Hilltop Middle Flags: Fill & Download for Free

I live in a country that is below sea level. I live in a nation where we turned a sea into a lake and created a new province by draining away part of said lake.I live in a land known for Kazakh steppe flowers*. And for cheese. And for beer. But our two next door neighbours might disagree. They think they make the best beer in the world.I live in a land which has a long history in art. For example: there was this religious painter from the late Middle Ages, but you probably think he’s Spanish. Then there was that guy from the capital who painted the city militia. You heard about him. And also that guy who left our country, went south, and painted a lot despite issues of insanity.Oh, yes, there’s that guy from the minority province who drew pictures that defied the laws of reality. But I guess you think he’s German.I wanted to go on and name more great artists, like the one who painted kitchen tiles, but if I did, I’d never get finished.I live in a province which was named after a Roman camp called Ur-Traiectum. This used to represent the outer limits of the Roman Empire.And I live in a town that used to be a swamp with a hilltop until the local monks dug a ditch to drain the water. The result is that the town used to be called “the Hump” in our local language. You may not have heard about it, but there was a very rich American whose family came from here. They have a huge family estate in North Carolina.Our flag has the same colours as the US flag, but we had those colours first.Oh, yes, and we explored the seven seas. One of my countrymen founded a settlement at the southern tip of Africa. Two of my countrymen independently of each other discovered that big island south of Australia.Want to know more? Contact me via comments.

Are there any forms of instant communication that could have been used in the Middle Ages?There were means of signaling across distances. The communication was not as instantaneous as the internet or cell phone, but in a time when news of a change in who was King could take months or perhaps years, signal beacons on hilltops worked to warn of advancing armies.Another means of signaling was to place a beacon atop a church. Churches were usually the tallest building around. I remember sitting in a hotel window in the 1970s and marveling at all the church spires across London. I could find only references to surviving beacons, but Europe might have more.The author of an article about “Cresset” used a book from the 1800s as a source:There is a cresset beacon in the vestry of St John’s Church, Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, UK, built between 1130 and 1160, which may possibly date from the reign of Edward III. It was certainly used at the time of the Armada.The cresset is still remaining at Hadley Church, Middlessex, reminding us of the warlike days when watches were regularly stationed at such places “Before the reign of Edward III, beacons were but stacks of wood set up on high places, which were fired when the coming of enemies was descried; but in his reign pitch-boxes, as now they be, were, instead of those stacks, set up; and this properly is a beacon.” (Lord Croke.). On top of a turret at the South West angle of the tower is an iron cresset, fire pan or pitch-pot, an almost unique survivor of other days. It was erected by the monks to guide wayfarers crossing Enfield Chase by night, and travellers to or from St Albans, or the north. The beacon may have been used as late as 1745 to provide an alarm to warn of the Stuart rising in the North. It was used for a more pleasant occasion to mark the marriage of the Prince of Wales in 1863, when the future Edward VII married Princess Alexandra of Denmark.”I am assuming the quoted material is from the book he used, Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England.Other than those methods, couriers with fast horses could be sent with messages or warnings. This was uncertain however as horses went lame, robbers lay in wait, and spies were willing to assassinate such messengers.At time, homing pigeons were trained to carry messages, but they too were uncertain. Birds of prey could take them, the weather could delay or kill them, and illnesses could kill them.I seem to remember that signals involving flags were used, but I can’t remember the details.Not until the railroad, television, the telegraph and telegrams, and other inventions of much later centuries was instant communication possible.How fast is the Beacon of Gondor?The origin of the Cresset nameA brief history of how people communicated in the Middle Ages

I’m not sure how often this was done in reality, but I’ve certainly seen it referenced in fiction: ‘counting banners’ and ‘counting campfires’.Each sub-unit of troops would have a banner, or flag. This was essential for discipline and battlefield organisation: in the noise and dust and confusion of a battle, one thing you always had be sure of was being able to see your unit’s banner flying above the crowd.You had to keep close to it; if you lost sight if it in the press of moving bodies, it meant you’d been separated from your fellow-soldiers and were probably about to die. If you saw the banner moving, you had to follow it — in the noise of battle you might not hear a shouted command to “Advance!” or “Retreat!”, but you’d see the banner.In the more organised armies of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, a banner would probably denote a specific number of men; either a company of 100 or a regiment of 1,000. So, count the number of banners you see from hiding as the army marches past; if there are 23 of them, then there are either 2,300 or 23,000 soldiers. (It would be easy to tell which.) In practice the army is likely to be smaller than that, since units were rarely at full strength; but the number of banners at least gives an upper limit.For earlier armies, there would be less certainty since units were of a more irregular size: but every feudal lord or vavasour would have his own banner and command his own unit of troops, so counting flags would still give a rough idea of size.At night, counting campfires is another way to estimate the total size of an army. If from a hilltop you can see the watchfires of a hundred circling camps, then if you know from experience roughly how many soldiers would be gathered round a single campfire, you can multiply that number by the number of fires to get the total army size.Of course, generals could certainly try to be sneaky and throw off enemy scouts, for example by lighting extra campfires or having each regiment fly two banners, in order to give the impression that an army was larger than its actual size — or vice-versa. But such deceptions require planning and materials, so could not be done every single time.