There are many mysterious legends in the Alps.

People from the village of Gurro believe that they are descendants of Scottish warriors who served the French king at the battle of Pavia in 1525!

It is said that after their retreat the Scots were stuck here due to a blizzard. 🧵



The village of Gurro is situated in Italy close to the border of Switzerland.

The villagers are said to speak a curious dialect and have distinct traditions which they believe originate from their alleged Scottish ancestors.

There are many anonymous accounts here on X.

But how did people post anonymously in the past?

16th century Romans developed an interesting tradition of "talking statues", attaching anonymous political commentary on statues.

The Pasquino was the first of such statues.🧵
The Pasquino is an old statue in Rome dating back to Antiquity.

It was one of many random statues in Rome until early 16th century when Cardinal Oliveiro Carafa decorated the statue with Latin epigrams on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Mark.

In the Middle Ages there was no word for orange color.

The Westerners only adopted the word for this color in 16th century from the Sanskrit word naranga through Portuguese merchants!

It eventually became associated with the Protestant cause.🧵

The medievals adopted the idea from the ancients that there were only seven colors: white, yellow, red, green, blue, purple and black.

These were also the seven heraldic tinctures which were eligible to be used on the coats of arms.

Medieval nobles could not use orange color!

From 1475 on, the Venetians recruited the stradioti light cavalry from the Balkans as borderland troops in Friuli to defend against Ottoman raids.

These were known for cutting off the heads of dead or captured enemies and wanted to be paid extra for every head they brought back!

In one instance during the Ottoman raid on the town of Spilimbergo in 1499, the stradioti were able to respond quickly enough and in cooperation with local Friulian militias killed around 100 Ottomans whose heads they brought to a Venetian commander, demanding to be paid!

I keep thinking about this town of Mahdia in Tunisia.

It used to be an important port but brutal wars through history reduced it to a quiet fishing town.

It's a place of significance for Western history as the first successful crusade-like expedition was launched here in 1087. The Mahdia campaign of 1087 was a huge success for Pope Victor III who was able to rally the rival Italian maritime republics of Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi behind the Christian banner to attack the hated Muslim port of Mahdia from where pirate raids were staged by the Zirids.

A donjon was a MASSIVE building that served as the last resort during the defense of the castle.

Basically if everything was lost you retreated into one of these.

This one in Houdan was built in 12th century as part of the castle that is no longer there. It was never conquered. The walls of the donjon have an average thickness of three metres!

This is an absolute unit of a building.

These huge towers in the town of San Gimignano present an imposing sight over the Tuscan countryside!

They are a reminder of a very violent time when warring families inside the town built such towers.

There used to be many more of such towers in this town, over 70 of them. 🧵



The picturesque Tuscan countryside is now a tourist attraction and it is associated with peace and tranquility.

But there was a lot of violence in these lands in the past.

Terrible conflicts broke out in the Middle Ages and Renaissance!

Some European towns are still enclosed by their medieval walls.

The most known examples are Visby, Carcassonne and Monteriggioni!

These towns are from different parts of Europe, located in Sweden, France and Italy respectively.

Which one do you think is the most beautiful?



The town of Montagnana in Veneto is still enclosed by fully functional 14th century walls which had withstood powerful Veronese bombards in 1386.

Absolutely amazing walls!

In the pre-modern world, purple color was seen as a status symbol as it was incredibly expensive to make.

Until this guy named William Henry Perkin accidentally discovered how to make synthetic purple dye in 1856.

Millennia of elite status of purple color gone just like that. The ancients used to make purple color from sea snails found in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

It was extremely expensive and time consuming to make and it became symbol of elite and royalty, known as Tyrian purple or imperial purple.

At the Battle of Nájera in 1367, French noble Bertrand du Guesclin tried to warn the Castilians not to attack English longbowmen with light cavalry.

When they didn't listen to him, he replied,

"So be it then. But these are the best soldiers and fiercest warriors in this world." As a result the Castilian light cavalry suffered heavy losses from English arrows, and the Castilian army was eventually outflanked by elite Gascon mercenaries.

Du Guesclin was well aware of the dangers of longbowmen as he faced them before in battles such as Auray in 1364.

The island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea changed hands many times in history.

Today it is a popular tourist destination, but the history of this island is full of brutal wars and invasions!

This was a very violent part of Europe!

Let's take a look at what was going on. 🧵



It is not known when the island of Rügen was first settled but they speculate it was inhabited since the Stone Age.

By 1st century it was populated by the East Germanic tribe of Rugii.

In the 7th century the island was invaded and conquered by the West Slavic Rani.

It's incredible how many inns and hotels in Austria and Germany still bear names such as Zur Post.

This is a remnant of the Imperial postal service created in 16th century by the Taxis family!

The Taxis established a network of inns which provided fresh horses for couriers! 🧵


The growing Habsburg Empire was in need of a better communication system in 16th century.

They commissioned the Taxis family which had historically provided couriers for the Duchy of Milan in Italy to establish a postal service in the Empire and beyond!

The brutal massacre of the Waldensians by the Savoyard ducal troops in 1655 shocked contemporary Protestant Europe.

But this was only the beginning of the long Savoyard-Waldensian Wars which would last until 1690.

A brave warrior emerged who became known as the Lion of Rora!🧵





The idyllic Cottian Alps on the border between France and Italy are now a tourist attraction and a place of peace and tranquility.

But historically, these lands witnessed a lot of unimaginable violence and brutality.

This cannonball in Nice was fired by the Ottomans during their siege of this city in 1543!

This siege was a result of French-Ottoman alliance and one of many joint operations they conducted against Habsburgs and their allies in the Mediterranean. 🧵 The Franco-Ottoman alliance was a result of the growing power of the Habsburgs which had encircled France due to their dynastic possessions in both Spain and Holy Roman Empire.

The alliance was proposed by King Francis I following the disastrous French defeat at Pavia in 1525.

16-17th centuries were more "medieval" than the actual Middle Ages, in terms of negative associations people have with the term medieval.

Constant wars, witch hunts, plagues, inquisition, religious violence...

All of these more common in 16-17th centuries than Middle Ages. 🧵





The 16-17th centuries were a specific time in European history when society was slowly transitioning from a medieval decentralized one to modern states.

This was an important step towards modernity, but one that brought with it a lot of problems and unprecedented violence.

One of the underrated aspects of European history is how the industrial revolution made wars much less brutal.

Early modern wars basically revolved around unleashing thousands of starving violent mercenaries on civilian population, bringing with them hunger and diseases.

https://twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1771106449709498845

The most devastating example of this is of course the Thirty Years' War where many parts of Germany lost more than 66% of population.

But there were many other less talked about wars that brought a lot of devastation as well.

https://twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1707450548276879695

The culture of Marsh Arabs is very interesting. These are people of mysterious origin who inhabit the marshes in southern Iraq and live in traditional reed houses.

There used to be much more of them.





I recently found a depiction of the Marsh Arabs made by the Portuguese around 1540 where it is said "These people are called jizares, inhabit some islands that are in the strait of Basra, are very valiant people and great marksmen."

This caught my interest and I researched more.

What are some of the popular phrases and sayings that originate from pike and shot era wars?

"Hoist with one's own petard" is one of the most known ones, but there are others. 🧵

A petard was an explosive device invented in 1579.

It was used during sieges to blow up gates or sections of walls. The petards often blew too fast and could hurt the petardiers (men who carried the petard and lit the fuse), hence the phrase "hoist with his own petard".

Very interesting depiction of a Portuguese household on Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf from around 1540.

The inscription says "Portuguese folk of Hormuz that are eating in water for the land is very warm."

Apparently they purposely flooded their homes due to hot climate! Hormuz was one of the important strongholds of the Portuguese Empire in the 16th century after they conquered it twice in 1507 and 1515.

The port city of Hormuz was very wealthy and prosperous as seagoing trade between India and the Middle-East passed through there.

The fortified churches in Transylvania remind us of the troubled violent past of this borderland region.

Many churches had to be heavily fortified in 15th and 16th centuries due to the Ottoman danger.

In this thread I will post some of the most fascinating examples. 🧵





The fortified churches in Transylvania were mostly built by Transylvanian Saxons.

These were people from Holy Roman Empire who came to settle this dangerous borderland region of the Kingdom of Hungary in 12th and 13th century.

Around 1620 baroque artist Jacques Callot posted a series of prints depicting nobility in his native region of Lorraine.

I will post his prints in this thread, for I really like this depictions of nobles. Just look how elegant they were!

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