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swords and daggers are legit tho
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Jul 1, 2016 10:08
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How do mounted archers handle themselves against foot-archers? Infantry can use a longer bow and thus have more range, and a mounted archer is a bigger target and thus easier to hit. I would think this would mean horse-archers would lose if pitted against an equal number of foot-archers, who are also easier to raise. But it seems this wasn't the case given the success of case studies like the Mongols.
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Jul 1, 2016 10:18
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The Lone Badger posted:How do mounted archers handle themselves against foot-archers? Infantry can use a longer bow and thus have more range, and a mounted archer is a bigger target and thus easier to hit. I would think this would mean horse-archers would lose if pitted against an equal number of foot-archers, who are also easier to raise. But it seems this wasn't the case given the success of case studies like the Mongols. Strategic mobility? Most of the time the foot are not professionals but some kind of levies, and they need to get back to their farms/actual jobs soon; the nomad horse-archers can just back off with their flocks for a while and then try for a defeat-in-detail. This is based on video games and casual reading, though.
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Jul 1, 2016 10:30
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Hazzard posted:Where did all these Katina and samurai myths come from? I read someone claiming that Samurai refused to use spears, because they were a peasant's weapon. I can't answer your questions but I appreciate the trainwreck that autocorrect seems to have created in response. Generally, if you see 'the samurai were too honorable to X' be suspicious because the samurai were plenty capable of lots of poo poo if it got them where they wanted to be. Often times it should be parsed as 'in the Edo Period the samurai were forbidden to Y' or 'there exists a story of a samurai who once Z'd.' The Lone Badger posted:How do mounted archers handle themselves against foot-archers? Infantry can use a longer bow and thus have more range, and a mounted archer is a bigger target and thus easier to hit. I would think this would mean horse-archers would lose if pitted against an equal number of foot-archers, who are also easier to raise. But it seems this wasn't the case given the success of case studies like the Mongols. It depends. Armor tends to help. Mobility is also a big factor, horsemen can ride around people they don't want to deal with, mass up when they want to or scatter when they want to. Geography permitting an all cavalry force can basically dictate the terms of any engagement they see fit; at best foot archers could create a hazardous zone.
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Jul 1, 2016 10:34
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The Lone Badger posted:How do mounted archers handle themselves against foot-archers? Infantry can use a longer bow and thus have more range, and a mounted archer is a bigger target and thus easier to hit. I would think this would mean horse-archers would lose if pitted against an equal number of foot-archers, who are also easier to raise. But it seems this wasn't the case given the success of case studies like the Mongols. The most simple shot in horse archery is the frontal and retreating one. Left to right is the most difficult. The same is true on foot. Foot archers don't have the luxury of varying their distance and heading rapidly. They can't underrun the enemy's shots. Their job is alot harder. They have to hit the moving target, while the HA shoots into a relatively slow moving mass of people. The closer the HAs get, the harder it gets for the ranks behind the first few to shoot directly at them unless they're positioned in an elevated place.
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Jul 1, 2016 11:04
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How did people settle who had to be in the first row in a battle? It seems like a pike or Napoleonic formation would not let this come down to "which poor sods happened to be the first to trundle onto the battlefield" because that seems to invite chaos. And since there seem to be obvious survival implications it seems likely that people would have felt pretty strongly about this and enforced a system that seemed fair to them? Was something like the whistle system from Rome ever actually used? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0
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Jul 1, 2016 11:05
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aphid_licker posted:How did people settle who had to be in the first row in a battle? It seems like a pike or Napoleonic formation would not let this come down to "which poor sods happened to be the first to trundle onto the battlefield" because that seems to invite chaos. And since there seem to be obvious survival implications it seems likely that people would have felt pretty strongly about this and enforced a system that seemed fair to them? Being in a two or three deep line and shot at with cannon you're probably not much safer at the back?
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Jul 1, 2016 11:21
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100 Years Ago Hey, did something happen today? I forget. (Of course my internet goes down yesterday right as I'm going to upload and only just came back.) Yesterday: Good news! Henri Desagneaux gets relieved! Bad news, it's only in the evening, so there's just time for a few final hideous horrors of war at its worst. General Haig puts his faith in God (no sarcasm, please); Lt-Col Fraser-Tytler hasn't had it his own way on "Y3" day; there's one last diversionary attack at Neuve Chapelle; and Evelyn Southwell is worried. (First day on the Somme to follow once it's been proofread and I've spent three hours drawing a map that will still be awful at the end of it.)
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Jul 1, 2016 11:25
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My office is waiting on your post Trin, I've got us all addicted.
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Jul 1, 2016 11:29
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aphid_licker posted:How did people settle who had to be in the first row in a battle? It seems like a pike or Napoleonic formation would not let this come down to "which poor sods happened to be the first to trundle onto the battlefield" because that seems to invite chaos. And since there seem to be obvious survival implications it seems likely that people would have felt pretty strongly about this and enforced a system that seemed fair to them? the spanish may have rotated their pikemen, which means a square escuadron might have had more physical stamina than a shallow formation
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Jul 1, 2016 11:33
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HEY GAL posted:it's a place of honor/respect, they don't avoid the position, they fight to get into it. Edit: It also goes to a more experienced person, because the guy in front has to know how the maneuvers work. Also, if you're a soldier in the late medieval period, you probably have a better chance of acquiring prisoners for ransom if you're at the front. So there's a financial incentive too.
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Jul 1, 2016 12:31
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My question before wasn't that badly worded was it? I just read it again and aside from being too long, I can't see anything wrong with it. typing it on phone was a bitch though. I remember reading that some pike regiments would either put the men with the most armour at the front, or armour the men in front more. either way, the file leader was designated. and they apparently got double pay. I believe pikes were the same in the Ancient World, it's from a fiction book, but there's an index which explains quite a lot about it, with a hierarchy among each file, I think of eight men.
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Jul 1, 2016 13:02
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Hazzard posted:My question before wasn't that badly worded was it? I just read it again and aside from being too long, I can't see anything wrong with it. typing it on phone was a bitch though. In the Swedish system both the last and the first man of the 6 man file were designated, they were supposed to be more experienced than the rest to keep the files orderly and to stop the ones in the middle from running.
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Jul 1, 2016 13:14
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Could it be in any way related to the way the arming sword (?) in Europe gradually turned into ludicrously long rapiers? IE for military sidearm use you need something short and choppy, but in duels being able to stick the other guy first is a real advantage, so you want a longer blade, even if you lose most of your slashiness. Issue is katanas actually have a blade that's around as long as most medieval one handed swords, they just are heavier and have a big two handed handle, so if there was a length change (im ignorant of actual japanese use) I'm not sure that is the reason. In Europe rapiers were used on the battlefield, but some places like England did make distinctions between what you used on the battlefield and a duel. They used basket hilted broadswords or backswords in battle and carried rapiers in civillian life. Though obviously if you could only afford one that's what you brought to battle. So some people of the time seemed to think rapiers were not ideal for battles, but tons of other people used them, though I imagine they tended to be the more sturdy versions and not some of the more excessively long and thin ones as a whack from a halberd might break those more easily. the JJ posted:Eeeeeeeh I'd contest that, I guess. Especially "the other weapons are more important on the battlefield." We have plenty of records of plenty of armies that looked at what they had and went 'yup, swords are what I want here.' Swords were overwhelmingly backup weapons. Spears/polearms were the weapons of choice for war until gunpowder, and even then they just made them extra long and they stuck around for another hundred years. There are exceptions, but normally its because that culture used specific tactics to take full advantage of their dudes having shorter weapons. Like the Romans used a big rear end shield so they could push past spearpoints as a mass. Knights always carried something other than a sword, since swords suck at fighting other dudes in armor and you have to use all kinds of advanced methods to try and jam the point into a vulnerable spot. 18th and 19th century cavalry certainly did use swords, but that was once the normal troops had moved to muskets instead of their own spear, whereas before some form of spear or lance was the standard cavalry weapon.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:02
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Nebakenezzer posted:Found something for you Mr. Bewbies. I've been doing some reading and I found a reference to some post-war research on the RAF bomber command vs. Coastal Command: apparently this research shows that a four engines bomber operating with Coastal Command has 20x the economic impact as it would have operating with Bomber Command. Anyway, I have no idea how valid that statement is, but I figure by mentioning it to you you'd find the paper and share the link This is pretty interesting...do you have any info on publishing, author, office, year, etc?
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Jul 1, 2016 14:16
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Swords were overwhelmingly backup weapons. This is one of those definitive statements that have so many exceptions to them that it comes off looking far too untrue. Swords of various types were always a light cav thing, the Scots had the Highland charge, the Swedes didn't give their musketeers bayonets, instead their infantry drew swords and charged after firing two slavos, and so on and so on.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:28
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Well, I'd counter that sword-and-shield is a very different prospect to 'just a sword'. Also carrying a sword instead of using a bayonet is generally a choice driven by the shortcomings of the plug bayonet. And the talk of the fabled Highland charge is rather contradicted by historical evidence. I mean really all I wanted to say was that swords > bayonets because swords 'were a dedicated melee weapon' is kinda nonsense, at least as of the 20th century once bayonets have had three centuries of iterations to improve on the formula. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 14:33
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Issue is katanas actually have a blade that's around as long as most medieval one handed swords, they just are heavier and have a big two handed handle, so if there was a length change (im ignorant of actual japanese use) I'm not sure that is the reason. Yeah, samurais that fought on horse would use spears, it fits into the same niche as the cavalry lance. If anything, I'm starting to get the impression that the european cavalryman's disdain for the bow is the exception rather than the rule.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:39
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According to this random book on Japanese swordsmithing I found on the internet, Japanese swords did get more ornate, slimmer and shallower in curve after about 1600, during the Edo period, and then beefed back up as tensions rose in the late 18th century. According to the author, middle class people bought swords more for show than for personal protection, since the Edo period was mostly peaceful. A similar thing happened in Europe in the eighteenth century, when people started moving from rapiers to smallswords. As a sword it's mostly a glorified shiv and pretty useless in any sort of battle, but the surviving examples are blinged out to a ridiculous degree and are clearly status symbols. Edit: I mean swords have been decorated and used as status symbols since forever, I just think it all peaked during the smallsword era. There aren't many purely utilitarian smallswords out there, I don't think. Siivola fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 14:39
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Kemper Boyd posted:This is one of those definitive statements that have so many exceptions to them that it comes off looking far too untrue. Swords of various types were always a light cav thing, the Scots had the Highland charge, the Swedes didn't give their musketeers bayonets, instead their infantry drew swords and charged after firing two slavos, and so on and so on. Both the highland charge and the swedes using swords instead of bayonets are examples of using the sword as a backup weapon. They marched into battle with a musket and then switched to a secondary weapon. Other than the Romans and Iberian tribesman that gave them the gladius, there are almost no instances of entire armies being primarily equipped with only a sword for fighting. Its nearly always a secondary weapon used when the primary one is either broken, lost, unwieldy, or in the case of guns, no longer able to be reloaded safely.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:44
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Speaking of which: Why did roman legionary tactics fall out of favour? As in: Short Sword, big-rear end shield, and reliance on formation. Considering that pikes etc needed a decent amount of drill, it can't be training alone which did those tactics in.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:48
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Fangz posted:Well, I'd counter that sword-and-shield is a very different prospect to 'just a sword'. Also carrying a sword instead of using a bayonet is generally a choice driven by the shortcomings of the plug bayonet. The Swedes did this in late 17th-early 18th century, when the socket bayonet was already a thing.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:56
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Both the highland charge and the swedes using swords instead of bayonets are examples of using the sword as a backup weapon. They marched into battle with a musket and then switched to a secondary weapon. The Swedish during the Carolingian period saw the use of cold steel weapons as the primary way to fight war, the musket was meant merely for the approach and wasn't expected to have a huge effect on the enemy.
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Jul 1, 2016 14:58
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nothing to seehere posted:Speaking of which: Why did roman legionary tactics fall out of favour? As in: Short Sword, big-rear end shield, and reliance on formation. Considering that pikes etc needed a decent amount of drill, it can't be training alone which did those tactics in. The legions needed just as much, if not even more drill. The Romans abandoned the hoplite phalanx after getting their asses handed to them repeatedly by the Samnites, a central italian hill-tribe. They then adopted a short sword and large shield, with a javelin used before charging to break up formations. However they also relied on the centurions to have a lot of autonomy to use his men to flank or push through a gap. Each cohort had to be able to respond to battlefield commands extremely quickly and with rigid discipline. For hundreds of years, the Romans were the only oens in there sphere of influence with the level of organization and logistics to support large armies of identically equipped and trained soldiers, and they almost always had those as an advantage in any war. What happens is toward the end of the western empire, the Romans no longer can afford the same level of troops, and their enemies have either served in the legions, or are on a more equal playing field equipment and training-wise. The legions shift to equipping their guys with spears, since a large group of guys with spears and shields works really well in a battle, and they are way cheaper to produce than swords. Essentially a lack of money and good recruits means they have to scale back the intensity of training, as well as what the standard equipment is.
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Jul 1, 2016 15:01
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Didn't the British cavalry rely on swords during the Napoleonic wars?
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Jul 1, 2016 15:07
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Those already exist though? I thought the airsoft MP 18s were just a prototype that never went on sale?
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Jul 1, 2016 15:09
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Good luck, everybody. 100 Years Ago This is hopefully going to be the hardest day to write about. Not because of all the death or the destruction, but the challenge of trying to hit all the points I want to hit while keeping things brief. Today is about what happened on the first day on the Somme, in as little detail as is decent. There's a few maps, a lot of personal accounts, a little blood and guts, plenty of war crimes, and an awful lot of questions to be answered later. Go on, sod off, there's a lot to read in there. Hopefully it gets from Point A to Point Q in some kind of logical order. I'm going to show solidarity with the blokes by having a bit of a rest now. Lying down.
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Jul 1, 2016 15:10
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chitoryu12 posted:I thought the airsoft MP 18s were just a prototype that never went on sale? Oh, I thought it was a regularly produced thing these days, my bad.
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Jul 1, 2016 15:12
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Kemper Boyd posted:The Swedes did this in late 17th-early 18th century, when the socket bayonet was already a thing. Really? Are you sure this isn't just an issue with phasing in the new technology? Wikipedia posted:During the outbreak of the Great Northern War every Swedish musketeer was equipped with a sword and often a flintlock musket with a 20 mm caliber, no bayonet attached, the bayonet was instead introduced to every Swedish musketeer first 1704. However, the grenadiers were equipped with grenades, swords and flintlock muskets with bayonet. This coincides well with the wider adoption of socket bayonets in, e.g. the French armies as the technology became more refined. Also worth noting that their opponents in Russia used plug bayonets up until *1731*. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 15:21
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Siivola posted:Didn't the British cavalry rely on swords during the Napoleonic wars? Everyone's cavalry was doctrinaire arme blanche and armed primarily with swords and pistols. There were some lancers, but the majority was sword-armed cavalry. British cavalry sucked during the Napoleonic was and also at all other times in history, so it's not really an example of things that are good.
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Jul 1, 2016 15:24
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Hazzard posted:Where did all these Katina and samurai myths come from? I read someone claiming that Samurai refused to use spears, because they were a peasant's weapon. It basically dates back to the Edo period, a long period of relative peace in which "samurai" became mostly just a different social class with different restrictions and obligations - hereditary minor aristocrats and nobles dependent on higher lords for their income, their swords being little more than mandatory class markers. With a somewhat uncomfortable social position and nothing really better to do, plus literacy and a decent education, some samurai turned to hobbies like writing - and a lot of stuff they wrote had more to do with the dreams of bored aristocrat-samurai than the realities of their soldier ancestors. That was the basic foundation of the samurai myth: cooked up by the samurai themselves as they attempted to adjust to a radically different position in society from that of their grandfathers'. After the final demise of the samurai class, the myth was widely spread around by the increasingly militaristic Japanese society, which absolutely loved the whole noble warrior thing and exploited it to instill values like loyalty and self-sacrifice. The Daisho saw different levels of use over different periods. When "samurai" was a job rather than a social class, people would obviously only wear it when there was some practical need, but once it became a class marker it became more and more important, to the point where it was eventually legally required for samurai to wear it in public.
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Jul 1, 2016 15:40
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This is your periodical reminder to go read Hagakure, the most get-off-my-lawn  samurai book ever.Interestingly, the Japanese were really into their own medieval history. Apparently period illustrations of the Boshin War, for instance, show people fighting with spears and swords despite mostly everyone involved being armed with a modern musket and dressed in a modrn uniform. Turns out The Last Samurai and Rurouni Kenshin weren't the first to go all Hollywood on it!
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Jul 1, 2016 15:53
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Siivola posted:Didn't the British cavalry rely on swords during the Napoleonic wars? Yeah, but that is in the context of pikes being no longer present and the line infantry having only muskets with bayonets and not 8 foot or longer spears, and even then, lancers continued to be a thing, but as more specialized units i.e. napoleon's guys.
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Jul 1, 2016 16:05
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The Lone Badger posted:How do mounted archers handle themselves against foot-archers? Infantry can use a longer bow and thus have more range, and a mounted archer is a bigger target and thus easier to hit. I would think this would mean horse-archers would lose if pitted against an equal number of foot-archers, who are also easier to raise. But it seems this wasn't the case given the success of case studies like the Mongols. The Mongols were really good. They had a good basic weapons platform in the horse archer, but they were also spectacular army organizers and strategists. As their successes piled on, they also started using non-Mongol manpower to supplement their horse archers. There were also horse archer groups that sucked. These are the guys that can be bought off with some cartloads of silk, they're the ones that charge into phalangites (How?), and they're the ones that exchange volleys with fortified foot archers and have to back off after losing too many guys. There would not be independent states of settled peoples anywhere near Central Asia if you couldn't defend yourself against nomads.
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Jul 1, 2016 16:25
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fyi mongol cavalrymen would often carry a spear and a sword as sidearms, even if their bow was their primary weapon. That's just good practice: no use wasting a valuable arrow on a routed enemy, when you could ride them down and stab them in the back of the neck.
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Jul 1, 2016 16:38
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Worth noting that the Mongols aren't just down to horse archers, but rather an entire system of discipline, logistics, communications and so on that were miles ahead of what anyone else had. They also loved the tactic of the feigned retreat, to draw their opponents apart and defeat them in detail.
Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 16:38
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Phobophilia posted:Yeah, samurais that fought on horse would use spears, it fits into the same niche as the cavalry lance. If anything, I'm starting to get the impression that the european cavalryman's disdain for the bow is the exception rather than the rule. Even the European disdain for horse archers can be overstated. Serbian cavalry used recurve bows, for example, though they tended to take a secondary role to lances. The late medieval mix of heavy western style heavy cavalry, armored lancers, and horse archers was pretty drat deadly. Also, while looking for some sources on this to make sure I'm not talking out of my rear end, I found out that apparenly, Serbian nobles sometimes used hardened leather corselets that were pretty drat good. There's records of a dude getting lanced in the back and surviving without his leather armor getting penetrated.
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Jul 1, 2016 17:14
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my dad posted:Even the European disdain for horse archers can be overstated. Serbian cavalry used recurve bows, for example, though they tended to take a secondary role to lances. The late medieval mix of heavy western style heavy cavalry, armored lancers, and horse archers was pretty drat deadly. "Corselets" reminds me of how I recently found out how big of a thing a tight waist and broad shoulders were among Eastern European and Russian officers. Apparently it was so popular for them to wear corsets and ultra-tight belts cinched around their shrunken waists that a common parody of officers of these nations was to depict them having subordinates tie their corsets for them, or for officers to be drawn in comics with cartoonishly slim waists and bulging chests.
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Jul 1, 2016 17:28
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Horse archery is really hard, there's plenty of posts here about how much harder it is to train an archer vs a musketeer, now imagine trying to do the archery while sitting on top of and steering a horse bouncing and moving on 3 different axis. The armies of Ghengis were made up of people who had been practicing this since before they could walk, where would a European king find such cavalry? They would have seemed like terrifying supermen to sedentary peoples.
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Jul 1, 2016 17:29
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Phobophilia posted:fyi mongol cavalrymen would often carry a spear and a sword as sidearms, even if their bow was their primary weapon. That's just good practice: no use wasting a valuable arrow on a routed enemy, when you could ride them down and stab them in the back of the neck. Well the idea that archers only carry bows, cavalry only carry spears or swords comes from video games and maybe 19th century standardisation (mostly video games). But like I said, the Mongols were just really good. Any of the big nomad empires (Parthia, Achaemenid Persia) had to be good. But in between the big conquests, there were failed nomads, bribed nomads, and just-not-quite-good-enough nomads, and one of the ways settled peoples could defend themselves was with foot archers. Not to mention that nothing stopped nomads from dismounting and shooting from foot if they wanted. Throatwarbler posted:Horse archery is really hard, there's plenty of posts here about how much harder it is to train an archer vs a musketeer, now imagine trying to do the archery while sitting on top of and steering a horse bouncing and moving on 3 different axis. The armies of Ghengis were made up of people who had been practicing this since before they could walk, where would a European king find such cavalry? They would have seemed like terrifying supermen to sedentary peoples. If you were near the Balkans, you could round up a non-trivial amount of light cavalry who mostly fought the same way.
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Jul 1, 2016 17:43
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