Vikings with Dirigibles.
- Thread starter NapoleonXIV
- Start date
Not hang-gliders. Siege of Syburg 775 AD, the 'flying shields' mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals are clearly flying carpets. I worked it all out when I studied at TCD. I can send you the essay if you want.
Well, I guess the article I read was trying to rationalise it and come up with a possible option of what they might realistically have been
What's TCD ? Is it a school of mystery and myth ?
Off to make an axe now...
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
OK, at your risk:
SAF Essay
Prof. Robinson
"The Carolingian Empire"
On some Events reported in
the Annales Regni Francorum during the
Siege of the Syburg by Charlemagne in 776
and the resulting conclusions concerning
Carolingian concerted tactics and military organisation
Dublin, April 1st, 1997
The Events at the Syburg in 776
In the entry for 776, the Royal Frankish Annals describes in some detail the siege of the Syburg, a Carolingian fortified position, by the Saxons in the opening phase of the long and bloody conflict of the Saxon War. The end of the investment was brought about according to this source not by a Frankish relieving army or a successful sortie by the garrison, but by what the chronicler describes as a miracle. Flying shields appeared over the Syburg and, by their mere aspect, prompted the Saxons to precipitous flight, pursued successfully by the Frankish garrison. Now the hand of God, as is well known, is invoked by the Royal Frankish Annals ad nauseam, especially in the context of the Saxon Wars. We need look no further for an explanation of its miracles than the obvious. The church in Fritzlar failed to burn down, in spite of all Saxon efforts, because a) stone buildings do not, as a rule, burn very well (Saxon building tradition uses no stone, so the raiders may very well never have seen one before) and b) Saxon raiders in a wealthy Frankish town generally could find more interesting things to do than trying to set fire to a church. Equally, the minimal success of the siege engines used by the Saxons against the Syburg1, ascribed to divine intervention, is not an unknown feature throughout the history of siege warfare in general and projectile weapons in particular are notoriously ineffective against the remarkably resilient earth-and-timber defences used throughout the Early Middle Ages2. Therefore we should by rights expect there to be a logical explanation for the "miracle" of the air support for Syburg.
The Search for Explanations
The most compelling explanation for the events is, of course, the arrival of a number of UFOs or extra-terrestrial spacecraft of the kind now widely known as "Flying Saucers" at the scene of the battle, quite unintentionally causing the Saxons to panic. This behaviour would, at first glance, be in keeping with the tendency of Flying Saucers to appear in combat areas throughout the world in the twentieth century. Nevertheless this explanation is, for various reasons, untenable. First of all, unlike a modern battle an 8th century engagement had no features that could draw the attention of an observer in orbit. The liberal use of exothermic oxidation (fire, explosives) in combat yet lay in the future, as did the construction of extensive earthworks for defensive purposes. Most importantly, radio reports, which would reach a ship in geostationary orbit in "real-time", were not known then. Edged-weapons combat, confined to a small number of combatants, and taking place at least partly under a dense canopy of indigenous European hardwood forest3, would be entirely indiscernible from any position higher than 10,000 metres at best, even given perfect visibility.
Even more compellingly, the panic, as the Annals expressly state, was confined to the Saxon besiegers. Far from afraid, the Frankish defenders were prompted to undertake a sortie and vigorous pursuit of the fleeing enemy. We must, therefore, assume that something in the appearance of the Flying Objects was familiar and even reassuring to them while terrifying to their enemies. The most logical assumption, therefore, would appear to be that they were thought to be a form of supernatural assistance, angels of the Lord fighting on the side of the Christians against the heathen. However, Carolingian iconographic tradition is strictly anthropomorphic. Angels were pictured, and therefore known to the average soldier4, as human figures endowed with a number of feathered wings. Therefore any object answering, even remotely, to the description of a "flying shield" could under no circumstances be mistaken for angels.
On the other hand the Germanic pantheon of the Saxons, as far as we can infer by comparison with the better-known Scandinavian religion, did allow for flying beings not strictly anthropomorphic. In fact, any bright, flying object would have been far more likely to be identified with pagan deities entering the fray on the side of their worshippers than the remote and ambiguously pacifistic Christian angels. Therefore we must assume that the flying objects appearing over the Syburg could be identified or did identify themselves as supporting the Franks rather than the Saxons, either by their actions or by some specific property the lamentably brief account of the Annals fails to mention. The latter explanation appears unlikely since, as contemporaries perceived the conflict as primarily between pagans and Christians, such identifying marks would have to have been expressly Christian in character, something the Annals would hardly fail to mention. Therefore, the flying objects must have in some manner acted in support of the Franks.
The obvious question, once this explanation has been accepted, is what manner of flying object would have acted like this. Clearly, as should be evident to all historians, none of the standard methods of flight in use in the modern world were available to the Carolingian world5. Therefore the question is if a method of flight can be found in ancient and mediaeval sources to match the descriptions in the sources. The problem with mediaeval sources is, of course, that they were written predominantly by clergymen. The attitude of the church towards manned flight should be evident from the apocryphal episode of Simon Magus' fall at the hands of St. Peter. If they were to mention flight at all we would expect it to be in the context of either black magic or devil worship. In Christian eyes, flight was the prerogative of the angels and to aspire to it the ultimate hubris. Therefore we must look to what little secular, as well as extraneous, sources we have for an explanation.
Simon Magus' defeat at the hands of the apostle was effected by theurgic rather than properly sorcerous powers of St. Peter, the only kind of magic permitted to Christian clergy. Since theurgy always carries the limitations established by the invoked deity, flight was an impossibility and we must not look in this direction for our explanation.
That sorcerers native to their empire were known to the Carolingians can not be doubted. The laws passed by Charlemagne to govern newly-conquered Saxony, half devil and half child, reflect the prevalent attitude in not only discouraging but downright outlawing any belief in or reliance on such powers. The punishment stipulated for such practice is severe, as are most punishments decreed by Charlemagne for his newly acquired Christian subjects. Clearly, then, these people could not possibly have been persuaded to come to the aid of a state that brutally suppressed them. In fact they would have been much more likely to aid the Saxon resistance. Also, the preferred method of flight employed by Western and Central European native sorcerers has always been that of bestriding a flying object - the fabled broomstick of Western Europe's witches is a case in point - and therefore they could not give the impression of "flying shields"6.
A method of flight capable of creating an impression similar to that of the "flying shield" is mentioned in (much later) Russian folk tradition. The witch Baba Yaga7 flies seated in a large kettle, using the ladle in a little understood method of propulsion8. As far as we can discern, Baba Yaga is a common element in Slavic tradition and may have roots going back further than the westward migration of the modern day Western Slavs. If that is so, Western Slav Obodrites may have been familiar with this method. We know that Charlemagne often used his Obodrite allies against the Saxons, without any qualms about allying himself with pagans, and therefore they may have used freely methods of warfare that were forbidden to the Christian Franks. However, 776 is a very early date for Obodrite intervention on a large scale and the Syburg is distinctly too far west to give much credence to this explanation9.
The Arabian Connection
Clearly, therefore, the origin of the "Flying shields" appearing over the Syburg must be sought in another direction, in all probability with the Franks of Charlemagne's time. They can not have been a familiar phenomenon in 776 since we can assume that the Saxons would have been acquainted with just about every weapon the Franks had hitherto used against them. Therefore the parameters of our search can be brought down to the following question: where can Charlemagne's army have found the means of mastering Magically Induced Flight once all indigenous approaches have been forbidden by the Church? The answer is easy; the only new cultural contact in Charlemagne's times that could have introduced such a method was that with the Caliphate of Baghdad. Charlemagne, as the sources report with pride, received rich gifts from the Caliph on at least one occasion. Relations between the two sovereigns appear to have been good throughout, which is perhaps due mostly to the fact that Charlemagne was too far away to pose any threat to the Abbassid Caliphate in Baghdad but close enough to have the worst of relations with the (largely theoretical) Umayyad counter-caliphate in Al Andalus. Therefore, the existence of a stable and powerful Frankish empire separated from his own center of power by Byzantium and the Mediterranean and antagonistic to the Muslim fringe states trying to escape the domination of Baghdad was in the interest of the Caliph and it would have been the logical course of action to do what he could to help maintain it, including delivering military technology into the hands of its ruler.
Diplomatic relations with the Caliphate were at their best between Charlemagne and Harun ar-Rashid. Now, as every well-read person knows, Harun ar-Rashid is the Caliph associated with the flowering of Arab magic described so vividly in the "Arabian Nights"10. Therefore he, if any person, had at his disposal the military hardware to send to Charlemagne and, we may assume, did send it along with his diplomatic gifts11. Those are described on one occasion as including, among other things, garments , rich cloth, and an elephant. No mention is made of military equipment other than this animal, and elephants, while certainly rather imposing in full panoply, are neither very effective weapons nor can they under any circumstances remain airborne unsupported for any length of time12. Also, there was but one sent which Charlemagne treated as a pet rather than the piece of military hardware it represented in the eyes of the giver. Clearly the solution must lie among the other gifts. Rich garments are a common gift to honour an inferior in the oriental tradition, much akin to the arm-rings and richly adorned weapons given by Germanic chiefs13, but unless we assume that they were capable of a form of levitation that at the same time gave their wearer the appearance of a shield they can not be the key to the Syburg mystery. There remains but the unspecified "cloth" to furnish it and here, I think, the solution lies. Whatever else an oriental prince would include in a diplomatic exchange of gifts, there would certainly be carpets. Carpet-weaving had become an art form in the Muslim east and beautiful specimens were status symbols as much as they were furniture. Carolingian culture, however, would not have understood the use of a carpet. The floor even in a Carolingian palace was covered in nothing more exotic than rushes, a necessity in an environment where animals shared human habitation and table manners were rudimentary at best14. If tapestries were in use, we know of none used by Charlemagne. He could not possibly, as was his wont with other valuable things he acquired, give them to the church because, coming from a Muslim tradition of craftsmanship, they would be adorned with Arab ornament and calligraphy, most likely even verses from the Qu'ran. Nevertheless they were of some use to their recipient - as an air force.
Flying Carpets and the Developmnt of Carolingian Air Power
Airborne or flying carpets are a stock topos of oriental tales and a recurrent theme in every description of the magical age which the Arab sources connect, it must be stressed again, with no other Caliph that Harun ar-Rashid, Charlemagne's contemporary. Their handling seems not to have required any particular training or skill (other than good balance and no fear of heights) as they were configured to respond to words of command. Such objects, included in the diplomatic gifts made to Charlemagne, were of great value even in the Orient, but more so in the West where their presence was a novelty. Indeed, their mere appearance over the Syburg brought the Saxons to precipitous flight. This also explains the expression "flying shield"; a carpet, being flat and, necessarily, rigid in flight does, to a degree resemble a shield. More so, of course, it resembles a board, a blanket or, indeed, a carpet, but the description used has the virtues of being both martial and of antique origin. Once arrived, the carpet crews could reassure the Carolingian ground forces inside the Syburg of their friendly intentions simply by lowering their craft to shouting distance and identifying themselves.
Of course the clerical chroniclers could not possibly be informed of the steps taken by their king to assure air superiority over Saxony - they would have disapproved of this breach of God's law in the strongest possible manner. I am not suggesting, of course, that the presence of these aircraft remained secret from them indefinitely. To keep such a secret would have been quite beyond the means of the Carolingian army organisation as it stood. They merely were not especially made aware of it15, nor, we may assume, were they particularly interested. Thus it is only in connection with the siege of the Syburg that we hear of the newly acquired air power Charlemagne went on to deploy, with high hopes, in his coming wars.
Air power stayed with the Carolingians for quite a while, but it never proved to be the success it might have been hoped to be. After all, as a weapon system the flying carpet has some serious drawbacks. Its flat surface, devoid of handholds or even the slightest elevation, makes high airspeeds hazardous, if not impossible16, and at a time when medieval Europe was developing attack speed as a prime factor in battle tactics this must have been felt painfully17. The same is true for manoeuvrability: unlike the horseman, securely astride his charger, a carpet aviator has no "seat" and is dislodged by sideways acceleration as easily as by forward. Therefore the pattern of attack familiar to Carolingian soldiers was made impossible by the inherent faults of their means of transport. Also, Carolingian and indeed common Germanic modes of combat stress the close, hand-to-hand confrontation, something that on a flying carpet would be extremely difficult to sustain.
It should not be assumed, of course, that Harun ar-Rashid knowingly delivered a useless weapon system to his tentative ally. The Eastern tradition of warfare understood well what a carpet was good for - being a stable platform, unhindered by ground obstacles and capable of altering its elevation almost immediately it made a perfect archery platform. Charlemagne's attempts to introduce combat archery to his forces prove that this was known to him also, but the inherent mistrust of the bow18 and the insurmountable difficulties of supplying the Frankish troops with composite reflex bows, the only kind that could be used while seated in a cross-legged position, thwarted any attempt to develop the carpets into a viable battle force.
They must have proved valuable in aerial reconnaissance over northern Saxony in the second half of the Saxon wars, and in the conflict with the mobile mounted Avars. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the difficulties of either fighting a fast, mounted force of horse-archers or scattered bands of determined resistance fighters in heavily wooded country could have been surmounted other than by superior intelligence. We have no precedent of a European army of infantry and heavy horse defeating Asian horse-archers other than under conditions and on ground of their choosing19, so we must assume that Charlemagne's troops somehow managed to negate the enemies' advantage of superior mobility. We can hardly expect the Bavarians, Franks and Saxons of his army to have developed, overnight, into better horsemen than the Avars who had terrorised the Balkans for centuries, so the only possible conclusion is that they had a different form of advantage - aerial intelligence, advising them of enemy movement.
The same is true, to a degree, of northern Saxony. That the Saxon War was won in the face of such determined resistance can be described as one of the miracles of Carolingian policy, and seeing that in later times the most powerful state in the world could not master tiny Vietnam in a war under similar circumstances puts the achievement into proper perspective. The Saxon resistance fighters certainly had nothing to fear from lumbering Carolingian armies breaking through the forest - these behemoths20 would have been spotted days ahead. However, once the small, mobile scarae, themselves hampered only by lack of intelligence, had been combined with carpet reconnaissance to guide them to their targets the results were quite devastating.
The Decline of Carolingian Air Power
Viewing these results the one open question remaining is why the carpet has not become a fixture of warfare in medieval Europe. The answer to this is rather complex. First of all its value was not recognised. European combat archery developed with the longbow, a powerful but unwieldy weapon that required a firm stand to be used. Even so, it was long regarded as the domain of cowards who dared not face their enemy in proper hand-to-hand combat. Therefore a device that allowed archers to bring an even more insurmountable - vertical - distance between the them and their target was assured of every warrior's contempt. Also, carpets took next to no part in the fighting. As we have seen once the novelty wore off they could be used only as reconnaissance craft. Reconnaissance is something that by definition only disciplined armies value properly, and those were rare in Medieval Europe. A warband of Normans or a host of Hohenstaufen knights had no use of a reconnaissance craft because they struck the enemy where they met him, not set traps or lie in wait like bandits.
Most important, however, was the drying up of supplies. Flying carpets could not be manufactured in Europe until the early 16th century when Dr. Faustus is reported as having broken the Arab monopoly and developed a flying cloak. The church discouraged sorcery of every stripe and exactly at this time had stepped up a campaign of extermination unleashed against the practitioners of indigenous sorcery. It was the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries that to all intents and purposes ended Magically Induced Flight in Europe. Therefore any flying carpet used in Europe had to be imported at great cost from the Arab world.
As if this were not enough, the Arab world at the time was going through a transformation. The centralised power of the Caliphate was crumbling, Turk mercenaries taking over the Arab centre and separatist states breaking loose at the edges. The vast concentration of magical know-how present in the circular fortress of Baghdad at the time of the great Abbassid Caliphs soon became a thing of legend as the Muslim world descended into centuries of internal strife. Where flying carpets were still made they were needed by local princes to combat their rivals. Clearly, even had they wanted to the successors of the Carolingian Empire would not have stood a chance of purchasing one21.
Thus ended the short and, all said, quite unsatisfactory flirtation of the Carolingian Empire with developing air power. It is not surprising, in view of the fact that Magically Induced Flight was discarded as a viable weapon due to the difficulty in producing the equipment and the limitations of its use, even in the countries that had independent production capability, that a state dependent entirely on import through difficult diplomatic channels should not be able to maintain such a force. In fact it seems rather unlikely that Magically Induced Flight ever was used in war on a large scale except during this brief period in which the centralised resources of the Abbassid Caliphate made the experiment possible, and proved it useless. Death delivered from the clouds had to wait for Heavier-Than-Air flight, giving the pilot seat, attack speed, and the advantage of chemically-powered ammunition developed in our century to become what Harun ar-Rashid and Charlemagne only dreamed of..
Literature
Bachrach, B.E.: Animals and Warfare in Early Medieval Europe in: Settimane XXI (1981) pp. 707-751.
Bullough, D.A.: Europae Pater: Charlemagne and his Achievement in the Light of Modern Scholarship in: EHR 85 (1970).
Burton, R. (transl.): Arabian Nights, London 1968.
Cavendish, R.: A History of Magic, London 1977.
Donovan, F.: Never on a Broomstick, London 1973.
Duby, G.: Les Origines de la Chevalrie in: Settimane XV (1967) pp. 739-761.
Frazer, J.G.: The Golden Bough, London 1957.
Ganshof, F.L.: L'Armee sous les Carolingiens in: Settimane XV (1967) pp. 109-130.
Korn, I.: Maerchen von den Klugen Frauen, Hanau 1977.
Nicolle, D.: The Normans, London 1987.
Raimund, E.: Die Nordwestslaven und das Fraenkische Reich, Berlin 1976.
Reuter, T.: The End of Carolingian Military Expansion in: Godman, P. & Collins, R. (ed.): Charlemagne's Heir. New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), Oxford 1990, pp. 391-405.
Summers, M.: A History of Witchcraft, London 1994.
Would it be possible to make a primitive hot air balloon out of skins and fuel it with torches/fires?
Possibly. But they'd need Alien Space Bats to give them the idea, and the result wouldn't have very impressive payload capacity.
Did ASBs give OTL's inventors ideas?
Of course, the Vikings lacked the education and material infrastructure later Europe did...
Perhaps a Viking balloon might serve as a means of frightening the enemy, making them run (and thus much easier to kill), even if its payload capacity is tiny.
Skins are too heavy. Fish leather might work, but silk is really best. And I don't think you need ASBs, just a brief moment of lucky inspiration and someone who won't let go. THe main question is, though, what's the point? What good would a balloon do the Vikings?
Well, it could be a means of panicking enemy armies (so they'd run and get massacred) or leapfrogging walls.
It could also be a means of reconnaissance--someone could be up in the balloon and see the enemy coming, then warn the others to run.
Would Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis be flying it? It's the only way I can think it would happen.
IMO, it would take a leap in thinking: not having noted anything round in Nature that could lift people off the ground and being able to build upon that, doubtless they would - as happened - look firstly at the birds and then try to replicate that (with unsuccessful and amusingly dangerous results) and carry on doing that.
IMO, it would take a leap in thinking: not having noted anything round in Nature that could lift people off the ground and being able to build upon that, doubtless they would - as happened - look firstly at the birds and then try to replicate that (with unsuccessful and amusingly dangerous results) and carry on doing that.
Perhaps it's found by accident.
Someone builds a fire under a tent made of fish leather in such a way that the tent floats up in the air.
Then the tinkering starts...
Is that usual?
I'm sure they might have noted the way some things drift skywards when caught above flame, but it's quite a step to conceive that sufficient hot air could be used to lift far heavier weights.
Moreover, how would the hot air balloon maintain its hot air? Would someone think it practical to put a massive flaming woodfire aboard a light (presumably wattle) basket underneath flammable material?
That'd be a tricky part--even someone as smart as Napoleon was skeptical of steam propulsion for ships.
Could they rub the fish leather with something to make it non-flammable? Perhaps a sort of anti-pitch.
Furthermore, great advances are often made by people who the rest of the community thinks is bonkers. Perhaps the Norse equivalent of "the village eccentric" builds this on his own time and everyone waits for him to get set on fire, only all of a sudden, he's sailing over their heads...
This is up there with my friend who wrote an essay on Kryptonite in his chemistry Finals.
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True, but as with Hitler (not that I am comparing the two in any other way), he never really understand the navy or naval matters.
All seems rather fishy to me.
You can imagine the attrition amongst these inventors. It'd make flying a biplane during the height of WW1 seem exceedingly safe, so would not encourage investment.
MerryPrankster said:
carlton_bach said:
I direct your attention to this article.
There is a theory that the ancient Nazca Indians of South America constructed crude hot air balloons, and tests by a fellow named Julian Nott have shown that it is possible. One of the interesting discoveries is that you don't have to have any special kind of cloth...cotton, linen, or even wool would do. The smoke from the fire used to inflate the balloon...provided that one uses the right kinds of wood in the fire (I am assuming something that has a high resin content and thus would produce a kind of coating on the inner surface of the bag)..seals the pores in the bag and prevents air leaks.
As for some ideas for how one might turn these balloons into airships, see here.