Ash: The Lost History
Chapter 170 : 30 - [ A term used in this text for Northern Europeans in general.]31 - [ As with the

30 - [ A term used in this text for Northern Europeans in general.]

31 - [ As with the nave, this was in fact left unfinished until the nineteenth century.]

Part Two: 1 - [ "For under the axis ['Axle' of Rota Fortuna] is written, 'Queen Hecate'" - an interesting quotation by the author of the Angelotti ma.n.u.script, in which the mediaeval "dreadful example" of the Fall of Kings, Queen Hecuba of Troy, has been replaced by Hecate, the powerful and sometimes malignant G.o.ddess of h.e.l.l, night and the moon. Curiously enough, the Greek for "Hecuba" is "Hekabe".]

2 - [ Celebrated on 15 July; thus an internal reference for the date of the company's arrival outside the port-city of Genoa.]

3 - [ 'The Lamb of G.o.d'.]

4 - [ Outriders, scouts.]

5 - [ A 'harness' is the common term for a suit of armour. Thus the expression, 'died in harness', meaning 'died while wearing armour'.]

6 - [ Matthew 10: 34. 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.']

7 - [ Plainly, this is another intrusion of mediaeval legend into the text. Given the earlier inclusion of the name 'Carthage', I suspect that this is in fact a dim memory, preserved in monastery ma.n.u.scripts, of the sea-power of the historical Carthaginians in the Cla.s.sical period when it dominated the Mediterranean before being destroyed by the Roman fleet at Milazzo (263 bc), chiefly by the use of the Roman boarding-spike or corvus. It would not seem strange to a mediaeval chronicler to include such anachronisms.]

8 - [ Latin: 'by the fact (of doing it)', rather than de jure, 'by right of the law'.]

9 - [ Context leads me to suspect that this refers in fact, to the city of Rome - perhaps the papal throne, the chair of Peter? The textual reference is obscure.]

Part Three: 1 - [ The t.i.tle of a popular contemporary treatise (c. 1450) containing instructions for putting on one's knightly armour for non-cavalry combat: How a man shall be armed at his ease when he shall fight on foot.]

2 - [ 6 p.m.]

3 - [ See Revelation 6: 12; Revelation 9: 2; Revelation 8: 12, and Matthew 24: 29, respectively.]

4 - [ Luke21:25.]

5 - [ Recorded in several fifteenth-century travellers' accounts of their alpine journeys.]

6 - [ 'Pourpoinf: a waistcoat-like garment, to which hose can be tied.]

7 - [ 'This appears to be the del Guiz Life's mistranslation of a Saracen term. Faris is Arabic for 'horseman', meaning the ordinary professional cavalry knight, rather than an army commander. However, I have chosen to use faris since the better alternative given in the Angelotti ma.n.u.script, the Muslim al-sayyid, 'chieftain' or 'master', already exists in European history - as the t.i.tle of Rodrigo de Vivar: 'El Cid'.]

8 - [ Fr Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1292) was an early scientist, and the actual European inventor of gunpowder. He was popularly supposed to have been a sorcerer, and was credited with inventing a mechanical speaking head, made of bra.s.s; later destroyed.]

9 - [ 'Hackbut': English for 'arquebus', a man-portable gun.]

10 - [ Back and belly fur of a European squirrel.]

11 - [ Arabic: a mercenary, a soldier who fights for money or land-grants.]

12 - [ 'Amir' or 'emir': Arabic: 'lord'. I can find no linguistic proof for the connection either with the Persian magi (holy men or magicians) in the Angelotti text, or with 'scientist' - surely a much later addition to the text, by another hand.]

13 - [ By internal ms evidence, I calculate this takes place on 9 August, the feast day of King Osward of Northumbria. Born c.605, died 642 at Masefeth, St Osward prayed for the souls of those who fell in battle with him. His cult as a soldier saint was later popular as far as south Germany and Italy.]

14 - [ The coronation-place of Holy Roman emperors from the time of Otto the Great.]

15 - [ This is similar to the Hastings ma.n.u.script Ordinances of Chivalry of the fifteenth century, 'The maner and the forme of the Coronacion of kyngis and Quenes in Engelonde'.]

16 - [ Mehmet II, ruled the Osmanli (Turkish) Empire AD 1451-1481.]

17 - [ Louis XI of France, known to his contemporaries as 'the Spider King' because of his love of intrigue.]

18 - [18 The original text uses the Latin fabricato, for a structure made by human hands, not necessarily a machine in the sense that we would think of one.]

19 - [ The Angelotti Latin text has, in its brief and previously obscure mention of this episode, machina rei militarise a 'machine-tactician', and fabricari res militaris, '[something] made to [create] tactics'. 'Fraxinus me fecit' renders it as computare ars imperatoria, or, in a bizarre mixture of Latin and Greek, computare strategoi, 'a computor of the "art of empire" ' or 'strategy'. This can be rendered into modern English as 'tactical computer'.]

20 - [ Joan of Arc (AD 1412-1431).]

21 - [ De Re Militari, written by the Roman Vegetius, became the standard training manual for the later mediaeval and early Renaissance era.]

22 - [ On 24 August.]

23 - [ French, lit. 'kiss my a.r.s.e'.]

24 - [ 'n.a.z.ir': a commander of eight men, the equivalent of the modern army's squad-leader (corporal). Presumably a subordinate of the 'arif' commander of forty (platoon-leader) that the text mentions earlier.]

25 - [ 'Frank' is an Arab term of the period, meaning 'Northern European', and is certainly not Gothic.]

26 - [ Latin: 'Thanks to G.o.d', 'with G.o.d's help'.]

Part Four: 1 - [ Hoc fund quam lude militorum. I quote Vaughan Davies's idiosyncratic translation of the mediaeval dog-Latin text.]

2 - [ Bartolomeo Colleoni (1403(?)-1475) had died the previous year. A famous condottiere, employed largely by the Venetians from 1455, he lived until the age of 72, still active Captain-General of the Venetian forces, and discouraged by the Most Serene Republic from travelling north of the Alps from his castle at Malpaga, in case the Milanese should immediately attack Venice in his absence! Those who truly wanted to see the great captain - for example, King Edward IV of England, in 1474 - travelled to him.]

3 - [ Sir John Hawkwood, famed English mercenary and leader of the White Company (1363-1375), saw long and profitable service in Italy and died old (in 1394).]

4 - [ The Italian 'contract', from which the condottieri took their nickname.]

5 - [ Original text, 'kirtle'.]

6 - [ In the original text, 'triarii [veteran] of a legion', but a modern version gives a more immediate referent.]

7 - [ Contemporary records survive for this.]

8 - [ Onorata Rodiani, a historical character, has obviously been incorporated in this text out of a conviction that these two women ought to have met. In fact, Rodiani is reported as dying, after a long career as a mercenary, in the defence of her home town, Castelleone, in ad 1472.]

9 - [ Priest. Most scholars (clerks) were also priests, in this era.]

10 - [ I find myself in agreement with Vaughan Davies's supposition in the second edition of the 'Ash' texts (published 1939), and can do no better than quote it: 'The oddities of religion apparently practised among the fifteenth century cohorts of Ash bear no resemblance to contemporary Christian practice. A more robust age - indeed, an age less in imminent need of divine protection than our own - can afford religious satires which we should, perhaps, deem blasphemous. These scurrilous representations (which occur only in the Angelotti ma.n.u.script) are Rabelaisian satire. They are no more intended to be read as fact than are descriptions of the Jewish race poisoning wells and abducting children. The whole matter is a satire against a papacy which was, by the 1470s, not at all beyond reproach; and shows the feelings which would, in the next century, explode into the Reformation.']

11 - [ Neither women, nor soldiers who were not officers, were permitted to be present at the Mithraic mysteries.]

12 - [ In AD 1450.]

13 - [ Not the fish. In heraldry, a five-pointed star.]

14 - [ Murrey: a mulberry or reddish-purple colour.]

15 - [ With rosbif, G.o.ddam is a contemporary nickname for the English, at that time popularly supposed to be very foul-mouthed.]

16 - [ 4 May 1471: Prince Edward, the only son and heir of King Henry VI, is killed in battle with Edward of York (afterwards King Edward IV of England) at Tewkesbury. Henry VI dies soon after, under suspicious circ.u.mstances.]

17 - [ 'Oxenford' is one of the contemporary versions of 'Oxford'.]

18 - [ Seven years after the actions narrated in the 'Ash' texts, Richard of Gloucester is crowned King of England, as Richard III (1483-1485).]

19 - [ Duke Charles of Burgundy, like his forefathers - Philip the Bold, John the Fearless and Philip the Good - was known to his people by a cognomen. Temeraire has been subsequently translated, according to taste, as 'Charles the Bold' or 'Charles the Rash'.]

20 - [ 'd.i.c.kon' is the short, affectionate form of 'Richard'.]

21 - [ In point of fact, these events happened exactly as narrated here, but some eight years afterwards, in 1484. During the period covered by these texts, the Earl of Oxford remained a prisoner in Hammes castle. I suspect a chronicler of adding Oxford to the text, probably no later than 1486.]

22 - [ Some sources give a figure of 400 men.]

23 - [ This is accurate. The English King, Edward, offered pardons to the men, but to Oxford and his brothers, only their lives. Oxford was incarcerated in Hammes shortly afterwards.]

24 - [ In 1485, by winning the Battle of Bosworth for the then 'Welsh milksop' Henry Tudor, Oxford -put Henry VII of England on the throne (1485-1509). Whether that is 'a better man' has long been a subject of debate.]

25 - [ Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Margaret of Anjou, wife to Henry VI of England; these inveterate n.o.ble enemies, having in 1471 spent the past fifteen years on opposite sides of the royal wars, were reconciled to an alliance by John de Vere.]

26 - [ Garden.]

Part Five: 1 - [ 'Affinity' - For a feudal magnate, this would include his dependent lords, maintained in his livery; his political allies among other feudal lords; and any commercial interests dependent on him for grace and favour.]

2 - [ Born in Dijon in 1433, Duke Charles was in fact 43 at this time.]

3 - [ A legendary female knight, notably popularised in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516).]

4 - [ Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou had only one son, Edward, killed at the battle of Tewkesbury. Any claim of the Lancastrians to the English throne thus devolved to more tenuously related men (ultimately to Henry Tudor, whose Welsh grandfather had married the widow of King Henry V). The Yorkist Edward IV, meanwhile, held the throne.]

5 - [ In fact, Charles had registered his formal claim to the English crown in 1471, five years previous to this, but took no further action over it before his death.]

6 - [ The 'uqda was carried by a n.a.z.ir's troop of eight men.]

7 - [ The original text has 'fortuna imperatrix mundi'.]

8 - [ Philippe de Commines or Commynes (1447-1511), historian and politician who first served the Burgundians, then betrayed them for the French. He became advisor to Louis XI four years previously, in AD 1472.]

9 - [ 1465.].

10 - [ The text gives us 'iuventus', referring to young men between, say, sixteen and twenty; in our terms, these are teenagers.]

11 - [ St Barbara, a Roman saint previously appealed to for protection against being struck by lightning, was adopted as the patron saint of gunners, presumably on the grounds that one explosion is very like another.]

12 - [ The eleventh century Dame Trotula of Salerno was a clinician, and the author of Pa.s.sionibus Mulierum Curandorum (The Diseases of Women), among other medical works. She was regarded as one of the foremost medical authorities of the mediaeval period. Other 'mulieres Salernitanae' or women physicians were also trained in Salerno, but this practice may have ceased by the fifteenth century.]

13 - [ Since most combatants are right-handed, close combat battles tend to rotate anti-clockwise.]

14 - [ Wearing duplicate armour and livery.]

15 - [ Small field cannon.]

16 - [ No relation.]

17 - [ In mediaeval military terms, a 'battle' is a unit of men, rather than a specific combat. Mediaeval armies were often divided into three battles or large units, for fighting.]

18 - [ The personal device of the Earl of Oxford.]

19 - [ Used by Roman, Byzantine and Arab cultures, in both naval and siege warfare, the exact const.i.tuents of 'Greek Fire' remain unknown, although naphtha, sulphur, oil, tar, saltpetre and pitch have been suggested. Its nature as a terror weapon, however, is well recorded in history.]

Part Six: 1 - [ Given the date of ad 1476, the text cannot be referring here to the original Phoenician settlement of Carthage, or to Roman, Vandal or Byzantine Carthage. Since the culture is not Islamic, this must be a reference.to my presumed Visigoth settlement, possibly at or near the same geographical location, and named 'Carthage' for that reason.]

2 - [ The Latin has 'upper body strength of a sword-user'; this is the nearest modern comparison.]

3 - [ ??? - PR. This is completely baffling! The Reconquista involved Spanish Christian forces driving out the remaining Arab cultures from Spain (after the Arab conquest and settlement begun in AD 711), a process completed in AD 1492, some sixteen years after the events supposedly depicted in the 'Ash' texts. I can only suppose complete textual corruption here. After five hundred years it is impossible to guess what the 'Fraxinus' chronicler actually meant.]

4 - [ This is obviously either a folk memory of the supreme Carthaginian sea-power in the Mediterranean around the time of the Punic Wars (216-164 bc), or of the Vandals' dominating navy in the 6th century AD.]

5 - [ Since this is used for street lighting, this would appear (despite the text's use of the same name) to be a variant of Greek Fire - perhaps using only the ingredient naphtha, which receives its name from the Arabic al-naft, and has a later history of use for this purpose in industrial England.]

6 - [ Possibly a Christianised version of the Carthaginian G.o.ddess, Tank, to whom babies were sacrificed.]

7 - [ This, and another similar reference, are additions to the original ma.n.u.script. Even were they not inscribed marginally in different handwriting, context would prove as much: the role of Rattus Rattus in carrying the 'plague flea' was not realised until 1896. I suspect a Victorian collector read this doc.u.ment at some point in its existence; a descendant, perhaps, of the man who wrote 'Fraxinus me fecit' on the outer sheet in the 1700s.]

8 - [ Possibly China. By the physical description in the text, this is not Rattus Rattus, the Black Rat, but Rattus Norvegicus, the Brown Rat, which is Asian in origin.]

9 - [ Ash's concern with the destructive capacity of rodents is original to 'Fraxinus', and must have been a similar problem for all army commanders.]

10 - [ Presumably 'cervix']

11 - [ Otherwise De Re Militari. The 1408 edition, made on the orders of Lord Thomas Berkeley?]

12 - [ The mediaeval medical theory of humours attributes health to a balance of the sanguine (dry), choleric (hot), phlegmatic (wet) and melancholy (cold) humours in the body. Ill-health is a predominance of one over the others.]

Part Seven: 1 - [ Young pike.]

2 - [ The geography of Visigothic Carthage, as depicted in the 'Fraxinus' ma.n.u.script, does not appear to wildly contradict the known archaeological facts. The compa.s.s directions are a little off, but there is more often than not a mismatch between site and chronicle in archaeology.

In fact, there were two enclosed harbours behind an isthmus: the commercial harbour and the great naval s.h.i.+pyards. They were a feature of what we may call Liby-Phoenecian, or Carthaginian, Carthage; as was the Byrsa, an enclosed hilltop citadel within the main city itself. The streets were, indeed, stepped.

Close to this original site, Roman Carthage added other features, including water-storage cisterns, aqueducts, baths, an amphitheatre, and many features of civilised life; as well as their own great naval s.h.i.+pyards.

[Anna - here's my rough aerial sketch of the ruins of present-day Carthage, and a proposed geography of 15c Visigoth Carthage.

I've included a possible new Visigoth harbour (which, like areas of the Roman/Carthaginian ones here, and the one at Leptis Magna, may have silted up in the interim).