Archaeologists may have found the grave of the legendary “fourth musketeer”
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Surprising to me too. On the Bones serial, she takes one look at a skeleton and knows the gender.
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Someone mentioned it above, but it's a lot harder than we used to think it was. There are differences between male and female pelvis shapes, but they aren't always obvious. especially in older remains. And I think there's a bit more overlap than previously thought. A number of remains have been re-identified due to DNA evidence, after previously being classified as one sex or the other based on bone evidence.Surprising to me too. On the Bones serial, she takes one look at a skeleton and knows the gender.
Which does just go to show you can't always tell...but let's not go there.
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I'd stated in the past on believing the book to be an almost satirical critique and had often wondered why people ever thought they were good guys. All they pretty much do is get drunk, fight, and not pay their debts. Between D’Artagnan being instructed on how to "properly" beat his servants to they point they become psychologically dependent on him and therefore no longer need to be paid and the story ending with them them high fiving after lynching Athos's ex-wife, I pretty much had thought narrator was sarcastic any time he praised them.
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I mean, no mention of the 1993 film. I feel like Chris O'Donnel deserved at least 3rd place as a mention there next to Vladimir and Kelly.
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Albino_Boo
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
You are mixing things up. The Musketeers existed at the tail end of the pike and shot era. The ring bayonet hadn't been invented. Infantry still needed a back up weapon for firearms. After the ring bayonet, Infantry didn't need a back up and swords became the weapon of officers only in Infantry units. Bayonets have a significant reach advantage over axes and they can also parry much easier. The sword also has a significant reach advantage and you can't parry with an axe anything like as easily as a sword.
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Nowadays we have ground penetrating radar for that.
I once had the pleasure of attending the search for an original tomb of a 10th century person in the church where they were rumoured to be initially buried – before their documented later re‑burial elsewhere – and all it took was a day or two of wheeling the radar around a grid and a few months (?) of data analysis.
Alas, the result was most probably negative, IIRC.
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That was Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), but remember Michel du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1731–1759), Jacques Roch du Motier de La Fayette (1711-1734)...
There was not only one Marquis de Lafayette, like there was not only one Duke of York.
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In the Netherlands burials under the church floor were extremely common. The main church close to where I live in Haarlem has 400 of them. So you can detect there's a skeleton, but that would be no surprise. Identifying using ground radar is not possible I think.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Kerk,_Haarlem The English version does not mention the number 400, the Dutch one does.
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Couple points there
1) tomahawks are ranged weapons - you can (and north americans did) throw them. Not very far or especially accurately, but more than enough to outrange a bayonet. It was indeed very popular with colonists in North America. (It was/is also a useful tool for various campaign purposes, like cutting wood for shelter or fire.)
2) A number of pre-contact north American tribes wore (non-metal) armor -- but this rapidly fell out of favor post-contact, as the armor proved ineffective against firearms. Sort of a speedrun of arms evolution, skipping past swords* and pikes entirely, along with most close-formation tactics.
*except further south; a macahuatl is sufficiently swordlike for our purposes.
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The one that immediately comes to mind is British longbowmen that have pretty distinct asymmetrical bone deformities including a twisted spine and an enlarged left shoulder.
I would think you'd also be able to identify a Hatter via all the mercury as well but that'd require some tests on the bones and wouldn't be obvious just from observation
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There is only one Three Musketeers film I enjoy watching over and over again, and that’s it (together with its sequel). By far the best, with an absolutely brilliant cast. For years (and maybe still) considered by actual swordsmen as the most realistic sword fighting on film.
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Don’t beat yourself up too badly. At least you weren’t letting GenAI make up D’Artagnan quotes
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Albino_Boo
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
The most dangerous weapon infantry had was the musket. A musket ball out ranges a thrown axe, is harder to dodge and can be reloaded. The standard off hand weapon of officers was a pistol. Its longer ranged, can be reloaded and harder to dodge. The only advantage the tomahawk has is if you get within 3 feet. However to get there, you would have to survived one or two volleys of fire and then people trying to stab you with a bayonet or sword. Especially more so for any unit facing the British Army after 1745 because they had adopted the tactic on not engage the person in front of you but the one to the immediate right. This was developed in answer to the Highland charge. Scottish rebels carried muskets, a basket hilted broadsword and a small shield known as trage. The Scots would fire a volley and charge the British line where their sword and shield would give them an advantage. However by attacking the unguarded side to the right that advantage disappeared.
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I would think having a spent bullet in the throat and being buried, in a bit of a rush during an ongoing siege by the Royal French forces would make the chance of it being a member of the female sex... rather low ? Not unlikely but approach the post 0. digits ?
And even if the skeleton was definitely male, it does not conclusively prove it was the Comte D'Artagnan. Not saying it that would not be fun Am now rummaging for my disks of the more than excellent BBC Series
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This made me lolDon’t beat yourself up too badly. At least you weren’t letting GenAI make up D’Artagnan quotes
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A hatter’s wife/family might be exposed to enough mercury such that it wouldn’t allow sex determination. But I like the idea that some professions would leave mineral markers in bone.
EDIT: And I didn’t know that about bowmen, so thanks for the tidbit!
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Not rare for a civilian of some ilk or other to get shot during a siege, I’d imagine. So a woman getting shot during a siege would be far from 0% probability, although I would concede that the evidence of a high status person who’d been shot (resulting in them being buried under a church’s altar) would weight more heavily towards the probability it were a man than a woman.
Most definitively, if they do get usable DNA, that seems a pretty good way to sex the skeleton.
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"The Three Musketeers" was my favorite novel as a child. I had no idea it was based on real people! More info on the other musketeers: https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/three-musketeers-real-athos-porthos-aramis-dartagnan/
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Oh, totally. I was just in general mentioning a couple examples of occupational related changes that could be seen in skeleton remains since the previous poster had mentioned them.
Some would definitely be also useful for gender determination though I think. Like there weren't that many women archers in England, so that would be relatively conclusive. There perhaps could've been women running the carroting vats for hatmaking though...
I do wonder if the "carrying a baby on a thrust out hip" pose that every parent does might show in the skeleton of someone who has a lot of kids though.
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All these comments and no love for a 2001 Crouching Tigeresque D'Artagnan fighting a menacing Tim Roth. Stephen Rea as Cardinal Richelieu too. Pretty enjoyable watch if you want fight scenes.
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I never realized how much I needed this 'til now. Who are we using as the Musketeers? Fozzie is clearly Porthos. Gonzo is Athos, I think. Animal is Aramis? Or should Aramis be played by Rowlf?
Kermit is, of course, D'Artagnan.
Should Miss Piggy be Queen Anne, or Constance Bonacieux?
Beaker or Rizzo as King Louis XIII?
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This is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery but honest deductive thinking leaves pretty much no alternatives :
The person who is buried there received special honours, and if a female led or particpated in a charge in the siege of Maastricht and died in the effort one would think sources would have mentioned that ?
Any normal civilian would not be buried inside the church but in her parish graveyard. And especially not in a place of honour near the altar.
Yes the likelihood for a female of noble rank as part of the French Royal Army which is unlucky enough getting killed in this siege in that age is... negligible ? But as stated it might simply be another male (noble) officer...
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So, this is cool, but it really only works when you're talking about the human cultural concept of primogeniture. They're only tracking first-born son to first-born son and establishing the line backwards to say "I'm the heir of Marc Anthony!"
In reality, pedigree collapse is a thing. We think of family trees as adding two new branches every generation going up, but in reality, those branches cross a lot (a very lot, if you're a Habsburg).
Per the wiki:
Without pedigree collapse, a person's ancestor tree is a binary tree, formed by the person, the parents (2), the grandparents (4), great-grandparents (8), and so on. However, the number of individuals in such a tree grows exponentially and will eventually become impossibly high. For example, a single individual alive today would, over 30 generations going back to the High Middle Ages, have 230 or roughly 1 billion ancestors, more than the total world population at the time.
Continuing:
If one considers as a function of time t the number of a given individual's ancestors who were alive at time t, it is likely that for most individuals this function has a maximum at around 1200 AD. It was suggested in 1985 that everyone on Earth is at most 50th cousin to everyone else, based on a relatively random mating model.
I think I learned about this on an article here long ago about Christopher Lee where he claimed to be a descendant of Charlemagne. Which sounds impressive until you look at the math and theory above and realize that there is a high, virtually certain, likelihood that every single human being alive today with European ancestry is also a descendant, through some line or other, of Charlemagne. (This is increasingly certain if you have French or German ancestry and probably becomes slightly less likely if you are an isolated population, like Sami, for instance). This almost certainly bears true for all of us with European ancestry when we talk about people like Marc Anthony.
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I was thinking that even the occasional woman who was a good archer — maybe a man with no sons taught his daughter to help hunting game — wouldn’t have been using the heavy-draw war bow, so probably wouldn’t have developed that kind of physique. You don’t need that kind of draw for a hunting bow.
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The claim was close to zero percent chance, which is entirely fallacious. It’s not about being Sherlock Holmes or whatever other dismissive claim you might make. It’s about the probability being nowhere near what was claimed.
Don’t get all snarky at me just because you made a dumb claim.
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scortiusthecharioteer
Ars Centurion
Those 2 movies (filmed as one, which I believe screwed over the cast and crew and led to some changes in how things can be made) are such a rollicking good time. Have seen them many times.
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Things sealed under altars being released in this timeline? Please, no...
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Dragoons or light horsemen were mounted infantry who wielded long-arm weapons (like muskets). They rode horses for mobility but didn't fight from horseback - that was cavalry's job.
That's why "the charge of the light horse brigade" was such a daring act - these were men and horses who were neither trained nor armed for it pulling off a cavalry charge. Bayoneted rifles were used instead of lances.
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Steven Brust deliberately changes his style between books btw, so you have to like the setting and characters, not the style specifically.
(“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” - am I waiting for more of Taltos? Why, yes, yes I am...)
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Dragoons were originally mounted infantry in the 16th century, but by the 19th century had long taken on the role of hybrid mounted infantry and light cavalry. An example would be the cavalry of the U.S. Army in American West, trained for both fighting on horseback and dismounting to fight as infantry.
The Light Brigade in Crimea was perfectly capable of the role their orders covered — chasing down retreating artillery. Chasing down retreating enemies is one of the key roles of light infantry, since the enemy is especially vulnerable in retreat and light cavalry can best catch up to take advantage of a retreat’s often poor defensive posture (historically, by far most battlefield deaths happened when formations broke during retreat, and could be chased down and routed).
The Light Brigade’s commander misunderstood the orders and charged a fully emplaced artillery position.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
Oh my! This is becoming a great authors thread!
Most people know the Flashman series. For mine, his Pyrates is among the finest of pirates novels, and The General Danced At Dawn is a superb narrative of life in a Scottish Regiment. All with a light touch. But for the real deal, his autobiography of jungle fighting on the Burma Front Quartered Safe Out Here is a superb read about a horrific war. Joe Haldeman did a similar thing (here's one for you) - novelist tells his own story - with his autobiographical 1968. Dark authentic stuff.
Dumas did a great thing. I didn't know about Fraser's filmography: I'm off to find out!
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Albino_Boo
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I worked with someone who had the surname Earl, he was naturally known as Duke
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Albino_Boo
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
1. You cant just go hunting in western Europe. The animals are the property of the land owner. Poaching was a serious criminal offence, being caught risked the death sentence.
2. By the late 17th century hunting was done with guns not bows. If done illegally snare traps are far less risky than carrying a bow or gun.
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I have many (but not all) of the Flashmans, but ‘The Complete McAuslan’ (which contains ‘The General Danced At Dawn’) is an absolute delight.
“You cannot shake a Regimental Sergeant-Major; whatever the situation. He is unconquerable.”
And the wonderful:
“Some say that it actually happened, that a one hundred and twenty-eightsome reel was danced on the parade ground that night, General Sir Roderick MacCrimmon, KCB,DSO and bar, presiding; that it was danced by Highlanders, Fusiliers, Arabs, military police, and three German prisoners of war; that it was danced to a conclusion, all figures. It may well have been; all I remember is a heaving, rushing crowd, like a mixture of Latin Carnival and Scarlett’s uphill charge at Balaclava., surging ponderously to the sound of the pipes; but I distinctly recall one set in which the General, the pipe-sergeant, and what looked like a genuine Senussi in a burnous, swept by roaring ‘One, two, three,’ and I know, too, that at one point I personally was part of a swinging human chain in which my immediate partners were the Fusilear’s cook-sergeant and an Italian café proprietor from down the road. My memory tells me that it rose to a tremendous crescendo just as the first light of dawn stole over Africa, and then all faded away, silently, in the tartan-strewn morning.”
Gods damn that man could write.
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Albino_Boo
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
https://antigonejournal.com/2022/10/descendants-mark-antony/ . If you actually look at the medieval nobility, the majority lasted 100 before being wiped out. The York and Lancaster branches of House of Plantagenet was reduced to 1 man and 1 woman in 3 generations. Mathematical progression ignores actual history
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