r/history Jan 06 '23 Heartwarming 1

The lost medieval sword fighting tricks no one can decode - No one knows how medieval knights really fought. Article

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221124-the-lost-medieval-sword-fighting-tricks-no-one-can-decode?ocid=global_future_rss
2.0k Upvotes

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u/Hygro Jan 06 '23

No one knows, but the more research done into European martial arts and considering how to optimally use the gear of the times, it does seem to be very practical grappling, swording, and sword grappling.

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

It’s tough when you say ‘medieval’ because it spans more than 1000 years of history. There’s a fair amount known about late medieval sword fighting which affects our assumptions about all medieval sword fighting incorrectly.

I remember giving a live demonstration in college on langschwert (longsword) sparring tactics for my Medieval Warfare class. There is a great deal of blade gripping, and most of the positions involve the weak hand gripping the blade for greater tip control. It makes sense in the context of 15th century knightly combat given the prevalence of plate armor. You need the tip to do most of the work, so controlling it is important.

Most of the strikes from this German longsword treatise were also almost exclusively to joints. Armpits, groin, knee and elbow were the most common. Which, again, makes sense given the prevalence of plate armor.

Now, if you turn back time before the era of plate armor there is less known about their combat styles. We know about general tactics from accounts of battles, but there aren’t any books literally explaining the positions.

We know that broad bladed weapons tended to be favored given the relatively light armor of the period. Spears were even more popular in the early period than the late, due in large part to the ease of manufacture. Shields were also much more common among knights in the early medieval due to the relatively light chain armor requiring it. So, we can assume that an early medieval knight was likely armed with a spear and shield and a sword or axe sidearm. Spear fighting isn’t as glamorous so there isn’t as much ink spilled on its techniques. But if you can understand spear fighting technique you understand 90% of medieval warfare.

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u/cavscout55 Jan 06 '23

This is blatant anti-spear propaganda. The poke-stab-poke method of spear combat is as beautiful as it is simple.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 07 '23

Had a buddy in the infantry. He was telling me how they were training with pugil sticks (one end represents a rifle butt, the other the bayonet) and he won every. Single. Match.

He explained, "All I did was stand back, wait for them to attack, then stab them in the face.". He said that was when he knew he had made a big mistake in joining the infantry. Despite the fact everyone watched him repeat this attack every time, they all still just charged in like idiots and he might have to serve in combat with them.

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u/BrutusGregori Jan 07 '23

I had to do Bayonet drills. Block, butt strike to wound and concuss the enemy and than a blade to the neck, twist and yank.

I lost when the enemy got within grappling range, but I would win if my opponent would stay back, just a quick step forward and sharp jab. Dead.

Spear combat is so simple. Bait the enemy into committing, stay out of reach and poke at weak spots. I aimed quite a bit at the foot. Disabling an enemy is as good as killing them.

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u/Muerteds Jan 06 '23

Way back in Basic Training, the Drill Sergeant wouldn't call the pugil stick fight over when I blocked the comically telegraphed overhead strike, and just went to town butt-stroking ol' boy in the groin (what a fun sentence). He then stepped foward and knocked me off balance, and the Drill Sergeant called it. Ah. Ok. I see how this is gonna go.

Next fight was 2 vs. 2 and I hit the guy in the helmet and knocked it askew so he couldn't see, then unloaded on him till the Drill Sergeant got tired of watching me kick the puppy. Then I went to help my buddy and bowled his opponent over from the side.

No grace. No finesse. Just swift and blinding violence.

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u/StateChemist Jan 07 '23

See this makes me think that as much thought strategy technique and study has gone into warfare, some large percent of it throughout all ages of history is just outviolencing the other guy.

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u/MortLightstone Jan 07 '23

yeah, absolutely

but you could also do both

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u/StateChemist Jan 07 '23

That’s my point. You can have a super well trained guy who spends his life training and 4 peasants with spears would probably beat him.

So while there were definitely some who did both it’s probably a surprisingly small minority of combatants

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u/NightGod Jan 07 '23

Sounds similar to my experience. Stab my opponent in the chest three times with the bayonet end? Nothing from the drills. He thwacks me once with the butt end to the side of my head? He obviously won, standing there with holes in his lungs and heart

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u/135redtoblue Jan 06 '23

Hear hear, spear brother! And let's not forget the elegance in jamming the spear butt into the ground while being charged. It is as the Amish hold with reverence the mundane task of butter churning. It. Is. A. Spectacle!

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u/Antedelopean Jan 06 '23

Get a horizontal line or 2 of spearmen doing that, and it's goodbye horsey advantage. Easy to train a farmhand with in 2 weeks, and you could more than easily trade a peasant for an officer, by just arming them with spears. Heck even once gun powder and firearms were introduced to mass warfare, people still stuck bayonets at the end of their rifles, to have an emergency melee tool.

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u/ReplacementRough5190 Jan 06 '23

Get a horizontal line or 2 of spearmen doing that, and it’s goodbye horsey advantage. Easy to train a farmhand with in 2 weeks

Known here as the “Schiltron” and a big reason why my homeland of Scotland still exists as a distinct nation and identity. One of the few parts of Braveheart that reflects some reality.

Allowed highlanders on foot to survive English heavy cavalry charges during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

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u/TaxFreeNFL Jan 07 '23

From what I can tell Braveheart really undersold the quality of Scottish spearman and their kit.

In the movie, Mel ponders the idea looking at tall pines, and then it's the only time they use spears really. When in reality they had amazingly built short and long spears and fought exclusively with those, wearing chainmail. Mel's boys were always in rags.

It's a nitpick, but one spear scene doesn't necessarily equate to "getting it right".

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u/ReplacementRough5190 Jan 07 '23 edited Jan 07 '23

It’s a nitpick, but one spear scene doesn’t necessarily equate to “getting it right”.

I mean, my baseline here is that Wallace impregnates a princess who was born about 12 years after he died, so maybe I’m just pretty charitable that they got a half decent spear scene into the film!

Edit: Albeit at a battle known as “Stirling Bridge” where there was no bridge in the film 😂

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u/InGenAche Jan 06 '23

I know from doing Cossack re-enactments as a kid doing summer fairs that the vast majority of those two weeks would be spent teaching the peasants how not to shit themselves as a horse galloped full speed at them.

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u/osberend Jan 07 '23

This is actually an important caveat: a sufficiently large body of hastily-trained peasants with spears can break a cavalry charge if they (a) can form close-order ranks (or at least a reasonable approximation thereof) sufficiently quickly and (b) don't break and run. Both of which, however, are a lot easier said than done.

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u/JackRusselTerrorist Jan 07 '23

I think something like 90% of battlefield casualties occurred during retreats. That’s also why so many civilizations used “be weird and scary” as a tactic- to try and make the other army turn tail.

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u/InGenAche Jan 07 '23

As the Light Brigade found out, guns work just as well lol.

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u/ZachMatthews Jan 07 '23

“In the summer, we made meat helmets.”

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u/BrobdingnagLilliput Jan 06 '23

Enemy pikemen can cover a lot of ground in the time it takes you to reload a black powder weapon. In that era, I'd argue it wasn't an emergency melee weapon!

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u/Bitter_Mongoose Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

Before Squad/line firing tactics were adopted, it was pretty much condomcommon practice to fire one or two volleys and then fix bayonets to advance.

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u/Subjunct Jan 06 '23 That Smile

That doesn’t seem like sound condom practice, frankly

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u/Bitter_Mongoose Jan 06 '23

Voice to text loves me. I'll fix it but leave it in there for comedic effect!

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u/Ikea_desklamp Jan 06 '23

In the early modern period, part of the reason muskets were so long was specifically so they could also function as spears with bayonets attached.

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u/NightGod Jan 07 '23

Well, that and the fact that they were smooth-bored, so the extra length helped a bit with the atrocious accuracy

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u/Rexel-Dervent Jan 07 '23

Not so much "early modern" as "homemade", but one Danish account from the 1840s mentions a Citizen Recruits "bayonet that could impale two men and a bit of the third."

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u/T-MinusGiraffe Jan 07 '23

How emergency was it, even? Oldschool rifles took a long time to reload. I thought the bayonets were used pretty frequently.

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u/Pylyp23 Jan 07 '23

Until armies developed tactics where lines of men fired alternating volleys it was standard for everyone to fire and then fix bayonets and charge. Even after line firing was commonplace most large battles eventually had some melee combat.

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u/T-MinusGiraffe Jan 07 '23

How emergency was it, even? Oldschool rifles took a long time to reload. I thought the bayonets were used pretty frequently.

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u/markusdied Jan 06 '23

letterkenny in the wild

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u/Variable_Decision53 Jan 06 '23

Amish what? Do the Amish wield spears now?

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u/prob_wont_respond Jan 06 '23

Whatchu think is on the other end of that butter churn? They plottin

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u/ppw23 Jan 06 '23

Stick em with the pointy end.

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u/Bitter_Mongoose Jan 06 '23

They have Spears now?!? They have Spears now!

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u/Ferengi_Earwax Jan 06 '23

Beware * Shield wall propagandist above folks !! ;)

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u/vir-morosus Jan 07 '23

Spears and halberds always did the dirty work in medieval combat. Swords were for knights.

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u/Geryon55024 Jan 06 '23

I don't know much about medieval European spear tactics, but Chinese spears are a force of grace and beauty to practice. Every little movement has a grander purpose. Flick a wrist and I parry a sword, quick as a flash, I follow up the blade, scrape cut the back of the hand, maybe hit the crook of the elbow, stabbing it through--or perhaps gain access to the armpit to tear out the shoulder. Large whirling strokes drive the enemy outside mid-length melee striking range. Behind the back strikes after a block or parry give a quick surprise as does the ability to disarm with a well-placed block & twist. It's one of my favorite weapons. I would think many of the moves could be applied to European spears.

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u/SindriAndTheHeretics Jan 06 '23

As a huge spear/polearm fan, it feels like the only media that actually gives them the respect they deserve is usually Chinese or Japanese (if they can put the katana down for five seconds). I assume it's partly because spear/staff techniques are part of some of the bigger martial arts styles that are still practiced.

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u/rynchenzo Jan 07 '23

Having trained with Bo, Jo, Bokken and Tanto I can tell you they all have their uses, and there are solid reasons why a Samurai in feudal Japan would carry a bow, spear, katana, wakizashi and a Tanto, as they are all effective at different ranges.

Pretty sure I watched a program on the History channel years ago that concluded that the katana was the greatest weapon invented, just ahead of the English longsword.

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u/shave_your_teeth_pls Jan 06 '23

But can that be done in massed infantry battles where you're in a crowd of 5k dudes against another 5k force? That sounds like martial arts focused on duels, rather than crude battles.

Plus doing all that while trying not to hit your own men, trying to keep up with the flow of the battlefield/orders and having arrows rained upon you seems too ideal to be done in real battles. Just an opinion though, I do by no means know shit about that

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u/Geryon55024 Jan 07 '23

Nice thing about spears. They're versatile. I know just as many tight techniques as large ones, and yes Chinese warfare was significantly different. A lot of ancient art and literature picture armies in wide columns of smaller teams ranging from 5 to a dozen soldiers. The teams are situated for 100% coverage with no gaps between them. The actual arrangement depends on what part of China we are looking at, the terrain, etc. Just as Northern and Southern Shaolin Kung Fu techniques differ because of terrain and population density differences, Army formations and weapons differed significantly. One of my favorite techniques learned involved protectors on both sides and in front of me. A partner and I each had a 15' long staff. We learned to bounce it off the ground to bend the staff to drive it into the belly of the foe or horse. Slide thrusts and wrist flicks to bounce aside swords are still somewhat effective despite cramped quarters, but let's face it. Formations break mid-battle, so you need to know a lot of different techniques...and I'm sure much of what was taught has been lost to time.

For more information on Ming Dynasty Infantry techniques, here is a good blog to start with: https://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/p/navigation.html?m=1

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u/Kahzma Jan 07 '23

It could be as simple as people finding assault rifles in the future assuming modern soliders actually ever fire their service weapons at each other.

Much easier just to shell and blow the bits out of each other from afar.

BiG GuNs dO TrIcK.. simple but effective.

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u/Thtguy1289_NY Jan 06 '23

May I ask, where did you go to college with a medieval warfare class?

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 06 '23

Skidmore College in upstate New York. My advisor ran the class since her background was in medieval Inter Family Feuds in the Rhine River valley

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u/Thtguy1289_NY Jan 06 '23

That's very interesting. I've been to 3 different colleges in my life and never had classes that sound remotely as interesting

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 07 '23

My school put a lot of emphasis on recruiting professors that were proficient and enjoyed teaching. They tended to have a lot of leeway to design courses based on their interests. As a result the professors tended to be enthusiastic about designing a cool course, like Medieval Warfare or my Forensic Archaeology course.

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u/The_Marcus_Aurelius Jan 06 '23

I was wondering why a few pictures showed them holding the blades... That makes sense.

Also, after reading your comment, I am now pretty sour about the fact that my university did not offer Medieval Warfare classes

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 07 '23

I wrote my capstone thesis in that course, and it really was the best part of my major. We Built a trebuchet. I wrote a capstone paper on the Military Revolution. It was great. For a relatively small school my history department had an awesome selection of courses

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u/Aaron_Hungwell Jan 07 '23

I certainly use my weak hand for better tip control!!!

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u/PrettyText Jan 06 '23

We know that broad bladed weapons tended to be favored given the relatively light armor of the period.

Average guys mostly fought with spears.

Knights mostly fought with bludgeoning or spikey (sometimes as polearms), to defeat armor.

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u/MidnightAdventurer Jan 06 '23

Lance (big spear) and shield is the classic knights combo for a very long time because the work so well. Once the spear breaks or the battle becomes a melee, that’s when the shorter weapons come out

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u/DeusSpaghetti Jan 07 '23

There's accounts of knights fighting on foot ( not unusual) with shortened lances.

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u/MidnightAdventurer Jan 07 '23

Yeah, the way the one's I've seen talk about it, they don't dwell on it like it's exceptional at all. It's much more of a quick mention like it's a completely normal thing to do

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 06 '23

True, but there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that early medieval knights used spears as well. Pole arms are just profoundly useful in melee combat, and the spear happened to be a pole arm that could be used with a shield. It helps that spears are also fairly good at penetrating mail armor. Spears we’re of-course easy to break though so Knights we’re also very proficient with swords, axes, maces etc..

Spears would eventually be replaced by other pole-arms that were fancier and more specialized like the billhook, warhammer, halberd, guisarme etc.. But having reach on your opponent is just so helpful that knights couldn’t rely on shorter weapons alone.

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u/explodingjason Jan 07 '23

I guess once the blade is on / entering a target you can let go and thrust in with your dominant hand??

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 07 '23 edited Jan 07 '23

I explained this in another comment, but the grip is about a third of the way down the blade. The stance actually mirrors a lot of spear grips, so imagine you’re wielding it a bit like a spear. You would also be wearing gauntlets so you aren’t at risk of cutting yourself on the blade. With a longsword, which is a rather large two handed sword, it still gives you a lot of blade after your hand. That said, most of the time you’re attacking weak points in the armor so you don’t need much blade..

If you were fighting a lightly armored opponent you would likely use a stance with both hands on the grip for the longer reach. This hand-on-blade technique is mainly for knight on knight combat or at tournaments where longsword fencing was common.

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u/Sun_Devilish Jan 06 '23

langschwert

You kiss your mother with that mouth? ;)

Just don't take it out in public.

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u/Technolio Jan 07 '23

If they gripped the tip to more carefully stab between joints I doubt that was done in the heat of a one on one battle. I wonder if that was used to take out other armored combatants while someone else was engaged with them.

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u/deviousdumplin Jan 07 '23

The hold was generally halfway down the blade, and held in a high guard. So, the tip was aiming down towards the opponents feet and then pommel above the head. Given the size of the longsword it’s not the craziest idea since it gives you much more control in an awkward guard like that, particularly if you wanted to strike with the pommel or the tip. A lot of longsword combat included grappling so having a firm hold of your own weapon when you’re closing makes a certain amount of sense. That said, I’m not a HEMA expert and they probably have better insights than me.

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u/Netroth Jan 07 '23

Spears weren’t primarily made for cost, they’re just the best melee weapon of all time.

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u/FairtexBlues Jan 06 '23

Go look at Japanese JuiJitsu from the time, it’s shockingly similar to what little HEMA is documented.

Convergent evolution in martial arts is real thing. Human haven’t changed their kinesiology. Sure the styling of armor may change, but the fact its easier to trip ‘em then stab ‘em hasn’t.

Id bet you could fill the missing chunks of HEMA with Kali/Escrima, Judo, and few others martial arts. The rest the HEMA community will need to experiment to realize the practical uses.

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u/Surfing_Ninjas Jan 06 '23

Also a lot of people shoving slim daggers into people's faces, armpits, and groins. Otherwise hitting people in the head with blunt objects or drowning them in mud if possible. What we know for sure is that they weren't twirling around and intentionally aiming for the opponent's sword or very protected stomach with slashes/cuts like you see in a lot of fantasy or modern medieval fiction.

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u/Divallo Jan 07 '23 edited Jan 07 '23

He's right a lot of knight 1v1s boiled down to "dagger grappling".

They'd use rondels, stilletos, misericordes etc but although they have different names they all essentially were very thin but rigid piercing-focused daggers.

There's entire historic arms manuals surrounding techniques of dagger grappling and it's actually pretty interesting some of the techniques they came up with.

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u/Dynahazzar Jan 12 '23

A huge number of 1v1 knight fighting would not be to death but to yield. Killing a knights makes you an ennemy, ransoning (rançoning? Ransomning?) him makes you quite a bit richer. I've been told killy stabby weapons are usually more a of peasant thing.

All of this comes from my childhood education and not any particular historical sources so take it with a spoonful of salt. But it makes sense. Duels were a marginal discipline at best (and this one is actually documented in "L'art chevalresque du combat" if I'm not mistaken)

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u/Surfing_Ninjas Jan 13 '23

This is revisionist at best. Men in armor, both high born and low born, died all the time in combat. Sure, ransom was an option occasionally, but if someone is trying to shove a knife in your eye socket you're going to reciprocate. Ransoming individuals was something that happened either after one side of a battle surrendered or as a result of a raid or skirmish (aka smaller conflicts), not too dissimilar to kidnapping. Theoretically gold is not worth getting a knife in the eye or in the groin, people would only get saved for ransom if the conditions met and in a life or death situation, such as in battle, the common reaction is to fight for one's life. Ransoming, as a whole, was somewhat of a nice coincidence that occurred when one side of a conflict had enough of an advantage to afford for such behavior.

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u/Scottish_Legionnaire Jan 06 '23

This. The more you can accurately simulate a real sword fight (safely) in a competitive environment, that's when gains are made. Proper technique works when the person you're doing it on is really not wanting it to happen.

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u/Darkdarkar Jan 06 '23

As someone practicing and has done a little bit of time judging at a tournament, competitive environments come with a slew of their own issues. Any rule set you design come with their own incentives that people will try to game.

For example, if you value all hits equally, hand hits will be prioritized as they are the safest hit. The mere presence of safety equipment already introduces divergence from the how they would fight as the lack of true fear of being harmed makes people more likely to not practice proper “safety” in a fight.

Rules in general are hard to come up with as any rule set will inevitably be gamed which defeats the purpose of trying to simulate a fight.

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u/nothrowawaysrleft Jan 07 '23

In a real battle prioritizing "not getting hurt" would tend to take precedence. A small wound compromises you and leads quickly to grievous injury.

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u/Darkdarkar Jan 07 '23

But then how do you model it with rules for scoring? Getting hit penalizes you a point? Even then, you want to reward the fighter the can actually demonstrate they know how to actually fence their opponent vs jumping forward and doing nothing, but get cuts to the hand

The rule set I worked with had you got rewarded for demonstrating you were in control of your opponent for instance meaning you hit them and their sword was properly controlled

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u/nothrowawaysrleft Jan 07 '23

Yeah it's tough, right? It's basically not possible. Sport is sport, and fighting with the potential of dying is not sport, lol.

You do your best to build rules to encourage/incentivize/reward strategies that approximate real fighting, and hopefully it's fun to do and watch!

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u/Scottish_Legionnaire Jan 06 '23

I see your point. Have you seen full contact M-1 midievil fighting with blunt weapons?

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u/Darkdarkar Jan 06 '23

I have though I’m not intimately familiar with it. I don’t think they practice historical technique from what I’ve seen. Though there is an argument to be made that technique may breakdown depending on far the fight drags on

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u/Scottish_Legionnaire Jan 07 '23

Without a doubt technique will suffer the more fatigued a combatent will get, as in all physical activities - if we're going to define technique as the effectiveness and efficiency of movemennt to get you closer to completing your objective.

We can make various assumptions based on what evidence we have today of competitive sword fighting, and throw in a great deal of self-preservation into the mix, which is always grossly under demonstrated in movies.

It's perhaps a bit of a twisted intrigue of mine, but as we get increasingly more realistic simulations of things (including human beings) it would be so thrilling to revisit historical battles in VR. Its the closest we'll get, and would want to get to, for me anyway.

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u/jlambvo Jan 07 '23

To echo Darkdarkar and others, another problem with this kind of format is that everyone of course knows they are going home, and the presence of scoring or multiple rounds all warp the psychology of the practice. I've seen a lot of EMA competitions that start to look a lot like kendo tournaments.

They aren't lethargic scripted play acting, but they aren't realistic warfare either. It just kind of evolves into its own thing. It adds something useful to training but can't be taken too literally.

I think you can plot training formats somewhere on a triangle between three points: options, spontaneity, and force. You can have completely unconstrained options in terms of allowing all the lethal or dangerous techniques your want, but with low force and in a scripted setting (e.g. kata or fightbook sequences). Or you can go full force, but with a limited range of techniques and spontaneity (e.g. drills). Or you can have open ended sparring but again limit what is allowed and how hard you go.

You can emphasize each dimension or anywhere in that trade-off space—like a partial speed scenario with designated roles and only some techniques restricted—but none of it is real and shouldn't be mistaken for it, and overdoing it on any point will create bad habits.

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u/Wisdomlost Jan 06 '23

I'm no historian but my money is they banged sharp or heavy pieces of metal into each other untill one of them was dead. Horses may or may not be involved.

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u/MisterSquidInc Jan 07 '23

On the contrary, banging your sharp and/or heavy piece of metal against your opponents sharp and/or heavy piece of metal is never going to achieve anything.
Ideally you want to avoid it and clobber the person wielding it instead. Much more effective

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u/goderdammurang Jan 07 '23

This but a flesh wound

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u/siliconsmurf Jan 06 '23

for people actually interested in research in this area, most of us HEMA folks look to this as the library of our source material. multiple translations of dozens of fight books and war manuals. There is a F@#$ ton of speculation going on in this thread and its a bit off that so many of the comments in here speak with authority even though they show no sources for their claims. I've studied HEMA related sources for over 10 years, practice weekly, run my own HEMA club and even with my level of research I wouldn't be making ANY broad claims because euro is big, its diverse and the time frame is large. If your really interested in the research side of this check out https://wiktenauer.com/ If you want to try sword training, come check us out at /r/wma or lookup local HEMA clubs in your area.

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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 07 '23

What's HEMA?

Edit: Historical European Martial Arts

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u/Harris_Octavius Jan 06 '23

It's short for Historical European Martial Arts

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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Jan 06 '23

Sorry, I found it too quick. But it’s a very long article.

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u/Quartisall Jan 07 '23

It's this way with a lot of things on Reddit. I know a bit about cars and bikes (and want to do HEMA) but whenever something comes up that is in my wheelhouse, so much disinformation in the threads. I shake my head and leave then find a thread about underwater basket weaving of the 15th century and think, ah, these people seem to know their stuff, right after. Thus is Reddit.

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u/MoogTheDuck Jan 06 '23

I would love a movie that shows realistic medieval combat. The King and the last duel are pretty good. No spinning or other stupidity like in game of thrones or pretty much everything else

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u/Dlatrex Jan 06 '23

If you are interested in “to the screen, but historically founded sword combat” I recommend you check out Adorea Olomouc. They do short films with an emphasis on using HEMA techniques for their stage combat choreography. It leaves me a pretty happy sword historian.

Here are a few of my favorites:

https://youtu.be/HwHNzL9-zpg

https://youtu.be/8vYFFx4whoE

Oh I should also mention Akademia Szermierzy which have done some good productions as well.

https://youtu.be/4GoQlvc_H3s

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u/yarrpirates Jan 07 '23

Thanks for putting me on to this. The knight in shining armour was magnificent!

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u/sabrtoothlion Jan 06 '23

There's a documentary called Back to the Source: Historical European Martial Arts that tries to answer this

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u/jaaval Jan 06 '23

My biggest movie annoyance is armor. they should know a sword doesn’t go through a steel plate and armored soldier doesn’t magically die if you hit him with a sword.

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u/Feral0_o Jan 06 '23

just roll a natural 20 and you're good

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u/coocoo52 Jan 06 '23

To the death. Lightsaber short.

https://youtu.be/AAzY28C8Syc

Kind of opposite to medieval I suppose.

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u/MoogTheDuck Jan 06 '23

Wow that was super cool, thanks. Love the random dude in the ballcap lmao

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u/vanilla_disco Jan 06 '23

Did you watch it until the end? Not really a random dude.

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u/RedTheDopeKing Jan 06 '23

The King was great for that, just grappling and smashing each other then a dagger through a weak point in the armour, quite realistic.

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u/blakhawk12 Jan 06 '23

1 v 1 combat being basically a grappling contest until you can shove a knife through the chinks in your opponent’s armor was basically the one thing The King got right in terms of historical accuracy.

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u/Whatreallyhappens Jan 06 '23

The King was such a good movie.

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u/killjoy73au Jan 06 '23

Kingdom of Heaven?

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u/TheRageDragon Jan 06 '23

Akademia Szermierzy on YouTube has some lovely videos on these.

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u/the_real_abraham Jan 07 '23

"No one can decode."

"Oh look, decoded!"

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u/Cyanopicacooki Jan 06 '23

Lindybeige on YouTube has a lot of vids about this, and lots of other links to HEMA practitioners. I went to a HEMA display, and the one thing that I was struck by was how much slower it all was than the films would have you believe - winding up a 1.5m sword takes a tad more effort than a fencing epee

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u/FerrousFacade Jan 06 '23

When you visited, were they sparring at full tournament speeds? 95% of HEMA training is not done at full intensity. I would say actual longsword fighting is way faster than what's shown on film. In real life you can barely see the blades and it wouldn't look great on film.

Anybody curious, check out this fun sparring video:

https://youtu.be/3mxbD3lRE6o

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u/knave-arrant Jan 06 '23

Am an actor, have studied combat for the screen and you are correct. Most fights occur at what we call 3/4 speed. It’s easier to view that way and safer for the actors. There’s a lot of mechanisms in place to make sure no one actually gets hurt (though that still happens).

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u/fearsometidings Jan 06 '23

Yeeeee boi, I was totally hoping to see Fabian in that link. Would totally recommend this clip to anyone interested to see some of the fastest longsword work I've ever seen in my life. Fabian is really the top 0.001% though, which is really far from representative of the speed of the average Hema fight.

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u/JohnnyEnzyme Jan 06 '23

How about with full plate, which could weigh up to ~60lbs, I understand.

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u/WelcomeScary4270 Jan 06 '23

Apparently it doesn't slow you down much, there are videos of people sprinting in them and it's been compared as being less cumbersome than modern armour.

If you think about it, the weight is evenly distributed over your entire body. Bunker gear and SCBA weight about 50-60lbs, more when wet. Firefighters can still move quite easily in regards to the weight, it's the heat that gets you.

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u/Wobblypenaltyfox Jan 06 '23

With my experience Bunker gear (scba and high rise pack included) don't feel heavy until your done. I assume it's the same with a plate armor set. You focus in, hit your flow state, and then once you're done, your body goes "AH holy fuck why is everything so heavy" and definitely lets you know.

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u/Vasquerade Jan 06 '23

I'm not an expert but from what I can remember:

Full plate wasn't particularly cumbersome. Sure if I put it on I'd be even less agile than usual. But chances are if you could afford fitted plate you were probably a reasonably wealthy and physically fit man. The way plate sits on the body (from what I've heard) makes it actually quite simple to move around in. After all this is the sort of stuff you'd wear often while riding a horse or actually in hand to hand combat and it would need to allow a combatant to move relatively quickly.

Anecdotally I've heard the same with chain mail, its heavy to hold in your hands but when you're wearing it you dont really notice the extra weight.

Again, not an expert so don't take my word for it!

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u/jumpsteadeh Jan 06 '23

But how fast can you roll?

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u/tenuto40 Jan 06 '23

It causes weird vibrations in your hands as I strangely plop onto the ground.

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u/jumpsteadeh Jan 06 '23

I put on my robe and wizard hat

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u/Charybdes Jan 06 '23

Depends on how high your endurance is. Don't want to fat roll, but there are potions for that.

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u/Vasquerade Jan 06 '23

Legend has it that Edward, The Black Prince was the mythical Fast Roll Havel!

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u/malthar76 Jan 06 '23

d6, d8, or d20?

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u/half3clipse Jan 06 '23

The equipment and supplies the average modern solider caries around is well over 60 lb and can get up to twice that depending on what they're doing.

Plate armour is not a big deal and the idea people wearing it could barely move in it is just a myth.

Also the entire point of the blade is that it can be moved quickly with fairly minimal body motion. The weight of armor has far less of an effect on how fast you can move it than the weight of the sword

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u/ogenj250 Jan 07 '23

I practice hema, and often fight in full plate from the torso up (I don't have legs yet, plate is expensive). The armor doesn't really slow me down that much, it's more that it limits my range of motion, mostly just raising my arms. Even that would be improved with a properly tailored suit instead of off the shelf pieces.

Most of the weight of the armor is on the waist, not unlike a backpacking pack. Even though you are carrying the extra weight, a relatively small amount is on your shoulders and arms. Don't get me wrong, there is extra weight slowing you down, but its more like 8lbs(I'm only guesstimating, I don't have a scale) per arm, and half of that is on the shoulder, so it's not as noticeable.

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u/flamableozone Jan 06 '23

It is heavy, yeah, but it's well distributed weight. You're certainly going to have a shitty sprinting time, but you'll be able to move your arms pretty quickly and adjust your body and legs. It's not that much different than the weight of a modern fully-equipped soldier wearing full body armor, ammo, etc.

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u/DrXaos Jan 06 '23

it’s cool, but that looks like modern sabre and then foil sport fencing with slightly altered and a bit heavier weapons, a touch slower than modern sport. They seem too close and aggressive if it were to really hurt. No attacks or threats to the opponent’s front leg or foot either?

Not a target area in sabre or foil so they’re not used to it. Epee fencers would try.

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u/FerrousFacade Jan 06 '23

This would be considered military saber. The swords are weighted and balanced similarly to historical sharp sabers but are obviously dull. "Doubles" and "afterblows" count in hema (i.e. if I hit you but you then hit me immediately afterwards it deducts points ) which will change the way you fight. Similar to a real sword fight you want to hit in a way where you can't be hit.

For example, if you go kamikaze for someone's leg you'll probably hit it but because of your shortened reach and your own unguarded upper openings you'll likely get hit in the head during your attack or while you're trying to exit their reach.

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u/DrXaos Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

Fair enough, though I was thinking more of the second rapier-like weapon. Epee fencers can attack legs & feet with point while still keeping the guard up, as I thought that sport epee emerged from historical rapier training practices.

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u/Phokiss Jan 06 '23

You're trippin. That video is supposed to be an example of this quickness you speak of?

There sure are alot of cuts on that video.

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u/MoogTheDuck Jan 06 '23

Contra DND and RPGs, swords are an agility weapon, not a strength weapon

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u/Tasorodri Jan 06 '23

The most nonsensical of those is bows being dexterity (they require huge strength) and crossbows being strength (with mechanism you could load them without much strength)

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u/MoobooMagoo Jan 06 '23

I don't know of this is in every version of DnD, but I know in some of them there is a strength requirement for bows. And the ones with really high strength requirements also deal extra damage based on your strength. I think it's called "might" or "mighty" or something like that. Like "might +2" means you can use your strength bonus for damage up to +2.

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u/andyoulostme Jan 06 '23

At least in 3rd edition D&D, composite bows had strength ratings for damage:

A composite longbow can be made with a high strength rating to take advantage of an above-average Strength score; this feature allows you to add your Strength bonus to damage, up to the maximum bonus indicated for the bow.

I'm not familiar with the term "mighty" but that may have been later terminology to clarify the effect.

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u/MoobooMagoo Jan 07 '23

I know the term from the game Neverwinter Nights 2, which uses the 3.5 rules. Although they are modified a bit because it's a video game, so maybe the terminology wasn't in the pen and paper game.

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u/Didrox13 Jan 06 '23

But between strength and "dexterity", dexterity is still by far the main factor, it the sense that dexterity represents your ability to actually hit any target further than 10 meters.

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u/PrettyText Jan 06 '23

If you want to shoot individuals, maybe. If you're a battlefield archer, you don't need much dexterity because you're aiming for a blob of enemies. The strength to draw a heavy bow is more important.

Also, the kind of "dexterity" you need to hit a target with a bow is different from what people commonly think of as "dexterity" (which is mostly being quick and having good reflexes).

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u/bigsoupsteve Jan 07 '23

How many large scale battles do you participate in in DnD though?

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u/OtisTetraxReigns Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 08 '23

Crossbow is a lot heavier than a curved bow? And while a longbow requires huge strength, most people could draw a regular bow with a little training. Just taking a guess at the thinking here. Not trying to start a fight.

Edit: clearly I was wrong in my guessing. Thanks for setting me straight.

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u/taint-juice Jan 06 '23

I think I can read between the lines here. You’re trying to start a fight with me aren’t you?

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u/RE5TE Jan 06 '23

most people could draw a regular bow with a little training.

No? In real life you have to choose a bow based on your strength. You don't need dexterity to pull on a string.

https://targetcrazy.com/find-draw-weight

This page recommends a draw weight of 40 lbs or more for hunting. Meaning average women and smaller men will have trouble.

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u/aitorbk Jan 06 '23

Good luck drawing a 130lbs+ longbow!

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u/YouAreGenuinelyDumb Jan 06 '23

While you are definitely correct, the average “adventurer” (given the DnD context) likely has enough strength to draw 40lbs without knowing much about bows. I imagine the table you linked takes into account certain factors that wouldn’t necessarily be present in the context of an “adventure” (worrying about minor injuries, RSI’s, etc).

Obviously, by far and away, the biggest difficulty of archery is being able to accurately hit targets at distance, especially if they are moving. This is why I think “dexterity” plays the larger role.

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u/RE5TE Jan 06 '23

Aiming is just practice, not dexterity. A ballet dancer is not going to be able to aim well just because they are dextrous.

Characters whose main stat is dexterity tend to be women and small men. It would be much easier for them to use a dagger or stabbing sword. Those actually require dexterity.

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u/garry4321 Jan 06 '23

Most people could NOT draw a war bow from when bows were used for such. Some medieval bows had a 200lb draw weight. Compound bows are designed to use mechanical advantage to achieve “draw weights” of much higher than it actually takes to draw. Back in the day, archers has massive upper body muscles, because they had to actually draw 200 lbs and be able to aim. Modern archery bows of like 40lbs are good for close distance aim practice, but can’t throw a large arrow hundreds of meters with enough velocity and punch to get through light armour like old war bows could

Also: STOP TRYING TO START FIGHTS!

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u/Cuentarda Jan 06 '23

It's literally a plot point in the Odyssey that the pretenders couldn't even draw Ulysses's bow.

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u/flamableozone Jan 06 '23

A standard long bow used in war had anywhere from a 70lb draw at the light end to a 150lb at the higher end, I think there are some with 200lb draw weights. It takes more than just a little training for people to be able to use those effectively.

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u/PrettyText Jan 06 '23

Yes, and also they're also a sidearm / ceremonial weapon / status weapon / self defense weapon that's easy to carry.

People who went to war almost always either brought a ranged weapon or some klnd of spear / polearm / pike as their main weapon.

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u/jrhooo Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

Yes, and also they're also a sidearm / ceremonial weapon / status weapon / self defense weapon that's easy to carry.

THIS

I went into detail about this in a different thread, but the basic summary was

Why are swords (and later pistols) associated with military officers/positions of power?

Because they are an extreme close range, personal defense weapon.

Its the foot soldier's job to attack the enemy. Its the officer's job to supervise and direct the soldiers. He's not up front attacking the enemy. (analogy, the orchestra conductor can't be doing his job if he's sitting in the seats playing a violin)

But he would need his close range personal defense weapon, so that IF his side were overrun, he had something to try and repel them with.

(even as far as WWII, you notice by T/O, majority of the platoon's riflemen would be armed with a with a battle rifle like the M1 Garand, but your officers would be armed with something like a tanker's weapon. Short range, lower power, but extremely portable with a high rate of fire. E.g., M1Carbines or Thompsons. Same concept.)

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u/PrettyText Jan 06 '23

Why are swords (and later pistols) associated with military officers/positions of power?

Because they are an extreme close range, personal defense weapon.

Yeah, great way to phrase it.

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u/LongDickLeukemia Jan 06 '23

There is also another element to officers holding short range weapons. In WWI, trench captains were issued whistles and revolvers. The whistle to give the signal for going over the top. The revolver was to shoot the men who refused. Most revolver models are famously bad at long range, so it was only useful if you could walk up to the guy and put the gun directly on his forehead, which you could do to your own men but usually not the enemy.

Not disagreeing with your point at all. Just adding to it.

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u/Sykes92 Jan 07 '23

It is however important to note that the term sidearm in the modern sense evokes an image of a weapon only used as a backup. This is not a good 1-1 analogy for what swords were. While the modern rifle-wielding soldier would probably expect to almost never pull out their handgun. Soldiers of yore fully expected to use their swords. They performed a different role in their kit, not a lesser one.

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u/PlaidBastard Jan 06 '23

Swing a longsword around, ideally a heavier one. Then, spend a few months strength training and swing it around again. Or, imagine doing that, and I think you'll still reach the same conclusion.

Your ability to be agile with a sword is also highly dependent on strength.

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u/flamableozone Jan 06 '23

Longswords aren't too bad, since you generally have two hands on it which distributes the weight pretty well and lets you pivot on one of your hands, and a lot of the guards keep the sword close to the body. Rapiers, on the other hand, weigh nearly as much as a longsword sometimes, are held in one hand, and are held very extended in most guards.

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u/PlaidBastard Jan 06 '23

You're missing my point. Your ability to maneuver and parry and cut and thrust and feint and otherwise move a blade around rapidly and gracefully is a function of muscle power as much as coordination and reflexes etc.

Make all else equal, and the stronger swordsman can do what the weaker one can with both more speed in the motions and with more rapid changes in direction between motions and positions.

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u/Level3Kobold Jan 06 '23

Longswords are probably the worst example to use, since they require the least strength. A rapier is a better example. Go ahead and hold that 4 foot long steel rod at arms length while swishing it around with just your wrist and tell me there's no strength requirement.

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u/PlaidBastard Jan 06 '23

I have, and I never said there wasn't, but I think you forgot that there's stuff you do with one hand with a longsword which is absolutely painful if a mouse and keyboard are all you've ever done to prepare your wrists, forearms, and shoulders, too. You just wish I'd used rapier as an example and seem to be fixated on your attachment to that metaphor, it seems like?

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u/Greentaboo Jan 07 '23

There were several videos on youtube that explained the idea that strength helped to a point, but general fitness was a far greater factor than simply being strong.

You really only need to be strong enough to comfortably handle your given weapon, then general fitness(cardio, flexibility, etc) was far more crucial.

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u/kynthrus Jan 06 '23

"Dexterity". There's a difference from agility.

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u/TaliesinMerlin Jan 06 '23

Well, they're contra DND, so I assume they're using Shadowrun. /s

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u/Level3Kobold Jan 06 '23

Depends on the sword. A messer/falchion is definitely a STR weapon.

Paradoxically though, two handed swords require less strength than one-handed swords.

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u/Anjoran Jan 06 '23

Slow? I'm kind of shocked to hear that. I fenced foil for a few years (dabbled with saber and epee), and it feels way more sedate to me than sparring with broadswords. The speed you can generate with two hands, particularly with abrupt changes in direction, is frightening and incredibly hard to counter.

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u/LondonGIR Jan 06 '23

I am a HEMA teacher in the UK, and learned with Jamie McIver who is interviewed in the article. I've also met Lloyd in person. Trust me, the guy is an idiot. Also most demonstrations and display whilst slower than in olympic fencing. It's actually pretty danm fast. Most likely they were slowing it down for safety and public demonstration. Check out swordfish HEMA tournament on YouTube, you will see that in competition it is pretty danm fast

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u/TheEmperorsWrath Jan 06 '23

Please don't use Lindybeige as a source.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AmateurLeather Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

On Youtube look up the following:

https://www.youtube.com/@scholagladiatoria

https://www.youtube.com/@AcademieDuello

https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt

https://www.youtube.com/@shadiversity

For how fast combat can be, look up "Battle of the Nations" (BoTN), or "Armored Combat League" The rules for that are if you have 3 points of contact on the ground you are out, and no stabbing. But it gives you a good idea for speed an impact.

I studied historical swordwork in rapier and longsword for several years (I'm still just an amateur) and did full armoured combat with both steel and rattan.

The biggest takeaway I have is that spears/polearms/pikes are deadly when you have multiple people, or defensive formations. Swords are good up close and personal, but getting to that range can be hazardous.

There are effectively 5 fighting ranges for medieval times (pre-gunpowder):

  • Bow range (25-200 yards)
  • Pike range (4 yards)
  • Spear/polearm range (2-3 yards) (Though polearms can be used down to 1 yard fairly effectively)
  • Sword/Axe/Club range (0.5-2 yards)
  • Dagger range (0-0.5 yards)

Soldiers no matter what their weapon would have a dagger. (and when I say dagger, I mean 8"-12" of sharp steel. Often thin, designed to get between chainmail links. Taking a knight hostage was a great way to get paid.

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u/wanderingpeddlar Jan 06 '23

Add shield range to sword/axe/club anyone that dosen't hold a shield as a weapon has never fought someone that knows how to use one. The Romans used them this way to great effect. As did the Scotts. Although the Scotts added a thrusting point that safely training with is almost impossibile. With a smaller shield like the Scottish Targe your left hook takes on a whole new meaning. I am sure other cultures used shields as an offencive weapons just not as famously.

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u/AmateurLeather Jan 06 '23

Oh yes. Anything smaller than a full tower shield or pavice is an offensive weapon. :)

I was trying to be general, as sword and shield you are in the 0.5-1.5 yard range, while a two handed sword or axe is closer to 2 yards, or a rapier and buckler.

Shields are their own sub-genre (buckler, targe, circular, kite, center grip, arm strap, several varieties of small arm strap shields, tower shield, pavice)

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u/RedTheDopeKing Jan 06 '23

I think they stabbed each other with the pointy end

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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ Jan 06 '23

That doesn’t do anything if you’re wearing plate armour

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u/RedTheDopeKing Jan 06 '23

It does if you slide it in at one of the joints.

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u/Hayaguaenelvaso Jan 06 '23

Yes, yes... But that's not the point!! What we have to discover is the exact battle cries used!! There was the POWER! The exact Words of Power are now lost... God damnit, humankind might still need them in the years to com.....e...

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u/PckMan Jan 06 '23

It probably wasn't as glamorous as we think. People tend to give too much emphasis on manuscripts describing techniques and such but real fighting is often messy and improvised. Of course they'd try to land precise blows but that's nearly impossible to do on an enemy that's trying to defend himself. There was probably a lot of clinching, hitting, shoving and many unorthodox moves involved rather than two swordsmen carefully and elegantly trading blows until one fell.

There's a lot we can deduce from modern martial arts too, both modern ones and attempts at recreating old ones. Give two men in suits of armor swords and they'll figure out the optimal way to hit each other, that's more or less what medieval knights would have done too.

Weaponless martial arts always look distinct and purposeful in exhibitions but when two combatants are fighting there's little to distinguish a karate kick from a tae kwon do kick or a boxing punch from a kung fu punch. Yes they all supposedly have their specific footwork, body positioning, travel arc and technique but unless you're punching empty air or a bag you can't actually execute them exactly like that during a fight in which you and your opponent are constantly moving. UFC is a great example of this. The participants have backgrounds on all sorts of martial arts but their movements don't really look like anything specific. They're simply probing, deflecting, clinching and grappling in order to allow for an opening, and when there's an opening they get in it in the most efficient way possible. I'm not implying martial arts are bogus and fighters are merely flailing at each other, just that real fighting does not look like theatrical fighting.

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u/Poopy_McTurdFace Jan 07 '23

Highly professional soldiers, like Knights and elite mercenaries, would've learned a codified fencing system under a fencing master. As would nobles preparing for judicial duels. These codified systems were how to "properly" fight.

Everyone else would've learned to fight through a tips-and-tricks trade network like how you describe. Soldiers sharing what worked for them between each other. Battlefield fighting most likely looked little like the fencing treatises we have, despite those sources being "correct".

It should also be noted that there were hundreds of local, simple fencing systems we in HEMA today unceremoniously regard as "common fencing", that were never properly recorded. They are occasionally referred to in the treatises we study in passing. These would've been more widely known and practiced than the ones we have preserved today.

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u/TheHappyPie Jan 06 '23

underrated point. I dislike UFC but those guys are the best fighters in the world and you can see how chaotic it gets.

When you watch some of the hema stuff it's the same. some dancing and positioning and then total chaos until someone lands a blow.

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u/Banned4Transphobia Jan 06 '23

I always want to see a real duel where someone utilizes the mordhau swing successfully.

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u/Quantentheorie Jan 06 '23

One pattern I think we see the more we learn about "ancient humans" is that they were smart and everything they reasonably could figure out with the means they had, they did.

Think of plant/ animal domestication and how few new species have been domesticated since writing was invented.

Point being, I doubt there is a big "secret" here. It's about trial and error for finding the range a certain tool has if you're deadset on using it anyway you can because your life depends on it.

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u/Greentaboo Jan 07 '23

I feel like saying no one knows is tongue in cheek and a little dishonest. We have treatises, and a lot can be deduced from them, as well as looking at the weapons and armor used.

More important, we can look at other cultures that preserved martial traditions, look back at surviving treatises, and realize that there are a lot of similar concepts, techniques, and principles. So a lot can be borrowed from other martial teaditions to fill in missing information and it fits very well.

Yeah, we don't have a knight from the 16th century to narrate combat treatises to us, but we have so many primary and secondary sources, plus just common sense to link it together.

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u/Raudskeggr Jan 07 '23

Well, we know factually that the medieval period was an arms race between weapons technology and defensive technology; it seems reasonable to surmise that the techniques underwent a similar evolution. So to ask how medieval knights fought would probably also require you to specify a time and region in which the knight is fighting as well.

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u/zertnert12 Jan 06 '23

Arent there several codex's that survived that showed exactly how the fought?

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u/newbies13 Jan 07 '23

These kinds of articles are always so click baity, like "engineers are baffled as to how the pyramids were made". Uh no, they don't have evidence of the exact way things were done, but there's plenty of ideas and some evidence to support pieces along with common sense.

Put two guys in period appropriate armor, give them blunted weapons and say go pretend murder that guy. You're going to get the general sense of things quickly. Add a splash of 'not all artwork is meant to be literal' and bobs your uncle. It's not like humans had a secret extra arm back in the day to do amazingly different techniques.

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u/mmabet69 Jan 06 '23

Interesting, I’d always assumed that knights were like the equivalent of modern day tanks. Sent in to mop up the light infantry and act as a reserve battalion to send in when things got dire.

An armoured knight on an armoured horse with a lance and a sword or axe would’ve been such a fear to see and a pain in the ass to deal with if you were on foot and unarmored. Spears and pikes would’ve helped but still it’s gotta be demoralizing to be some levy with a pointed stick facing a heavy cavalry charge…

Now, if a knight were to enter combat on foot I’d imagine that asides from the aforementioned weak points, bludgeoning them would work just as well. Steel helmets may save you from being mortally wounded but I’d imagine being bludgeoned would still KO them or at the very least badly wound them to the point of incapacitation. A football helmet may stop the bone from taking the direct impact but it cannot stop the brain from being sloshed around and likewise I’d imagine a big hammer or mace would’ve had the effect on a knight. I also wonder due to the weight of the armour if some sort of mobbing by 3-4 unarmed attackers to try and trip or take down a knight would’ve been a good tactic because once a knight is on his back with someone else on top of them it’s going to be very hard to get up again.

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u/Greentaboo Jan 07 '23

Knights trained pretty much constantly. They held a position almost exactly the same to samurai. It would be a couple of guys trying to fight Mcgregor or other UFC star. They might get him, but realistically he rip through them way quicker then you'd think.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '23

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u/Kradget Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

From a written description, it's not easy to tell what they're trying to tell you to do. It's also not always clear that everything they're saying in a book is something they'd actually advise a paying student to do.

But mostly, if I tell you "put up a block, step in, circle his blade out of the way, and throw him down," it isn't necessarily clear what block I'm telling you to use, how I mean for you to circle his blade out of the way (to the outside? Using your blade or by pushing his hand?) Which throw are you supposed to be in position for when you step in? Where did I mean for your feet to be?

In person, I'd show you and it would be obvious. In writing and with medieval perspective drawing, it's... Less so.

Edit: pictures definitely help, but there are nuances that don't come through in them, so every reader is doing an interpretation and every practitioner is kind of picking an option based on what seems most right to them. Kind of like in Jurassic Park - they had most of the dinosaur DNA, but they had to fill in some places with other stuff, so they ended up with things that were mostly-dinosaurs, but varied in different ways.

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u/patfetes Jan 06 '23

Don't forget translation issues.

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u/Kradget Jan 06 '23

Also true! Just... ambiguity. Ambiguity everywhere!

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u/KarmaticIrony Jan 06 '23

The headline is a tad sensationalist, but there are some techniques that are described in historical treatises which require a good deal of interpretation to guess what exactly they were saying to do.

As mentioned in the article, Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) is a sport/field of study that tries to figure it out. I recommend checking out Scholagladiatoria on YouTube if you're interested in learning more.

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u/Lord0fHats Jan 06 '23

You'd be surprised.

Another good example is the Phalanx and the Roman Maniple. We don't actually know how these formations worked or how men in them fought. All the movies and reenactments you've seen are just guesses. Ironically, the only authors to really discuss these formations (Xenophon for example) don't bother to really explain them. Why would they?

The audience any such writer would be writing for in their own time would presumably know how a phalanx or maniple worked. They didn't need it explained to them. Same reason no book you've ever read has bothered to explain what a 'car' is. The word car is simply said and you know what it means so the author doesn't go into the details of how it works.

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u/CJW-YALK Jan 06 '23

But we do have detailed thermodynamic and engineering books detailing how cars work

We are far less a oral society than then, it’s more like you actually learned from a teacher and just had the written notes to recall from…if that….

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u/bestest_name_ever Jan 06 '23

Another famous case like this is greek fire. Keep in mind there's a big difference between "we can't figure out what they meant" and "we can't figure out how to do it". It's not about simply figuring out how best to use a sword, it's about figuring out how exactly it was historically done. Likewise with the greek fire, saying that the formula is lost and we can't recreate it doesn't mean we can't create incendiaries that burn on water, it means we don't know which ones they used.

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u/TaliesinMerlin Jan 06 '23

I've worked with some later period sources (early modern rapier: Agrippa, Capoferro, up through a bit of Marcelli). The general issue is trying to describe kinaesthetic movements in text with static images of the result. Frequently these manuals may have made more sense in a living tradition of training that used the same terminology as the texts. There is lots of jargon (guards, actions, ways of thinking about actions) and sequencing to parse through, and that's even before trying to figure out how to actually move, how fast these actions were, how force was applied, and whether what's being taught would be effective in training, bouts, or in combat.

It's possible to create a workable recreation of a plate in Capoferro (example) with considerable work and reconstruction based on classical fencing (which we know more about). Is it perfectly authentic? We don't know. Maybe. Now put everything another two hundred years back without the benefit of a printing press or realistic human illustrations, and without the systematizing approach adopted by later Italian writers. All of that makes medieval reconstructions of fighting techniques extra difficult.

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u/G_Man42 Jan 06 '23

Someone in modern times could absolutely train and practice and improve their skills to the best they could possibly be and come up with an effective system of swordfighting. The better their training partners and the more accurate their equipment, the more likely it is that their system would match what was done in history.

But we don't know for certain. We're not medieval knights, we would be making it up ourselves. The only way to know for certain is to go back to the records written in that time period. Unfortunately, these records are terse, sometimes written in code and the illustrations look like child's drawings. So we don't know for certain. Not without a lot more work and the discovery of more records at any rate.

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u/aitorbk Jan 06 '23

No one knows is a bit rich.. we do have treaties, etc.

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u/Necessary_Bobcat7239 Jan 06 '23

Stick em with the pointy end was probably rule number one

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u/Chinabotv2 Jan 07 '23

I believe a lot of knights had blunt force weapons that could cause impact damage through the armor; because armor by nature is slash proof and with a good fighter it can be stabbed through at certain critical points, but there’s nothing like the power of a club or large axe

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u/oh-lloydy Jan 07 '23

I train in bladed weapons and I heard that when they had to fil gladiator movies and what not they use Filipino martial arts because it is the oldest styles using those weapons...

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u/Omnithea Jan 07 '23

You have to use both hands for a sword beam.

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u/Stock_Regular8696 Jan 07 '23

"End him rightly" iirc is my favourite medieval fighting technique.

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u/Ipad_is_for_fapping Jan 06 '23

There’s a video that gets posted every now and then - it’s a medieval sword fighting demonstration of various movements. It’ll cause epilepsy if you watch it though - hopefully someone here knows what I’m referring too and can post it

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u/Iwantmyflag Jan 06 '23

An article starting incompetently with "Knights were the biggest celebrities of the medieval era. The best among them were rewarded for their skill with castles, lands, and courtly influence. They were widely celebrated as the romantic heroes of their age – livening up legends, poems and paintings with their clashing blades and chivalrous deeds." will not convince me of and with anything it has to say later.

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u/CuriousCanuk Jan 07 '23

Who really cares about how people fought and died 100's of years ago? They're dead.

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u/DerivativeOfProgWeeb Jan 07 '23

Ancient practice or technology lost this, ancient practice or technology lost that. Why can't we just shove a bunch of the closet living descendents of the civilization into a room for a couple hours and make them brainstorm ideas about how they would have came up with it, smh

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u/scipio0421 Jan 07 '23

As fans of Skallagrim can tell you, unscrewing the pommel and throwing it at the opponent.