News and updates 22 August 2014
Here’s our latest news and updates post. As many of you will know, our latest poll for Volume V is now available on our blog-page, so if you haven’t voted for your favourite topics, make sure you do soon.
Poll update
The poll will run for several weeks yet, but we’ve already received quite a few votes, so I wanted to give you an update. For MW V-3, I was rather surprised to see that the Heptarchy is even more popular than the other topics at the moment, with some 34% of the votes. Next comes the first stage of the War of the Roses, with 30%, and closing is the Anarchy with a mere 7%. For issue V-4, it seems that either there are a lot of Spanish people have voted, or that our readers simply want to check up on Spanish history, as the Reign of Almanzor is now on 31%, with the Sicilian Vespers coming up not so close behind (just over 24%), and the Ghibbelines and Guelphs being the least favourite topic, though still above 15%. For the thematic approaches of MW V-5, it’s a close call between Piracy and naval warfare on the one hand (29%), and Peasants at war on the other (25%), with the rest far behind. The Mongols in Europe is doing very well for MW V-6 (35%), while Matthias Corvinus still has quite some way to go before he’ll win (25%). The last issue in the poll is still very much undecided, as both the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Heraclius vs the Sassanids are on 27%, while the other topics all seem fairly popular as well.
Of course, this is just a preliminary update. The poll closes on 15 October, and I will send a full update in about a month. Right now, anything is possible, and your one vote can make all the difference.
Re-enactment
If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, you can visitHerstmonceux Castle’s Medieval Festival, with hundreds of re-enactors participating, and featuring cannon and trebuchet.
Furthermore:
With August traditionally being the most popular campaigning season, it’s not so strange to see that the next few days include two major battle anniversaries.
- First and foremost, today marks the 529 anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth Field, which put Henry VII on the throne of England and saw the death of Richard III and the Plantagenet dynasty. The Battle of Bosworth re-enactment festival took place last weekend, and it seems to have been a success once again.
- The eleventh century saw a series of major reversals for the Byzantine Empire. The first major defeat, at the Battle of Manzikert, occurred on 26 August 1071, when the mobile horse-archers of the Seljuq army crushed the Byzantines under Romanos IV Diogenos. The Byzantines had know reversals before, but in the past, they always managed to keep their empire relatively strong and stable. From 1071 onwards, things would be different. Despite being able to win back ground in later years, decline had set in. Some 130 years later, the city would fall to crusaders. The Greek empire did return for a while, though. For all the details of the battle of Manzikert and the conflict between Byzantines and Seljuqs in the 11th-12th century, read our excellent issue Medieval Warfare III-2.
