A 🧵 Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon .

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Barry Lyndon, and so I want to review the depiction of Frederick the Great's Prussian army in this film.

Like it's depiction of combat, Barry Lyndon get's a lot right, at least for the 1970s. 1/23 If you didn't see it, I recently reviewed the film's depiction of combat.

I'm an eighteenth-century military historian, I wrote my dissertation on the 18th century Prussian and British armies. 2/23

https://x.com/KKriegeBlog/status/1887539706969075741

A thread on the battle scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 Barry Lyndon. The film turns 50 this year.

In many ways, I think war films set in this period might have regressed in quality. These battle scenes from 1975 are better than anything we have had since. 1/16

🧵 Kubrick does an incredible job of trying to capture scenes from eighteenth-century art on film, and as a result, the film is breathtaking. 2/16

It's the birthday of one of the most important eighteenth-century figures: Frederick II of Prussia, or as he is commonly known in English, Frederick the Great.

In 1725, 300 years ago today, he would have been 13.

A thread on Fritz. As a general, how great was he? 1/22 Who was this man? He was born as crown prince of a small Lutheran country in what is today northern Germany: Prussia. His life and story would invariably be tied to the rise of that country, and actions of its successor state, the modern nation of Germany. 2/22

Today, my book Infantry in Battle, 1733-1783, released.

Why should you care?

It changes the story of 18th century battles by telling the experiences of enlisted and NCOs, not just the officers. Battle looks different when you are enlisted.

A thread for the infantrymen. 1/20 TL;DR: if you just want the links to the book, here you go. The book is available today from the publisher, it will ship from amazon later in the month.
Helion (Publisher)
tinyurl.com/czk3bab3
Amazon
tinyurl.com/y3s38a3c

How does it change our understanding of battle? 2/20

Several people asked me if I would give the "correct" answers to these poll questions.

So here is that thread.

Keep in mind, this was a poll, not a test, a lot of these are subjective, which is why I conducted the poll: I wanted your answers.

https://x.com/KKriegeBlog/status/1876354734568931416

Obviously, no correct answer here: I'm pleased with the ratio of the sample size, if it was 10 academic experts, the answers might conform to what I think, but it would have defeated the point of the poll.

https://x.com/KKriegeBlog/status/1876354738964639935

We are coming up on the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War.

This is a thread of polls, to try and figure out where popular opinion is on some of the military issues of the war.

I'd consider it a favor if you shared these as widely as you can. My level of knowledge on the Revolutionary War is:

Napoleon Bonaparte is a great example of a loser: someone who gambled it all, repeatedly, and lost.

Well, that's made you mad. Let's have a thread.

What does our popular memory of Napoleon get wrong? And what does it tell us about risk taking? 1/25 If men as a whole think about the Roman Empire too much, there is at least a dedicated community that thinks a little bit too much about Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor, strategist, and military genius who dominated Europe in the early 1800s. 2/25

John Adams to James Burgh, 28 December 1774

In this letter, written 250 years ago today, Adams describes America on the brink of the Revolutionary War, the American Crisis that was unfolding in Massachusetts:

"We are in this Province sir, at the Brink of a civil War." 1/10 "Our Alva, Gage, with his fifteen Mandamous Councillors, are Shutt up in Boston, afraid to Stir, afraid of their own shades, protected with a Dozen Regiments of Regular soldiers, and strong Fortifications, in the Town, but never moving out of it." 2/10

Just saw Robert Eggers' Nosferatu.

As a historian, more than any other director, I trust Eggers to capture the "vibes" of a historical setting, even a fantasy one like this.

From the standpoint of capturing the 1830s in Germany, this film is great.

🧵 1/25 It's a remake of the original, and I'm not really going to get into the plot or spoilers that much, but rather evaluate the setting in 1830s "Germany" and Transylvania. 2/25

My Christmas gift to you this year:

A guide to identifying Revolutionary War infantry uniforms.

Over the next ~9 years, there are going to be a lot of "250th Remembered" accounts and posts. If you are doing that, use this guide to share accurate visual/material culture. 1/21 It is easy to get this stuff wrong. For example, the "Christmasy" image I shared above is not from the Revolutionary War or 18th century at all, but rather Prussian troops retreating in 1806. How can we cut through this minefield? 2/21

What's wrong with American higher education? Are colleges corrupt? Greedy? Woke?

I worked for 12 years to earn my BA, MA, and PhD in History. I'm now a professor at one of the more conservative Christian colleges in America.

A 🧵 on what US colleges get wrong. 1/27 I've worked in higher education as a student and professor since 2012. I see four main problems in American higher education today:
Bureaucracy
Pedigree
Ideology
Entitlement
To prepare American students in the 21st Century, colleges need to address these four crises. 2/27

What would the mighty Romans have said about the ridiculous "fur babies" of the 21st Century?

Well, the results might surprise you.

TL;DR: the past isn't all one thing the further you go back. how much people cared about dogs depends on class, culture, and the type of dog. 1/25 Of course, an early example of this in the western tradition is Homer, who described the relationship between the hero Odysseus and his dog, Argos.

As they were speaking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any enjoyment from him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear from his eyes without Eumaios seeing it, and said:'Eumaeus, what a noble dog that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?'

'This dog,' answered Eumaios, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master's hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.'

So saying he entered the well-built mansion and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years.—Homer, Odyssey, Book 17, lines 290-327

2/25

Just had a great talk with some reenactors: Basically, they were asking, if musketry was as accurate as revisionist historians would have us believe, then why are casualties so relatively light during battles of the eighteenth century?

🧵1/14 On average, about 14% of combatants were killed and wounded in eighteenth century battles. In some fights, like Oriskany in the AWI, or Zorndorf in the European SYW. If muskets could hit fairly accurately out to about 100 yards, why would this be the case? 2/14

I've worked as a military historian for 10 years, teaching undergrads and ROTC cadets.
The thing that many students get wrong about war is focusing on a tactic or piece of technology. Single technologies rarely revolutionize war overnight. You have to take a broader look. 🧵1/25

https://twitter.com/brandan_buck/status/1861555248482963789

Today you see this in conversations about Elon Musk and the F-35. Futurists ask: Should we ditch the F-35 for drone swarms? Will drones make it impossible for infantry to operate on the battlefield? Will all future combat systems be autonomous? 2/25

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033

Nuclear weapons have been around for ~80 years, about the lifespan of a woman in the United States.

Historically, a blink.

They're gonna be here forever. Barring world peace or calamity, our descendants will live alongside them. 🧵1/25 This week, we saw significant nuclear posturing from the Russian Federation, who used a non-nuclear missile, designed to carrying multiple nuclear warheads (MIRV) in combat for the first time in world history.

A lot of people freaked out, or said it was no big deal. 2/25

Historians are tasked with exploring the past and presenting it to the public, "as it essentially was."

On Twitter I find that understandings of the past frequently break down into: the past was trad, chad, and chiseled, vs. the past sucked 100% of the time. Maybe both? 1/20
If you are engaging with and thinking broadly about the past and it is constantly making you feel great/proud, and never making you uneasy/sad, that isn't history, that is heritage. 2/20

As promised, I'm going to be paying a bit more attention to fashion history going forward, so here is a thread on one of the ways that military and elite men tried to look sexy in the eighteenth century: how they wore their hats. A thread on cocked hats. 🧵1/17 People living in 2024 frequently called the hats worn by eighteenth-century men (and sometimes women) tricorne or three-cornered hats. English-speaking people alive in that time didn't use the term, instead referring to them as "cocked hats." 2/17

So, with the greatest respect to Derek for his fashion sense, which in a modern setting completely outstrips my own, I do want to offer a few thoughts on this thread, as a professional historian who has constructed many reproduction items of clothing from the 18th Century. 🧵1/20

https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1854969654948905355

The general premise of this thread is correct! The period of the second British Empire DID see a great flattening of fashion throughout the globe, resulting in the suit, but it is made in a odd way which concerned me as someone who studies this period, and sews its clothing. 2/20

As Halloween nears in the United States, let's get spooky with a story of vampires from Austrian military border in the 1720s.

Tales of the supernatural combined with frontier tensions to create a vampire crisis for the Habsburg government in the early 18th century. 1/25 Our story begins in the aftermath of Prinz Eugen von Savoyen's victory at Belgrade in 1717. After this victory and the resulting Treaty of Passarowitz, the Austrian government ruled part of Serbia and northern Bosnia via direct military control. 2/25

The Plains of Abraham.

When discussing 18th century military history with Americans, it's so common to encounter the idea that what the British did was the norm throughout Europe.

In order to understand tactical practices, you've got to read widely. A Friday Firepower🧵. 1/21 When you read on the 18th century wars, you here again and again that troops fired at very short ranges. And certainly, compared with weapons today, the capabilities of the smoothbore flintlock musket were modest. 2/21

A thread on those statue accounts, that always have something to say about peasant days off, or life under feudalism, or Cortes taking over Mexico, or what is wrong with the modern west. You know the ones I mean.

My best advice is love/enjoy history but be careful. 🧵1/22



For those of you who don't know me, I'm an assistant professor of history at one of the more conservative universities in the United States. You can look up my bio and my resume.

I study military history, specifically 18th century military history. 2/22

https://x.com/KKriegeBlog/status/1809738790820253779