Protection Against More than Just the Cold
When we think about quilting, we tend to think about hand-crafted patchwork coverlets and puffy down coats. We don't think about armor. But in fact, quilted armor played an important role in European warfare from the time of the Crusades through the sixteenth century.
The most simple form of quilted armor, the jack, was simple enough for a soldier or his wife to make at home: a sleeved coat made of two outer layers of linen, canvas , or fustion that enclosed a layer of padding, with small pieces of metal stuffed in the padding for extra protection.* The jack's up-market relative, the brigandine, was made by a professional armorer and combined the flexibility of the jack with the protection of plate. Small metal plates were riveted to a canvas foundation, overlapped like scales for ease of movement. The scaled canvas was then covered with a rich material and a lining.
Whether made by a pro or run up by loving hands at home, so-called "soft armor" was surprisingly effective against sword cuts and arrows, though it provided no protection against a thrown lance or a mace. Even with the advent of metal armor, foot soldiers continued to wear fabric armor as their primary defense and knights wore padded garments in conjunction with chain or plate as an additional defense.
The use of quilted armor finally declined with the rise of firearms and heavy artillery at the beginning of the seventeenth century, only to reappear in the twentieth century in the form of the bulletproof vest.
* Sir Thomas Wyatt, who led a Protestant rebellion in England in 1554, had gold pieces sewn into his jack instead of the usual metal or horn scales so that he would have the dual protection of armor and ready money if he had to flee the country.
Realpolitik In Ancient India
Renaissance Italy had Machiavelli. Nineteenth century Prussia had Otto von Bismarck. Ancient India had the Arthashastra*--a political manual attributed to Kautilya, chief minister to India's first emperor, Chandragupta Maurya , in the fourth century BCE.**
Kautilya described his subject as the science of being a king, which he summarizes as "the acquisition of what is not acquired, the preservation of what has been acquired, the growth of what has been preserved, and the distribution among worthy people of what has grown." All that acquiring, preserving and growing sounds pretty abstract, but in fact the Arhtashastra is a hard-nosed manual of practical government administration, with detailed instructions on how to manage a complex bureaucracy, organize a national economy and run a spy network. Kautilya doesn't hesitate to get down to the nitty-gritty of running an empire. He suggests a timetable for the king,** a strict curfew to help prevent crime, and rules for the management of slaughterhouses. (Not to mention detailed instructions for state operated breweries and state management of prostitution. The man doesn't miss a trick.****)
Kautilya explicitly say that the first duty of a king is to protect his subjects, but the idealism gets lost in the details of running an empire. Some things don't change.
* Variously translated as the Treatise on Polity, the Treatise on Material Gain and the Science of Material Gain. (You get the idea.)
**The text as it exists today may date from as late as the fourth century CE.
***Only 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Kings are busy men
****Sorry. I couldn't resist.
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
I've been looking forward to reading Jack El-Hai's The Nazi and the Psychiatrist ever since I heard him talk about it at a conference in April. Now that I've seen the book trailer, I'm even more excited about it. Take a peek:
[If you subscribe to History in the Margins by e-mail, you probably can't see the embedded video. Click on the title of the blog post and it will take you the blog site. It's worth the extra click. Honest.]