it's official # it's obscure

[verte76]

Someone e-mailed me a history question this morning. He wanted to know if a king's entourage at a battle in the Middle Ages had included a certain armor-maker named.........I won't bother you with the guy's name. It's the Obscure History Question from Hell. I've already read one medieval account of this king at this battle and no word of his armor-maker. The thing that makes this question really hard is the fact that those historians of that day only cared about aristocrats and kings and didn't record the names of servants or craftsmen. Yikes.

 

[daafish]

Makes you wonder where the emailer gets his info.

 

[Angela Harlem]

I would love to have your ability to retain details like that, verte. seriously, you have a gift. it's all incredibly fascinating.

 

[verte76]

I have no idea where this guy got the possible name of the King of Bohemia's armor-maker. I do wonder where he got the info in the first place, I wouldn't have run into it in a million years, but then I don't do military history normally, it's my Achilles' heel in history. My memory saved my ass in school, because my concentration is crummy. If I didn't have a good memory I wouldn't have a degree.

 

[nbcrusader]

You'll be a history teacher yet. Very cool that people look to you for answers to these tough questions.

 

[verte76]

Makes you wonder where the emailer gets his info.

I'll be finding out. The guy has co-written a book about this particular battle, the Battle of Crecy in France in 1346 which was a HUGELY important battle in more ways than one, and I'm going to finangle myself a copy. The guy's co-author is a Ph.D. in medieval history which means he's fluent in Latin; until recently you couldn't go to grad school in medieval history without being fluent in Latin; I never mastered Latin and this kept me out of graduate school. So it's entirely possible that the only source for the guy's retinue is in Latin. If so, well, that's something the good prof can dig up, not me.