Military History Photo Friday: A Viennese Death Organ from 1678

I was rummaging through some old photos yesterday and came across some from the Military History Museum in Vienna I took back in 2013. The museum has an incredible collection from the 16th century up to modern times, with an especially strong World War One section. More on that in a later post. Today I'm sharing something from a bit earlier, an attempt to make a quick firing gun from 1678. It was constructed by Daniel Kollman, a gun maker for the Holy Roman Empire.

By this time guns were in common use on the battlefield and armor was on its way out, but guns still suffered from the fact that they could only fire one shot and took a while to reload. Various attempts were made to solve this, such as making guns with two or more barrels. Another solution was to put rows of guns on a carriage. This device was called a ribauldequin and appeared as early as the 14th century. It also earned the name "organ gun" since its barrels looked like the barrels of a church organ, although the music wasn't as good.

Because I couldn't get behind the ribauldequin, I couldn't see its firing mechanism. I presume it was a series of flintlocks that set off the powder in the barrels. It would have made quite a nasty antipersonnel weapon against a closely packed group of pike men, one of the more common infantry formations at the time. Reloading it must have taken ages!

Military History Photo Friday: Luxury Armor in Vienna

I've posted here before about visiting the lovely city of Vienna, which feels like a museum with all its palaces, elegant nineteenth-century cafes, and fine squares. While I wouldn't want to live in a museum for very long, I certainly enjoyed my visit.

One interesting spot was the Royal Armory, housed like many Viennese museums in an old Hapsburg palace. It has one of the best collections of luxury arms and armor made for nobility in Europe.

Above are three suits of blued steel made in Augsburg around 1570. Blued steel is created by heating the metal to 300°C, polishing it, and reheating it to 300°C again. It creates an attractive finish but doesn't make the steel stronger.

Below are two other blued steel harnesses with gold inlay, and a shield that you wouldn't want to use in battle. They were made around 1575 for Don Juan de Austria, the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, back when the empire included Spain. He led the Spanish to victory over the Ottomans in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, the same battle where Cervantes got wounded.

For more on this amazing collection, check out my post on Black Gate about The Royal Armory of Vienna.


Photos copyright Sean McLachlan.

Travel Tuesday: Mysterious Stone Book in Vienna

Here's an odd little sign I spotted in Vienna last year. You'd think it would be hanging above a bookshop or library, but it isn't. Perhaps the building changed hands? Judging from the style, it looks like it was made in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Not that I'm an expert.
Austria's capital is a wonderful destination for art and culture. The museums are in old Hapsburg palaces and the cafes serve up cakes that will kill you with kindness. I got to thinking about Vienna yesterday because former Gadling colleague Pam Mandel wrote about a fun blog post about the Vienna flea market. Check it out. She's a great travel writer!

Military History Photo Friday: The Danger of Avalanches on the Alpine Front

This photo shows Austro-Hungarian troops positioned at the peak of Mt. Ortler in the Alps in 1917. The Alpine front was one of the worst places to be during World War One, and these guys don't look like they got a very good posting. Looks cold, doesn't it? In fact they were probably glad to be up there because being at the top of a mountain they didn't have to worry about one of the front's greatest killers--the avalanche.

Avalanches killed at least 60,000 men on the Alpine front as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy fought for possession of mountain slopes and narrow valleys. Avalanches are common in the Alps, and what with all the noise from artillery fire they became a lot more common.

One story that's often repeated about the front is that the opposing sides targeted above enemy positions in order to create avalanches to bury them. I've even repeated that tale myself in an article or two. According to this interesting article on the website La Grande Guerra, it isn't true. The author could find no contemporary mention of that tactic, and veterans he interviewed said they never saw it during their service. That's the interesting thing about history, no matter how much you study it, you're always learning something new!

It makes me feel relieved to learn those guys didn't inflict that on one another. While trekking in the Annapurna range in Nepal in 1994, I saw a major avalanche that covered an entire mountainside. I was on a different mountain on the opposite side of a valley so I was safe, but it sent a tingle up my spine. Just a few days before a Japanese mountaineering team had been all but wiped out by an avalanche. It would be a terrible way to go.


Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Military History Photo Friday: Romania Defeated in World War One

This is an Austro-Hungarian propaganda poster from 1916 celebrating the defeat of Romania. That year Romania joined the allies fighting Germany and Austro-Hungary on the promise of territorial gains. Their army was woefully out-of-date, however, and a quick offensive by the Central Powers crushed them.

Here a German and Autro-Hungarian soldier are celebrating a round as the prisoners come racing in. In reality both armies had supply shortages by this time. The Austro-Hungarian soldier would have been dressed in tattered clothing and neither would have been drinking beer unless they had plundered it from some Romanian village.

The defeated army is interesting too. Not only does it show Romanian soldiers (who surrendered in droves, often not having fired a shot) and their Russian allies but also British and even a Colonial Sikh soldier. Well, there's nothing like a good bit of propaganda!

An interesting footnote to this campaign is that a young German Lieutenant named Erwin Rommel distinguished himself during the fighting. He wrote an excellent analysis of the campaign. I've read it, but I can't seem to find it online. Any university library should have it, though. It's considered a classic.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Teutonic Treasure and Archaeology

When I'm not blogging here, I often do guest blogs at other sites. Recently I did a post for the Black Gate blog on The Church and Treasury of the Teutonic Order, Vienna. Black Gate is a leading fantasy magazine that runs a great blog on all things genre. Last year they published my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence, which you can download as a free ebook.

I'm also now the "Archaeology Expert" on the The Scout Project, a fun blog run by former Gadling coworker Libby Zay. It covers all sorts of subjects and encourages readers to go out and explore for themselves. She just interviewed me about my archaeology career.

Expect to see more from me on both these blogs in coming weeks!

My travel year, a look back and a look forward

Tallinn in winter.

This past year has been pretty good for me as far as travel goes. I managed to visit three new countries—Estonia, Slovenia, and Austria. In addition I got in some other smaller trips such as visiting an Italian book festival to celebrate the translation of one of my books, did lots of caving, saw Edinburgh, plus the usual visits to Oxford and London. I also visited Tangier three times. I’ve really fallen for that relaxed Moroccan port and I’ve been getting a lot of work done on a novel set there.

Sadly, there was no great adventure travel in 2013. In 2012 I got to visit Iraq and the year before that I spent a couple of months living in Harar, Ethiopia. This year I spent entirely in Europe with a toehold in Africa. Am I getting old? No, it’s just that my travel funds are drying up thanks to my main sugar daddy, the travel blog Gadling, closing up shop.

This is going to make 2014 a tight travel year. Oxford and Tangier are in, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford much more than that. Both of those will be working/research trips. Beyond that, I may just hole up in my apartment and write a ton of fiction, like I mentioned in an earlier post.

Of course, the New Year might bring some surprises. Who knows where I may end up in the next twelve months?

What were your big trips in 2013? Anything good planned for the New Year?

Military History Photo Friday: A Combination German Halberd Pistol

On my recent trip to Vienna I got to see some great museums. One of my favorites was the collection of Hapsburg arms and armor at the Neue Berg. I'm working on an article about this place, which has one of the greatest collections of medieval arms and armor anywhere.

Here's one interesting item: a combination halberd and double-barreled rifle made in Germany c.1580. You can see it at the top of a case of other early firearms.

Here's a closeup. As you can see it has two wheellocks, firing mechanisms that are wound up and then released by the pull of a trigger. Given the ornamentation on the halberd, I'm thinking this was intended more for show as a curio than as an actual weapon. A lot of these combination weapons have survived from the Middle Ages and Renaissance but I've never read an account of one actually being used. They all tend to be similarly ornamental, which may explain why so many have survived.

More on Vienna

Still buzzing from my Vienna trip. My first travel article is out already and there will be more to come. This one is a general overview. The others will be more history oriented.

Vienna is a great place for high culture. I was totally blown away by the galleries and museums, and the fact that many are in palaces. The above shot, for example, is the cafe in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the main art museum that I mention in my last post. That's right, this is the cafe. The rest of the museum is even better.

Vienna is a museum junkie's paradise. Not only do they have all the usual museums (such as a military history museum I'll be writing up for another blog) but they have lots of random weird museums, like an Esperanto Museum (more on that in a later post) and a Globe Museum. The Globe Museum is a compelling place for anyone who loves travel and geography.

As the Christmas season approaches there are plenty of winter markets selling food and gifts. One of them was in the Museum Quarter near my hotel. The little rounded huts you see here sold mulled wine and bratwurst, perfect for a chilly Viennese night. That glowing box had a DJ in it and was pumping out tunes!

Back from Vienna!

I'm back in Spain after a wonderful five days in Vienna. I'll be publishing more about my trip here and on other sites, but at the moment let me just leave you with this stunning piece of Renaissance art from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This is the most impressive art museum I've ever been to, beating even the Met and the Prado. They have a huge collection of fine art from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance.

This lapis lazuli bowl with gold, rubies, emeralds, pearls, garnets, and enamel was made in Milan around 1565. The dragon looks pretty Chinese, doesn't it? Marco Polo had made his voyages two hundred years before and there was some contact between Italy and China by this time. I've never seen a piece like this, though! The Kunsthistorisches Museum has hundreds of pieces like this.