Greatest Armies, or Units Throughout History...

5fish

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Here is some more on the Foederati and was the Barbarization of the Roman Army cause its fall... A that summary the Foederati by century...


Foederati were peoples and cities bound by a treaty, known as foedus, with Rome. In Republican times the term identified the socii, whereas during the Imperial period it was used to describe foreign states, client kingdoms, or barbarian tribes to which the Roman Empire provided benefits in exchange for military assistance.

The first Roman treaty with the Goths was after the defeat of Ariaric in 332 AD, but whether or not this treaty was a foedus is unclear.[1

The Franks became foederati in 358 AD, when Emperor Julian let them keep the areas in northern Gaul, which had been depopulated during the preceding century.

Foederati were still present in the Eastern Roman army during the 6th century AD. Belisarius’ and Narses’ victorious armies included many foederati, including Hunnic archers and Herule mercenaries, when they reconquered Africa and Italy.


Here an interesting video with a map of the Foederati... in the Western Roman empire...

 

5fish

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This goes with the Viking and Germanic warrior cults....

 

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Here is an unusual warrior the American plains Indians had... Contrary and Reverse warrior...

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A Contrary, among the historical Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains, a tribe member who adopted behavior deliberately the opposite of other tribal members. They were a small number of individuals loosely organized into a cult that was devoted to the practice of contrary behavior.

The Contraries are related, in part, to the clown organizations of the Plains Indians, as well as to Plains military societies that contained reverse warriors.[1]: 2  The Lakota word heyoka, which translates as clown or opposites, serves as a collective title for these institutionalized forms of contrary behavior of the Plains Indians. When Lakota Indians first saw European clowns, they identified them with their own term for clowns, heyoka.


Here more...



Native American tribes (also known as First Nations) are actually many different cultures. So, there are different types of Native American clowns.
The Cheyenne tribe has Contrary clowns. They would walk about the camp on their hands, ride horses backward, shoot arrows back over their shoulder, and do many other things wrong. When they came to a stream, they would take off one moccasin, and then hold up the bare leg as they hopped through the water. In times of battle, they would revert to doing things the normal way. The other tribes feared the Contraries the most because they were the most skilled warriors. Contrary clowns are shown in the movie Little Big Man.
The Hopi tribe has several different clown characters. Their appearance is the easiest to find because they are depicted in Kachina dolls. They all paint their bodies. The Koshari or Hano clowns paint their bodies and face in black and white horizontal stripes. Their costume is a loincloth and a striped hat with two tall thin horns. The Koyemsi (mud head) clowns wear a spherical felt mask with gourds attached to make it lumpy. Then they paint their bodies and the mask with red clay. The junction between the mask and their body is hidden by a bandana, called a ruff, tied around their neck. They frequently wear a skirt, although they sometimes wear a loincloth and other times pants & a shirt. Pictures of these characters can be found in books about Kachinas. Barton-Wright wrote two of the best. They are Hopi Kachinas - The Complete Guide to Collecting Kachina Dolls, and Clowns of the Hopi - Tradition Keepers and Delight Makers.
 

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Here is a Northwest Native American Tribe that wore wood armor and was referred to as the Vikings of Canada. They not only attacked other tribes but captured Western ships too. It was smallpox that conquered this tribe... There is a list of ships they capture but they captured and burned many miners' vessels as well...


Haida (English: /ˈhaɪdə/, Haida: X̱aayda, X̱aadas, X̱aad, X̱aat) are an indigenous group who have traditionally occupied Haida Gwaii, an archipelago just off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, for at least 12,500 years.[3]

The Haida are known for their craftsmanship, trading skills, and seamanship. They are thought to have frequently carried out raids and to have practised slavery.[4][5][6] The Haida have been compared to the Vikings by Diamond Jenness, an early anthropologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
[7]


Various Imperial and colonial actions against Haida Gwaii Authorities have been undertaken since the 19th century. The indigenous peoples of Haida Gwaii often reacted violently to European and American ships which trespassed in their waters and lands. From the 18th to 19th centuries, various skirmishes took place between Haida authorities and European and American merchantmen and warships. Canadian settlers did not arrive on Haida Gwaii islands until 1900, and many Canadian colonial police actions attempted to assault the Haida Gwaii authorities and citizens. The indigenous Haida population was decimated by diseases such as smallpox which were introduced by agents of the British authorities based in Fort Victoria. A hostile Colonial presence directed and condoned aggression which along with the continued use of disease meant that the numbers of Haida citizens was reduced from tens of thousands to 588 by 1915.[1][2] This erosion of Haida cultural institutions was essential to open the way for subsequent British and Canadian incursions and jurisdictional claims.

 

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Here is an example of Haida armor...


Here is more on Haida warfare...


The Haida were feared along the coast because of their practice of making lightning raids against which their enemies had little defence. Their great skills of seamanship, their superior craft and their relative protection from retaliation in their island fortress added to the aggressive posture of the Haida towards neighbouring tribes. Diamond Jenness, an early anthropologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, caught their essence in his description of the Haida as the "Indian Vikings of the North West Coast":
 

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The Native American wood armor is similar to some bronze-age Greek armor...

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I found this YouTube site that explains the individual Roman legion's history... Here is Ceaser's favorite Legion... Legio-X . It was a Spanish Legion... You know I will mostly likely post all those Legion videos here... The Lgio X fought on land , at sea, on horse back...



 

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This post is related to post 44...

The Jomsvikings Fortress of Jomsborg seems to have been found in Wolin, Poland.


Most evidence of the existence of Jomsborg and its warriors, the Jomsvikings, comes from medieval legends and histories, and the legends and histories come from different cultures and call the fortress different things. Comparisons of the stories have led some scholars to place the fortress, which was probably a ring fortress after the style of the time, and which probably had a harbor that held anywhere from three to 360 ships, in or near the modern day town of Wolin.


Jomsborg was a mythical Viking semi-legendary fortress south of the Baltic Sea (probably in the vicinity of present-day Pomerania), which existed from 960 to 1043 A.D. Its inhabitants were known as the Jomsvikings.

Here is a resent dig...

 
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5fish

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Here the lost IX Roman Legion in Scotland it may have been a cover-up... Hadrian was losing Legions? The Legio XXII Deiotariana was lost in a Jewish revolt around the same time. It seems the Scots( Caledonii ) beat us Germans for the best victory over the Romans... @rittmeister


Well, actually it is not at all. Most people are however swayed by what they hear and this has been magnified by certain key “authorities” who appear to have undertaken a crusade to relocate the location of the Ninth legion’s loss to anywhere other than Scotland. These claims have been repeatedly published since the 1970s, and on the strength of this, the theories have gained an entirely undeserved acceptance as a rock-solid proven case.

On closer examination, a rock-solid proven case it isn’t. Rather it amounts to a handful of disjointed, weak, and speculative suggestions that amount to a far from convincing case. Before we look at the evidence for loss in Scotland – and primary evidence at that – we will look at the reasons why these attempts to remove the scene of the legion’s loss in Scotland have been made.


...

117 AD is the year Hadrian ascends to the throne, and while Cornelius Fronto records the loss, the language used notably downplays the enormity of the losses in Scotland and (at some point) in Judea. Just as many historians claim military action at the start of an Emperor’s reign may be based on an attempt to seek military glory, the loss of two legions – at least one of which was at the start of his reign – will not have been something Hadrian, therefore, will have wanted widely advertised.

It must be remembered that Hadrian at the start of his reign was and remained widely disliked and mistrusted by the senatorial classes, many of whom suspected he had colleagues of theirs put to death in order to safeguard his ascendancy. To give these people ammunition to criticize his reign will have been astutely avoided in the politically sensitive climate of Rome and the two disasters, while reported may have been deliberately played down or severely censored to “many troops” from what should have read “two legions”.

More practically, a year later in 118, Quintus Pompeius Falco lands in Britain (Newcastle) with massive legionary vexillations from those legions stationed in modern Spain and Germany – clearly to make up for the losses of the previous year (the Ninth). The possible two or three remaining cohorts from the Ninth can be expected to be among this force and it may have campaigned in southern Scotland. However, the record is equivocal and we are merely told the matter was brought to a conclusion but we are not told the manner in which it was concluded. This suggests a lack of successful action in the field against the tribes of southern Scotland. Aviragus or his successor may have simply and sensibly melted into the hills in the face of an overwhelming Roman force.


The following year 119 AD sees a Roman coin issue recording the conclusion of the war in Britannia, though Hadrian takes credit on the coin’s inscription, an indication of the political value of the conclusion of the war after its poor start for the Romans. The whole affair, however, has a very flat tone underlying it- an unsatisfactory state of affairs comes across from the historical record on the whole matter.


It is generally proposed that XXII Deiotariana suffered serious losses during the Jewish rebellion of Simon bar Kokhba.[3] According to Peter Schafer's 2003 book "The disappearance of the Legio XXII Deiotariana in connection with the Bar Kokhba Revolt is uncertain and not generally accepted as fact."[4] Evidence from Caesarea Maritima gained support from a number of scholars interpreting the aqueduct reparation inscription made c.133-134 as mentioning Legio XXII Deiotariana.[5] If indeed connected with the legion, the inscription sets the last known location to Judean province during the Bar Kokhba revolt and making the war the most plausible explanation to the legion's disappearance. According to Isaac and Roll[who?], the fact the inscription was apparently deliberately erased was an intentional damnatio memoriae because of Legio XXII's defeat.[5] However, according to Negev[who?], the inscription may be attributed to either Legio Ferrata or Legio Deiotariana.[citation needed]
 

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Here is a little more...


A Roman writer tells of the weapons that the Caledonians used. 'Their arms are a shield and a short spear, in the upper part whereof is an apple of brass, that, while it is shaken, it may terrify the enemies with the sound, they have likewise daggers. They are able to bear hunger, cold, and all afflictions.' A measure of how troublesome the Caledonians were to the Romans is shown by the fact that one of the largest and most complex military forts in the Roman Empire was built at Ardoch in modern Perth in Scotland, and that within 10 years the Romans would be driven out of Caledonia for the first time.

Roman writers blame the woods of Scotland... Caledonian Forest..


So the Romans decided it was not the primitive barbarians known as the Caledonii who had defeated them, but the vast impenetrable forest covering the country now known as Scotland.
 

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You should see what he thinks about what happened as a cover-up...

 
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Here is an article talking about the Caledonian forest today but mention the forest was small and the Romans walking over bogs and treeless land... This supports a Roman misinformation campaign about the IX Legion...

 

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Here is an article talking about the Caledonian forest today but mention the forest was small and the Romans walking over bogs and treeless land... This supports a Roman misinformation campaign about the IX Legion...

so are the irish forrests - ever wondered where the royal navy came from
 

5fish

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so are the irish forrests - ever wondered where the royal navy came from

Woodland cover then began to decline, largely due to early agriculture. By the time the Roman legions of Agricola invaded Scotland in AD 82, at least half of our natural woodland had gone. Much of it was replaced by peatland, partly as a result of the cooler, wetter climate and partly because of human activities

In the Medieval times Norse and Celtic people felled trees for ships, houses and more. The Little Ice Age in the 14th Century sped up the decline. From the 17th Century the demands of wars and industry, and a growing Highland population all took their toll. But the worst was still to come.


It seems the English navy ate its trees and then started bringing imports or building their ships in their colonies... It seems England had enough trees until the 19th century or 18th... You need the big old ones for the keel of ships...

 

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Who were the first mercenaries? What is defined as a mercenary? The video looks first ones....

 

rittmeister

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them prussians never employed any hoplites - will watch it later
 
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