Bloody medieval battles

On July 22, 1361, King Valdemar IV of Denmark sent an army of 2500 men ashore on Gotland's west coast. Gotland is an island that lies just ninety kilometers from the Swedish mainland, and for many centuries it played a dominant role in trade between Europe and Russia. Its walled town of Visby had been a member of the Hanseatic League since 1280. This league protected the economic interests of all cities within its membership along trade routes and each city had its own legal system and military force. By the middle of the fourteenth century the town had encroached into rural areas, this fact and its membership of the Hanseatic League had separated the city from the rest of the island and this had caused much antagonism between the town dwellers and those who lived in the countryside. By 1356, Visby had become less important within the Hanseatic community and this had not gone unnoticed by King Valdemar of Denmark who had seen the Hanseatic League become increasing powerful within his own country, angry that he had no control or any say within the trade route it protected, Valdemar made his way to Gotland. [Top image:

The citizens of Visby had somehow been warned, and had closed the gates. But 1800 peasants prepared to fight for their small country. It is unknown who commanded the Gutnish army. However, he was probably a minor noble of some standing, probably with military experience. The Danish army was composed mainly of Danish and German troops, many mercenaries from the Baltic coast of Germany, with recent experience in the various feuds and wars between the German and Scandinavian states.

Simple peasants armor found in mass grave near city wall.

A legion of Swedish peasants tried to repel the Danish invasion near the city of Visby, but the inexperienced Gotlanders were no match for the Danish soldiers and many of them were slaughtered during the battle. Men, old folk, youths, cripples – they all die in battle outside the city walls of Visby. Their corpses are thrown into mass graves.

Nearly 700 years later a mass grave was found on the Island of Gotland and in the years up to 1928 at least three more pits were found. The final ones were found outside the gates of Visby, a walled city. Extensive archaeological investigations of the graves in 1928-1930 and modern science have provided new knowledge of what happened.

The dead of the peasant defenders were stripped of virtually anything of value and any arms or armour and then flung into pits where they had been despatched. Over 1185 human remains were found in pits excavated and many more are known about - some inaccessible.

Just a few were found still wearing minor bits of equipment such as skull with the mail coif still in position but many would have been very poorly equipped or armed.

There were 456 wounds with visible evidence of cutting weapons, such as swords and axes. There were 126 which were from piercing weapons such as arrows, lances and "morning stars" which were a wooden ball studded with metal spikes and attached to a short handle with a chain and these were used against head and shoulders from above. There were also an undisclosed number of crushing injuries by the mace and war hammer. The latter were also often used to finish off the wounded. [Left: Armoured glove, from the mass graves, Visby]

Cutting wounds were split into two groups, those which showed hacking evidence but finished at the bone and those which actually severed the bone were 29. For example in more than one case where a single well aimed blow with a sword had been aimed at the upper legs and gone straight through both severing them instantly. Some had evidence of more than one lesser blow before the killer blow was used either in or after the battle.

War hammers were also in evidence where a square section of the hammer head showing in the shape of the section of the skull which had been stove in. See the picture on the left which points to three bodkin arrow points which had penetrated the skull and two holes where a hammer had been used and the skull split between them.

Which came first is unknown. A number of guesses can be made such as two quick hammer blows to fell the man and the arrows landing after, or a hail of arrows which he had turned his back on and then later two hammer blows to put him out of his misery. Before stripping and dumping him with his mates. The grouping of the arrow heads is particularly spectacular and it makes one wonder if they used the tactic of a hail of arrows as in the later battle of Crecy where it is said the English Longbow men kept 100,000 arrows in the air at one time.

There is one skeleton of a man who has had both legs severed, and it appears to have been done with one blow! The blow landed on the right leg below the knee on the outside, and then struck the left leg slightly below and on the inside. Since it appears to be unreasonable that someone would stand still with one leg hewn off, that one blow cut off both legs below the knee. As can be seen in another section of this book, that is not so astounding after all. There are several skeletons where a foot has been severed, and there are many with cuts to the lower leg. Indeed, this seems to have been a major target. A rough estimate is that close to 70 percent of the blows detected at Visby were aimed at the lower leg. This is quite understandable, as the lower leg is hard to protect, even with a shield. When you consider that these fighters were not well equipped with leg defenses it explains why they were targeted. The head also took many blows. There are several skulls from Visby that received so many blows that you would think the enemy would have gotten tired of hitting the poor devils. Many of the skulls still have their mail hoods, and although the hoods did provide some protection, many of the blows cut through the mail and into the bone. One of the most unsettling skulls is one where the victim had been hit a sharp blow right at the bridge of the nose. The blow was so hard that it cut through the upper jaw.

Skull of peasant from Visby with three arrowheads

Crushed skull with riveted mail coif from the medieval battle of Visby. 

There is also a skull from a different battle that shows how brutal the fight were. The Battle of Towton was fought during the English Wars of the Roses on 29 March 1461, near the village of Towton in Yorkshire. It brought about a change of monarchs in England, with the victor, the Yorkist Edward, Duke of York—who became King Edward IV. 28 000 men died that one day.

The skull (left) of a warrior shows was crushed. The soldier  had survived battle before. A healed skull fracture points to previous engagements. He was old enough—somewhere between 36 and 45 when he died.

He suffered eight wounds to his head that day. The precise order can be worked out from the direction of fractures on his skull: when bone breaks, the cracks veer towards existing areas of weakness. The first five blows were delivered by a bladed weapon to the left-hand side of his head, presumably by a right-handed opponent standing in front of him. None is likely to have been lethal.

The next one almost certainly was. From behind him someone swung a blade towards his skull, carving a down-to-up trajectory through the air. The blow opened a huge horizontal gash into the back of his head—picture a slit you could post an envelope through. Fragments of bone were forced in to his brain. His enemies were not done yet. Another small blow to the right and back of the head may have been enough to turn him over onto his back. Finally another blade arced towards him. This one bisected his face, opening a crevice that ran from his left eye to his right jaw.

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Amazing Viking axe

In 1868 a farmer began to dig into the mound Bjerringhøj at Mammen near Viborg. During this work he chanced upon an unusually richly-furnished grave, which has become known as the grave from Mammen. A magnate was buried in the grave during the winter of 970-71 AD. He was given an expensive costume, a ceremonial axe with inlaid silver decoration and a large wax candle.

The buried man lay upon a bed of down cushions in a coffin placed in a wooden chamber – a so-called chamber-grave. At his feet lay two axes. On the coffin lid a bronze bucket, two wooden buckets and a large wax candle had been placed. The man wore costly clothing decorated with purple and red silk, as well as embroideries in red and blue. It is not known whether the deceased was Christian or pagan. The motifs on the one axe can be interpreted as both of these, but the large candle is probably a Christian symbol. The fine quality of the furnishings shows that the deceased presumably belonged to the circle around King Harald Bluetooth.

 One of the most magnificent finds from the Viking Age is one of the axes from the grave at Mammen. It is made of iron with silver inlay. The axe is decorated in the so-called Mammen style, which is named after this particular find. The style arose in the 900s and it survived until around 1000. The motifs on the axe can be interpreted as both Christian and pagan.

On one side a tree motif can be seen. It may symbolise the Christian Tree of Life or the pagan tree Yggdrasil. On the other side is an animal figure – perhaps the rooster Gullinkambi (Old Norse “golden comb”) or the Phoenix. According to Norse mythology Gullinkambi sits on top of the tree Yggdrasil. Here it wakes the Viking warriors every morning and it will crow at the beginning of Ragnarok (the end of the world). The Phoenix is a Christian mythological animal and a symbol of re-birth.

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3500 years old amber bear amulet

The amber bear amulet was found in 1887 in a peat bog near Slupsk,Poland. When the figure was examined it turned out to be the amulet of a bear hunter, originating from the Neolithic period. It was dated at between 1700 B.C. and 650 B.C. 

Since the researchers were not precise regarding the age of the find, we can assume this figure is over three thousand years old. The original did not stay long in Slupsk since special protection was sought for the oldest item ever discovered in the Pomerania. The museum in Szczecin guaranteed safety, and the amber bear was placed there - probably until 1945. 

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Bored Viking on Gokstad Ship (1100 years ago)

Are you ever bored? What do you then? 

What would you do if you were Viking sailing for days on a small ship?

Life of a Viking was... monotonous. Living in small towns, looking after their farms and preparing for another military campaign. When they were ready, they went on their warships to sail for many days. 

One of the most amazing artifacts ever found is barely visible. On two wooden planks you can see small carvings which are... outlines of feet. Mighty Gokstad ship was found in found in a burial mound in Norway. It is one of the largest viking ships found. The Gokstad ship is clinker-built and constructed largely of oak. The ship was intended for warfare, trade, transportation of people and cargo. The ship is 23.80 metres (78.1 ft) long and 5.10 m (16.7 ft) wide. The ship was built to carry 32 oarsmen, and the oar holes could be hatched down when the ship was under sail. It utilized a square sail of approximately 110 square metres (1,200 sq ft), which, it is estimated, could propel the ship to over 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). The ship could carry a crew of 40 men but could carry a maximum of 70. 

Even though the ship was excavated 133 years ago and has been in Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum since 1932, researchers only noticed the footprints in 2009 when moving the loose floorboards.

Two small carvings was probably the work of a bored youth, much like kids these days might carve their initials into their desks. The right foot is quite visible while the outline of the left foot is only partially visible. The right foot is 22 centimeters long, which corresponds to shoe size 4 (Europe; 35). We believe that those carvings were made during sailing by some bored, young warrior just like modern teens do.  He wass crowded into a sleek sailing ship with 65 other men. Scarcely room to move. It’s been days since anybody has seen land − longer since anyone bathed. The old-timers’ repeated tales of bygone raids and voyages are beginning to wear thin. His place is behind an oar, but there is no need to row continuously on the North Sea. With wind in the sail, the boat surges towards England, where riches await. But what is there to do while waiting to reach a foreign coast?
Maybe it was a teenager engaged in a Viking version of tagging a school desk. In any case, someone took out his knife, bent down and traced the outline of his foot on the deck of the Gokstad Ship. "I was here" message from 1100 years ago.

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Roman slave collar

In the Museo Nazionale Romano–Terme di Diocleziano in Rome is an

iron neck ring with a bronze tag attached. Five lines of mysterious text were carved on it:

FVGITENEME

CVMREVOCV

VERISMEˇDMˇ ZONINOACCIPIS

SOLIDVM ⸙

Expanded and punctuated, this inscription reads “Fugi, tene me. Cum

revoc(a)veris me d(omino) m(eo) Zonino, accipis solidum” 

After translating we can discover one of the most amazing artifacts ever found.

I have run away; hold me. 

When you have brought me back to my master Zoninus, 

youwill receive a gold coin

This is a Roman slave collar, one of about 45 surviving examples that all date to the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.  Most have been found in Rome and central Italy, with three more from

the North African cities of Thelepte, Lambaesis, and Bulla Regia. The collars were inscribed either on the neck band itself or on a pendant tag, as this one was. The Zoninus collar is important because it is the only known example of a tag still hanging from its neck ring. The inscriptions on these collars and tags typically ask the viewer to stop the wearer from running away. Many also name the slave owner and provide an address to which the slave should be returned. Some include Christian terms and symbols, such as a ChiRho or this palm frond.  The Zoninus collar is unique

in promising a reward.  Not all enslaved people were required to wear such collars; most scholars have interpreted them as a punishment for an escape attempt and an alternative to the long-standing Roman practice of tattooing runaway slaves on the face. The Zoninus collar is important because it offers direct, physical evidence of Roman slavery. It tells us something about how enslaved people were treated and seen and what they experienced; it can help illuminate ideas and enforcement practices concerning the ownership of human bodies and their labor. 

The Zoninus collar is made of iron and bronze; as with other collars, the utilitarian materials match the everyday language of the inscription. The pendant tag was cut from a flat sheet of bronze into a rectangular shape with rounded corners, with a long, ribbonlike extension left at the top. This extension was bent forward and down, back onto the surface of the tag, to create a built-in attachment hoop, or bail, that was then riveted shut. The neck ring is heavily corroded but appears to have been made from an iron wire doubled back on itself and twisted along its entire length, creating loops at either end. This iron wire was probably threaded through the tag’s attachment hoop

during the making of the neck ring. 

Alternatively, the tag’s attachment hoop was folded over the finished neck ring and then riveted shut.  The inscriptions help clarify that purpose. The very first words on the Zoninus collar are fugi, tene me (“I have run away; hold me”). Almost all Roman slave collars ask viewers to stop the wearer from running away. The two most common phrases employed are tene me ne fugiam (“hold me so I do not run away”) and tene me quia fugi (“hold me because I have run away”). 

About half the collars also ask the reader to return the slave to the owner: revoca me (“return me”) or, phonetically spelled, reboca me. Throughout the Roman era, slave escape was a preoccupation of owners and punished by flogging, keeping the slave in chains, and tattooing letters or words on the forehead.  The Zoninus and other slave collars are a phenomenon of urban slavery in the Early Christian period in the western Roman empire, especially the city of Rome. At the same time, they participated in longer-term Roman practices of marking and controlling the bodies of slaves. Roman slave collars show how Roman visual, epigraphic, and material culture were marshaled to explain and enforce ideas about human property.  

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Amazing statue of Lector Priest Kaaper, 5500 years old

Sheikh el-Beled, was an ancient Egyptian scribe and priest who lived between the late 4th Dynasty and the early 5th Dynasty (around 2500 BCE). Despite his rank being not among the highest, he is well known for his famous wooden statue. Little is known of Kaaper's life; his titles were lector priest and army scribe of the King, the latter possibly linked to some military campaigns in Palestine.His mastaba (named "Saqqara C8") was discovered by Auguste Mariette in the Saqqara necropolis, just north of the Step Pyramid of Djoser. During the excavation, the Egyptian diggers unearthed the statue and, apparently impressed by its exceptional realism, they called it Sheikh el-Beled (Arabic for "Headman of the village") likely because of a certain similarity between the statue and their local elder. The statue – located in the Cairo Egyptian Museum, CG 34 – is 112 centimetres (3.67 ft) tall and carved from sycamore wood, and depicts the corpulent Kaaper while walking with a staff. The statue's round, peaceful face is almost lifelike thanks to the eyes, which were made using rock crystal and small copper plates; it is often cited as an example of the remarkable level of craftmanship and realism achieved during the late 4th Dynasty.

 From the same mastaba also came a wooden statue of a woman, commonly considered as Kaaper's wife (CG 33).

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The breastplate of cuirassier 23 years old Antoine Fraveau, struck and killed by a canonball. June, 1815, serving Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo

He was just 23 when a deadly cannonball struck him during one of the Waterloo skirmishes. He served as a of Napoleon's heavy cavalrymen during "The Hundred Days."  The Waterloo campaign is referred to as The Hundred Days, because such is the amount of time between Napoleon's return to France after his escape from the island of Elba and his final  defeat near the small town of Waterloo, Belgium.  Heavy calvarymen, such as Antoine Favreau, played a significant role in Napoleon's victories.  They would be wasted in the defeat which ended the Napoleonic Wars.


Favreau served as a Carabinier a Cheval -- a heavy cavalryman who wore armour on the battlefield.  Specifically, Favreau would have worn a helmet made of brass and iron with a red horsehair crest.  On his chest and back he wore  a brass and iron breast and backplate over his white tunic.  As a mounted man, he wore white leather riding pants and black riding boots that extended past the knee.  His primary weapon was a long, straight bladed sword, but he would also have carried a pair of pistols in holsters mounted on his saddle and a carbine.   The Carabiniers a Cheveaux must have been something to see with the sun shining off of their brass armour.

Napoleon was a master of battlefield tactics.  Many of his victories involved flanking maneuvers and deception   rather that brute force to win the day.  Waterloo was different.  At Waterloo, Napoleon would attempt brute strength to push Wellington and his multi-national army off of the field.   Much like Robert E. Lee, Napoleon attempted to defeat his enemy with massed  assaults on the flanks as well as the center. 

Napoleon was not well at Waterloo and the fates took advantage of his predicament.   In the afternoon when by chance Napoleon was indisposed, Wellington issued an order for his entire line to redeploy several yards to the rear.  Michel Ney, Napoleon's second in command, misinterpreted the redeployment to be a retreat.  As any good commander seeing a retreating enemy would,  Ney ordered the French cavalry to charge and rout the Anglo-Allied army. 

The night of June 17, 1815 was marked by torrential rain.  Thus, the ground was saturated when Ney's charge took place.  The French cavalrymen charged down the ridge, across the valley and up the opposite ridge to a plateau where they met the enemy infantry formed in squares.  In the days of linear tactics,  infantry  threatened by cavalry formed square.  The defensive position required the men in the  front rank of each side of the square to kneel with the butts of their muskets grounded and the bayonets angled upwards and out.  The remaining men faced out and fired at the cavalry.  Horses will not charge into the line of bayonets.  Thus, the charge is broken and the cavalrymen are picked off.  To defeat infantry in square,  either  infantry or artillery were brought up with the cavalry.  The infantry in square either stayed in square and were blown apart by musket or  cannon fire or the broke square and were run down and sabred by the cavalry. Because of the wet soil, the French cavalry could barely get above a gallop. They were under artillery fire the whole way and upon cresting the hill found infantry not retreating, but in square.  Looking behind, a French cavalryman saw neither supporting infantry or artillery.  No one had his back.  One charge and Ney should have known everything -- the soil is too wet to reach a charge,  British artillery is effective and, most importantly, the British are not retreating, but rather are formed in square.   While the initial charge was not improper, the successive charges ordered by Ney were.  Again and again the French cavalry were sent against the British squares.  Ney could have sent infantry and artillery support, but he didn't.  Ney could have ordered the British cannon hauled off or spiked (the British artillery man serviced their guns until the last second and then ran to the safety of the squares), but he didn't.  Rather, he wasted a valuable asset of Napoleon's army.  Ney failed his commander. While the French defeat cannot be blamed solely upon poor old Ney, he shares a good portion of the blame. The battlefield at Waterloo was roughly a mile deep by 2 miles wide, held nearly 200,000 men over the course of the day and and estimated 41,000 cannonballs we’re fired over the course of the battle.

But what about Antione Favreau?  Well, he died at Waterloo.  He suffered a mortal would when a cannon ball pierced his gleaming breast plate. A recent recruit, Fauveau’s height of 1.79 metres gave him the ideal stature for a heavy cavalry regiment. These, after all, were intended to be big men on big horses, riding down the enemy by the weight of their charge. The young man’s service papers also record that he had a “long, freckled face with a large forehead, blue eyes, hooked nose, and a small mouth”. Family legend has it that when his call-up papers arrived, François-Antoine was on the point of getting married, so his brother joined up, and died, in his place. Yet whoever was wearing it on 18 June 1815, this cuirass serves to emphasise the brutality of Napoleonic warfare at a most personal level.

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