> >I don't see how you can dismiss the Taborites as "extremely poorly
> >equipped and badly led" considering that they fought in well-equipped
> >wagon fortresses-laagers and were ably led by one Zizka Hus, a
> >distinguished knight.
>The average Taborites were rural and urban poor, hardly model troops.
Which is typical for most armies in the period (as Kings and Nobles calculated that it was better for the scum-of-the-earth to die in defense of the realm than the productive members of society). While the Tabourites did have a shortage of knights they were far from being "extremely poorly equipped". Each wagon was supposed to have two handgunners, six crossbowmen, two flail-carriers, four halberdiers, two shield carriers, and two well-armed drivers. Generals have swapped sides for less...
>Zizka (spell him as you will) was a fairly talented commander, but
>he was badly compromised by splintering within the spiritual arm
>of his movement.
And to argue from this that the Tabourites were badly led is to confuse its military leadership (the leadership that makes the troops effective on the battlefield) with its political direction (the aims in which it fights for).
> >As for the Muenster Anabaptists, they managed to seize control of
> >the city after which the local bishop retook after besieging it for
> >a year. While they may have been poorly equipped and badly led
> >(insofar as Jan Beuckelzoon attempts to relieve the siege by
> >charging out with only twenty men), I don't consider their success
> >to be overly startling, considering they never managed to raise
> >much support from Anabaptists elsewhere in Germany.
>That's typical of the impact I'm talking about: intense but local.
But you originally said that you found their success to be startling considering their poor leadership and equipment whereas the Hussites weren't either of these things and the Muenster Anabaptists was pretty much what one would expected if they had sezied control of the city.
>They
>managed to hold Muenster for about a year against a combined army of
>Catholics and Protestants (which took some doing, I suspect) while
>managing a complete reorganization of society within the city.
Not really. Siege warfare was a real pain in those days as German cities often walled themselves quite well to preserve their independence.
>The wider impact of Millenial groups is the way elements of their
>philosophies kept getting recycled by similar groups.
Which is true of most uprisings that one can care to think of. The French Revolution, Spartacus, Masada, Tupac Amaru have all been used. I do not consider that because Millenial philosophy was recycled, it had some special resonance within the human psyche that set the downtrodden free. Rather they reappeared because they were a legitimate interpretation of the standard religious texts that could be used to justify the uprising (or whatever political deed one desires).
>In Ralios, where city-states are the norm, groups like these
>could ptentially seize a whole country before being beaten
>down by their neighbors.
You seem to be implying from the dramatic example of Muenster that this sort of thing should be a not unusual occurrence in Ralios. I find this difficult to accept. Muenster was unusual in that a bunch of loons took over, while most religious change was actually far less dramatic. For a domination by a religious group, I would take Savonarola and Florence as being more typical.
>(The Flagellants were relatively low key and orthodox in Italy; they
>might have had another Muenster had they been more "German" in their
>approach to flagellism.)
In the first outbreak, they were prominent in Germany and the Netherlands for instigating anti-Semitic violence (which lead to their suppression).
> >I have doubts about this for Safelstran religion is centred upon
> >Arkat rather than the Kingdom of Logic. Longing for the Kingdom
> >of Logic makes as much sense as Christians longing for King
> >Solomon's time.
>The longing in the Middle Ages wasn't for the Roman Empire, it was
>for a fantasy kingdom loosely based on Biblical stories.
But the longing in Safelster _is_ for the Autarchy which Arkat founded. There's a discussion about this in the Glorantha: Intro p54-57. The world of losers movement (the Gloranthan Flagellants) even worships Arkat the Martyr (Ibid p60).
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