sq.m. From 10 to 30 "armored" Korean ships took part in different battles. Suppose they were absolutely invulnerable, no replacements were required due to combat losses, and only 30 units were built at all. In total we have 12,000 sq.m. armor cover! Isn't it too much for feudal Korea, and even in conditions when half the country is already occupied by the bloodthirsty Japanese?!

How is all this iron made? Blacksmiths, a handbrake and a sledgehammer, in a half-sighted smoky fantasy? This is how many those blacksmiths are needed! Another question. All booking elements must strictly comply with certain standards; if, say, the thickness “walks” at least a little, an imbalance in the load of the ship and the power loads of the hull parts is inevitable. If there are inaccuracies in observing the width, height and geometric shape, the armored parts simply will not fit together. To adjust in place with a file and a chisel? Not funny. Another question. And what they, in fact, should be - length, height and geometric shape? Armor bars, like on the Tonnan? Or thick steel strips, in principle - the same, in general, bars, as on the "Virginia"? Or armor plates, like on all other armored ships from 1862 to the present day?

So after all, you can’t forge them by hand; will not fit in the forge. Forging small armored parts? It is quite feasible, but completely pointless, because the idea of armor coating is that the huge impact pressure is distributed over a large area of \u200b\u200bone-piece, monolithic armored part. A cannonball hitting a small iron plaque will press it into a tree, and what is armor, what is not, everything is one. In short, even crack, but not without a rolling mill. And without a forging and pressing shop, too, because armored parts must be bent in advance. And you can't do without a machining shop!

Fellow archaeologists, be so kind as to present to the curious public the ruins of a medieval Korean metallurgical plant! And at the same time, open-hearth furnaces, since such a number of products would have to be forged from raw iron for an indefinitely long time ... Although, perhaps, the wise Koreans had an effective medieval converter in the gas chamber? .. But as far as I know, one has not been found.

And here's another question. What was the thickness of that armor? 100 mm, like on "Tonnan"? 114 mm, like on the Virginia? Please take into account - sheathing a ship simply, say, with millimeter tin is pointless; even for a musket bullet this is not an obstacle, especially for a cannonball. I give historical fiction writers a colossal head start. I accept the thickness of the "tortoiseshell" armor already ... in 10 mm. Not a hundred, not two hundred. And I get ... 40 cubic meters, which will give the mass of armor of one ship 280 tons! Here it is. People don't understand the meaning of numbers. They are not aware of their specific content. A ship with a displacement of 400 tons cannot afford to carry 280 tons of armor. And 180 tons cannot. Moreover, a wooden ship.

There is such a concept in technology: weight return. In short, a larger ship can be built from 100 tons of iron than from a hundred tons of wood. And from 100 tons of steel - larger than from iron. Accordingly, he will be able to carry more payload, for example, the same armor. Or so: an iron ship with a tonnage of 100 tons can afford thicker armor (or large area booking) than wooden. The bottom line is the strength characteristics of the structural material. So, in the twentieth (!) century, a rare steel warship could afford to have booking at 40% of the displacement. This is a small category of battleships and some river monitors, whose extremely low side did not allow them to go to the open sea.

And knowing this, someone will argue that four hundred years ago, some Koreans achieved a greater weight return from wood than shipbuilding design bureaus in our time from first-class steel?

Although, forgive me, I forgot: after all, this is the incomprehensible and mysterious East! They pull out three hairs from a thin beard, say some kind of “fuck-tibidoh”, and that's it - all the laws of physics helpfully bent in the right direction. It is a European who needs a slide rule, but a Korean or a Chinese needs only a beard. Apparently, from that time on, they all walk with bare faces - they spent all their beards on changing the laws of nature.

But the list of perplexed questions does not end there. A friend lent me a book. Good book, thorough. Franco Cardini, "The Origins of Medieval Chivalry". In it, among other things, curious tables. We are talking about the cost of knightly weapons in the Middle Ages. Without going into details, a mediocre quality sword and helmet cost as much as 100 sheep. The total weight of both - from the strength of 10 kg. It turns out that the Korean emperor had to pay as much as 840,000 sheep?! This is not counting the cost of the "turtles" themselves, not counting other "unarmoured" ships, not counting the costs of the land army, cannons, espionage, rice and chumizu for warriors?! Moreover, half of the country has already been taken from him! Wasn't the Korean emperor too rich?!

The second reason- I would say, of a military-technical nature. And why, in fact, in Europe only in the middle of the nineteenth century came to the idea of the need for reservations? For five hundred years, cannons have been roaring at sea, and only now stupid Europeans have thought of such an obvious thought?!

The answer is very simple, although it looks paradoxical at first glance. All this time, the power of artillery was insufficient to destroy ship hulls with high efficiency. No hinged armor for ships simply not required, their thick wooden sides themselves provided excellent protection against enemy nuclei. The facts are this. Until the middle of the 19th century, cases of, so to speak, pure sinking of ships by gunfire were very rare and this happened only due to some exceptionally unfavorable circumstances for the late ship.

For example, if a relatively small and weak ship was exposed to the fire of a very powerful enemy, say, under the cross fire of two or three heavily armed battleships or a large-caliber coastal battery. Pure sinking should be understood as the death of a ship, the hull of which was so destroyed by shell impacts that it lost its buoyancy. In short, too much outboard water poured into the holes. But the main loss in all fleets was the capture of the ship by the enemy, when during the classic artillery duel one of the opponents suffered more than the other. There comes a moment when the commander of the wrecked ship, having sadly surveyed the deck littered with fragments of the downed spars, torn apart guns and the corpses of sailors, comes to the conclusion that all possibilities for resistance have been exhausted, and lowers the flag. Or, a more aggressive enemy, having previously treated the victim well with buckshot, rushes to board and finishes the job in hand-to-hand combat.

The second article is fires, sometimes ending in an explosion of the cruise chambers. No wonder: wood, resin, many layers of oil paint. And only then the statistics show the direct sinking of ships by artillery fire. The reason for this situation lies in the fact that the side of a more or less large and seaworthy vessel made of wood simply involuntarily turns out to be thick. The ships of that time were built according to the so-called "transverse" scheme. This means that the main load in the ship's power set is carried by the frames, which have to be made very thick and put in very often. In practice, it looks like this: the gaps between the frames are smaller than their width, they stand almost like a solid palisade. Then, a sheathing is mounted on top of the frames, both from the inside and outside, also very thick, since it has to take longitudinal-bending loads, linking the frames into a single whole. As a result, even merchant ships the thickness of the board reached half a meter.

For warships, the situation was aggravated by the fact that the nature of their loads was different; "merchant" is simply a box for cargo, not every one of them had at least one deck below the main, upper one - the so-called "tween deck". And a solid warship had two or even three battery decks, which had to withstand a multi-ton mass of guns, and even take serious dynamic loads when firing. In turn, the decks transferred it to the frames, which made them even thicker. In general, the thickness of the side of the famous "Manila galleons", for example, could reach 1.5 m. And Nelson's battleships too. And so it was until the transition to iron shipbuilding.

Thus, the high projectile resistance of military sailboats is not the result of the purposeful work of shipbuilders, but was obtained, as it were, "in addition", in addition to the overall structural strength. The designer could not do otherwise if he did not want his offspring to crumble immediately upon launching. So, the then core simply did not break through such sides. Cannonballs and buckshot flew into gun ports, destroyed gun mounts, crippled sailors, shredded spars, marines from the mars (mast) platforms showered bullets on the enemy deck, incendiary shells (brandskugels) set fire to everything that was dry, but break the side so that the ship was dripping like a sieve, could not.

At this point, the Attentive Reader is simply obliged to grab me by the tail: wait, wait! How are you supposed to understand this? That is, the guns coped with the fortress walls, but not so much with the wooden ship's side? Exactly. The reason is in the specifics of naval combat. On land, the commander of the siege corps had the opportunity to calmly, without haste, reconnoiter the enemy fortifications, determine the best direction of the main attack, pull the bulk of the siege artillery there and then methodically, day and night, sometimes weeks, sometimes months!- conduct continuous fire on a small section of the wall, loosening and breaking it. Moreover, the final success here was by no means guaranteed: the siege of Sevastopol is a vivid confirmation of this. And not only Sevastopol.

And at sea, such an option is unthinkable. Firstly, a naval battle is inherently transient, and secondly, the bomb cellars of ships have a very specific limited capacity, and their replenishment - at least in that era - is impossible without entering a sheltered harbor and anchoring, which automatically means ending the fight. So, there is no contradiction here.

The picture changed dramatically in the 40s of the nineteenth century, when the bomb was created ( high-explosive projectile) impact action. Actually, the bomb has existed for a long time, but its fuse was a remote tube - a piece of igniter (fickford) cord inserted into the hole in the hollow body of the bomb. It was used exclusively in mortar-howitzer artillery, only for mounted firing at fixed targets: enemy fortifications and manpower in areas of its concentration. And this is understandable: the target is motionless, our firing position is also, you can safely shoot, choose a more or less suitable length of the cord so that the bomb does not explode on approach to the target and not a minute after the fall, because they will simply have time to put it out. In Sevastopol, dashing Black Sea sailors performed such tricks on the “yat”!

At sea, such ammunition is ineffective. Shooting is carried out from cannons purely flat. Such a bomb has no chance of breaking through the side of an enemy ship, or at least getting stuck in the side and waiting for the tube to burn out. With the same caliber as the core, the bomb is much lighter (because it is hollow and filled with light powder), which means that its kinetic energy is less than that of a solid core, which itself is not ideal in terms of penetration power. It is also unrealistic to choose the optimal installation of a remote tube for short and constantly changing distances. Now, if only to achieve an automatic detonation of a bomb when it meets an obstacle! And it was done.

The development of chemistry and pyrotechnics led to the fact that at the end of the 40s of the nineteenth century, the leading battle fleets of the world acquired the so-called "bomb guns", firing explosive - high-explosive projectile of instant action. Moreover, simultaneously with the impact fuse, explosives of increased blasting (high-explosive) action appeared. In 1853, with such shells, the Russian Black Sea Fleet under the command of Nakhimov, he defeated the Turkish squadron in the Sinop Bay, smashed it to pieces in the most literal sense.

The countermeasures of the shipbuilders followed immediately: just two years later, the first battleships entered the battle - French floating batteries of the Tonnane type, which fought the Russian sea fortress of Kinburn. Result: the fortress was severely damaged, and the French, by and large, did not suffer losses. The tree, by the nature of its structure, is unable to withstand the effects of a blast wave: it flies in chips. Therefore, a dugout, a field shelter with log rolling, must necessarily have at least a meter backfill. And better than three meters, like a mound - to cause a premature rupture of a high-explosive projectile. Then he doesn't care; the logs will spring up and cover the fighters who have taken refuge in the dugout. And without land - sorry: everyone will fall under the hail not so much splinters as chips from crushed logs. By the way, wood chips are worse than splinters.

Another thing is a steel (iron) sheet: it is very difficult to break through it with an overhead charge. In sapper business, an overhead charge is a charge fixed in one way or another on the surface of a breakable barrier, not embedded in it. In artillery, the action of a high-explosive projectile with an impact fuse against an obstacle is a classic example of the action of an overhead charge. Of course, for a steel sheet of any thickness, there is an overhead charge of critical mass (in equivalent) that will break through it. But it is practically impossible to create a weapon that will be able to throw a powerful enough charge to the side of a well-armored ship.

Naval armor-piercing shells of all countries since 1855 pierce enemy armor exclusively due to kinetic energy and the special strength of the hull, and only then they are torn apart inside, crippling everything around. If we recognize the reality of equipping the side and deck iron armor of Korean ships of the 16th century, we will have to admit that the medieval Japanese had high-explosive impact projectiles. What about remote-controlled torpedoes? Didn't the Koreans have them at the same time? Too bad I can't read Korean. I do not trust "translators" instinctively. And where can I find that original source?

But the pictures of "tortoise ships" suggest: a covered gable deck, with oars sticking out from under it ... Bah! What a meeting! Yes, this is the good old Spanish galeas! And once again everything falls into place. A small number of "kobuksons" - according to various sources, sometimes 10, sometimes 30 - clearly fits in with European data on the number of galleass in the ranks of Christian fleets. These were the "dreadnoughts" of the rowing fleet, there could not be many of them. Both those and others had a pronounced feature- deck, cover over the rowers. So here it is this is the armor, which the great admiral "Lee Sun Sin" defended his "battleships".

To cover the rowers from shelling from above, a relatively thin barrier is sufficient: a wooden "roof" two inches thick, given the high tendency of spherical projectiles and bullets to ricochet.

Hochma No. 4: Kill Khan or Mongolian Supermen

The traditional version: On October 3, 1274, some Mongols set off from the Korean port of Ma-san to conquer Japan. The invasion fleet consisted of 900 ships with forty thousand people on board. On October 19, the paratroopers went ashore in Hakata Bay, Kyushu. How things turned out there is not very clear, but, one way or another, the Mongols had to wrap the shafts. However, the Mongol boss, a certain Ubilai Khan (aka Kublai, aka Kublai, the devil knows), turned out to be a stubborn man and in 1281 reappeared in Hakata Bay, this time at the head of the fleet already in 4400 ships, with one hundred and forty-two thousand paratroopers and crew. There would have been an amba for the freedom-loving Japanese people, but the emperor went to the temple, agreed with his Shinto gods and the aliens were covered with such a typhoon that there could be no question of any invasion. In memory of that, the word (or, rather, a whole ideological block) was fixed in the Japanese dictionary kamikaze - Wind of the Gods. In October 1944, he strongly backfired on the Americans, when Japanese pilots began to launch suicidal attacks on the ships of the US 5th Fleet in shoals.

So we have: 1274- 900 ships and vessels, 40,000 people. 1281- 4400 ships and ships, 142,000 people (Mongols, let's not forget about it).

For comparison: In 1571 Don Juan of Austria (?) led a mighty Christian fleet against the Muslims: 6 galleasses (a large row-and-sail vessel) and 203 galleys. The number of personnel is 80,000 people (which is doubtful!), Plus Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. In 1588 Philip II sent the Great Armada to sea to conquer England. And how many were there, Gishpans, in the Great (not just that!) Armada? As many as 130 ships: 73 combat, 25 transport and 32 low-tonnage, as we would say today, patrol, escort. Number of crews and soldiers marines- 30,693 people.

Thus, it turns out that the Mongols of the 13th century proved to be many times more trained sailors than the "enlightened Europeans" of the 16th century. After all, if not for the typhoon, their enterprise would certainly have been a success! A typhoon doesn't count, a typhoon is a force majeure, you can't argue with it. Just as he sank junks five hundred years ago, so now he sank not only junks, but also ocean freighters, huge car ferries and destroyers. I'm not a racist, I'm a sailor. At least in terms of education. Therefore, the creation by the "Mongols" of a military transport fleet of 900 and even more so of 4400 ships and vessels, and their performance is more difficult than a landing operation to land a hundred thousandth army I think it's impossible.

At first- some purely empirical considerations. I, as already mentioned, walked a little on the water both on oars and under sail. So, I declare with the aplomb of a mareman: a mediocre sailor of the sailing and rowing fleet can be trained in six months, provided that he has been sailing all this time. Only this is impossible: a ship, even a small one, needs, in today's language, maintenance. And there is no one to do this, except for the sailor assigned to this particular vessel. Thus, the required period of education automatically increases at least twice.

Further. To master - and to master decently - the art of navigation, you need at least four years and then, as a result, we will get not a naval commander, but a navigator-lieutenant, who still has to grow and grow to the admiral. This is a nuance on which many got burned, including a certain Napoleon Buonoparte, who believed that navigation was no different from driving troops on mother earth. And in order to create a combat-ready navy - it is the FLEET, and not a bunch of ships, it takes ten to twenty years, and this, again, is at a minimum. Moreover, a fleet capable of performing a landing operation, the most difficult task, which can only arise in front of the naval forces.

Let me remind you: Christian fleets reached the level of Lepanto and Gravelin only in the 16th century, when the compass, quadrant and spotting scope were already firmly established. And here - the steppe eagles, who until recently did not even suspect that there were seas in the world, having not yet finished the showdown with freedom-loving China, are confidently storming a country they do not really know with a grandiose, even by today's standards, fleet. That is; just yesterday the guys were sitting around the fire, singing mournful steppe songs, dragging undercooked horsemeat from a smoky cauldron with dirty fingers, and now they are already flying like albatrosses over the waves of the Sea of Japan and soaring so sharply that the Emperor of the French Napoleon can only envy them. And Grand Admiral Raeder can only envy them. They failed, the poor fellows, to reach the level of Ubilai Khan, and yet the Pas de Calais, to put it mildly, is a little narrower than the Korea Strait.

But with the Mongols, which is typical, it is always like this. Judging by the materials of the Canonical Version of History, no other nation, either before or after, had such an amazing ability for express learning. As soon as they get out of the steppes (or rather, semi-deserts), the pastoralists master, moreover, masterfully, the art of siege-assault combat, then the art of warfare in the snow-covered wooded and swampy regions of Central Russia and at the same time:

a) they create excellent mountain troops that defeated the very proud Georgians and other "professional" mountaineers, and wiped out the notorious castle of the Alamut Assassins from the face of the earth. (Note: before them, no one could deal with the Assassins! They were such cool guys, the Assassins, and the Mongols - rrraz! - And they saved Europe and Asia from drug addict terrorists! They completely saved them, so that archaeologists still cannot find the castle Alamut By the way! In China, too, it turns out, there was a certain castle, a nursery of invincible superheroes - Shaolin. The Chinese have already exhausted kilometers of film on this topic. But the Mongols did not go to the cinema, and therefore they were not afraid of kung fu and this castle-monastery too smashed.)

b) they master ocean navigation and not just navigation, but the driving of combat fleets.

c) are engaged in state building, that is, the most difficult thing, that people who did not have any statehood before, in principle, cannot understand.

We have supermen. Simple steppe supermen. No one has ever demonstrated such phenomena before them. Moreover, the Mongolian supermen somehow suspiciously quickly and quietly died in the 15th century, and has not yet been revived. Somewhere here, apparently, a very large historical dirty trick is hiding. Question: when did Mongolian writing actually appear? In short, inconsistencies stick out around and everywhere. And the representatives of the KVI, without flinching a single muscle of a single face, in the meantime, spit further: the fleet of Ubilai Khan of the sample of 1381 consisted of: a "landing platform" with 20 batyrs; 2) 200 large warships, 100 people on board, that is, each ship - approx. 600 tons; 3) 600 ships of "medium size", say, 200 tons of displacement each; 4) 900 "small" (?), As well as "vessels for the transport of provisions and water" - suppose a hundred tons.

Well, let's try to calculate. Displacement- this is approximately the same as the mass (weight) for ground combat weapons. As for a gun, one of the most important characteristics is the weight in combat and stowed positions, so for a ship it is displacement. Without going into details, I'll go straight to the results. And it turns out that the lumberjacks had to put at the shipyard about 800,000 tons of timber or about 1 million cubic meters. All? No, not everything. The catch is that at the shipyard after drying, rejection, sawing, etc. hits 10-14% of that forest that we dumped. There's nothing to be done: we're not building a fence, but a ship, here - a bug, there - a knot, here - fibers with a corkscrew, the rejection is very large, but how much will dry out and go for machining ?!

That is, for us to build ships with a total tonnage of 800,000 tons about 10 million cubic meters of timber will be required. For seven years?! I remind you: in 1274, the first expedition failed miserably, while they were recovering, this and that, this is with medieval means of communication and communication speed (and communication is the basis of combat control; there was no telegraph in the XIII century), and now in 1281 -m brave Mongols are already sailing to Japan on the decks of a five times more powerful fleet! Isn't labor productivity too high for the thirteenth century?

But that's not all. A ship, even a wooden one, is hundreds and thousands of “efficient things”: copper, bronze, iron, all kinds of coffee pins, bale planks, raxes, yokes, eyelets, gunshpugs and other things, until the ringing in the ears. And where do you want to do all this? In the village forge? So after all, the village craftsman will not forge much of the above, if only because he does not know what it is. And we need hundreds and thousands of meters of cables of the most varied weaving and circles, which also do not grow on branches in the forest. In short, to create a fleet, especially such a fleet, a very, very strong infrastructure is required. Question: if the Mongols, with the help of the Chinese, Koreans or the inhabitants of Easter Island, created it, then where did she go then?

Just two hundred years later, the Portuguese penetrated the Far East. No, of course, they did not find a cave civilization, but they did not find a powerful sea power either. If there was one, they would hardly have chopped off the Macau enclave for themselves. So, there was, of course, something within the limits of long-distance cabotage, but no more! If this were not the case, then the Portuguese, most likely (and even for sure!), Would not have had so painful and difficult, as representatives of the KWI assure us, to look for a way out to mysterious China. We would have met with narrow-eyed sailors much earlier, if not at the Cape Verde (which would only be natural, - after all, following the logic of the KVI, the Mongoloid army entered the oceans 200 years earlier than the captains of Enrique the Navigator), then at the Cape of Good Hope for sure, but off the Indian coast - one hundred percent. But they didn't meet. At least in the official, traditional, canonical version of the story.

Conclusion? There are two of them: Firstly, there really could have been some kind of invasion (there is no smoke without fire), but, of course, the number of aggressors is very, very exaggerated. I can't say how many times - twice? At three o'clok? AT 10 O'CLOCK? At 50? But definitely overpriced. Secondly, it happened later, by 200 years, and maybe more, when navigation reached the appropriate level.

In short, everything is confused. For the 13th century, 4,000 ships is impossible! So later? But even in the 16th century, such an armada is unimaginable. Let me remind you: according to the KVI, this is the peak of the confrontation between Christian Europe and the Arab-Turkish world, when the blades of the best powers at that time, having many centuries of experience in ocean navigation, crossed in the battle for the Mediterranean Sea. And Europe has never seen such fleets as Mongolia allegedly had. Do you know until what time? Until 1944, before Operation Overlord, the Allied landings in Normandy. No more, no less. And one heresy, meanwhile, pulls another. It's like a chain buried in the ground: you bend down to pick up an iron ring, and it pulls one more link, and another, and another...

The second heresy also turned out to be twofold. Aspect one: were the Mongols really defeated? Aspect two: were they the Mongols? I mean, guys from Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding area? Here's the thing. Nowhere in the Far East, except Japan, do we see such a deep, wide, such an impassable gulf between the military - samurai, caste and the rest of the population. And it's not just about property. A samurai could be as poor as a church rat and yet have immeasurably greater rights than a prosperous peasant or merchant. Those, strictly speaking, had no rights at all.

A brilliant connoisseur of medieval Japan, James Clavell vividly described this situation in one of the books of his Shogun. Two people are riding: a natural Japanese samurai and an Englishman who, by the will of fate, has recently been elevated to the dignity of a samurai with the presentation of all the required regalia, up to the traditional pair of swords. Here they are met by a Japanese hawker, an oil seller. The poor fellow lingered, he did not clear the passage quickly enough. The samurai bows to the European: "Could you lend me your sword for a minute?" - "Yes please!". The Japanese takes a katana, and - whack! - without saying a bad word, brushes the unfortunate merchant's head off his shoulders. He wipes the blade, returns it to the owner with a bow: “Very good sword! If I were you, I would call him the Butter Salesman!” What?!

I declare with all responsibility: all the way the Japanese was tempted under some plausible pretext to ask the Englishman to look at his new sword: what was the daimyo handed over to the strange foreigner? A good blade or some cheap stuff? Is this serious or just a whim of the overlord? But samurai politeness and restraint did not allow, and a worthy excuse still did not turn up. And then turned up. If this were not so, he would have hacked to death the poor merchant with his proven blade. Here it is. Do you want to test your saber, chop some kind of twig, don't you have enough bamboo on the sides of the road?! But for a samurai, a hawker's neck and a bamboo chin are about the same value. The neck is even preferable because it allows you to test weapons in conditions "as close as possible to combat." Full impression: the samurai simply does not perceive himself and the hawker as representatives of one nationality, one race. The behavior of the samurai in Japan is the behavior of an occupying army in a conquered country.

This is where it hit me. The samurai rite of initiation is well known: upon reaching maturity (at the age of 15-16, then they grew up early) to shave their forehead, or rather, half a head to the very back of the head. The rest of the hair was grown, braided and cleverly styled. Who else shaved their heads, leaving a long “tail”?! That's right, Cossacks and Janissaries, both of them are professional warriors. Means?!.

One more fact. As you know, the first duty of a samurai was to fight. In the 19th century, they successfully changed spears to machine guns, but as they were a privileged military class, they remained. In the era of mass armies, of course, quite a few ordinary people joined the officer corps, but high military posts remained the lot of the samurai. Confirmation of this is the biographies of all without exception Japanese generals and admirals, from the Japanese-Chinese war of 1895 to World War II. And here are their portraits in front of me. Admirals Togo and Nagumo, Ito and Yamamoto, Generals Doihara, Yamashita, Tojo...

Of course, I am not an anthropologist, but - the full impression - these are some non-japanese japanese! Nearby for comparison are photos of ordinary warriors, I have this stuff - a dime a dozen. Japanese in Shanghai, Japanese in Burma, Japanese in Guadalcanal. These are - yes, seasoned Mongoloids. Round-headed (brachycephalic), the chin is slanted, the teeth are forward, the eyes are not visible. And the military leaders have a classic elongated dolichocephalic skull, wide-open eyes, rich mustache and beard(But it is known that the Mongoloids do not suffer from excess facial hair, to put it mildly!). They look more European than our Russian Kazakhs. And here's another comparison: right there, next to it, is a photograph of the British Admiral Fisher, a 100% European. Now, he looks more Mongolian than Togo and Nagumo put together.

And there are also “medieval” (I put quotation marks because I strongly doubt their medieval dating) Japanese engravings. Their presentation in popular historical literature is a masterpiece of the most elegant falsification. Here, for example, a certain comrade with a katana is depicted. Under the picture is the caption: “Japanese samurai, 12th century. Engraving by Hokusai. And instantly it is fixed in the head: here lived and worked in ancient Japan a wonderful master, an artist named Hokusai. Such a dry old man in a kimono with cranes, with a sparse gray beard and clear radiant eyes. Civil wars thundered around him, proud samurai galloped, geisha clothes rustled, and he knew himself creating. He opens the sketchbook, licks the brush and sprinkles the imperishable. From nature, of course.

And then one day in a book on art criticism, almost without any connection with my topic, I accidentally stumble upon a mention, in passing: Hokusai, it turns out, is an engraver of the 19th century! A contemporary of Napoleon, Alexander I, and possibly Bismarck! That is, it is likely that he himself walked in boots and a frock coat, brewed coffee on a gas stove, read Yomiuri and Tokyo Shimbun in the morning, and ordered chisels for work in Berlin through the Tokyo office of Kunst and Albert. Meanwhile, even with a cursory glance at his engravings, the following detail is striking: they again depict non-Japanese. As if the author, a Japanese, depicted classical Europeans, say, the British with their horse faces, unconsciously “Japanizing” them, in particular, narrowing the shape of the eyes. Which is quite understandable and humanly explainable.

In general, for me personally, the diagnosis is clear. The invasion of Japan did indeed take place. And, crowned with success. Of course, the number of interventionists was much less than the official one hundred and forty-two thousand. Serious resistance was really offered to the invaders, since they had to organize the “katana-gari”, a sword hunt included in all textbooks. It got to the point that in the villages not only all weapons were taken away, but in general all iron tools, leaving one knife for the whole village for slaughtering livestock, chained to a pole on the village Maidan and guarded by sentries. It is clear that the new masters of life were simply forced to introduce the most severe occupation regime, when any manifestation of discontent and even a hint of discontent is punished immediately and mercilessly, so that others would be disrespectful. So, the samurai Clavell not only had the right - he had to cut off the head of the unfortunate peddler of butter. Otherwise, colleagues, if they found out about the softness shown by him, they could well ask him the question: “You are what? Signed up for Christ? Today he was too lazy to give way, but tomorrow, you see, he will raise another jacquerie? Do you even realize how many of us - and how many of them? No, of course, you're sorry, but you're wrong! And they would give him an obstruction. And here, like it or not, you can’t avoid seppuku.

The same hypothesis well explains the original political system of Japan, the so-called shogunate, when the emperor was a nominal figure, pure decorum. The receiver is old, like mammoth tusks: the invaders take some more accommodating representative of the ruling dynasty and raise him to the honorable, but impotent place of the “supreme ruler”, and on his behalf they turn things around as they see fit. Examples - the sea, I do not even consider it necessary to list them. Today's Russia, for example. And, of course, Japan was “taken to the sword” not by some Mongolian arats, but by people of a completely European type. It was then that a problem lay in wait for them, which, in the heat of conquest, was not thought of. Namely, women.

There simply could not be many women in the expeditionary corps. Wagon whores don't count; with such a build a family hearth, you see, is quite difficult. And you won’t run into a distant metropolis for brides. Willy-nilly, I had to use local resources. I have lived in the Far East for many years, and, thank God, I have seen enough of Japanese, Chinese, Korean women, and so on. Not wanting to offend anyone, I have to state: it’s not the same for European taste. It is clear that, having an unlimited choice, the samurai could, even in this bleak situation, choose brides among the local girls who at least somehow met their aesthetic needs. Therefore, the erosion of their Aryan archetype was rather slow. And yet!

If, as traditional historians believe, the landing in Japan falls on the 13th century, then at least 35 generations lay between Ubilai Khan and Admiral Togo Heihachiro, and this is an underestimated (out of caution) figure, since I took one generation at 20 years old, and in fact, people in those days had children much earlier, and life was generally short, people were in a hurry. That is, it turns out that less than one thirty-billionth share of Aryan blood flowed in the veins of the glorious admiral?! Then, how does he not look like a half-breed on his face ?! It's up to you, something is wrong here. My opinion: These events took place much, much later. Century that way in the XIV-XV. Or maybe even later.

In this light, it is worth taking a closer look at the canonical version of the "discovery of Japan" by the Portuguese and, in general, thoroughly revise the entire history of relations along the West-East line! And if this was the case, then, one wonders, when did the "great purge" of Japanese history in Japan itself? There is a thought to this.

In the middle of the nineteenth century in Japan there was a so-called "Meiji Revolution" or the restoration of the power of the emperor (in fact, power from the hands of one clan grouping of samurai passed into the hands of another, nothing more). According to the good old tradition, the first thing that the revolutionaries who seized power (or conspirators, as you like) do is to declare the actions of the previous government a continuous chain of political mistakes, blame it for all miscalculations and flaws, and if there were any achievements, then they were achieved they, it turns out, not because of, but in spite of the former leadership of the country. Well, and so on. And now we have come, all in white, and the light has shone, and the truth has finally made its way through the heavy oppression of obscurantism. Tenno heika banzai!

I do not at all claim that it was during the era of the Meiji revolution that the history of Japan was thoroughly retouched. But the moment was right! It would be simply ridiculous not to use them.

Finally - small illustration to the way our brave historians study history. There is a transmission on the box: "Disasters of the week." In the end, after today's troubles, as usual, an excursion into history, so to speak, a retrospective look at the catastrophes of the distant past. And now, a certain figure, it’s a pity I didn’t write down his last name, publicly, introducing himself throughout the country as a naval historian and even a retired captain of the 2nd rank, popularly sets out the canonical version of this very invasion of Japan. His speeches are accompanied by a demonstration of documentary footage of the rampage of modern typhoons. Well, the matter is over, the Mongols were driven away and then a respected historian, who is also a captain, takes out a reproduction of some painting and gives out: - This is how brightly and truthfully (!) A Japanese artist of the 19th century (the name of the artist follows) depicted on his canvas tragic death Mongolian fleet under the blows of a hurricane ...

There is nowhere else to go. And the saddest thing is that the "historian" point-blank does not see the flagrant contradiction. According to him, a picture drawn in the 19th century is practical proof of the reality of an event that happened (supposedly) in the 13th century! That is, if I skillfully portray the victorious entry of Rommel's African Corps into Cairo, then everyone around will be obliged to admit that it was not Montgomery who beat the Germans in Africa in 1943, but quite the opposite! Briefly speaking, Orwell rests with his Ministry of Truth.

That's their level, these guys with diplomas from history departments. Word "analysis" they have heard it at the university and often pronounce it, but they do not understand its meaning and do not want to learn it. Not all, of course, but the dominant is just that.

Hochma No. 5. Elephant for suicide

At school (as I remember now - in the 5th grade), they explained to all of us simply and intelligibly that war elephants were quite widely used in ancient armies. They were used by the soldiers of the Indian king Por, who fought with Alexander the Great, then by the soldiers of Hannibal and the fighters of the king of the Epirotes, Pyrrhus, who became famous for his “Pyrrhic victory”. On all the diagrams of ancient battles with their participation, detachments of elephants are depicted with the unwavering hand of armchair strategists; their formidable tread shakes the pages not only of school textbooks, but also of serious textbooks on the history of military art, intended for students of military academies. Generations of officers were shaking before the exam in military history: do not forget how many elephants Hannibal had there! The professor is strict and extremely scrupulous in the matter of elephants!

Elephants in the history of ancient military art are such a well-known topic that, as a matter of principle, I do not cite primary sources. However, to be honest, I myself read about elephants with enthusiasm. After all, the oldest analogue of tanks, and I like tanks. Especially when this iron thing creeps about a hundred meters behind you and extinguishes Chechen machine-gun nests from a cannon on your own path. I read about elephants with enthusiasm until I accidentally stumbled upon a thin book by Kesri Singh "Tiger of Rajasthan". Kesri Singh - a representative of the Kshatriya warrior caste, a professional huntsman, spent his whole life in reserves and reserves; he devoted all his strength and his mind to protecting people from dangerous animals and protecting animals from dangerous people. He lived quite recently, around 1920-1970; Unfortunately, there are no exact dates in the book, but it can be assumed that, by the time the book was published in Russian (1972), he was still in good health, otherwise his death would have been mentioned one way or another in the comments. The testimony of K. Singh is doubly valuable, because, firstly, he knew the habits of animals not from books, but alive, and, secondly, he was an excellent, most experienced shooter who put to death more than one hundred cattle-stealing tigers and cannibals, which in itself speaks of his excellent marksmanship.

What does he report?

And he reports, moreover, quite calmly, somehow even phlegmatic, as if about something known to everyone, that, sitting on the back of a running elephant, you can’t shoot. Generally impossible. The shaking is not only strong, it is deadly. So much so that the only concern of the riders is, clinging to something with their hands, try not to fly out of the saddle under the feet of the enraged beast. From the back of an elephant walking calmly, shooting is, in principle, possible, but requires a lot of practice. But Singh talks about our time: his hunters and he himself were armed with modern piece-work rifles.

Here you need to very clearly understand the difference: learning to shoot accurately from a rifle is many times easier than from a bow! English archers for so long and successfully reduced the number of French chivalry precisely because they were recruited at the expense of forest dwellers, accustomed to bows from childhood. The unfortunate outcome of the Hundred Years War for the British is not in last turn due to the widespread deployment of firearms to the battlefields, which partly devalued the value of the bow. Thus, it turns out "Elephant Archer" Hannibal was supposed to be downright "super shooter", "shooter in the square."

Well, it's theoretically possible. But the following message from Kesri Singh finally torpedoes the very idea of "elephant cavalry". It turns out that the elephant is an animal with an exceptionally delicate nervous system. In other words, at any moment some trick can be thrown out. Indians use elephants for hunting only for combing areas with tall grass or dense bushes, while the elephant (elephants) is accompanied by a whole cavalcade of horse and foot hunters and beaters. And all this to ensure the work of one or two elephants, and all this against the one and only tiger, which only dreams of being left alone.

But even such a crushing numerical superiority does not give an absolute guarantee that the elephant will not go crazy at the decisive moment. And the trouble is that an enraged elephant immediately and first of all turns its fury on people, moreover, on everyone in a row and, for starters, on the person closest to him. Moreover, due to the very high “feeling of the herd” among elephants, this misfortune is contagious, the rest of the elephants also get excited, and even then there can be no talk of any kind of hunting.

And now let's mentally replace the lonely quiet tiger with tens of thousands of seasoned warriors who have gone through more than one campaign, marching against elephants with trumpets and thundering cymbals. What will happen to our elephants? That's right, everyone will be furious at once. After that, the shooters-riders, having thrown their bows, will only have to pray to Mitra or Buddha so as not to fall under the feet of a living “tank”, and to everyone else - to run in all directions, as quickly and as far as possible.

The tale was born because elephants were still used in military affairs. The most recent event of this kind is the use of elephants by the Viet Cong to transport artillery and supplies to areas impassable to vehicles in Vietnam and Cambodia. On one of the sections of the Cambodian border there is even such a place, the Valley of the Elephants. There, American artillery shot down a whole column of these animals. So, it is quite likely - and even natural - that the generals of antiquity really used trained elephants for military purposes. But, of course, in carts!

Hochma No. 1: Antique battles, battering rams and rams

Military-historical jokes - 1

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