Esoterica

[Scarabin]

Thanks. I think they were chat messages but it's OK now.

 

:D

[Scarabin]

The trouble with esoterica is that it's a very loose definition. I do not know if this really fits.

 

David Chandler,the historian, frequently quotes Puysegur as a contemporary authority on Marlburian warfare, and says his great merit is that he describes warfare as it is/was not as he thought it should be. He also records that Puysegur gave very bad advice & information to other French leaders, particularly at Oudenarde.

 

I think of this sort of snippet as esoterica but maybe this is idiosyncratic?

 

:D

[Scarabin]

A last word, and probably the last word, on esoterica (since I always knew this bird might not fly.)

 

Did you know that the tune Napoleon used to whistle, "Marlbruck sén va-t-en guerre", has come down to us as "For he's a jolly good fellow". Makes him seem almost human,somehow.

 

I am pretty sure I got this from Barbara Tuchman.

 

:D

[Scarabin]

I have always liked this story, although I'm not entirely sure why, of an English aristocrat or politician who was a contemporary of the great Marlborough and who went mad:

 

One night there was a great commotion in his bedroom. When the rest of the household burst in they found him, dressed in a nightshirt, holding a candle in his left hand, and a sword in his right, standing over an empty corner of the room. "Don't move you foul fiend" he snarled "or I'll run you through."

 

:D

[Vampyr]

When I lived in Russia, some of my young students asked me if I had heard of the Great Patriotic War. Known elsewhere as World War II.

[Scarabin]

When I lived in Russia, some of my young students asked me if I had heard of the Great Patriotic War. Known elsewhere as World War II.

 

Was your stint in Russia connected with "glasnost"? Around the time I retired, Americans were going to Russia to help start a capitalist economy.

 

:D

[Cyberyeti]

I'm learning a fair bit about Hungarian history from an odd source. I've recently discovered the folk metal genre of music and many of the songs have a historical basis. They particularly seem to like setting poetry to music. But I've learned about the following:

 

The first 3 are poems by Arany János - Music by Dalriada

 

A failed assassination attempt on the king of Hungary in 1330 and its gruesome aftermath - Zách Klára

The siege at Dregel in 1552 where around 100 troops held off many thousands of Turks for sefveral days - Szondi Két Apródja

The Austro-Hungarian king asking the poet to write a poem of praise for him, and the poet writing a tale of the oppression of the Welsh by the English king as a metaphor for what was being done to the Hungarians - A walesi bárdok (the Welsh bards)

 

Then a couple more from Dalriada that are not from poems

 

The siege of Belgrade, where a brilliant general and a priest who rounded up a huge peasant army held off the Turks - Hunyadi és Kapisztrán Nándorfehérvári Diadaláról

The journey of friar Julian in 1235 from Hungary to eastern Russia to find the Magyars that didn't come West 400 years earlier - Julianus Útja