Category TIFAM Archive

Men of Forlorn Hope

The Lisowczyks formed as a fierce body of Polish light cavalry, carrying the wild spirit of a mercenary host sustained through spoils of conquest. Brought together in 1607 as a soldierly confederation under the command of Aleksander Józef Lisowski, they drew their name from his—his legacy shaping their banner long after his death. Their allegiance lay with the Commonwealth, though coin never reached their hands; sustenance came through spoils alone. They struck into towns and villages across enemy lands, tearing through stone and spirit alike, burning, seizing, and destroying with furious purpose. Churches and monasteries yielded no sanctuary. Their passage carved terror into the lives of the innocent. In the Czech lands, long after the company ceased, mothers carried tales of Lisowszczyks to frighten children into obedience, casting them as creatures of fire and blood, unmatched in malice. Their vanishing defied a single date—by the mid-1620s, they drifted from the field, their once-unique imprint fading into the broader chaos of war.

In form and function, the Lisowczyks mirrored the shape of Polish cavalry from their day. Each unit bore the name of a banner, often numbering between one hundred and four hundred men. These banners gathered comrades—bannermen—and footsoldiers alike. Alongside them rode unattached servants, who, though second in status, frequently joined the fight. Yet a crucial difference marked them from the Polish standard: the Lisowczyks chose their own colonels from within their ranks.

They surged through Europe as the swiftest warriors of their time, rivalled only by the relentless Tartars. In one stretch of daylight, they could cover one hundred and sixty kilometres—four times the range of the most agile forces of the age.

An Unnatural History of the Bow: Trivia for the Terminally Curious Archer

We like our archers graceful, all clean lines and poised stillness. We imagine a certain elegant geometry of the human form, a partnership between body and bow. History, however, keeps its own accounts, and they tell a story etched in warped bone and strained sinew. The body of the true war archer was a thing remade, a specialised engine of violence. Skeletons recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose and other medieval sites show us the truth: men with thickened left arms, distorted spines, and grotesquely enlarged joints around the left wrist, left shoulder, and right hand. This is the physical receipt for a lifetime of devotion, a process begun in childhood, with boys as young as seven learning to pull the string.
They were training to master a beast. The draw weights of English war bows were immense, starting around 90 pounds-force and soaring to a staggering 160 or even 180 lbf. This is a force that few modern men could command once, let alone for the duration of a battle. The technique itself was a full-body agony. The 16th-century bishop Hugh Latimer described how an English archer “laid his body in the bow,” a visceral image of a man pressing his entire weight into the stave, a human press converting flesh and bone into projectile energy. This was the price of admission to the world’s most devastating ranged infantry.

The archer’s body became a living testament to the bow’s demands, a beautiful and terrible asymmetry. The true, unvarnished history of our craft is a story written in this strange ink of sinew, bone, and poison; enforced by absurd laws; and etched into the very skeletons of its masters. It is a history of humanity’s darkest and most brilliant impulses, all converging on a single, pointed end.

A Hunger for the Old Aim

A hush settles in, a quiet breath drifting through the vast expectant cinema as the first glint of dawn appears on screen and paints Panem in a fresh, solemn glow. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping unfolds with solemn…

War of the Feathers Part 7

V It was too warm for Evander, the searing aftershock of heat from the exertion of battle engulfing him. “That’s a deep wound, I’d say,” Xiphos stated quietly, feline blood still glistening upon his armour. They stood before the slain…

An Arrow’s Moral Geometry

A single arrow, loosed beneath a moonless sky, carves a new reality from a father’s certainty, flinging it toward the unknown. 28 Years Later greets its audience with a scream: a fractured symphony of instinct and intention, of despair and…

Colum Cille 3D 2025

I was excited to be back at Ballywalter for a couple of reasons, one of which was because of the new species of pheasant introduced to the estate. This species is known as Reeve’s Pheasant and comes from China. And…