Remus <roamulus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On Jul 7, 4:51 pm, Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcent...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> 1) Roman troops are not going to wet
>> their pants and flee en masse just
>> because some barbarian fires off a
>> boomstick.
>>
>> A handful of clumsy smoothbore
>> matchlocks will not be decisive against
>> well-trained infantry with steel
>> weapons, bows and arrows, and horses.
>>
>> Cortez defeated the Aztecs, who did
>> not have any of the above, with the
>> aid of large numbers of local allies,
>> while the Aztec state was being decimated
>> or worse by Euro diseases - and it was
>> still a struggle.
>
>This is pu****ng it. The Romans do not
>have THAT much more tech than the Aztecs...
Well, aside from _metal-working_, _draft animals_,
****p-building, and a few other keystones of civilization...
>and they are much, much closer
>than the New World was with Cortez and
>both France and Spain are immediately
>going to scramble to take over Britain.
I rather doubt that.
>Both the French, the Spanish, and the
>Dutch are all going to sail in, tell the
>Romans that 'They are Gods' in Latin
>and prove it by aiming sticks at the
>local Roman military commanders and
>their possibly newly proclaimed emperor
>and make them drop dead at the press
>of a button.
You remind me of a famous quotation from an
old crime novel:
Some people think that a gun is like
a magic wand. You just just wave it
and people have to do whatever you want.
You seem to think that a matchlock musket
with a maximum effective range of maybe
a hundred yards, that takes a minute to reload,
and can't even be fired in wet weather,
is "the wrath of God".
The first chap to show up in Britannia with
a firearm will impress some people. Not that
much, since he probably hasn't bathed in a
month and is missing teeth. It will happen
within a few days, as ****ps inbound from the
Continent straggle into "English" - now
Britannic - ****ts. There will be confusion
and surprises on both sides, but at least a
few firearms will fall into Britannic hands.
After that, the secret is out.
>By far, however, the most powerful Protestant
>power has disappeared from the face of the
>map, to be replaced by a few primitive pagans...
Primitive? These are Romans. They
live better than most European
nobility.
>> Might: there are
>> much worse infidels, actual enemies of
>> Christ, all over the Med and Balkans, and
>> no one is "crusading" against them any more.
>
>The Spanish war against the Ottoman Turks
>was only shortly before the Spanish Armada
>was sent against England.
What effort did the Spanish make to conquer
and Christianize North Africa, an adjacent
country full of extremely hostile non-
Christians? Answer: not much.
Spain fought against the Turks, but that
was a defensive struggle - it was the
Turks who came west, not the Spanish who
went east.
--
| People say "There's a Stradivarius for sale for a |
| million," and you say "Oh, really? What's wrong |
| with it?" - Yitzhak Perlman |
|
