This is just a short section about my recent blog post, Religion in England,
This post was not done, so I must put a second part on it. This piece is about Religion in England and how the Government coped with it, and WHY it even occurred. Please watch my blog for another one. I will put it out on Wednesday.
When Edward the Confessor, who was part of the house of Wessex and the rightful ruler, came to the throne, he found a dangerous enemy. He happened to be the former favorite of Cnut, and his name was Godwin, earl of Wessex.
Edward had good reasons to hate Godwin, chief among them was the fact that when Edward and his brother were trying to take the throne from Cnut’s sons, his brother was caught, imprisoned, and murdered by Godwin. Edward and Godwin created a standoff for many years, until finally, Edward claimed victory when Godwin was forced into exile.
Edward had no sons, let alone children, to inherit the throne. Godwin had no ties to the house of Wessex, but would probably take the throne after he died. So, in 1051, Edward offered his kingdom to William, duke of Normandy, after he died. This would not last. Two years later, Godwin died, and his son, Harold Godwinson, took the position of Earl of Wessex, and his other son, Tostig, took a position as Earl of Northumbria.
in 1066, though, Edward died, and left his kingdom, surprisingly, to Harold Godwinson. In only a short amount of time, Harold was marching against a force led by his brother Tostig and Hardrada of Norway. He soon crushed them, but then he had to take his exhausted force south to defend against William of Normandy, who was also attacking.
The two met near Hastings. The battle raged all day, with the Norman archers and knights trying to take down the Saxon shield wall. Again and Again William charged uphill at Harold, and every time he came back down with less men and no victory. Finally, Harold was killed, hit by an archer in the eye and hacked the rest of the way to death by one of William’s knights. Soon afterwards, the Saxon shield wall faltered due to losing their leader, and fled.
This shock was to be continued, as village after village was taken by William. He decided to use a method that he was familiar with: Terrorize the country into submission.
The crown of England and Religion have been tied together for most of history, but, in the 1530s, All of that changed. Part of that was due to England’s limited monarchy.
Monarchy started out as a dictatorship, and changed over time. Monarchy that allows the king to tax at will and do anything without anyone’s agreement is called an absolute monarchy. France was the ultimate example of an absolute monarchy.
On the other side, England was a limited monarchy, meaning that there was a Parliament that voted on taxes and other subjects. Here, the people, or at least the rich people, had a say in government. But, in a way, the Barons and other lords were saying that they, and only them, could hold the king to account. The king’s true power lied with the villages and towns of England.
Kings, in the middle ages, were ruled over by the Pope religiously. In the pope’s mind, he was also the political master of kings, and most kings didn’t agree with this. Many kings argued with the Pope.
Protestantism began in the 1520s as a group of Christians said that the Pope and the Catholic church was “Corrupt and over-mighty”. This was a chance for the English kings to try to gain more power, when Henry VIII made the Royal supremacy by making himself the head of the Church of England.
At this point, Parliament thought that the king would gain too much power through religion, but what would Parliament do to stop the reform?
In this blog post, I will explain how, and why, Rome was overrun by barbarians.
For hundreds of years, Rome ruled most of Europe with little resistance. The barbarians outside the border were not strong enough to take on Rome’s army, but by AD 200, it was becoming clear that Rome couldn’t hold it’s borders. The glory days of the five ‘good’ emperors had passed, and a new sector of emperors came in, known as the 20 short emperors. In a period of fifty years, from 234 to 284 AD, 20 emperors ruled the empire, and most got to the seat by murdering their predecessor. During this time of turmoil, Rome’s borders collapsed quite a bit.
After this, the new emperor, split the empire in half, knowing that it was too big to handle. For a short while, the empire was stable, but all that changed in 378, when the eastern emperor, Valens, was killed at the battle of Adrianople, at the hands of barbarians, the Visigoths. After this, his successor, Theodosius, united the empire under his rule for a short amount of time, the last emperor to do so.
The next emperors in the Roman empire were weak. The eastern emperor couldn’t control his territory, and the western emperor, Honorius, saw Rome sacked by the Visigoths. After that event, Rome began to decline. The last emperor who truly ruled well was Valentinian the third, and he was assassinated in 455 AD. Rome finally fell to barbarians completely in Ad 476.
WHY did Rome fall?
There are some good answers to the question. Here are the questions and answers.
Q: Why did Rome’s border collapse?
A: The 20 emperors greatly weakened the borders by fighting each other rather than combine and fight one enemy. The barbarians finally realized that they were going to have to team up to actually get anywhere against Rome. This is what they did, and that is how the borders weakened.
Q: Why did the 20 emperors even happen?
A: Probably because of family unrest. All of these emperors were related, so some must have thought that the seat was rightfully theirs.
These two questions are just a couple of examples, but the main question is…
How did the western empire survive for so long?
We are not quite sure why yet, and we probably will never know. All we know is that the empire fell and the dark ages began, spelling the end of a Europe ruled by barbarians and empires.
In this blog post, I will talk about three major defeats of the Roman Empire. They were Cannae, Carrhae, and Tutoburger Wald.
The battle at Cannae was not the first military disaster of the Roman empire. The battle of Trebia had done that. Why Cannae was so important was the death of one man, a general, as well as many men.
The battle was fought between the consul, Varro, of Rome and Hannibal Barca, brother of Hamilcar Barca, leader of Carthage. In this war, the Second Punic War, Hannibal had made an assault on Italy. He had won many victories due to superior generalship, and, since his forces were much smaller than the Roman Armies, he certainly didn’t enjoy superior numbers, and he didn’t need them. The Romans had 58,000 Legionaries, 16,000 Light auxiliaries, and 6,000 cavalry, that included both the Roman cavalry and Allied cavalry.
Meanwhile, Hannibal only had 32,000 infantry, 8,000 Light auxiliaries, and 10,000 Cavalry, which included Numidian cavalry and Gallic and Spanish Cavalry. Hannibal’s advantage lay not in his infantry or his Light troops, nor in anyone from the Carthaginian Empire, but the Gallic and Spanish cavalry.
The battle began with the Light troop skirmishes, and soon have both sets of infantry battering each other. Hannibal draws the Roman General Paullus and most of the Legionaries into a trap. Meanwhile, his cavalry batter down the Roman and allied cavalry. The Numidian cavalry are held off, but the Spanish and Gallic are victorious. Finally, they go behind the Roman forces, sealing their fate.
Half of the Roman force is killed, as well as Paullus himself, at the cost of very little Carthaginian lives. Despite these victories, Hannibal did not feel strong enough to attack Rome. Not too long later, he was called back to Carthage, where he was defeated by general Scipio at the battle of Zama. Through all of Rome’s battles, it has been shown that Roman foot soldiers are the strong point, and the cavalry are the weak spot. Many of Rome’s enemies won over them sometimes because of superior horsemanship.
Carrhae was the worst defeat of the Romans in the Middle East. Recently, Rome had come up against the Parthian Empire. General Licinius Crassus prepared an invasion. It seemed that he would be unbeatable, with 32,000 infantry, 4,000 Gallic and Roman cavalry, and 6,000 Arab cavalry. They were only faced by 11,000 Parthian cavalry, but the Romans underestimated their enemy.
The Parthians and the Roman cavalry slugged out for a while. What the Romans didn’t know was that the Parthians had two different kinds of cavalry. They knew about the Horse archers, but not about the heavily armed Cataphracts, a kind of Super-heavy cavalry. They charged at the Roman forces with the cover of the Horse archers, and destroyed the Roman force. Crassus and more than 20,000 soldiers died, and 5,000 soldiers were taken prisoner and never seen again. It was thought that they were killed.
The Romans always took the Parthians seriously after this. They wouldn’t suffer another defeat for more than fifty years. The next one came during the Roman empire, and it was one of the greatest military disasters of all time. Its name is Tutoburger Wald….
Tutoburger Wald is probably one of the most famous military defeats of all time. The one general who caused all this was related to emperor Augustus. He was Publius Quinctilius Varus. Augustus had put him in charge of the Germans, mainly the Cherusci tribe. Under Varus, the Germans were brutally suppressed, which lost him much local support. Varus still thought that the Cherusci were loyal to him and liked him.
Not too long afterwards, Varus went to crush a rebellion in Germany. He was in control of three legions, about 15,000 men, along with cavalry and auxiliaries, making for a grand total of 21,000 men. But to get there, Varus had to go through the forest of Tutoburger Wald. For that, chief Arminius of the Cherusci and some of his guides were used by the Romans.
Suddenly, the Germans disappeared, but soon came back with an army of about 31,000 men. They slowly attacked the exhausted Roman soldiers. It had been raining, making shields heavy and useless. The Romans were broken apart and slowly destroyed.
Finally, realizing that he had made a massive mistake, Varus committed suicide, while all of his other men died around him. At the end of the battle, Only a handful of Romans survived. In memory of these lost legions, Rome never again used the numbers 17, 18, or 19. These were the legion numbers that Varus had. Tutoburger Wald went on to become Rome’s greatest defeat ever, and perhaps the greatest in ancient times.
Rome is not invincible, and that was showed during these battles. Tutoburger Wald ended Roman invincibility, and the Romans never again invaded Germany.
Blog Info:
If you are waiting for other Blog posts, it is because I am quite busy right now. I do have a few pre made Blog posts that I will release over time.
Minecraft weekly:
In this fourth step, I am expecting that you have Diamonds and other rare things, along with basic stuff. First step to this new age is to gather these supplies:(a Stack means 64 of an item)
Diamond tools
Iron armor
stack of wood.
Stack of coal
two stacks of Cobblestone
stack of torches
Stack of Iron
Spare diamonds
Emeralds(If you find any. I don’t expect you to find them, so this is optional)
Whatever else you want to take!
Once you have these items in your inventory, make sure that you have a chest with some backup items in it back at your home. Also, if you have spare diamonds, don’t take many, just three(In case you need another pickaxe).
If you have an Enchantment table and(Optional) bookshelves, place the bookshelves in a square one block away from the Enchantment table. There has to be nothing between the Enchantment table and the Bookshelves except for the air. There HAS to be a one block space, or it will not work. Now you may be asking me “Why are you telling me to do this?”. This is because NOW you have the highest enchantment levels.
Enchanting is a complicated system, and today I am not going to tell you about it. Just keep with it for right now, but don’t use your enchantment table yet. Now you are ready to go on an adventure. Go wherever you want, but try not to die. You could go into more caves, explore the overworld, or even make a new home. ALWAYS remember where your old home is, though, because it is a nightmare to get lost.
The next step isn’t really a step, it is more of an age. At the beginning of the last age, you would have thought that everything is complete. It isn’t. In the next Minecraft weekly, I will talk about all the new adventures that are waiting for you when you get back from your final adventure in the older age.
So far, we’ve gotten a good start to minecraft; A home, good tools, building blocks, and food. If you just want to do that for the rest of your minecrafting days, then from this point on, these blog posts will be useless for you. If you want to go farther, and explore the dangerous and uncharted parts of minecraft and get even better upgrades, then these are for you. This section will tell about mining, and what you get when you go deeper.
First of all, you need to mass up supplies, such as food, iron, wood, coal, and, oddly enough, a bucket of water. The water is for in case you run in to lava, so when that happens, just right click while holding the bucket of water when you get out of the lava, and bam, you’re not on fire any longer.
Unlike last time, go AS DEEP AS POSSIBLE, and ALWAYS start from a cave. They can be time and material savers, though you could get blown up. Once you get deep, four different ores will appear along with the ones that you have already seen; these are Gold, Redstone, Lapis, and Diamond. If you are under a mountain biome, you can find Emeralds too. All of these ores must be broken with a iron pickaxe.
Gold ore will look like all the other ores, except with yellow spots instead of black(Coal) or rust(Iron) spots. You have to smelt gold. It is used to make strong tools that last about as long as wood, so don’t use gold for tools(Same with the armor). You could use it to make a clock or powered rails. I usually just keep it in a chest. Like Iron, you can make it into a block and place it.
Redstone is an ore that has red spots on it. It does not need to be smelted, and will drop more then one piece of redstone dust when you break it. YOU CANNOT USE IT FOR TOOLS, it is used mostly for redstone creations. Redstone is like a wire used to carry electricity in your house, and can turn on different things. It does need something to turn it on, though. Redstone blocks are newly added into the game, and are used in redstone circuits.
Lapis is very much like redstone, but have a few major differences. First of all, Lapis has dark blue spots on its ore. Second of all, it isn’t used for redstone circuits; it is used for dyeing things blue. You can make it into a block.
Diamonds are the best of all. They have light blue spots on their ore, and drop one diamond that does not need smelting. These diamonds create the best, most durable tools and armor around. Diamonds are very rare, though. Just like everything else, they can be made into a block. They are also used in other items, such as Enchanting tables and jukeboxes.
Emeralds are like diamonds, except the only use of them is to trade with villagers. They also have green spots on their ore. This ore is the rarest. They can be made into blocks.
Last week, I talked about the first two steps to Minecraft success. Now you will learn about the settling and the starting of thriving.
The next step would be to settle your home. You could build it in a mountain or just on the land. I would recommend discounting fancy builds, and just build a wood and cobblestone hut with a basement, lit with torches. If you choose to make a mountain your home, just make a small hole in the side of it, light it up, and bam, you have a home. Now, you can make your cave home more comfortable, but that will be in a later step.
I’m going to assume that you have found a good spot to make your home. Once you build your home, I would recommend going out to either mine or collect materials on the surface. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of the two options.
Mining:
It gets you many much needed recourses, such as cobblestone, iron, and coal. Don’t go too deep right now, though. These recourses will help you in both adventures underground and on the surface.
Now for the disadvantages. The most nagging problem is the lack of food and materials from the overworld that you have probably used to make your house. With the food, you will probably end up eating rotten flesh, which poisons your hunger bar. Also, mining can be dangerous. One slip, and you could fall to your death or to lava. There could be anything around the corner, even a creeper waiting to blow you and your new materials to pieces. I would recommend staying away from mining and go for the latter choice, the surface.
Collecting materials on the surface
The advantages of this are obvious: during the day, no monsters will spawn on the surface, and you can sleep out the night. While it can become light again on the surface, only torches can solve the darkness in caves. Also, you can get good food, such as meat, and also collect seeds to make a farm. If you find an NPC village, then loot their crops and then replant them for later. Then, make sure you have enough to make your own farm.
The only disadvantage is that you are staying with stone tools and not moving up to iron. Also, you can’t get any armor better then leather, and anyways, Iron armor is much better.
These two steps are your steps to success. After one, do the other. These ARE from my own experiences in my minecraft survival, which I have been playing for two years. Due to updates, I DID transfer my world into another(I will talk about that later, so just don’t bother about it right now).
If you die, don’t panic. You are so early in the game that you are bound to start again and be ready again for this step within a few days. Panic could kill you again. YOU CAN TRY TO GET YOUR STUFF BACK, but if you chose to mine, don’t. Just start over again in that case.
This step is probably the biggest that early minecrafters will experience, and I would recommend trying to make this step worth something.
Most of you probably already know about the English monarchy, since it is still going on. In our age, Queen Elizabeth II is queen, and will be succeeded by Prince Charles soon. Most of you know about ‘bad’ king John, Henry VIII, and ‘evil’ Richard III, along with kings like Good queen Bess(Elizabeth I), Richard the Lionheart, and Alfred the great. With these monarchs, people keep putting the wrong faces on them, for example, Richard the Lionheart once massacred more than a thousand Turk POW(prisoners of war) in the holy land, and Richard III wasn’t terribly evil in they eyes of half of the country. In this series, you will learn the truth about the English monarchs.
The English monarchy truly started at the beginning of the Dark Ages. Once Rome left Britain to defend Italy, the British were left alone, without help defeating the Picts and other raiders. The British had no choice but to get other barbarians to help them; the Saxons. But it all went wrong. Once the Saxons got hold of some land, they decided to get more. Eventually, the Saxons had taken over more than half of England. They split up into different kingdoms, such as Northumberland and Mercia, each with its own ruler.
Eventually, the Vikings came and sized massive lands from the Saxons. After a few years, only one kingdom remained, Wessex. The king there, Alfred, was desperate for supplies and men. Over the winter, he spent his days in the marshes of southern England, planning to defeat Guthrum, the Viking conqueror. As soon as spring came, he started sending out raids on Guthrum’s Vikings, annoying them to no end.
Also, Alfred gathered other nobles in the region, urging them to join him. Soon later, Alfred formed an army to fight against the Vikings. He defeated them, taking huge amounts of land that was taken from the Saxons. Throughout his reign, Alfred worked on taking back land from the Vikings, creating a whole Saxon England, ruled by one king, Alfred the Great, as he was now called. Alfred’s successors continued his work, and eventually claimed Scotland as well, creating the First British Empire.
They were rising so high they were bound to fall, and it came in the form of the succession. In the mid 900s, a new king came to the throne. He became Ethelred the unready. There are many reasons why he was called the unready. First of all is that during his reign, Vikings came and took massive amounts of territory. He may have been unready for the invasion. Another reason comes from the saxon raed, meaning advice. If he was un-raed, he was given bad advice.
When the Vikings came, he paid them large amounts of silver and gold to go away. Naturally, the Vikings didn’t go away, since there was so much plunder if the Saxons could pay them that much. After a long fight, Ethelred fled and the Viking Sweyn took over, but he soon died. Ethelred came back, but also died soon. Sweyn’s son, Cnut, came back to take the throne.
Cnut made peace with England and the Vikings, effectively making one of the largest Viking empires ever. Since he traveled to Norway quite a bit, he left his Earls in charge of large parts of England while he was gone. When Cnut died, Edward, one of the descendants of Alfred the Great, took the throne. Little did Edward the Confessor, as he was called, would change the course of history.
This is the first minecraft weekly. In this blog post, I will be talking about the basics of survival, which will help many n00bs to get better at the game.
For a starter, you create a world. I suspect that you know how to create a new world. First of all, the ‘gamemode’ button needs to be at survival. Next, press the ‘create new world’ button, and there you go. If you want to name your world, just type in the name in the box that says ‘new world’ in it before you create the world. Once you create it, the survival starts.
There are many different methods of survival, but first of all there are two different modes that switch the way that you play the game. First of all, you can play on Peaceful, which means NO monsters and NO losing hunger. There are bosses, but you can’t get to them(Because there are no wither skeletons to get wither heads and no endermen to get ender pearls, which you have to combine with blaze powder to get an Eye of Ender, and there are no blazes,).
There is also easy, normal, and hard, which all have monsters and hunger(Important note; In peaceful, there are still non hostile mobs and some neutral mobs. In peaceful, dogs, cats, and Iron Golems are still there, but not Enderman or Zombie pigmen). I would recommend you starting at easy, because peaceful can get boring after a while, and normal and hard can drive you mad because the hunger bar goes down faster. Also, Cave Spiders poison you on normal and hard,). If you go on peaceful, I would recommend looking at another blog post, or maybe just look it up, since I am going to be talking about survival on easy.
IMPORTANT NOTE: NEVER choose hardcore as your gamemode instead of survival when you create your world, at least while you are not a good survivalist to the game. More notes will be about that in another blog post.
When you come in to the new world, start punching trees(I know it sounds dumb, but do it anyway,). This will give you wood, which you can craft by putting in your inventory. Once you craft these, you need to craft a workbench and sticks, and you can look up crafting recipes on the Minecraft Wiki. Once you have a crafting table, you need to craft a wood pickaxe. Once you have done this, dig down to get some stone. Once you have cobblestone(when you break stone, you get cobblestone, which is used for tools. Stone can be smelted back from cobblestone, but you cannot make tools out of it), Go ahead and craft some stone pickaxes, swords, and axes. If you find coal, get it, because you can use it to get torches.
At this time, you will probably be ready to explore. Get your crafting table and start exploring, and once it becomes night, make a quick shelter. If you can, find some food, but wait to mine in caves. NEVER stand outside and fight through the night. It is the best way to get killed. The best way to kill mobs is to make Murder Holes, shown by PaulsoaresJR.
After you have survived the night, I would get out and wander around a little more. This is the checklist that your home place NEEDS to have:
Nearby wood source*(1)
Nearby cave
Pasture of animals nearby, preferable animals are cows.
It cannot be in the middle of a desert,*(2)
*(1) If you have saplings, then this is not needed, but it is better to live near a forest or jungle.
*(2) If you find a desert village, then you can stay, but otherwise, go in to the desert, but don’t make your settlement there.
Here is a list of optional things:
Terrain(Such as mountains) That give you a natural barricade from monsters.
Huge cave system with many ores
Nice landscape
DOGGIES NEARBY!
MOST IMPORTANT OPTIONAL THING: KITTIES NEARBY!(No, it isn’t, but It IS true that minecraft cats and kittens can be cute, but they take a lot of effort to tame,)
After this, you should be able to settle down and survive. No matter how long it takes you to find the necessary things, search for them. Until you can, set up a small hole in the ground to stay in during the night. These are your first two major steps in minecraft, which I call the Beginning(Getting tools and things), and the Searching(When you search for a home).
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