[Fabrice Cognot]

Hello all and Best Wishes - I hope 2014 will be even better to you (or maybe even less bitter) than 2013 was.

Here's a thing to treat you (or bore you to death, depending) in this New Year's days : my PhD thesis is now online at this address :
http://www.theses.fr/2013PA010609
(click on "accéder en ligne", top right)

I surrendered and defended it last year (summa cum laude, with unanymous jury congratulations - said jury including experts such as Philippe Contamine or Bertrand Schnerb), and am happy to say that more than a few things in this work have been fueled by discussions and thoughts that stemmed in this place - so please let me thank you all again, most sincerely.

A few things, though :
- it is in French. There's an abstract in English though ("Description en Anglais")
- it has been stripped of almost all images, for obvious copyright issues ; but there are still pictures in it, especially photographs of the objects I studied. And a bit of google-fu (copy/pasting the image captions) should send you straight to what's missing.
- it is *old work*. Writing and finishing a thesis takes a certain amount of time, and this dissertation is merely the reflection of things I (mis)understood four to five years ago - therefore please read it with a gentle eye. Most of its content is probably 'old news' to the regulars here.
- due to time restrictions, I had to limit this work to swords, spears and axes.
- there's still a ton of mistypes and misquotes in it.

Make good use of it, still.

Cheers

Fab

[Jean-Carle Hudon]

Congratulations Doc. It is always great to have more reading material of good quality available in the heart of winter, especially one like we have upon us this year.

[Boris Bedrosov]

Congratulations from me also!

Although I don't speak French and couldn't read the text, I was quite fascinated by your technical drawings. They gave me precious knowledge and ideas. Yes indeed - a picture says a thousand words.

Thanks for sharing with us.