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Here's a video on armored combat, which shows the dexterity possible while wearing full harness, as well as some historical fighting techniques. http://youtu.be/zvCvOC2VwDc
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Oct 15, 2014 04:37
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Verisimilidude posted:Here's a video on armored combat, which shows the dexterity possible while wearing full harness, as well as some historical fighting techniques. Edit: And when it doesn't fit, but at the time these guys are portraying, if you're going to have armor at all it's going to fit. (Mine doesn't fit.) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 16:09
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Plate armor really was not that much more heavy than a chainmail hauberk and probably much less straining to wear since the weight was more even distributed across your body whereas if you wore a chainmail hauberk most of the strain is on shoulders and waist rather than evenly distributed.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:59
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From my experience backpacking, if that poo poo isn't supported by the waist but instead by the shoulders, it gets loving heavy really really fast.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:10
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Chainmail is always worn with a thick belt since Roman times.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:11
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Frostwerks posted:From my experience backpacking, if that poo poo isn't supported by the waist but instead by the shoulders, it gets loving heavy really really fast.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:15
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HEY GAL posted:The major problem is not the dexterity issue, it's that on a hot day there's nowhere for your sweat to go and you steam yourself like a Chinese baked good. At a recent tournament someone was describing fighting in harness and how the sweat from someone's body develops a special rust on the inside of pieces like the breastplate that makes it more difficult to puncture. It was gross but kinda neat.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:08
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I remember hearing someplace that swords were unrealistically romanticized in the media and that most warriors of the day favored bludgeons, axes or spears. Is this true?
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Oct 15, 2014 18:58
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Applewhite posted:I remember hearing someplace that swords were unrealistically romanticized in the media and that most warriors of the day favored bludgeons, axes or spears. Is this true? There is a much longer answer but in short, swords were almost always sidearms, not the main weapon of a warrior. Most men in armor would have gone into battle with some kind of pole weapon, in the late medieval era most likely some form of poleaxe, or a lance on horseback. Think of a sword as pistol, and larger weapons like spears or whatever as assault rifles. For the rest of people on the battlefield, spears were the default weapon for most of history, with it getting more varied in the 1400s-1600s as pikes, halberds, other polearms, early muskets, greatswords, etc were all thrown together at various times in varying proportions. Only a few societies used the sword as their default weapon like the Romans, but even they brought throwing spears to battle that could be used as regular spears in a pinch. Swords however were really, really, good as backup weapons, and skilled swordsmen could hold their own against other weapons, especially if they had a shield.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:15
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Verisimilidude posted:Here's a video on armored combat, which shows the dexterity possible while wearing full harness, as well as some historical fighting techniques.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCvOC2VwDc&t=83s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCvOC2VwDc&t=94s Applewhite posted:I remember hearing someplace that swords were unrealistically romanticized in the media and that most warriors of the day favored bludgeons, axes or spears. Is this true? Schwertkulte (sword cults? Whats a good translation for that?) persistet up to the fascist movements of the last century, and even today swords still play a part in militaristic rituals (dress uniforms for the marines for example). Nektu fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 20:02
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Randarkman posted:Plate armor really was not that much more heavy than a chainmail hauberk uhhhh yes it is. If you look at hauberks that you see, for example, in the Bayeux tapestry, they do not extend far past the elbow or the thigh, not dissimilar from this mail shirt in the Wallace Collection. Andrew Ayton lists a late 11th c. hauberk at 25 lb. The famous gothic armour from the Wallace Collection, meanwhile, weighs in at 60 lb. WoodrowSkillson posted:There is a much longer answer but in short, swords were almost always sidearms, not the main weapon of a warrior. Most men in armor would have gone into battle with some kind of pole weapon, in the late medieval era most likely some form of poleaxe, or a lance on horseback. Think of a sword as pistol, and larger weapons like spears or whatever as assault rifles. That's an awful analogy, and badly misrepresents the use and usefulness of swords. On horseback especially, your primary weapon was expected to break, lodge in the enemy, or otherwise become useless. You don't expect your assault rifle to run dry after two or three shots. Additionally, most modern soldiers who see combat don't even carry sidearms. Swords and other short hand weapons, meanwhile, see frequent use by the lowest and the highest in siege and in the open field. It is valid to call the spear the 'primary' weapon of most medieval combatants, but only in the sense that it is the first weapon they employ. I've written more thoughts on the subject of swords in war here, and have plenty more textual examples to use if you remain unconvinced. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 20:37
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:uhhhh yes it is. If you look at hauberks that you see, for example, in the Bayeux tapestry, they do not extend far past the elbow or the thigh, not dissimilar from this mail shirt in the Wallace Collection. Andrew Ayton lists a late 11th c. hauberk at 25 lb. The famous gothic armour from the Wallace Collection, meanwhile, weighs in at 60 lb. I am not unconvinced, I wrote that on my lunch break.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It is valid to call the spear the 'primary' weapon of most medieval combatants, but only in the sense that it is the first weapon they employ.  Edit: The sword's importance is underlined by the words the guys I study use for their weapons. A dagger is a "side weapon" or an "under weapon," while your sword is your "over weapon." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 20:56
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Are they using single sided picks at the gate or is it a sickle like weapon?
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Oct 15, 2014 21:05
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Hogge Wild posted:Are they using single sided picks at the gate or is it a sickle like weapon? It's a pick. You can see the guy in the upper right using them to demolish some towers or w/e
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Oct 15, 2014 21:26
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Verisimilidude posted:At a recent tournament someone was describing fighting in harness and how the sweat from someone's body develops a special rust on the inside of pieces like the breastplate that makes it more difficult to puncture. It was gross but kinda neat.
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Oct 15, 2014 21:32
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Applewhite posted:I remember hearing someplace that swords were unrealistically romanticized in the media and that most warriors of the day favored bludgeons, axes or spears. Is this true? Others have made some great comments so far. Main thing I would focus on is the intended job of the weapon. Spears were popular because of reach: greater reach means you can strike first, and if you are in the second rank you can strike past the guys in front of you. One way to think of it is any time your enemy is close enough to use a sword against it is because you haven’t killed them yet. For instance, you could stab with a long spear as you approach and then switch to your sword as they get closer. Bludgeons were popular as anti-armour weapons. You can’t cut through mail or plate armour, so impact from a mace or war hammer can be a little more effective as a way to injure them through the armour, or at least stun or cripple them enough for you to finish with a stab into a vulnerable point. Another reason to use maces is law enforcement, since a broken limb is less fatal than a severed limb. Axes have a less definite ‘role’ than the other two, as far as I am aware; possibly a compromise between the cutting ability of a sword and the impact of a bludgeon. In the early medieval period, it is plausible that axes would be cheaper than swords (when pattern-welding or folded steel was the main method of sword smithing), although there were cheap swords around, especially later on. Another factor is weapons that are more than one of above: halberds were spear + axe (with a hook or ‘thorn’ at the back), pollaxes could be spear + axe + hammer (+ extra spike on the back end + possible hook), or possibly a spear + hammer + pick. Then you get thrown weapons are often variants of spears or axes, and lances are a form of spear as well. I would hesitate to say which weapon was the most common, since it depends a lot on interpretation. Spare spears were fairly common, for instance a knight might charge with a lance, then fall back and retrieve another lance from his squire: so a knight might have only one or two swords (King’s Mirror suggest a knight have one sword on his belt and another on the saddle), but use over half-a-dozen spears/lances in a single battle. I hope that helps!
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Oct 15, 2014 21:46
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Was the sword ever the primary self-defense weapon of the time (time periods I'm interested in are 1300 to 1700)? Also can anyone suggest a decent book on Germanic history dealing with historical weapons, knighthood, and combat in those same time periods?
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Oct 15, 2014 23:44
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Verisimilidude posted:Was the sword ever the primary self-defense weapon of the time (time periods I'm interested in are 1300 to 1700)? http://www.amazon.com/Martial-Ethic-Early-Modern-Germany/dp/0230576567/ HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 23:50
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HEY GAL posted:By self defense, do you mean outside of a military context? Then yes it was. During the 1600s and 1700s, every adult gentile male city-dweller in Germany would probably have worn a sword almost all of his waking hours, or at least when he went outside.(I do not know about Bauers.) Someone in my fencing class was reading that last night! I'll try to borrow it from them instead of paying the hundred bucks. (Why are history books so expensive?)
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Oct 15, 2014 23:59
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Verisimilidude posted:Was the sword ever the primary self-defense weapon of the time (time periods I'm interested in are 1300 to 1700)? I'm playing silly buggers with semantics, but if by 'primary' you mean 'most common' then I'll bet you cash it's gonna be a knife or something like that ; just like how today most times it's a kitchen knife and not a gun, sheer numbers moves it away from the dedicated weapon. But I'm just Some rear end in a top hat so someone with more facts please call me out.
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Oct 16, 2014 01:30
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm playing silly buggers with semantics, but if by 'primary' you mean 'most common' then I'll bet you cash it's gonna be a knife or something like that ; just like how today most times it's a kitchen knife and not a gun, sheer numbers moves it away from the dedicated weapon. But now I'm wondering if the sword is more important in the civilian context, weird as that would seem.
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Oct 16, 2014 01:37
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This is probably gonna be the stupidest question in the whole thread and I maybe a massive ignorant idiot, but for some reason war and combat in middle ages with swords, spears and bows feels more "manageable" than modern fighting with guns, explosives and artillery, so is it? I recently read David Finkel's Good Soldiers which is about battalion 2-16 in Iraq in 2006-2007 and I just started to think about the fragility of a single soldier and how uncertain his fate is, because with modern weapons everybody is extremely dangerous, no matter how untrained, out of shape and badly equipped he otherwise is and the IEDs and other explosives are constantly waiting for you with horrific consequences. The idea of a firefight feels so chaotic and luck just feels such a big part of it. With explosives, you have to be in the right place in the right time to remain unscathed, which is almost only luck. With melee weapons everything feels a lot more controllable, like if you just have been well trained and are a good fighter and are in shape, you should be able to defeat multiple less skilled opponents and otherwise fight against better fighters. You still need luck, of course, but not as much and good armor should shave off a bit of that uncertainty, because it protects you from mistakes. It's still war and the stakes are horribly high of course, but I'd rather be a well trained knight with a sword against ten armed un-trained peasants than a well trained marine with an assault rifle against ten un-trained insurgents with assault rifles. I don't know if I would be the only one to choose this, because there's conscription in my country and we did some drills in the military and it kinda felt like you would be thrown into a battle and hope to see the other guys first to shoot first and hope not to get hit by artillery fire but I've been doing combat sports for 9 years so physically fighting guys is familiar to me and I know what I can and can't do. I'm not saying that medieval fighting would be less lethal or less dangerous, just that being skilled in fighting would raise your survivability a lot more than it would now. But I could be dead wrong, I am not a soldier and never been in a war.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:00
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HEY GAL posted:The most common weapon for drunken soldiers getting in fights is a dagger. Which, incidentally, you're not supposed to let anyone take from you because "it's for defending your life" and also because "it's that by which you receive money from the lords," which is a mercenary's usual phrase for what they do (thus the fight that began when one dude told another "You've received money from the lords many times but only marched out once!"). So not only is the dagger the most common weapon you fight with, it symbolically stands for your entire career. Of course, I haven't seen anything about people trying not to have their swords taken away, so I don't know how they would respond. Also I have seen the distinction between dagger/knife on on side and sword/saber on the other as both an officer vs. NCO thing and as a infantry vs. cavalry thing, up until ww2 even.
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Oct 16, 2014 16:16
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HEY GAL posted:The major problem is not the dexterity issue, it's that on a hot day there's nowhere for your sweat to go and you steam yourself like a Chinese baked good. Related curio: This may be an outdated interpretation, but I was taught in school that this fact had a significant influence on at least one major battle. According to sources, at Tannenberg/Grunwald (1410) it was a scorching hot summer day and the Polish-Lithuanian king set up camp in a wooded area while the Teutonic Knights ended up in an open field. In this way he supposedly negated their advantage in heavily armored knights, as the Grand Master sent envoys with insults going "come on you rear end in a top hat coward and come fight us" and received a response to the tune of "welp sure is nice and cool here in the shade". The P-L army just sat there for hours, refusing battle and watching their enemies boil. This was, of course, terribly dishonorable, cowardly, unfit for a Christian ruler and so on, but history is written by the victors and apparently victors don't have heatstroke. I have a question, though, about a matter that makes me doubt this story: did European knights modify their armor at all during the Crusades? I know 12th century armor was lighter than in the 15th century, but still - wearing all that metal in the Levantine heat must have been horrible. Did they adapt, wear lighter stuff, carry tents everywhere, or just grin and bear it?
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Oct 16, 2014 18:37
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Guildencrantz posted:I have a question, though, about a matter that makes me doubt this story: did European knights modify their armor at all during the Crusades? I know 12th century armor was lighter than in the 15th century, but still - wearing all that metal in the Levantine heat must have been horrible. Did they adapt, wear lighter stuff, carry tents everywhere, or just grin and bear it? From reading in "The Crusades Through The Eyes Of Arabs" that the average Arab's reaction upon seeing crusading knights for the first time was something along the lines of HOLY poo poo, SPACE MARINES! I think the crusaders just said 'gently caress it' and went into combat fully armored.
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Oct 16, 2014 19:12
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Saladin won at Hattin by parking his army between the Crusaders and the only water for miles. The knights were in absolutely no condition to fight after marching in the sun all day with nothing to drink but wine. More the fault of dumbassery than the armor itself, of course.
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Oct 16, 2014 19:23
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ManOfTheYear posted:This is probably gonna be the stupidest question in the whole thread and I maybe a massive ignorant idiot, but for some reason war and combat in middle ages with swords, spears and bows feels more "manageable" than modern fighting with guns, explosives and artillery, so is it? I recently read David Finkel's Good Soldiers which is about battalion 2-16 in Iraq in 2006-2007 and I just started to think about the fragility of a single soldier and how uncertain his fate is, because with modern weapons everybody is extremely dangerous, no matter how untrained, out of shape and badly equipped he otherwise is and the IEDs and other explosives are constantly waiting for you with horrific consequences. The idea of a firefight feels so chaotic and luck just feels such a big part of it. With explosives, you have to be in the right place in the right time to remain unscathed, which is almost only luck. ManOfTheYear posted:With melee weapons everything feels a lot more controllable, like if you just have been well trained and are a good fighter and are in shape, you should be able to defeat multiple less skilled opponents and otherwise fight against better fighters. I say an old kenjutsu (japanese fencing) video from the 1930s somewhere on youtube once (Ill try to find the link). And it did not make sense to me at all. There where 4 or 5 studends. They all rushed into the fighting area and started a complete free-for-all - they just hacked left and right as fast as they could. Once someone was hit, he would leave, and the next student rushed in and started hacking. Noone parried/blocked/evaded/tried to get into an advantageous position. They all just attacked and attacked and attacked until they got hit and replaced. There simply was no "fencing" in the way I imagined it at all. I talked that video over with some other people and one person had a good explanation: those studends were drilled for the unorganized melee that happened in medieval battles too when the formations had broken for whatever reason and the fighters were just entangled. In that situation there was no "fencing" any longer, no control - you were just drilled to kill as many opponents as possible as quickly as possible before you died yourself (or got really lucky and survived). Its the same military logic that you can still see today in stuff like ABC protection suits: those were not made to help the soldiers to survive, those where made to keep the soldier killing for 30 more minutes before they kicked the bucket themselves. ManOfTheYear posted:You still need luck, of course, but not as much and good armor should shave off a bit of that uncertainty, because it protects you from mistakes. It's still war and the stakes are horribly high of course, but I'd rather be a well trained knight with a sword against ten armed un-trained peasants than a well trained marine with an assault rifle against ten un-trained insurgents with assault rifles. I would also say that the modern equivalent to a knight is a tank, and not a single soldier (even if its a marine). ManOfTheYear posted:I don't know if I would be the only one to choose this, because there's conscription in my country and we did some drills in the military and it kinda felt like you would be thrown into a battle and hope to see the other guys first to shoot first and hope not to get hit by artillery fire but I've been doing combat sports for 9 years so physically fighting guys is familiar to me and I know what I can and can't do. ManOfTheYear posted:I'm not saying that medieval fighting would be less lethal or less dangerous, just that being skilled in fighting would raise your survivability a lot more than it would now. But I could be dead wrong, I am not a soldier and never been in a war. Edit: On second though regarding "It's probably true that an individual soldier in todays army is more of a cog in a incredibly big and complex engine of destruction than a medieval soldier was": No, actually not. A medieval fighter that had learned to fight in a formation was as much a cog as todays soldier - its just that the machine he was part of was far smaller and simpler. Edit 2: Found the video. Its even older than I remembered (from 1897), and even if its not quite as chaotic as I remembered it, still everybody in that video would have died if they had used real swords... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN9SDF05nX0 Nektu fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 19:54
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We talked about that a few pages back, there's cloth or padding worn above the mail. Even here in central Europe, spending a day out on the fields in summer isn't advisable without lots of water. We had a half-day with fast marching with a kit of 15kg when I was in the army, that was in August. Wasn't exactly fun and people were dropping, but it was also through woods and not just the open field. On another occasion, I spent a few days at a festival where there was no shade of trees at all, just tents. That was pretty hosed up and I think the only time when I was close to having a heatstroke. Now imagine that in a place that's really hot, like Iraq. Cold sucks, but heat is really the worst.
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Oct 16, 2014 20:29
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Nektu posted:Edit 2: Found the video. Its even older than I remembered (from 1897), and even if its not quite as chaotic as I remembered it, still everybody in that video would have died if they had used real swords... I'd say there's plenty of parrying in that video! Look at the guy to the right in the foreground at about 1:00 for a nice example of parrying an attack and then countering (a men-kaeshi-do if you want to be technical; here's a beautiful modern example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUHXWOpBPuM). In general I'd say it looks pretty similar to ji-geiko (sparring) in modern kendo, just more hardcore. In fact, to me it looks a lot more like modern kendo (that is, a sport) than actual sword fighting; look how they're specifically aiming for the top of the head, the wrist and the side of the abdomen (the three main targets in kendo), while seemingly avoiding targeting the areas not protected by the armor. Don't ask me what's up with the guy with the twirly rope thing. Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 21:50
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HEY GAL posted:I end up supporting my harness with my hip bones, because gently caress my life. Oh, come on. You enjoy the hell out of it and we all know it. (and get jealous).
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Oct 16, 2014 21:52
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mastervj posted:Oh, come on. You enjoy the hell out of it and we all know it. JaucheCharly posted:Even here in central Europe, spending a day out on the fields in summer isn't advisable without lots of water. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 21:56
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Alekanderu posted:I'd say there's plenty of parrying in that video! Look at the guy to the right in the foreground at about 1:00 for a nice example of parrying an attack and then countering. Also they tend to look for a single opponent and stay with him (which is absolutely not smart, because a 3rd person bashes their head in). I still think that that practice tried to simulate the chaos of an uncontrolled melee - it was just a bad simulation because the studends normally just trained in the kendo way (Some of them even held back and let two others do their duel in peace). Nektu fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 21:56
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mastervj posted:Oh, come on. You enjoy the hell out of it and we all know it. A friend of mine finally received his harness after several months of waiting, and the first picture he took in it he has the biggest poo poo eating grin. I can't wait to get my own harness (it's happening), and I want it to be similar to the second suit shown in the video I linked earlier. Nektu posted:Yea, as I said its a bit less chaotic than I remembered it. Still - there are numerous attacks from behind or from the side against someone who is already engaged, and noone gets out of that poo poo as the "winner" - which is notably different from modern kendo. Which is why I've always appreciated systems that teach fighting multiple opponents. We don't practice these very often (I think we did a flourish once that has a historical context of parrying and then defeating one foe after another) but they are very cool. It's also why I like watching people practice montante, which seems to focus more on fighting crowds rather than one on one. Verisimilidude fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 22:10
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Verisimilidude posted:A friend of mine finally received his harness after several months of waiting, and the first picture he took in it he has the biggest poo poo eating grin. I can't wait to get my own harness (it's happening), and I want it to be similar to the second suit shown in the video I linked earlier.  Will yours be made for you? How does that work these days? (Mine is mass produced and in real life it would have been mass produced, just the cheapest poo poo some proto-factory can gank together and shove in the direction of a colonel. One size fits...someone.)(Also instead of being blackened with chemicals it's paint. Which will keep the rust off until it gets scratched, so that's OK.)
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Oct 16, 2014 22:13
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HEY GAL posted:
I know someone who had his custom made for him, and I figure if I'm going to go all out and get a suit of armor I want it to be custom fitted.
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Oct 16, 2014 22:14
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Verisimilidude posted:I know someone who had his custom made for him, and I figure if I'm going to go all out and get a suit of armor I want it to be custom fitted.
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Oct 16, 2014 22:16
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:uhhhh yes it is. If you look at hauberks that you see, for example, in the Bayeux tapestry, they do not extend far past the elbow or the thigh, not dissimilar from this mail shirt in the Wallace Collection. Andrew Ayton lists a late 11th c. hauberk at 25 lb. The famous gothic armour from the Wallace Collection, meanwhile, weighs in at 60 lb. In the 12th century and later full chainmail armor was usually multiple layers, and covered both arms and legs, even including mailed mittens and leggins. This would be what most knightly heavy cavalry wore, though I can admit that it probably in many cases is not as heavy as full suits plate armor, when you have these heavy, all covering chainmail hauberks, the difference will be much less and the plate armor will still distribute the weight alot better and offer better protection. Guildencrantz posted:I have a question, though, about a matter that makes me doubt this story: did European knights modify their armor at all during the Crusades? I know 12th century armor was lighter than in the 15th century, but still - wearing all that metal in the Levantine heat must have been horrible. Did they adapt, wear lighter stuff, carry tents everywhere, or just grin and bear it? I think knights in Outremer more often used elbow length chainmail hauberks, mail aventails instead of mail coifs, and favored conical helmets, skull caps and kettle hats and other styles of open helmets rather than closed helmets like the great helm. You should also consider that usually armor would not be worn while on the march or when combat was not imminent, that's part of the reason why knigths were accompanied by squires and other servants, as they could assist the knight in putting on his armor. Also people seem to have the misconception that the Middle East is all scorching desert, which is simply not true, especially of the areas of greatest action during the Crusades which would be modern day Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, much of this area has a mediterranean climate not really that different from Italy, Spain, Turkey or Greece, yet no one really bats an eyelid at Italians going into battle in full armor or Byzantine cataphracts. Then there's the misconception that Middle Eastern warriors didn't really wear much metal armor which is simply not true. For much of the high point of the Crusades equipment actually was pretty similar, both sides wore chainmail hauberks, iron helmets and used kite shields, lances (the favored weapon of the Arabs) and straight swords (though round shields also were common among the Muslims, and Arab straight swords were shorter, more like a Roman spatha, whereas the Turks favored sabers and maces over straight swords). A big difference was that European soldiers made much greater use of padded cloth armors than the Muslims did, particularly when it came to using these as padding to give increased protection to a soldier already wearing another armor over it, the Muslims seemed more often to have used silk shirts underneath their armor or to have worn lamellar cuirasses (leather or iron), and metal or leather arm and leg guards for added protection, also used was a kind of multi-layered mail-lined fabric armor known as a kazaghand or jazerant (which I mentioned earlier in this was also worn by some people fearing assassination, such as Saladin, because it could appear to simply be a thick and somewhat stiff coat). Here's some pictures from some books (two Osprey Military titles, Saracen Faris and Knight of Outremer) I have.   
Randarkman fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 22:40
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Well, while looking for that video earlier, I stumbeled over a good half-swording video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bdMfaymGlk
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Oct 16, 2014 22:40
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Randarkman posted:Also people seem to have the misconception that the Middle East is all scorching desert, which is simply not true, especially of the areas of greatest action during the Crusades which would be modern day Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, much of this area has a mediterranean climate not really that different from Italy, Spain, Turkey or Greece, yet no one really bats an eyelid at Italians going into battle in full armor...
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Oct 16, 2014 22:50
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