> I doubt it has close resemblance with medieval long sword fighting, though :-)
It does actually resemble it very much, but medieval longsword fighting was probably very different than what you think it was.
> It must have been a lot slower fighting in leather, chainmail or plate armor than in this ultra light modern equipment.
Not really. The main difference is visibility. First, the modern HEMA equipment is a lot heavier than e.g. standard fencing gear. It's a lot thicker (like those dog attack suits) and often have steel or kevlar plates in the inside. Second, medieval gear wasn't all that heavy. I have a full suit of maille (as it's really called) and it weighs less than 15 kilos, helmet included. A full steel plate armour shouldn't weight more than 25 kilos. That's less than modern soldiers have to carry around on the battlefield.
The biggest difference is that a fencing mask gives you better visibility than a historical closed helmet.
> these guys fight one on one
That's what happened in medieval times too most often. The original medieval books were written mostly for one-on-one combat, either for dueling or trial-by-sword. That happened a lot more than being caught in a war on a battlefield. Swords have little use on a medieval battlefield anyway. You use different weapons and tactics.
> And fighting on some uneven, damp meadow [...] would be hard compared to fighting indoor on a floor.
My HEMA group trains for this as well, and I suspect many other groups too. It is also mentioned in the medieval books. I have trained in loose sand, in the surf on a beach, in deep snow, etc. It's true that competitions are usually held indoors on an even ground though.
I'm from upstate NY (US), and I agree wholeheartedly with everything mentioned here. This man speaks truth.
Our group focuses on medieval German Longsword, but we also take a dip into several other techniques, ranging through history from slings, to viking sword and axe, all the way through la canne and savate.
Like true vikings, we train in the snow (when the weather cooperates and gives us snowy fields). Nothing quite invigorates the blood like doing laps and duels in the frozen north!
I am surprised that nobody in this thread has mentioned the Dog Brothers from California. They do not fight with swords, but they practice live, full contact stick and staff fighting. In a cage. Without any armor.
Yes, I also thought that that can't possibly be a thing...
I came across a troupe of Longswording Englishmen in a fencing workshop in Scotland. They mainly practiced mowing down unarmed peasants with longswords, from what I could see. Perhaps you could expand on my limited insight?
He puts it a bit too general, but against full plate armour, swords are nearly useless. In the late Middle Ages, when plate armour became increasingly common, people started using weapons with better armour-piercing capabilities, like maces, warhammers and various polearms.
Swords are great against lightly armoured and unarmoured targets, like peasants, archers and civilians. Swords remained in use as a side arm and civilian weapon, and a popular duelling weapon, which may also be why so many medieval manuscripts are about one-on-one fights. Carrying a polearm with you everywhere you go is a lot more cumbersome than having a sword hanging on your belt.
But swords were absolutely used on the battlefield. Romans and vikings used them a lot. Knights had them of course, and even they became increasingly less useful against other knights, they often didn't really want to kill each other anyway. Pikemen generally had a short sword as backup weapon (the Katzbalger), and there's of course the massive two-handed swords used by Landsknechts to break up pike formations (supposedly; nobody knows for sure). But again knights in plate armour, you'd better get something that can knock holes in it. If you want to kill him, that it.
You might compare the sword to a pistol. You don't usually send a mass of soldiers into battle with just a pistol; you give them assault rifles (or polearms). But officers and civilians tend to carry a pistol, and maybe some soldiers have one for backup.
>He puts it a bit too general, but against full plate armor, swords are nearly useless.
A sword may not be an ideal weapon against an armored opponent, but half-swording with one is still very effective...
Also its important to note, the sword pedagogically-speaking is the root weapon of HEMA systems. So the fact these folks train with a sword as their primary weapon makes sense. Manuscripts support historical training following the same pattern. I teach you how to use a sword, then I teach you how to use a pole-axe...
This is a good point, I think people often overlook how knights and samurai on foot share the same battlefield weapon configuration: <primary weapon> + <longsword/Katana> + <dagger/Tantō>
>He puts it a bit too general, but against full plate armour, swords are nearly useless.
they are useless for penetration. The rest of effects are in place. The beauty and usability of sword comes from it being very convenient weapon to focus and amplify the power of your movement in much wider envelope of possible positions and movements - much better than any other type of weapon. Hammer/axe comes close but it trades in significant part of the envelope for penetrating abilities in other part of the envelope.
A spear or halberd were much more effective than swords.
Swords were partially ceremonial and partially "nobility" weapons. Walking around with a spear in town is tiring, because its big, heavy and awkward.
On the other hand, swords can be sheathed. They were expensive to manufacture, so they denoted wealth. And finally, they were effective weapons at the end of the day.
Pistol vs Machine Gun is the best way to compare a Swordman vs Spearman. It is said that you can train a Spearman in a week to beat even expert Swordsmen (with years of training) regularly.
Spears / Polearms were cheaper to manufacture, more effective in the battlefield, and easier to teach. Swords were more of a "city personal defense weapon", very similar to pistols today. I'm sure the HEMA players around here know how much that range advantage gives you.
A Halberd was perhaps the perfection of Medieval combat weaponry. A long spear-tip for stabbing, a strong blade for cutting, and a hook for pulling people off of horses. Halberds could definitely do a lot more than swordmen, at much cheaper costs.
I mean, what is a swordman supposed to do against a heavy-Calvary charge? Halberdiers also outrange Swordmen, and have stronger formations. The two-handed poleweapon can be swung with massive leverage that can break shields and cut through even plate with ease. While the stabbing point can be dug in to brace against calvery charges. It was an effective weapon at all stages of medieval combat.
The only swordmen on the medieval battlefield were the legendary "Double-paid" Zweihanders (The Doppelsöldner). But the massive swords these Doppelsoldners used were approximately the same size as a halberd.
But they were expensive, and the full-metal massive swords that they wielded were heavy, expensive, and required extensive training. (ie: more expensive) It was more effective in the long term to just train more Halberdiers, and the Zweihanders left the battlefield by the 1500s.
In any case, the "Longsword" is much shorter than these Zweihanders, and is at a considerable range disadvantage against spearmen. Mind you, King Author of legend killed Mordred with a Spear.
Swords were probably carried by Soldiers in case their primary weapon broke. They are excellent sidearms (like Pistols today), but I personally am much more comfortable with a pole-weapon (Spear, Pike or Halberd) than I am with a Sword. And I started with Foil Fencing mind you.
My understanding is that in battle, there were very few knights in full plate - it was very expensive, required training, ie. tended to be nobles. So while swords were effective against the peasants, knights were usually captured alive and ransomed.
Sure. The problem is that swords don't have much effect on an armoured opponent. There are three types of attacks you can do with a sword: slashing, stabbing and cutting. Against a gambeson (jacked made of 20+ layes of linen stitched together) stabbing works, slashing is hard and cutting mostly doesn't work. Now add a layer of maille over the gambeson. Cutting doesn't work at all anymore, slashing probably only bruises you or breaks some bones and stabbing only works with narrow and sharp-tipped swords. Replace the maille with steel plates and you're pretty much invulnerable to swords, except at the joints, eyeslits, etc).
So, sending out a group armed with swords on the battlefield isn't going to do much. You want warhammers with backspikes that can pierce steel plate and crush bone, halberds that can hit so hard it crushes anything underneath armour, long pikes to keep the enemy at a distance, bows to pierce maille. The best weapon on the battlefield is actually mass. Get a group large enough close together and trample your opponents.
That's how most battles were won. In viking and early medieval times you would use large shields and short spears, create a shield wall and run over your opponent. Later on heavy cavalry appeared who could easily run over them. Cavalry dominated until the English started using the longbow en masse to kill the mounts of the cavalry. Swiss pikemen started using 6+ meter long pikes in tight bock formations. These pikes were so long that cavalry could be stopped dead before they reached the pikemen in a charge. It's like a wooden cumple zone. That pretty much spelled the end of heavy cavalry. Then soldiers started using halberds to get in between the pikes and crush pike blocks.
Swords were often carried on the battlefield but usually as a backup weapon, not as the primary weapon. Their cross shape granted them a lot of symbolic meaning in those religious times, but there are much better weapons available if you want to win large battles.
I think the most important insight about medieval warfare is that it too was a constant arms-race, it was not some sort of static period with knights and swords that magically disappeared one day to be replaced with musketeers and riflemen. There are so many weird myths and ideas, and it's always nice to see people who know what they're talking about. :)
I've read a few accounts and seen a few programs about how the word bulletproof came about, which also illustrates this period of change. It was a title given to (plate?) armor to protect the wearers against bullets (I'm not sure to what effect). For that even to be a thing means that suits of armor and guns were on the same battlefield.
Early blackpowder was of poor quality, as were the handgonnes, and round balls are ballistically inefficient (and the actual projectiles were usually worse). So, probably pretty well, until you got too close.
P.S. The primary effect that I keep seeing mentioned is that they make a really loud noise and scare the crap out of everyone.
P.P.S As far as I can tell, the use of armor declines as the momentum of the projectiles (and number of firearms) goes up. Accuracy was the last attribute that was important on the battlefield. (Except for individual rate of fire.)
I'd imagine that facing a row of soldiers aiming things that go "boom" at you must have been an extremely effective way to break morale no matter how inaccurate the projectiles are.
Besides, all that hot lead had to go somewhere. Maybe you wouldn't be hit by the guy in front of you, but you'd still risk getting hit by the one behind him or the ones next to him. Arrows may have been more precise, but at least you could see where they were going.
I have no idea whether the term used at the time for sling ammunition was bullet, but even so, I can't imagine that being a selling point given the penetration power of human powered sling projectiles would have with regard to plate armor. Also, the sources I've seen were very clear to link it to the rise of guns on the battlefield.
Interesting. I didn't know there was that much controversy (albeit for earlier armor technology). I was assuming, so I guess I was luckily right through ignorance. ;)
The weakness of the phalanx is that you can be outflanked; it's really hard to turn a long pike to address an opponent not in front of you. I would imagine that having cavalry to protect your flanks would make it a lot more effective.
The swiss didn't ise a classic wide phalanx formation but a more densely packed square formation. Their pikes would stand out in all directions as a sort of hedgehog. Only the corners would be a weaker point. The flanks and rear would be well covered by pikes.
The pikes would generally stand only in one direction at once, and their drills had diagonal forms, so the corners would not be a weak point.
When people think pikemen, they think of very static formations, with little mobility. This is true of a lot of historical pike units, but the Swiss pikemen are the opposite of it. They drilled as small companies of ~100 men, and they were so successful because they made mobility as an unit into an art. A swiss pike block was drilled to change facing in seconds, and they liked to charge pikes levelled at near running speed. Many a condottiere got their last surprise when they were at the last stretch of their charge against an exposed flank or rear of a swiss block, and suddenly all the pikes rise, everyone turns, all the pikes come down again, and the swiss start charging the would-be attackers like madmen.
While I'm sure your knowledge is aggregated over many sources, are there any particularly excellent sources (books, documentaries, etc) on the history of military tactics?
Based on the description of effects I believe "cutting" would be a sliding motion meant to leave a long, shallow cut while "slashing" would be more of a chopping motion with the blade side.
Swords are sidearms, designed for self-defense, duels, and as last resort. They were very rarely used as main battlefield weapons between the fall of Rome and the widespread use of firearms. In general, people on foot in this period fought with some kind of polearms, from spears to dane axes to bardiches to pollaxes to pikes. Same goes for Japan, btw -- the fetishization of katanas happened after samurais stopped being soldiers and became bureaucrats. On the actual battlefield a samurai was most likely to hold a long spear or a bow.
And in Roman formations they were used in much the same way later and earlier combatants used spears: tightly locked ranks of shields, with the sword as a thrusting weapon.
I want to point out that the system that HEMA teaches (all though done usually by teaching longsword first) is a multi-weapon + unarmed system. A given technique that you can do with a longsword can also be done with a pole-axe. A pole-axe us better suited for armored combat (Harnischfechten) and a sword is better suited for unarmored combat (Blossfechten).
Although its worth pointing out, there are Harnischfechten techniques for longsword commonly referred to as half-swording (and you almost NEVER see these in movies). Btw, the unarmed component is called Ringen.
P.S. There are two similar schools for HEMA, the German and Italian school, my terms used above are the German terms. Most of the difference is either style, terminology or quite subtle.
There are also a lot of other non-HEMA historical european martial arts groups and less historical EuroMA. For instance you can find stick fighting most palces, Jogo Do Pau is Portuguese stick/staff fighting, Savate is French kickboxing usually with cane and maybe some sailor stuff, Zipota is similar, but from Basque Spain. Lots of herding cultures kept this stuff alive and whether it is MMA or something else they seem to be getting more attention.
just echoing what termain said. Going back to at least the Greek Phalanx and up to even quite a while after the introduction of gunpowder, massed warfare typically involved long weapons like spears or pikes.
A reasonably good depiction is the Phalanx shown in the movie "300". The history of warfare is generally about increasing the standoff distance between two militaries. The side with longer spears generally did better, then the side with the better archers.
Even after gunpowder was introduced, the reload time was so long that after getting a shot off, armies would switch to pikes.
The "wall of men in formation" you see in the Napoleonic wars and the American Revolutionary and Civil wars was sort of the last use of that kind of traditional formation and movement. The widespread use of heavy artillery put an end to it much like the airplane put an end to trench warfare.
Yeah, listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History[1] series, which is currently covering WWI, this is very apparent. Airplanes seem to have been used for reconnaissance more than anything. That makes sense when the artillery brought to bear was so concentrated is literally reduced forests to fields of churned up earth with splinters.
Still a sword, but not the same kind of sword most people think of:
For much of their history, the Roman Legions used a kind of short, broad-bladed sword called the gladius. There were various types across the centuries, but generally they were quite a bit shorter than the swords we see in the movies, sometimes as short as 18 inches from guard to point. This was not a great one-on-one weapon; all other things being equal, a warrior with a traditional long-bladed sword would usually beat a shorter one.
But the Legions didn't fight one-on-one. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder, leading with big rectangular shields, and thrusting around the side, top, or bottom with the gladius. Quite a few of their of their enemies came from traditions that emphasized personal glory and used big, long swords that needed room to swing. These men had to space themselves out further to avoid hitting their fellows, and so each one would find himself facing two Legionnaires shoulder-to-shoulder. A bigger sword doesn't help much against odds like that.
(I am not an expert and I have probably got some details wrong; feel free to correct me.)
I would say, rather, that the sword was used as a sidearm rather than a primary weapon. Most soldiers would have been armed with a spear, lance, or other polearm -- weapons with greater reach and ability to penetrate armor.
But many of those soldiers would also have carried a sword as a backup weapon and for use at closer range.
There is only a little bit of crossover. The focus of HEMA groups is to approach medieval sword fighting like a modern sport or martial arts (e.g, much like Karate, Judo or Kempo). That's why you see modern sports equiptment.
The focus of the SCA is more on reliving medieval times. They wear medieval clothing and armour for example, they hold medieval banquets, practice dancing, etc. As for fighting style, I don't think medieval swordsmanship skills will get you very far on an SCA battlefield. Maybe in one-on-one tournaments though.
That's interesting. I'm a fencer and it's interesting to see how quickly even sword fighting changed (and armor wearing in public and duels). Every time the swordsman in the video put the sword above his head all I could think was: free points! Just about any ranked fencer would have popped the guy in the chest and moved back before he could do a counter attack. Foil and sabre are pretty wussy (light) compared to their real world equivalents but an epee is quite close to a rapier or dueling sword.
Just about any ranked fencer would have popped the guy in the chest and moved back before he could do a counter attack.
This has long been my dissatisfaction with fencing. The type of strike you describe (a glancing touch at maximum extension of one's body, arm, and fingertips) is unlikely to disable any opponent wearing so much as a leather vest. Not to mention the fact that a sword and arm extended thus are highly likely to be mangled or removed by an overhead slash by a heavier sword from the position you describe.
Of course, this is a matter of taste. Since few of us will ever find ourselves fighting for keeps, we can play in whatever sword discipline we prefer.
Fencing models modern" dueling, typically a contest that ends with first blood. From that perspective it does apretty good job of staying close to its roots. That said, i prefer epee for just that reason.
That technique doesn't work well in HEMA combat. It's not hard to parry a thrust like that from a high, open guard and it leaves the attacker completely open to strikes on the hands, arms and head.
There's also a difference in scoring with regards to defense. In my HEMA group if opponent A strikes B, but B strikes back in the same motion (roughly 0.5 seconds, but basically the same "move") then it's a double-hit. Often counted as 0 points for either side but on some tournaments even counted as -1 for both sides.
In modern foil fencing, a riposte (B in your example) gets the point. Also, the only way to get a hit is by thrusts to the torso. No other body parts count, and no slashing or cutting.
It's very interesting that modern fencing is so "ritualistic" and far removed from actual sword combat. I wonder how that happened?
I think that other weapons and combat forms pushed the sword to be limited to duels and mainly duels of honor. Fencing came from training to duel. The foil is a learning weapon and even though the entire torso is a target, most attacks ideally aim for the heart. Epee you really see the dueling roots. In epee many points are scored off your hand or foot. Duels of honor were commonly fought to first blood rather than death. First blood was typically a wound to the hand or other body part close to the action.
An epee is close to a dueling sword, but still pretty far from a rapier. I imagine you know this, but a rapier is not the ultra fast moving sword most people think it is due to movies and the like. They are actually pretty heavy (1.7-2.2 lbs).
I was really surprised to see people wearing fencing masks to do this. These masks are not designed to stand up to the kind of blows that are shown on this video, if I were doing it I would be inclined to wear a keno mask instead.
A modern soldier is probably running in bursts and often firing from a crouched or prone position. I imagine someone fighting in armour with a swung weapon is going to feel the weight from the ongoing movement?
> I doubt it has close resemblance with medieval long sword fighting, though :-)
It does actually resemble it very much, but medieval longsword fighting was probably very different than what you think it was.
> It must have been a lot slower fighting in leather, chainmail or plate armor than in this ultra light modern equipment.
Not really. The main difference is visibility. First, the modern HEMA equipment is a lot heavier than e.g. standard fencing gear. It's a lot thicker (like those dog attack suits) and often have steel or kevlar plates in the inside. Second, medieval gear wasn't all that heavy. I have a full suit of maille (as it's really called) and it weighs less than 15 kilos, helmet included. A full steel plate armour shouldn't weight more than 25 kilos. That's less than modern soldiers have to carry around on the battlefield.
The biggest difference is that a fencing mask gives you better visibility than a historical closed helmet.
> these guys fight one on one
That's what happened in medieval times too most often. The original medieval books were written mostly for one-on-one combat, either for dueling or trial-by-sword. That happened a lot more than being caught in a war on a battlefield. Swords have little use on a medieval battlefield anyway. You use different weapons and tactics.
> And fighting on some uneven, damp meadow [...] would be hard compared to fighting indoor on a floor.
My HEMA group trains for this as well, and I suspect many other groups too. It is also mentioned in the medieval books. I have trained in loose sand, in the surf on a beach, in deep snow, etc. It's true that competitions are usually held indoors on an even ground though.