A Reply To A Reader And An Announcement

As Ralphus stated, just like your favorite local radio station in those bygone days, we do take requests. In a comment following my post on the Evolution of the French Carabins, relatively new visitor Doran Davis posed the following:

“I'd be even more grateful if there are other great websites or blogs that you're aware of? My interest for wargaming and reenacting covers a few diverse time eras. The information for the era of Louis XIV is a bit vague. The many different regiments that were created and then disbanded, encompassed many cycles of these activities. Do you know where I might be able to obtain some of this information?
I really appreciate your blog and the efforts that you and many others do make here and in other places for this era to be understood.
Thanxs,
Doran Davis”

A proper answer to these questions would obviously be too long for a reply comment, and I considered simply sending Doran a private e-mail. However, reviewing our “Followers” and looking at comments that we’ve received from far and wide, it seemed to me that we might have other newer readers like Doran who do not have “all the usual suspects” already bookmarked, may not know which books are available on Google Books (or even which books to look for), may not be aware of the various online sources for artwork (both period and reconstructed), and may not know what Forums exist that specialize in our favorite time period. So, locating this information in one post that can be labeled and referenced easily might be of interest to a wider readership than just Doran.

I will state at the outset that it’s highly unlikely that I am aware of every possible resource out there. Certainly Ralphus is more knowledgeable about historical reenacting, except possibly the Late Fur Trade era through the final period of Westward Expansion in the United States, say 1830 through 1890, which I have participated in as a reenactor and a vendor/supplier. And certainly our own Corporal Trim is much more knowledgeable in certain aspects of 17th and early 18th century warfare than I am, and has some wonderful resources for artwork and figures. And it should go without saying that I am always indebted to regular readers Curt Johnson and Daniel Schorr, both of whom are historians of note who have their own web projects and many wonderful non-English reference sources which they willingly share. Both have, through comments here or private e-mails that we have exchanged, greatly increased my knowledge and the resources that I now have available. And certainly our "foreign" visitor's like our friend Motorway with his "Anna Domini 1672" blog have added greatly to our non-English resources for period artwork and documentation.

I am going to put the actual Resource Guide in my next post, completely separate, with only “Resource Guide” as a label. It is my hope that Ralphus and the other gentlemen I’ve named, as well as any other readers out there with their own sources to share, will send them to me via a comment on this post or an e-mail and I will continue to update the one master post labeled “Resource Guide”. In this way our blog truly becomes a “community”, or “village”, in the best sense of those words. Any of you who frequent web sites like “The Miniatures Page”, or various Yahoo Groups, know that one of the most repeated questions from those new to the era is always a variation on “what one book can I buy or web site can I visit to give me an overview or feel of the period?” While there may not be one single book or site out there, maybe we can provide a “select” bibliography that new visitor’s can utilize, and that even veteran visitor’s can refer to from time to time.

Bill