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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

In the Annals of St Bertin there's mention of an attack by the Danes (Vikings) on a region of Francia in 859 AD, where the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings, and drove them off without the assistance of the Carolingian rulers.

This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service was reserved for aristocrats only.

The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants who had defended their own land. Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated.

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I don't think these two events, the Danes raid and the rebellion crush are linked outside of one making the author remind itself about the second.

The French translation from Latin http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/anonyme/annales.htm [859] says:

> Les Danois dévastent les pays au-delà de l'Escaut. Le commun peuple des pays entre Seine et Loire, conjuré entre soi, résiste courageusement aux Danois établis sur la Seine ; mais sa conjuration étant conduite sans prudence, il est facilement défait par nos grands.

Which I would translate (using some true-to-heart adaptation given author period) by:

Danes (norsemen) raid country further the Escaut (probably that river in the north). Commoners from between Seine et Loire (in the center so), which were seceding at the time (secede is way too modern but best bears the sense IMO), bravely resist to Danes camping by the Seine; this secession however being lead without much thought, is easily defeated by our rulers (kings or dukes I'd say, and probably over months).

These annals are telegraph styled, written by multiple authors, etc. They are kind of notes. Yet they are one of the best material over this period of French history :)

Thanks for providing the direct citation, which is more specific than just "Annals of St Bertin."

> I don't think these two events, the Danes raid and the rebellion crush are linked outside of one making the author remind itself about the second.

Sound's like the parent comment's description oversimplified things. I knew it sounded off.

No, the text is ambiguous, but the main point about forbidden peasant autonomy and the "easily defeated" peasantry still stands. Look at the translation from the Latin in the other comment.

I have no relevant information for that era so this is purely a translation note. I'd love to learn more though, would you mind sharing additional reading you find pertinent?

I question your use of "seceding" for "conjuré". As far as I understand, the connotation of ~seperation from a whole~ is absent in the original french which I'd argue speaks more of the spontaneous and unsanctioned nature of this militia's constitution.

As in "le peuple ..., conjuré entre soi" could be adapted to "the people, having organised to take arms"

Thanks for your citation. I was able to get through to the original Latin text [1]. It is ambiguous.

Dani loca ultra Scaldem populantur. Vulgus promiscuum inter Sequanam et Ligerum inter se coniurans adversus Danos in Sequana consistentes, fortiter resistit; sed quia incaute suscepta est eorum coniuratio, a potentioribus nostris facile interficiuntur.

Which translates roughly as follows. (I'm not a medieval Latin scholar so some meanings may be off.)

The Danes plunder the areas beyond the Scheldt River. The common people between the Seine and Loire, allying themselves [or: conspiring] against the Danes residing on the Seine, fight strongly; but because their alliance [or: conspiracy] was undertaken without care, they are easily killed by our more powerful [troops].

It does not say explicitly whom the commoners were fighting. The word used for their alliance also means conspiracy and can be quite negative. It's the same word used in the phrase "Conspiracy of Cataline."

p.s. It's mind-blowing what you can find on the Internet.

[1] https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_1/index.htm#page/452/mode/1up

Fair enough, I'm no medieval scholar, I am/was merely commenting with the interpretation that Chris Wickham (who is) had in his book "The Inheritance Of Rome", where he begins his chapter "The caging of the peasantry" with a brief discussion of this event (and a translation that looks a bit more like the one done from the Latin by the other commenter).

He does point out that the meaning of "incaute" is ambiguous here, but the salient point still stands: that military service was forbidden from the common people and that an organized common people was not allowed, and dangerous. It is speculative but he comments that these peasants may have felt they were following in the footsteps of their grandfathers who would have rightfully assembled for defense in time of need, and in fact that had formerly been the prerogative of free peasants.

So the point still pretty much stands regardless, the language speaks of free peasants self-organizing as a threat and an easily defeated one.

I'm not so sure that both events are not linked, given that the peasants were 'seceding' they probably prepared themselves against an army which would explain why they were able to fight against the Vikings..

The more I hear about this feudalism thing the less I like it.

Supporters of feudalism are down for the Count.

-Fun fact: Feudalism (somehow) lingered on until about a decade ago on the channel island of Sark.

That being said, aside from the dubious principle, 21st century feudalism on Sark had little in common with its medieval cousin.

Which makes sense given that it started with the settlement of the island by Helier de Carteret in 1565, well after feudalism in England was on the way out.

The last parts of feudal law in Scotland were only removed in 2000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc...

The shitty thing is the west is gradually moving into neo feudalism, like the World Economic Forum said "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy".

My pet theory about why modern democracy appeared when it did instead of earlier during the Medieval period is that it coincided with the rise of cheap muskets, which overturned the power dynamic between masses of untrained and unequipped peasants and knights with lifelong combat training and the best armor technology available. When victories started to depend less on whoever had the best elite fighting force and more on whoever had the most muskets in the field, the winner is whoever had a better system for funneling wealth and power to as many people as possible instead of to just a small class of elite fighters. For a new state with little government tax revenue or wealth, the democratic vote was a cheap and effective way for America to raise as many militiamen and muskets as possible. If muskets didn't come onto the military scene when it did and the American revolution was fought between armored knights, I'm quite confident the vote would have remained limited to only landowners that had enough economic surplus to spend their time training and maintaining their war equipment instead of spreading to anyone that could hold a musket.

Based on this model, WW2 was probably peak democratic potential. Everyone had the same capacity to hold a rifle or work on an assembly line, and whatever country could mobilize the most workers/soldiers would be the strongest. With automation and computerization, a member of the technology elite that can program a robot to make widgets or shoot hostiles can roll that out to replace millions of humans instantly. The world is reverting back to the economic and technological setup that fostered feudalism, where someone trained from birth with the best equipment can outproduce and outfight a numerically superior force.

The big difference between old and neofeudalism I can see is that the technological elites in neofeudalism are more vulnerable than the old military elites because they individually also have lower bargaining power. For a medieval knight, their effectiveness is the same no matter which king they serve under, which gives them plenty of power to switch sides. For a member of the technological elite, you may be so hyperspecialized in your niche that if you leave the system that gives you the ecosystem and tools to do your work, your economic value plunges. An individual chip designer without a company that can pay thousands for monthly EDA software licenses or the millions needed to tape out a chip is as unproductive as any member of the unskilled labor pool. Even the average web developer is dependent on a surrounding national/international technological ecosystem far more than a medieval knight would be on his private estate. In neofeudalism, the real holders of power are the same as in older feudalism. They're propagandists, kings, clergymen, academics, populists, think tanks, revolutionaries, people with enough social acumen to get others to do things that coincide with what they want and make them like it at the same time.

George Orwell has an essay, You and the Atomic Bomb[1], where he makes a very similar case:

> It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.

[1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Then you probably won't like what the corporate elite has in store for you either. :)

My view is that nobility were really like gangs that controlled and fought over territory and extorted the common people.

So the current nobility are really just the heirs of criminal associations. They shouldn't have a place in the modern world.

That's exactly right, although over time "nobility" added a layer of polish and distance which allowed it to pretend that nobles were more refined, more intelligent, and generally better people - when in fact they were just the most successful crooks.

This continued all the way through the 20th century, where the disposable deplorables did the fighting while the aristocracy profited.

There were even strong links to drugs. Look up the history of the opium wars for details.

Most of the UK's country estates were built from the profits of slavery, drugs, and colonialism - which is just nation-scale feudal conquest painted over with flag-waving patriotism.

This continued all the way through the 20th century, where the disposable deplorables did the fighting while the aristocracy profited.

The upper classes volunteered enthusiastically for WW1 and died in vast numbers in the trenches along with the commoners. Perhaps because they had come to believe their own myths of honour and glory.

I see it like all political systems really comes from people stepping up to acquire power over the common people, and over time are given de-facto legitimacy.

Kinda like a mobster turning their money into legit business, and eventually their heirs takes over and people forgetting about how it all started.

Do you have a source for this? This sounds like a fishy story to me based on my understanding of medieval society:

1. Peasants are often called up for military duty as levies (conscripts), to supplement the knights and men-at-arms. Especially when there wasn't a standing army.

2. Authority wasn't so centralized -- these local matters would be the authority of local lords, not the king.

"In the Annals of St Bertin…"?

The account you're replying to gave you a source: the Annals of St. Bertin.

It's available on Google Books, you have everything you need satisfy your own curiousity.

God, people’s reading comprehension is so poor nowadays.

Ah, the young people...

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-peo...

But that period is dark ages not medieval

The Medieval period lasted from the 5th to 15th century. The Dark Ages is a misnomer for the early medieval period (5th to 10th centuries).

Historians no longer use the term Dark Ages and haven't for years now. Late Antiquity and the early Medieval era were more complex than that.

"Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated."

In the United States, "gun control" (restrictions on gun rights) is universally classified as a liberal/left policy and the absence of "gun control" is classified as a conservative/right policy.

Without entering into a discussion of these politics I would like to point out that those classifications are completely backwards.

The US Second Amendment (and associated US gun rights, court interpretations, etc.) are extremely liberal, from an historical perspective.

Incorrect. Republicans have successfully branded themselves as gun advocates, and Democrats as anti-gun. There are as many liberal gun owners as conservatives. Liberals just don't jerk off with their guns on social media.

This is just factually incorrect. Republicans are significantly more likely to own guns than Democrats: https://www.statista.com/statistics/249775/percentage-of-pop...

Some brief googling doesn't support the assertion that there are as many liberal (Democratic) gun owners as their are conservative (Republican) gun owners:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/21496/gun-ownership-higher-amon...

But this is way too reductive. There's lots of gun ownership in the US across all political affiliations. Additionally, gun ownership is independent of someone's views on guns. I know people with liberal views on gun ownership who don't own guns and people with restrictive views on gun ownership who do own guns.

Please do not confuse "liberalism", the moral philosophy espoused by Locke/Montesquieu/Mill et al., with "liberal" as used as an adjective in modern-day US politics. The two have almost nothing to do with each other.

I would not consider the philosophy of those three writers to be the same philosophy.

They don't have almost nothing to do with one another. Modern American liberalism is based pretty heavily on universal suffrage and human rights.

The Rawlsian veil of ignorance[1] that the modern American left is pretty much based on is largely an extension of Locke.

Sure, there are some economic ideas that the early liberals had that most modern liberals (and modern conservatives for that matter) would eschew, but to reduce their thinking to being purely libertarian does a disservice to the modern left, which needs all the historical support it can muster.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

Frankly as an outside observer (Canada), the "right to arms" in the context of the United States seems fairly clearly to be tied to the history of slave ownership, not the revolutionary war. Raising a militia for defense in the context of the US south has pretty clear implications.

Just because there's a right to bear arms in the US doesn't mean the public there has any effective resistance against state coercion or violence. History doesn't bear that out at all. Likewise over history in countries that have no right to bear arms there have been many instances of the population resisting state coercion.

Guns are fairly easily obtained in a licensed and registered manner here in Canada and in many other countries that have large rural areas, etc. for the purpose of hunting and sport. Sure, hand guns or assault weapons, no. And yes, there are no constitutional guarantees of this. But it's mostly irrelevant because the public is on the whole supportive of the notion that guns like cars and pesticides and other things are a fairly dangerous tool where the public as a whole gains from carefully watching them.

I wonder if one day in the distant future, humans will each have their own autonomous mutually assured destruction devices hovering around them at all times, almost like a guardian angel.

It would even the playing field in some ways.

You might like Vernor Vinge's work. This is briefly touched on in "Marooned in Realtime", and I suspect a prior novel, "The Peace War" is similarly interesting.

Isn’t the second amendment about exactly that?

The government has weapons that are literally thousands of times more destructive than anything you can wield under the second amendment. That's just apart from the fact that the vast majority of citizens cannot afford even a single fighter jet or cruise missile.

I'm all for citizens owning cruise missiles but, I think that's missing the point. The point is that an organized and armed population of say Vietnamese farmers could theoretically hold off against the largest power in the world until they decided to move on

Sure, but after they move on you're left with nothing but your homes burnt down and your family dead, while they're still the largest economic and military power in the world living it up in their first-world mansions. Pyrrhic victories taste just like defeat.

The american airforce and navy are quite small (thousands of ships). A well placed strike force couple wipe the whole thing out. And then you're back to guys with rifles, unless you're going to start dropping nukes.

I suspect they would have limited usage - both from the legal concerns/lack of utility but also because the obvious counters would be even more readily available - outrange the thing. Assuming it is relatively precise instead of carrying a kilogram of antimatter or something absurd.

The situation is 'very high information entropy' in the sense of it is a combination of both requiring both high technology proliferation and prosperity at the same time as severe and sustained instability for it to become remotely acceptable as a status quo instead of "National Guard? We need artillery on this maniac going around with a death drone. How the hell did he get it in the first place?" Theoretically a dual use guardian drone could say work for digging someone out of a collapsed building quickly which could also be lethal if misapplied but that is getting into 'keeping rattlesnake anti-venom in your pocket all times in Canada in case you get bit by one escaped from the zoo or potentially illegal exotic pet trade' levels in terms of effort and expense vs returns in safety.

A boon for suicide bombers /s

What happens if one goes off beside another one? Do you get a daisy chain effect?

The "slap drone" of Iain M. Banks' culture performs a similar function in a different way: IIRC, convicted murders are allowed out, but followed forever by an autonomous drone that will stun (slap) them to prevent further crimes.

You're misremembering a detail: the term isn't "slap drone", but "drone slapped" – as in, you'll be slapped with an electronic ankle bracelet in drone form. That drone doesn't necessarily have to physically hurt or stun you to prevent you from doing something bad; even at the time when Player of Games (in which this concept is explained) is set, drones are powerful and sophisticated enough to displace or physically restrain someone with their field effectors.

Also, if you murder someone, you won't be invited to parties anymore.

Thank you! That sounds about right. Must put Player Of Games on the re-read pile.

And yes, I remember not getting invited to parties is the ultimate sanction.

Yeesh, sort of the exact opposite of a 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

It's so ourageous isn't it?

a thousand years before the 2nd amendment was conceived, peasant had other preoccupations than bearing expensive, heavy, difficult to handle arms.

What were they thinking?

Did they not love freedom?

It's so incredible that they did not copy the US Constitution, even though the first Constitution in the human history /, the Magna Charts, was written 4 centuries later than the Annales Bertiniani, in 1215.

Seriously guys, 2nd amendment was written in 1791, the Annales Bertiniani are from 840.

The idea that the 2nd amendment protects the peasants is also wrong and it's one of the reasons people laugh at USA, when the 2nd amendment was approved, Grand Duchy of Tuscany had already abolished death penalty.

2nd amendment was introduced to permit people to shoot tax collectors (i.e. the British)

>2nd amendment was introduced to permit people to shoot tax collectors (i.e. the British)

The 2nd Amendment was introduced because the states were afraid a standing national army would give too much power to the Federal government, so the plan was to have individual states field their own militias instead. Also because the principles of the right to self defense were established in British common law at the time - but that has more to do with keeping cougars and vandals away than any abstract fears of tyranny.

You're right that it didn't really protect "peasants" - it mostly protected the interests of rich landowners. Which is, ironically, what Ben Franklin was actually arguing against with his often repeated (and misinterpreted) quote about those who trade a little liberty for safety deserving neither.

> quote about those who trade a little liberty for safety deserving neither

He said stuff like that left and right. He was very much in favor of sticking to one's ideological guns even when personally inconvenient. He was arguing in favor of the federal government retaining the authority to tax in the instance everyone quotes.

It's one of the reasons the 2nd Amendment was written; to avoid tyrannical rule, and to allow the "peasants" (regular people) to revolt if a tyrant ever took power.

You don't need the right to bear arms to revolt to tyrants.

There is no similar right in any other part of the World, in every other part of the World there have been revolts, sometimes much larger than US has ever witnessed.

Many countries have also revolted against USA, that more often than not has been the tryrant.

It’s not a requirement, but it certainly helps.

it depends on who gets the arms.

there is no "the people" as a single entity and interests when there is a revolt.

if everybody is armed, the supporters of the tyrant are going to be armed as well.

But with better equipment.

That would be true if it was just civilians fighting, but the military is usually on the side of the tyrant.

It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt vs armed loyalist populace + armed military than unarmed populace vs unarmed loyalist + armed military.

And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger than the pro-tyrannical populace since if the tyrant has the support of the people then are they really a tyrant.

> It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt

US is the only country in the western World who only made one real revolution.

And it was to not pay taxes, not against a true tyrant.

> And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger

The only thing that will be larger is the anti everybody else populace (tribalism, to give it a name).

USA had one major civil war and they keep killing each other like nowhere else in the World (like ten times more than the west average).

It's mathematically provable.

The civil war in the US was different. The last war fought with the old swords tactics, but using modern rifles. After it was over everyone looked in horror and decided that new ways for fighting were needed before they went to war again.

To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed unless they were supported by foreign militaries (like the US.) I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded.

edit: the armed right wing of the US could easily decide that they didn't like the outcome of the election, and change it. The volunteer military and national police forces entirely constructed to prosecute the drug war are overwhelmingly right wing. Second amendment warriors tend to own more guns than they have fingers and toes. That the civil service and the majority of patrician-generals at the top support the result of the election would be no hindrance.

The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you. A right-wing revolution as described above would probably have fewer than a couple of thousand casualties. It's very easy to still feel like the good guy if the only casualties of your revolution were a few of your most deeply committed archenemies (i.e. a few lefty militia types.) It's a lot more difficult when you're hurling artillery into normal civilian neighborhoods.

There were plenty of Northern Irish neighborhoods into which UK military and the police simply couldn't operate without negotiating with a representative of that neighborhood.

> To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed

To be fair the US has a tendency to side with tyrants, dictators, oppressors, not exactly with the peasants, at least in the past 80 years.

To name one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

But I see your point, my objections are to:

1 - you don't need to be armed, you nede to be able to, in case you;re going to need it (for example through external support)

2 - you prove my point, there is no armed revolt that succeeded only because people were armed, you need international support (at least from your neighbours)

> I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded.

here's one for you, my friend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution

> The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you

exactly.

that's the point.

and that's why you don't point a gun to a policeman.

being armed has always been a disadvantage for regular people.

That's why the comment bringing up the 2nd amendment is completely off topic in this context, 10 centuries ago if you traveled armed you had to be ready to fight, because everyone armed like you was going to try to kill you: you represented a danger.

it's the same thing that happens today in US, a lot of people are armed, they have guns on them, the police patrolling is even more heavily armed that the gangsters, they take a look a round, see something fishy, they see a gun, they shoot.

No question asked.

So, to go back on topic, being unarmed for the peasants of the Carolingian era most of the time made the difference between being killed and being simply robbed.

As a European I've always thought that this bit of US law has not aged all that well. Imagine a tyrant takes hold of the US armed forces and uses that to overthrow the rest of government so they can rule alone. The US armed forces have equipment going up to tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones and nuclear weapons. A militia is going to struggle to field even heavy machine guns, let alone an air force. I doubt they'd have the logistics either.

In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.

You don't have to win open battles. You just have to make it not worthwhile to keep fighting. Think Vietnam war. Also, in this scenario the army will not be united. In our civil war, many army units joined the rebels.

I have saved a post about this from 4chan, they passed it around on some pro-gun rights forums. Will paraphrase it and spare you the expletives.

"You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms.

A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3am and search your house for contraband.

None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrants in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington DC into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of [excrement].

Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why is a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while civilians are unarmed.

BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out of the window because now the police are outnumbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them.

If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them. ".

So basically, it can't protect against all out war on it's citizens, or a oppressive government willing to kill innocents in order to terrorise the population; but it could protect against softer power grabs or coups.

You don't need any of the above if you have an effective media machine that tells people what to think.

Which you very much do in the US. The militias aren't there to protect "freedom", they're kept on hand in case they're ever needed to protect privilege.

> If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them.

Guerilla warfare is a sharp reminder that the biggest weapon a soldier has is the one between his ears. Standing armies, like the story of david and goliath, "deploy" troops with the expectation that the other side will play by their rules. The result? David ain't about that life and uses his head, sling and a rock. You can have all the weapons in the world, nothing can garuantee your victory.

So how do the politicians and top brass justify the dead sons and no real, tangible success? They order the army to kill civilians ofcourse. Can you imagine training soldiers for a million bucks a pop, then he gets killed by a homemade bomb in some wadhi?

In short, war is a mess. It's not more guns needed, it's diplomacy.

> A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts.

Loitering drones sure could.

The US seems to have one of the most widely deployed sets of them (so far), spends lots of R&D money to improve (and automate) them, and has already shown they'll be covertly used within US borders for (at least) surveillance operations.

Remember those guys who let their house guest attack the US a little under 20yr ago? Last I checked they're in the process of getting their country back.

The "but they have tanks and nukes" argument has been long debunked. To actually run an oppressive nation you need boots on the ground which requires very strong support from a very sizeable minority (e.g South Africa, Northern Ireland). The less firepower the peasants have the smaller the minority you need is. You can't fight a insurgency with tanks and bombs without destroying the things you seek to protect. If you're England crapping all over Ireland or if you're the US crapping all over Iraq you can kind of make it work as long as you have political will and keep the death tolls low because your supply lines and political support are isolated from the violence (notice how quickly the Troubles wrapped up once the bombs started going off in England). It's much harder to fight an insurgency when people are sabotaging your supply chains. See the 4chan copypasta someone else posted for other details.

>quickly the Troubles wrapped up once the bombs started going off in England

The Birmingham pub bombings (for example) happened in 1974. The Belfast agreement (ending the troubles so far) was signed in 1998.

>requires very strong support from a very sizeable minority (e.g South Africa, Northern Ireland)

Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Northern_Ireland.

You will note that Northern Ireland has a plurality of Protestants (48%) compared to a sizable Catholic community (45%). The majority of people in Northern Ireland do not support a united Ireland up to this point. At some point in the future that may change and a referendum for reunification may be held (if the Irish government agrees). And, note, it is not at all for sure that the Irish government would agree because Northern Ireland is a cats cradle of trouble and problem - demographically, economically, politically and in terms of civil order. I think only with very significant backing from the EU could Ireland contemplate taking it on.

Currently the UK (read England, because the Welsh and Scots are also net recipients of significant monies from England) subsidizes every subject in Northern Ireland to the tune of $7k per year, if that is "crapping all over Ireland" frankly I'd like a bag of that shit please.

And frankly there is peace in Ireland now because the IRA lost, it lost support in it's communities and it lost interest in freedom fighting because one element of it realized that a political solution had been available for at least 10 years, and one element realised it was far more interested in trading drugs and protection.

Anyway : please do some research and reading and don't use straight falsehoods to support an otherwise reasonable argument. Perhaps traveling to Ireland would be a good start.

You're getting caught up in the technical details because this is an ideologically driven issue.

NA had two minorities with opposite enough ideologies that they got violent. The UK would have never succeeded in keeping the peace there were it not for having a good chunk of the population on "their side". The violence eventually came to mostly an end because the IRA blew up enough crap that the British were willing to mostly throw them a bone in the Good Friday agreement and everyone was sick enough of the fighting to reach an agreement. The agreement was satisfactory enough for enough people that most combatants laid down their arms. An agreement so favorable (i.e. favorable enough to get them to stop fighting) to the republican faction(s) would never have been reached without the violence spilling over into England to a greater extent in the 1980s and making people ask tough questions like "why does what they do even matter to us?". You can call that a "loss" or a "win" or a "pivot to drug trafficking" or whatever you want to make it compatible with your politics. The framing doesn't really change what happened. Considering your characterization of North Ireland I don't expect you to frame the issue in a neutral way.

Consider how the troubles might have played out without loyalist factions. Starts looking a lot like some other, nastier, more resource sucking conflicts. Local support is required any time you want to make a bunch of people do stuff you don't want them to.

You say technical details, I say relevant facts. I don't have any ideological perspective, my family are 1/2 irish catholic and I live in the UK - I don't care what happens in northern ireland at all.

But, the loyalist factions were the majority, post WW2 it's just for sure that the UK wouldn't have (and certainly wouldn't now) hang around in Northern Ireland, apart from most of the people in Northern Ireland historically wanted to stay as part of the UK. A minority wanted to leave and fought a violent campaign to do so. The minority was ruthlessly discriminated against and terrorized by the majority - which complicated matters to say the least. These issues do not boil down in the way that you indicate, things are complicated. An agreement like the Belfast agreement had been on the table for the IRA for many years - and frankly it's not very favorable, the only major concession that I can think of was the dissolution of the RUC - but is the police service of northern ireland really that different? I mean it is vs the RUC of 1975 (that's for sure) but vs the RUC of 1998? The big issue that the IRA's final spurt of bombing decided was that they didn't disarm before the agreement was negotiated and signed - but instead after it was agreed and signed. The two truck bombs were painful, but Manchester would not be the city it is now without the last one - and docklands doesn't seem to have suffered much tbh. The Bishop's gate bomb in 1993 was probably more economically impactful than either, and there was no hint of compromise after that.

The UK has very limited economic, military or geographic interest in Northern Ireland. The oil was elsewhere, there is fishing - but we are talking $10M's per year at the most there, and most of that goes to NI boats in any case. There's no reason for the UK to be there apart from the fact that a) the bulk of the population think that they are part of the UK and b) the irish government would be in the mire trying to deal with it if it suddenly came to be their job. Without these two factors there wouldn't have been a conflict, because the UK would have dropped it like a hot coal.

The US military is the militia >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29

Vietnamese farmers have a different view point. It's not about competing on an open field, its about not being able to be subjugated. Another historical example would be American snipers in trees picking off the British commanders during the revolution.

And how did all that military might fare in Vietnam? How has it fared in the Middle East?

Now imagine turning all that might against itself where much of the population has small arms of some sorts.

Was the US trying to tyrannically attack those places? The government had to constantly answer to it's populace for those wars; if it had to answer to no one, things may have been different.

How about Russia in Afghanistan? Surely they had much less accountability and a similar technology gap (yes, I know the US supplied the fighters with some advanced weaponry). Yet, the had the same outcome as the US.

Here's a short documentary that captures some the post-Soviet dissolution mood of the Russian troops in Afghanistan, following the glasnost.[1]

[1]: Afgan - The Soviet Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqAHOpGd0g

Why do you assume the US military is united against the people like that. If a tyrant takes over the US military you can expect a large number of the existing military will leave. They might have jets, but it doesn't do any good when whoever is flying them takes off and then uses the bombs on yet, then ejects over enemy territory thus ensuring that you cannot use that jet anymore while they survive as a hero.

Others have replied to the other points.

We have modern examples of this situation, and that’s not how it works. In the 1971 Bangladesh independence war, the Pakistani military started conducting a genocide of Bangladeshis. (They didn’t do it with fighter jets, which they had plenty of, but infantry with rifles.) Bangladesh was mostly disarmed, but arms were funneled to it from India. Civilians also raised army supply depots to steal guns. They then put up a resistance with the arms they had or could get. That caused large swaths of the Pakistani military—many of whom were Bangladeshis—to defect and fight for independence. A citizen military’s willingness to fight their own people is limited. Having enough arms to start the armed resistance was the most important thing. And I suspect a lot fewer Bangladeshis would have been killed in the genocide had they been as well-armed as Americans are.

At the end of the day, holding territory is hard. Look at how much trouble Americans have had subduing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The bombs, tanks, planes, etc., are largely useless in holding a city. Now, combine that with the fact that the US military is comprised of citizen soldiers, who would be in the position of fighting against their own communities.

It’s when a community is totally disarmed, and when the mere show of military force would force total capitulation without violence, that a citizen military could rationalize aiding tyranny.

It’s also worth pointing out that there are 50 governors who command national guards that have fighter planes and tanks and whatnot. In a real civil war, armed citizenry would likely be fighting alongside state forces.

I'm very sorry, but the militia presence in the US has never served to protect against tyranny, but rather to preserve it. You've truly been mislead if you believe that is its purpose. I grew up around lots of these sorts of people and what those guys are really for is to keep the blacks and immigrants properly terrorized and subjugated. My experiences with them were that they were uniformly from the most racist and ignorant class of whites, usually the ones the military wouldn't take, and they were essentially another version of KKK. That crap in the 2nd amendment about a well regulated militia is a nice cover to let these dudes do their thing, but please do not confuse that with the actual purpose of these people in US society. They maintain white supremacy.

You are thinking of a traditional force on force battle, which is not what it would be. Looking at the Taliban in Afghanistan would be a more accurate picture of how it would look. It would be an insurgency of mostly unknown members that lived with and among average citizens, as well as a larger support network of citizens that provided material support (food, equipment, medical supplies, etc) to “the cause”.

You would have a small percent of “full time” insurgents that would probably operate in rural areas of the US, in order to better hide larger equipment, but that would be the minority. Most of the time they would be avoiding conflict with military forces, only attacking vulnerable areas and forcing the military to guard everything. I remember reading that trying to surveil Afghanistan was already using the majority of the US’ aerial surveillance assets. The US is massive, with huge rural areas and tons of regular traffic to hide amongst.

A dictator would likely attempt to crush opposition with a heavy handed military response. That would likely serve in the insurgents favor, as it would turn the average citizen against the military strangers with tanks in the streets, checkpoints, and extra judiciary killings of civilians. Just look at the police protests and riots over the summer. The heavy police response stoked more anger and resolve and grew protests and people willing to provide support.

It is also worth noting that we don’t know how much of the military would fall in line with this. And even if they did, how many would secretly help the insurgency. How many insurgents would be tipped off to unguarded National Guard bases with military hardware? Do you really think the military would willingly use nukes on its own people? Bombers? Tanks? Just because the military has them, doesn’t mean they could be used effectively.

In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.

The militias of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia would disagree.

It’s doable if you have the support of the majority of the population, such as Nazi occupation of France and later US/UK occupation of Germany.

Do you have more detail on this? Is there supporting detail from other sources? It's not clear from my brief reading that the association was conclusively for self-defense and held no insurrectionary or political aspect.

It might have started for self-defence, but became insurrectionist once the vikings had been defeated. "Why should we pay fealty to a liege that fails at his most basic duty?"

The terms used are "conjurés/conjuration" (from Google: Middle English (also in the sense ‘oblige by oath’): from Old French conjurer ‘to plot or exorcise’, from Latin conjurare ‘band together by an oath, conspire’ (in medieval Latin ‘invoke’), from con- ‘together’ + jurare ‘swear’.). It seems to imply something more than just gather together for self-defence.

> military service was reserved for aristocrats only.

That varied by region.

Often English Lords were required to provide troops or arrows on demand, and those both came from the peasant class.

(Frankly, peasant men would have to be tough to work in the fields in the mid-day sun, so were ideal stock for battles.)

Otherwise what was the point in appointing nobility if they weren't contributing an army, but just collecting taxes?

"All burgesses and freemen shall have a gambeson, an iron cap and a lance"

-English Assize of Arms, 1181.

Knights, and freemen who owned more than a certain value of property, were required to own more and better weapons.

Later laws extended this obligation to all men not just freemen, and required ownership of bows.

> the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings ... military service was reserved for aristocrats only ... The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants

Strange that the peasants could fight back a group of Vikings ("the toughest warriors ever" according to National Geographic[0]) but not a bunch of aristocrats.

[0] https://www.vikingmartialarts.com/vikingculture/2018/4/4/vik...

Using "bunch of aristocrats" pejoratively is a thoroughly modern take. Aristocrats were the best fighters in their day. They were the ones with money for good arms and time to train well, besides which fighting was for many of them their profession.

Besides, "toughest warriors ever" sounds more like popular colouring than an academic assessment. I don't know a lot about Vikings but as I understand they were principally raiders, which I would absolutely expect to perform worse than a Frankish aristocrat-led army.

>I don't know a lot about Vikings but as I understand they were principally raiders, which I would absolutely expect to perform worse than a Frankish aristocrat-led army.

In a pitched battle, on a open terrain, in a nice weather with preferably not too soft soil.

Also if you want to find tough people you look them at the extremes - so high north, or up in the mountains or in the deserts.

The 'living in harsh conditions makes you a crazy good fighter" is a meme though, as this historian explains: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

They'd be experienced in many different forms of combat, pitched battles were a rarity in most eras, and certainly the early middle ages.

I also don't think toughness is the right metric. We're not talking about brawls, we're talking about trained, well-equipped professionals doing their jobs.

If you look at European warfare after the collapse of the Roman empire and before the Siege of Vienna it was basically a wave of ass kickers coming from central asia and getting their ass kicked by the next wave coming from central asia.

Aristocrats were also better fed as well

> Using "bunch of aristocrats" pejoratively is a thoroughly modern take

Very _very_ modern. This is basically the plot of The Jam's "The Eton Rifles"...

I'm certain there were some great fighters amongst the Vikings; after all, they have an entire age named after them and their raids. Viking was an activity, not a people though, and the Vikings were mostly Norse peasants trained to fight with shields and basic weapons like spears and axes. There was an elite class and a small class of professional warriors too, but they weren't really a majority.

Apples and oranges and all that.

There's more than one type of "Viking" warrior the Elite Huscarls where effectively professionals and are considered one of the best heavy shock infantry period - this is what they are referring to as Vikings.

Though this is prior to the switch to mounted knights

> Elite Huscarls where effectively professionals

Yes, definitely. It's just that the raiding parties weren't just consisting of professional warriors. Many were simply farmers with axes, bows and spears, seeking plunder and glory like the others.

Also the Varangian Guards of the Byzantine Empire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard

The Vikings might not have been looking for a fight, just some easy plunder.

It happens that prey can fight of the predator. The prey if fighting for its life. The predator might not want to risk even an injury rather than just finding the next opportunity.

This is pretty much it. The Viking raids were, mostly, a way of obtaining loot and thralls, and it gave the peasantry an opportunity to attain an otherwise unattainable amount of wealth, and a way to Valhalla if things went wrong.

Chances are the aristrocrats were mounted in heavy armor and trivially routed the peasants. Cavalry is powerful.

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