[Michal Plezia]

[James Head]

I was fairly pleased with this program. I think the producers and 'experts' did a good job of putting together a nice show. There were very few (if any) real 'cringe moments' concerning poor information. Of course, deciphering much of the mysterious stuff in 'Thott' is only ever going to be guesswork.

Off the top of my head, here's a list of things that I found interesting or had questions about.

First of all, Leo's Langenschilts were not featured in the hour program. But I did notice a picture of John Clements and Aaron Pynenberg on the NatGeo website demonstrating their use.



It would have been very cool to see a clip of these in action. Maybe it will be released online?

But... I do want to point out that the spiked shields in the picture are employed when fighting with wooden clubs according to the Frankish dueling shield tradition. The image shows the spiked shields being used with swords, when hooked shields would have been used in conjunction with swords. It is actually Talhoffer's 'Thott' that makes this specific distinction about particular shield and weapon pairings. I am not aware of any other Langenschilt sources that specify spiked shields for Frankish duels and hooked shields for Swabian duels. Maybe I am expecting too much, but I thought that since the NatGeo project was specifically about 'Thott', they would have sorted that bit out.

Also, Talhoffer is called a 'Knight' a few different times in the show. Could someone who knows more about Talhoffer clarify his status as nobility in the Holy Roman Empire? I've often seen images of him standing before a coat of arms, but for some reason I always thought he did not hold any titles of nobility, only charters to teach as a fight master. I could be way off here...

I loved the attempts at turning Thott's two dimensional siege weapon schematics into three dimensional digital models (or real models) ... Looking at those old paintings will eventually warp your mind. Not even M.C Escher could create such confounding perspectives. I was fairly convinced by their interpretation of the cannon wagon. My brain never would have extracted a simple wagon out of that convoluted, tangled mess.

I was also intrigued by Mike Loade's assertion that Talhoffer's 'Siege Bell' would have actually been made of many thick layers of boiled leather instead of metal. Right now, my mind has just as many reasons for and against boiled leather. It is an interesting approach that I had not considered before watching the show.

The 'crayfish' is freaking great. I'm convinced by most of the show's ideas about this odd contraption. My only difference of opinion is that instead of cranking a windlass to move the crayfish across the floor of a castle gateway, it was probably ratcheted up tightly and hidden in the wall, then released when invaders had entered the gateway. The crayfish would fly out of the wall at a much faster speed than one could accomplish by turning a windlass by hand.

[Blaz Berlec]

This link works for me, Battle of the Sexes, a 4 minute clip (after commercials):

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode...s/09511_00

[Nathan Robinson]

For a discussion of the show itself and its comments, please see This Topic.